If people were 100% rational, would the world be better?

[The Grand Nudger]

Life can't be both absurd and meaningless. Absurd has a meaning. If life is absurd, life has meaning, even if we don't particularly enjoy it's meaning. Though, I think that we're taking liberties with the phrase "life is absurd" as a declarative statement in totality. What part of it? The living part, the life, or some of lifes contents. All?

Consider this. If there were no truth and goodness in life or it's contents, it may still have meaning - just not those two things. If this were a soul forge run by a magical creator, it would have no truth or goodness, and yet it would still have god-value.

I'll give you a demonstration. In magi-god soul forge world, it's not actually true that the sun does or must rise in the east. Magi-god may, to run it's forge, stop the sun in place, make it fail to rise at all, or indeed rise the sun in the west. Every single one of these things is found in soul forging magi-god stories.

The statement "the sun rises in the east" is declaratively false. The true statement being "the sun does whatever magi-god says".

[vulcanlogician]

Life can't be both absurd and meaningless.  Absurd has a meaning.  If life is absurd, life has meaning, even if we don't particularly enjoy it's meaning.  Though, I think that we're taking liberties with the phrase "life is absurd" as a declarative statement in totality.  What part of it?  The living part, the life, or some of lifes contents.  All?  

Sure, liberties are taken with "life is absurd." But there's more than a grain of truth to what is being said.

I think what is meant by the absurdists is that if you try to figure out the truth and then live by it, you'll find that it doesn't work as well as we'd wish. No matter how powerful (or true) a truth is, it doesn't work at "the ground level" so to speak. Sometimes, falsehood prevails. And maybe (sometimes) it's better that it does. Sounds pretty absurd, doesn't it?

There may be reasons for everything ultimately. But trying to pursue those reasons and live by them is, in a practical sense, impossible much of the time. That's why the absurdists urge us to dispense with that sort of thing. They call that kind of life "inauthentic."

As I said before, I mostly disregard the absurdists. They're too emotional for me. I like the Platonic route. But the absurdists have good criticisms of the Platonic route. Ultimately, such a route has its limits. As I live more, I realize that some things don't have an answer. (Or at least not an answer I can ever realize like I want to realize it.) So wisdom dictates I don't try. As Nietzsche wrote, "Wisdom sets limits, even to reason."

edit: Actually I think the Nietzsche quote is ""Wisdom sets limits, even to KNOWLEDGE." But my misquotation isn't bad either.

[The Grand Nudger]

I probably just don’t see things the same way. I might notice that a fear of divine retribution is more compelling to some people than a rational treatise on ethical behavior, for example. That a person could try and live their life by the latter set and fail whereas that same person might have or may succeed by the former.

This fact (or example of a possible fact) doesn’t strike me as absurd. Rather, it seems like something a behavioral scientist is more than willing to educate us on.

We’re not absurd. We’re biological. Seeing things that way is probably why my first thoughts on the mattered concerned phenomenology and homeostasis. My willingness to grant rational causes and processes for life broadly or human behavior specifically a function of seeing us as cognitive systems seeking value fields.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Sounds like we need a thread on absurdism :-)

[vulcanlogician]

Rather, it seems like something a behavioral scientist is more than willing to educate us on.  

We’re not absurd.  We’re biological.

Interesting that you brought behavioral scientists in. Think about a pigeon in a Skinner box for a moment.

What if you were able to converse with a pigeon in a Skinner box, and you asked it what the meaning of its existence was?

And it said, "Well, when I push the button, I get a food pellet. But when I don't push the button, I get a shock from the floor. So, what I'm supposed to do with my life is push the button and do what I can to avoid the shock from the floor."

That's a very Platonic answer. You could say that the pigeon deduced this, and what the pigeon says is rational. It is truthful, and it is accurate.

But then, let's say the pigeon then read a book by Albert Camus and came away from it with a new attitude. The new attitude is: "Fuck this! I'm in a Skinner box, and my whole existence is absurd. Any rational activity that I engage in is useless. Sure, I'll continue to peck the button to get my food pellet and avoid the shock... but never for a minute will I think that understanding any of this is 'me getting closer to the truth.' The truth is: I'm in a Skinner box and my life is absurd." Is this new attitude from the pigeon unwarranted?

The absurdist doesn't want to stand back and understand the capital 'T' Truth like Plato. The absurdist wants to show us that we are in a Skinner box of sorts, and no kind of rationalizing will ever set us free from it. And THAT is the human condition. But we CAN find a freedom of sorts from it. As Camus writes, "Imagine Sisyphus happy." Or the last paragraph in his book, The Stranger, when the protagonist is about to be executed:

...blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-so like a brother, really-I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

Should a pigeon trapped in a Skinner box all its life feel any different? Is it better off being "rational" and trying to obtain a better understanding of its predicament? Or, if it had the faculties to realize it, why shouldn't it pronounce its circumstances absurd?

[The Grand Nudger]

I’d say that the pigeons new attitude is unwarranted only in the apprehension that it’s absurd. Being in a Skinner box isn’t irrational or inexplicable or incoherent.

It’s not that I can’t understand the gist, it’s that I think the term absurd is being used more as an exhortation of frustration or dissatisfaction than a factual descriptor. It’s not true, it just feels shitty, I guess.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Great post. In post-modern terms, absurdism rejects any and all Grand Naratives...a sentiment I share. My current thinking is that rather that striving for certainty of belief contents, I am inclined to ask if the process by which a belief is gained was done so was virtueous regardless of content.

[Brian37]

     



   

 Not at work.

Vulcans and cats, like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

"You got my logic in your coolness"

"You got your coolness in my logic."

[Brian37]

     



   

 Not at work.

Vulcans and cats, like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

"You got my logic in your coolness"

"You got your coolness in my logic."

As much as I love Star Trek for promoting diversity, the fact that Leonard went on to host "In Search Of" is a bit annoying. I can handle si fi as long as those who watch it accept it as the fiction it is. But I really hate shows that promote bullshit conspiracy and "In Search Of" was the 1970s version of Qanon. And I really fucking hate the creators of the X-Files.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

In regards to 'In Search Of.' I'd be blaming the "Barnum effect" that broadcasters want to make moneg off other's lack of credulity that goes back, dare I say, centuries of marketing and "Buyer beware".

As for the "X Files" a better torch barer for Kolckak's 'Night Stalker' legacy I can't think of.

Cheers.