Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
I think I muddle together various issues
the inaccessibility of truth. I never get to the real truth, but there is wide variation in how hard I try and how close I get.
fear of the future. Will it be A or B? I make my choice. It turns out to be C.
Should I pursue "Epistemic Rationality" and seek the truth just because it is true. That is a reckless path that probably leads to nihilism, despair, and suicide. Not a good idea.
Should I tackle the problem above by being more pragmatic? I could compromise the concept of truth by asking "is this true for me" where I'm sneaking in the idea that things can be true because they make me happy or help me cope.
But the two paragraphs above get greatly modified when I contemplate that I'm not actually getting close to the truth, sometimes because it is hard to find, sometimes because I slack off and don't really try. Since I'm not actually getting close to the truth, the stuff that I believe to be true doesn't stand the test of time. My pragmatic approach fails because times change and the things I believed would make me happy and help me cope, turn out to make me sad and become new problems to be coped with.
My attempts at "Epistemic Rationality" fail twice. No God, no joy, no hope. I buy my rope and my bucket. But this first failure is followed by a second failure. I don't believe that I have gotten to the bottom of things. What if I'm wrong? What new horror will 2024 bring? Disabled by doubt, I fail to kick the bucket. I wait with anxious curiosity to find how how I was wrong this time.
I lean more towards "Epistemic Rationality" because I hope that the things that I accept as true will be closer to the truth and hence last longer. I guess that it is easier to come up with coping strategies for unpleasant truths that last, than it is to cope with the endless churn of pragmatic truths that don't last.
tldr: my version of pragmatism is a shoddily constructed thing that wobbles, breaks, and falls over.
Oh man, I can’t even read all this because it’s so close to my own previous issues. I found a way out by listening to my heart or body or soul or whatever you want to call it instead of my head. Over rationalizing will get you nowhere.
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