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by biot 3326 days ago
Oh, I'm not saying that I live under a nihilist viewpoint. Even if free will is little more than an illusion masked by seemingly infinite complexity, I happily buy into the illusion and (for the most part) operate as if I have unlimited agency / free will. My comment was more to say that you have to stop asking "why" at some point and just go with the flow otherwise you descend into meaningless.
2 comments
webmaven 3325 days ago
> I [...] operate as if I have unlimited agency / free will.

That's a different sort of trap, as it ignores the effects of circumstance (even minor things, like whether organ donation is an opt-in or opt-out checkbox can have huge real-world effects).

It also leads to blaming the unfortunate for making poor choices when those choices have been both constrained and biased by circumstance.

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projektir 3326 days ago
I mean... but you do. You just said that if you keep asking, you end up with a "nihilist" view and descend into meaningless. So your overall philosophy right now is that form of "nihilism". That is, after all, why you do not find the value in asking "why".

I strongly disagree with that and I believe this kind of thinking is not actually as logical or as rational as you were lead to believe, and properly asking the why question and answering it is fairly critical to figuring out what should be done.

> go with the flow

Go with whose flow? You realize that this is just you piggybacking on someone else's answer to the "why" and blindly accepting it without any kind of verification? This should be alarming, not calming.

Really, if someone somewhere was able to answer this question well enough that they could create a "flow" for you to go with, you can do the same.

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Bakary 3325 days ago
My understanding was that the whole point of going with the flow is to avoid thinking too much.
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projektir 3325 days ago
It's the path of least resistance, that's why people do it, there isn't some greater "point" to it. But it leaves you at the mercy of someone else. Choose the someone else carefully, as I haven't really seen good candidates lately...
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biot 3325 days ago
Exactly.
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