You'll Never Be Able to Unsee this Nihilist Trick | Jonathan Pageau ( 

To be fair, that IS how most people treat marriage. They say ALL THE VOWS, to God, their family, everybody and guess what? A year later they divorce without even blushing. Despicable, aint it?

Contracts literally hold civilisation together

Huh. Good point.

@@Dre2Dee2 modern people dont take things too seriously anymore. Unless it's a material tangible object

Well, in fairness money is less valuable than ever, colleged degrees mean squat day by day and contracts are defaulted because people would rather take the punitive damage. Those are all papers that work because of magical thinking. They are necessary and fundamental but because they reflecpt/project social intentions. As values change so does the grip these papers have.

looking through here to try and antedote to the reductive impulse. and this here quote i believe is closest i have come across so far.

@@cymbolic_space1832 Glad I can help! Lewis fights reductionism brilliantly all across his writings, would recommend reading any and all of his stuff.

Dang that's good.

In another work Lewis gives a name to this move: "Nothing Buttery."

@@TimoteoTheOsprey I don't understand, can you explain?

is he trans now? (not sarcasm)

@@cymbolic_space1832 Why do you ask this? Is there some news about this? If you look at his earlobes in different pictures they don't seem to match up.

@@dickmcwienersonIII well Saved Skeptic here referred to him as "themselves" and it just sounded like maybe that was the news! i could be very wrong. but now that you mention it. something has changed with his earlobes. maybe early signs of cybernetic mutations and i feel confident assuming he is a transhumanist.

@@cymbolic_space1832 "themselves" refers to "cells."

@@xaviervelascosuarez it all makes so much more sense now! thanks for clearing that up.

Rap: "Fast-talking cursing guys obsessed with body parts" Pop: "Generic progressions and overused themes designed to sell fast and fade faster" Rock: "Angst about an establishment that long ago became too comfortable to meaningfully rebel against" Metal: "People who could do classical if they weren't determined to be different" Classical: "People who could do metal if they weren't so boring"

Sounds like an AI that is yet to learn EQ

there is no emotional quotient. may as well be an astrologer.

If you’re into Yes & ELP, you need to branch out into King Crimson & Tangerine Dream. “They’re, like, all connected man!”

@@Thisisreallystupid Already there. In fact, if you like Tangerine Dream, check out Eloy - another German group. Try their album "Silent Cries and Mighty Echoes." Genius stuff!

They're little tyrants and they follow the spirit of Satan.

Yes

i wish that someone would say that to tyson when he's going on about why everything is meaningless because "infinity". Just be like "well everything you just said is just the result of random cells arbitrarily formed together in a pattern thats contracting and forcing are out of your face hole, creating vibrations that tingle random cells in your ear, it doesn't actually mean anything."

@@dash4800 that somehow contradicts yet proves his point o_0

@@dash4800 but ultimately disproves it because to understand words (=meaning) is to be meaningful.

It is an argument, just a fallacious one.

Thank you

I tell my husband this all the time. Poor guy, he just wants to sit in peace watching a bunch of dudes running up and down a field chasing a ball. 😁😅🤣

@@SydneyBristow0788 that twist was sad

Wow.. I think this is the first time I actually understand this🙃. Thank you 😊

Ha

Sometimes it’s harder to argue against this with people than argue for religion haha

Pfft. Beethoven clearly also used diminished and augmented chords!

Chords are just basic building blocks. It's what a talented composer can build with them that counts. Of course, there's a lot more to music than just chords, but a person who reduces Beethoven to majors and minors probably wouldn't grok that.

@@andrewmize823 In the spirit of Johnathan's video, be careful with your use of the word 'just'. I loved this video because the word 'just' is my bete noire and I take everyone up on it. A chord, as I am sure you'd agree, is so much more than a building block and is itself made of meaningful parts. This is the essence of the subject: the particular and universal, the many and the one, that come together in that essential thing, meaning. Perhaps the problem, at heart, is the fear of meaning and the implications that arise from it. God bless you.

Your friend doesn't even recognize a dominant seventh when he hears one. Sad!

Oddly enough the magic of Beethoven is that he uses such simple stuff and produces an incredible sound.

They always care about my beliefs even though they claim to be nihilists. Very odd.

Example?

@@crassgop he meant for example, if they do this to you, you can tell them: your body is nothing more than a bag of cells, so i'll punch you in the face right now, your pain is nothing but neurotranssmisors sending signals to your brain, so don't worry about that, also, your fear is nothing more than preprogrammed survival instincts, it's not real. The idea is not to be nihilistic, but to make them understand their own hypocrisy by telling them that they also care about some things.

@crassgop actually it does. If you tell me the truth doesn't matter, you're simultaneously expressing a value and a nonvalue for truth. It is an absurdity and deserves to be dismissed.

@crassgop no it's hypocrisy because the arguer expresses an implicit preference contrary to their stated position. That is, they say one thing yet do another. I call this hypocrisy.

Yeah, that one is hilarious!

Art immitating life.

Haha! I had no idea reductionism was such a character defining trait of Tyson.

I've seen it. Key and Peele may be libs, but sometimes they surprise me.

@@joashtunison351 all sides have good people

better late than never! 😂

She wasn't wrong. That's why drugs are used to treat anxiety, depression or schizophrenia. It's why people become addicted to heroin or alcohol. Your thoughts aren't independent of your chemistry.

Except with increased use of psychiatric drugs we have seen increased prevalence of anxiety, depression and psychosis. Just because something is widely done per existing orthodoxy doesn’t make it correct

If I take a pain killer to treat an injury, which works by interfering with signals in the nervous system, thst doesn’t mean the nerve system is the source of the problem. The nervous system is only informing you of the problem, which is the injury itself of course.

@@corbinsmith50 she was wrong on the just part

Is it just a knife?

@@freegaeltobias 🤣

And all because we didn't let the golem rest on Sunday.

Legend has it that if you erase the letter 'A' in the word "atheist" written on Neil DeGrasse Golem's forehead, he suddenly believes in a divine being.

@@journeytoform The Golem is 1000 years in the making

I'm just another stranger on the internet, but I hope this comes across the right way. I'm glad you've come back to church, and see the value in it. That's a step forward perhaps from relying on other religious teachings to guide you. But if you're only looking to church, and not to Christ, then all the spiritual and religious tools in the world won't help you. For example, the act of prayer can have some effect on you, just like the act of speaking to another person. But if you don't hear the other person speak back to you, then there's no real relationship; you've effectively wasted your words. The same goes for all religious and spiritual acts. If they don't bring you closer to Jesus, it's all a waste. I hope you don't settle for religious acts, and instead push through to actually seek closeness with God. That will help you grow far more than simply returning to church.

@@yeshua-on-wings I read the post and didn't get an impression they weren't experiencing that. ??

You'll love tao te queen

@@yeshua-on-wings and how do you know they have or haven't 'brought you closer to Jesus' Seems vague and subjective

I highly suggest you read Christ the Eternal Tao

No his joy is astronomy, and his joy is apparent in how he speaks and conducts himself. His debunking of movies are for fun and education. You're just too sensitive. It's ok if other people don't like the things you like.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a very intelligent idiot.

@@billlyons7024 no, he's a dull and pretentious snotweasel.

@@billlyons7024 > a man can only have one joy at any given time

@@devilsadvocate6098 Well, a man certainly can't have more than one "ONLY joy"

Or maybe mayyyyyyyybe.......... Agents of the so called enemy have already seen the 3 hour long movie from life origin and death spiritually and no matter what movie doesn't have 2nd part and spiritually knowing you are at 40% of that movie and now at 60-80-90-95-99 is something these people are fearful about? And just warning others? Ever care to think of that? Ever? Just because these people that you call ENEMY don't hide from the truth no matter how painful for themselves (forget others) they go out of their way to tell something which was never uncovered before or only a handful have know in entire human existence? I see myself in others more so then ever before I'm not religious but i have answers to the true "spiritual categorical" questions about the beginning and the end. And there is neither white clothed Jesus or Black clothed Lucifer at the end. Not just Jesus 100% of every religion that exists That i can tell u.

@@words007 maybe i would go a 100% with Jesus on this one and for sure not with whatever you are trying to say.

So he is like a philosopher or like an apologist… or like Jordan Peterson.😂

NDT seems very stupid to me.

In fairness, he also loves to harass, grope, cajole, threaten and/or seduce young white women who work for him...

@@saintdominicreview …with zero supporting evidence whatsoever… just like the legends of the Bible.😂

Colbert asked NDT if the New Year was based on anything astronomical. Tyson said "No." he was wrong it is based on the midnight zenith of Sirius. He's not even informed in his field!

me too... I should apologize to my mother 😅

@@ceddebruxelles Haha

@@ceddebruxelles You probably owe her an apology anyway. 😄

@@TinaHyde true 😓

After watching this I realized I do it constantly with my own thoughts, emotions and responses

That's false, because some of the student will have been converted to water vapor that would no longer be present.

love that movie! :D

Ironically, that movie is an exploration into the very dangers of nihilism and abandoning tradition altogether. When he turns his back on the traditions of his family, he gets lost in the nihilistic worldview of obsessive artists who cannot exist outside their artistic mediums. They lose meaning in their lives, become depressed, and project themselves onto the characters and losing their own sense of reality. Death becomes a romantic offering to the art. Incredible movie with many hidden meanings.

Reading this with Robin Williams in my head...

@@drboone357 also full of Masonic references. The two worlds cross each other throughout. It romanticizes something very dark in my view . None of the boys survive . They all "sign their name".

@@christophermarcone5504 I agree. The whole ritualistic suicide at the end is very disturbing. All occult references.

you can find meaning in a movie, and still realize it's just a movie. There isn't really any contradiction. Whether it is actually just a movie or your friend's imagination is another question

@@radscorpion8 life's but a walking shadow , a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more . It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.. Macbeth

Society has lost the ability to think outside the physical world

Statements of the form “Love is just a chemical reaction in the brain” are very popular with pop-philosophy/scientism. From a properly scientific perspective, the very most you can say is the experience of love CORRELATES with certain chemical reactions in the brain, and even then, you’d need a scientific-materialist worldview already in place to have justification for saying that the material correlate “wins out” as the more significant, determinative side.

@@DeflatingAtheism I don't know how they don't see it as self-refuting. The act of deconstructing what us ordinary folk find meaningful could be reduced to mere babbling to get laid like any other pursuit. They try to use rational arguments to argue for a position which precludes rationality.

Yep. Adult humans are also "just a clump of cells."

That's a profound thought, I like it.

What is your point? A lot of people misunderstand Watts for some reason. I can’t tell if you agree or disagree with him

"...I had a discussion with a great master in Japan. We were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English He said, 'That's a waste of time, If you really understand Zen, ' he said 'You could use any book, you could use the Bible, you could use Alice in Wonderland, you could use the dictionary' Because he said, 'The sound of the rain needs no translation'...", Alan Watts. Watts said in almost every one of his speeches that Zen and Zen masters had nothing to teach. He lowered expectations to a minimum, yet people always seem disappointed they did not get the enlightenment they sought. Now that is cosmic humor.

@@ScuffedLife zen teachings are thoroughly useless to a person burdened with trauma and emotional reactivity from a toxic society. that encompasses a huge percentage of people in our society. clearing intense traumas from the nervous system FIRST is what allows zen teachings to become resonant. peace can not be sustained in a troubled and broken heart & mind.

@@trapsenpai The teachings give an idea on how to start dealing with it at least- when you are hungry, eat, when tired, sleep, when thirsty, drink. Focus on what's now in front of you, not what was behind or what will be ahead. Most people's minds are the source of their own problems (I am excluding abuse victims or worse trauma in my generalization). Jordan Peterson would say - clean your room, which is basically the same as the Zen teachings. Don't do 100 things at once, start with 1 and it will be enough. Zen is used in many forms, without people even realizing it - because if they did, it wouldn't be Zen.

Our names will be remembered; if we die like trampled flowers.

Mickey really shut Donald the fuck down

No. Humans are not bag of chemicals, that's kindergarten level stuff to know, whats actually at the very base of human experience is, which we call CONSCIOUSNESS is actually just FRICTION. FRICTION between our organs that's it, if you actually know and can even do thought experiment if you have creative developed brain, you would come to same conclusion and yes HUMANS are nothing special the only thing that is making all the progress for us is MINDLESS reproducing from less then 1 BILLion in 1922 to hundreds years now 2022 we are at 8 BILL and look at our race and our achievements. You cannot contradict me to what I just wrote the human experience is just friction with not just our body but with nature. And no matter what, however perfect, there can never be 2 same human experience and that's why individual truth is rubbish and Religion is crap although in very real sense Religion exists when people cannot deal with idea of death alone so they form a group and do different different things to just pile on the shared belief which still exist to this day, Death. The universe in all its vastness is more Blacker then White, Death is and will forever be the 1 true GOD where even planets and galaxies will end. Nihilism is where OPTIMIST AND PESSIMIST individual eventually reach which are also called REALIST.

@@words007I had a stroke reading this.

@@BootySweat4491 i had multiple, when i was on a journey to write millions worth of words as small as i could ABOVE.

💯

Sagan always made the universe MORE real and MORE impressive. You could see that he truly understood how awesome it is, and I mean awesome in the sense "something that inspires awe", and not the modern meaning. He somehow made the enormousness of the universe even grander, without making us seem small (in the negative sense of small) by comparison. I was thinking the same thing after listening to this! I'm glad someone else mentioned it!

I always kind of liked the retort: "Yes, well so are you."

@@ChristianTheChicken Right, just a slightly bigger clump of slightly more cells. What's the moral distinction? Good question to ask

You know what I'd say? Sam Harris is just a bag of air people get excited about.

@@SeraphsWitness BURN!!!!!! 🤣

I'd imagine Sam Harris understands that there is psychological significance to the sport of football, since he can infer it from the gathered crowd. I would also say that the act of humans gathering to a football stadium to watch a bag of air is inherently fascinating, and it can be meaningful to look at things at different levels of analysis. If aliens could view our behavior, I'm sure they would be quite perplexed about much of what we do. I think the video is a bit off base in that mechanistic reductionism does not imply a necessary loss of appreciation for a certain phenomenon. For example, the statement "Love is just a configuration of neurotransmitters in the brain." could be completely true from a scientific perspective and interesting to point out, and yet, knowing that fact shouldn't change your experience of love. I know that my thoughts and feelings are chemical/electrical processes in my brain, but I don't spend all of my day thinking about it and knowledge of this fact doesn't change my engagement in life.

@@gnomechomski2406 actually people do not go to the stadium to watch a bag of air, but rather two competing teams; the bag of air is only a key tool

@@bogdanpopescu1401 I don't think anyone could seriously argue that Sam Harris doesn't understand that there is a higher order abstraction going on. It is still interesting to point out that the exact manifestation of the higher order abstraction (e.g., teams competing) happens to involve a specific set of rules surrounding the movement and handling of a bag of air. You could describe any game such as chess or football by pointing out the required materials and rules, and many can fall into a similar higher order category (players competing in a skill based game). I think social psychology refers to these conceptualizations as higher vs lower construal levels. For something like love, we have psychologists who specialize in studying it lower levels (e.g., neurotransmitters) and higher levels (e.g., evolutionary purpose and personal meaning). In sum, these levels of analysis should be obvious to pretty much anyone, including Sam Harris, so the main comment is a mischaracterization in my estimation.

The meaninglessness of things is the most meaningful thing about being an atheist.

@@phonepunk7888 hard to tell, the ones I encounter think their egos are the most meaningful thing.

@@phonepunk7888 what do you mean by meaningless? Personal meaning, greater meaning etc…?

Please, you're just another pseudo intellectual without comprehension. The phrase means "You can't compare the suffering in one person's life to another because there's no objective measure that can tell us which person is suffering more". You're juvenile retort compares one type of suffering to another within the same individual and hence fails to address the meaning of the phrase.

@@stevedoetsch Nice try. The fact that, almost without exception, people would all choose the slap in the face exposes everything you wrote as nothing more than drivel from a "pseudo intellectual without comprehension" . But don't let reality get in the way of your pontificating.

Well, I understand what they were sort of getting at. It's a attempt at dealing with people who keep throwing around the fallacy of relative privation. There is a tendency where some people (usually from older people, especially in some authoritative position) to utterly dismiss your complaints and grievances simply because its "not as bad as" something else. So, I sympathize, even though its not really a well thought out phrase.

@@drooskie9525 There is certainly cases of that, but there is way more making mountains out of molehill too. Quite often though the cure to these little sufferings is to realize it's not all that bad and to realize you being a pussy is the actual problem.

tell him to do metta meditation. lovingkindness meditation. the often left out secret that newbies to buddhism miss out on.

@@trapsenpai Tell him to leave. I finally found the Orthodox Church after a lifetime in Mahayana Buddhism etc... Not confused any more!!! Phew!🙏🏼☦️

​@@rigavitch Amen!... I spent 63 days of my life doing Buddhist inspired vipassana meditation retreats, which probably did more harm than good, but in just 3 months since being called to Christianity I've experienced some truly miraculous changes, countless questions answered and the cessation of so many self-destructive habits. Praise God! 🕊️

If God exists, why would he, after that, push us away from him?

@@eugengolubic2186 I’m not sure he pushes us away. I do not think this video proves that God simply exist more like God (the giver of life and the pattern maker) is necessary.

When I followed the evidence that supported a simpler hypothesis than theism and started to question Christianity, he could give me a clear sign to deal with my doubts or a better theistic explanation, but I don't think he did. He left me in doubts and fear of going to hell. If a human did a lot of what the Christian God does that wouldn't sound veery loving and looked like he pushed some of us away from himself. I'm still reasoning through annd following the evidence if I find them, but although I'm not an atheist or agnostic, I'm not a religious and committed Christian as before.

@@eugengolubic2186 I think Christianity isn’t just a “thinking” religion it is a religion of action. The most basic of actions that I believe God calls us to do is only 3 things. To love justice, and to do Mercy to walk humbly before God (micah 6:8). Don’t overthink it. Sometimes God gives clear signs, and people still do not believe. I don’t think that Christianity is about looking for clear, unarguable events. I would say, pray to God one more time and serve whoever is closest to you with all of your heart. Try to be OK with not understanding what you don’t understand. But the Christian walk always starts in the heart of love. Whoever you love the most, serve them. not just once or twice but make a commitment to charity for them. You may be able to see the goodness of God’s grace. I will be praying for you. You sound very open and honest. Not too far from where any of us truly are.

@@eugengolubic2186 I honor you for being so honest. Dear friend let me know if there’s anything I can help with. Truly. Not because I want you to believe what I believe or think what I think. But I do understand doubt. I know it’s tricks. Thank you so much, again, for your openness, and willing Ness to share exactly where you are in your life. I pray the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ, be on you through this time. That he will open your eyes to himself. Not just the theory or a hypothesis or philosophy. I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ opened your eyes to the person of who he is. It truly is OK to reason your way through this, I do think that service is the best way to get to know the man from Nazareth though

It's tricky because when most ppl do this, it's just to validate their bias. See the abortion topic, "it's just a clump of cells" the flip is pointing out so are they. The antidote seems to be challenging their consistency. "I'm fine with theft" till they get mugged etc.

Don't bother talking to them. Let evil be evil. Let the righteous be righteous. Time will come and they will pay. It will be the most satisfying moment ever.

@@arcguardian "It's just a clump of cells." "Yeah, so are you...".

One way is to question the arbitrary nature of their framing. In an "X is just Y" statement Y is always chosen arbitrarily and can always be further reduced to ever smaller components. Eventually you come to the conclusion that you don't know what anything is because your opinion is only based on the level of our current technological advancement. From there if you don't know what anything is you cannot claim that X is just Y because you don't even know what X actually is, let alone Y. Another way is to accept their framing and see what sort of evil it enables. For example if humans are just clumps of cells and walking flesh-machine sacks then all crimes against humanity are permissible and no human rights are needed. So if you feel like tearing out a human fetus in order to have sex with it before you bake it with urine and feces, turn it into a meal and serve it to your children to eat, there's no issues since that's just flesh-machine sacks interacting with each other - it's just clumps of cells participating in a meaningless event. Now if they agree with your gruesome example you know you're dealing with a narcissist / ideologue who will never admit to being wrong and from there you know that any conversation with such a person is a waste of time. Alternatively you're dealing with someone who is suffering from depression (there's some overlap between it and nihilism) or is mentally ill.

Was it a trick though? Or a comprehension test? Did the snake lie? Or did it speak in the name of God, have the truth of what it said come to pass, and have God confirm it's words as the truth? There's a riddle for you.

Well said Tom!

@@wernervanwyk9324 Thank you sir. :-)

Few actually live that way because they end up killing themselves.

I don't think anyone really follows nihilism to its absolute conclusion. Depression, hedonism, suicide - all responses are anti-nihilistic. Action or inaction, it doesn't matter, so nihilism is a philosophically-bankrupt philosophy.

"Its just a clump of cells" "and youre just a WHORE" 🤣

Well, social science accepts that "social truth" is objectively measurable, so there's that. It's just that, if all humans would vanish tomorrow or have a collective amnesia, that "social truth" would vanish, while material truths of the physical world/universe would not.

@@KangMinseok The likelihood of either of these events is exceptionally low. People use this phrase to advise the young and gullible that they should expect no consequences to their actions.

@@CornerTalker This has nothing to do with likelihood (although even that can be debated, human existence is actually extremely fragile and dozens of species go extinct every year - in the grand timeline of the universe, our existence is miniscule). The point is simply this: We humans can create social truths that apply to us as a social group, like for example the objectively verifiable power that the social construct of money holds over our lives. Yet the value and power of money is itself not measurable by natural science, money would just be meaningless paper if humans would not exist and imagine value into it with our minds. Anyone who doesn't realize that social constructs have social consequences is an idiot, naturally, and scientifically.

@@KangMinseok And your last sentence was my thesis. We agree there.

@@CornerTalker Glad we established that then!

That's a good point. Words themselves are just sounds crafted from vibrating vocal chords... but is that ALL they are? Of course not, because sounds have meaning and intent and purpose.

Here's a test you can apply: Does your three-year-old know the word "chair"? Point to the chair at the kitchen table and ask her if that's a chair. Now point to the La-Z-Boy in the living room and ask her if it's a chair. Now point to the couch next to the La-Z-Boy and ask her if it's a chair. Finally, move to the bathroom, point to the toilet, and ask her if it's a chair. The correct answers, obviously, are yes, yes, no, and no. You've probably never robotically defined to your daughter what constitutes a "chair" and what doesn't. You probably just pointed to the chair in the kitchen and said "chair". At some point, her eyes widened, you could visibly see the "lightbulb moment", and she said "chair". How many of those questions did she get right based only on you pointing to the kitchen table chair? All of them, probably. Thing is, what would you have to build into code to get a robot to do the same thing with perfect accuracy? It'd probably be and awful lot. And that's because even concepts as simple as "chair" have more to them than their physical constituent parts: there is something indescribable and that only exists in the human mind which is _essential_ to the word "chair", and even your three-year-old daughter can see it. And if she can see it without any deep and formal training in graduate-level philosophy, then it must be something simply baked into the human condition.

@@captainphoenix Object Recognition develops in three stages in early childhood. (i) the level of basic visual information processing, (ii) the level of perceptual content and (iii) the level of higher-order perceptual cognition.

@@captainphoenix Everyone knows a toilet is not a chair. It is a throne.

Captain Phoenix. I love that idea!

At a minimum, we are designed with an amazing gift for pattern generation and recognition. I'm exactly autistic enough to occasionally be floored by how many things I must not have known at one time, but which are instinctive patterns with remarkable nuance today. One such pattern: never, in all my time, have I seen any system which contains more information than that fed into it. The greatest AI is dumber than the sum of its creators and knows less than all the information fed to it. We're awesome existences. How much more awesome must that be which created us?

Is a meaningful existence a pre-requisite for happiness and fulfillment? Follow up question: what is the difference between a meaningful life and a meaningful connection?

@@adjustings673 meaning IS connection. whenever life is done with deep awareness of connection, it IS meaningful.

Cept that example offers the alternative with equal weight, while the nihilist grants their reduction absolute.

Nope, suffering is not real. Anyone who thinks that saying that suffering is not real is nihilistic and heartless is still just caught up in the seduction of suffering. Christ transcended suffering by being born again, that's the whole meaning of the story.

@@zootsoot2006 So when Paul says to share in Christ's suffering...? Armchair theologian.

@@donquixote8462 As opposed to a full-action theologian?

@@zootsoot2006 As opposed to some one who has a single clue as to what they're talking about, in fact.

That can defintiely be a danger. You may not be able to guarantee the outcome of external events, but you have immense control over your own reaction to the world, your relationship to it, and what you choose to do with any given situation.

It is valiant to try and fail, then the timidity of never trying at all. It's what I always tell myself in the face of uncertainty.

I think thats stoicism while missing its core, which isnt stoicism at all. The core is virtue and virtue, to the stoics, isnt consequential, its principle. Virtue like all things, comes from the gods. Theres always reason to try because trying is virtuous and being virtuous is its own reward. A stoic doesnt die with regrets, why regret what you failed to accomplish if it was beyond your ability? To hold that mindset, requires honesty and dishonestly selling yourself short to avoid the work that doing your best to no avail is itself, not virtuous and conscience should, to the stoic's mind, tell you that. The problem with stoicism as people generally understand it is that they like the endpoint and try to cheat. Stoics dont repress negative emotions, they move past them by understanding. They dont brush off disappointment, they understand that theres nothing to be saddened by. Aurelius, from a young age, used to sleep on the floor to build up his resilience in the face of discomfort. Stoicism takes conditioning, you cant shortcut your way to being honest with yourself about how much effort you are putting in.

Not true

@@blakeavila4409 Care to elaborate?

@@SunwardRanger83 You know in your heart that pedophilia is morally wrong. In other words, the 'meaning' of children is not for sex. When you look at the world from an atheistic perspective, it doesn't match up with what you know in your heart to be true. I believe in absolute morality and objective truth/meaning, which is easily explained by the existence of a creator.

​@@blakeavila4409 Okay. first off, you're way off base starting out from assuming anyone just "knows in their heart," or that they agree with you on what's moral or not. Take the pedo thing for example, you and I may agree on that, it may seem pretty self-evident, but lots of cultures throughout history, and today would disagree. Evil barbarians by our standards, but they're not denying what's "in their hearts," they honestly think it's perfectly fine. That's the problem when you're dealing with morals, you aren't just going to guilt or shame people into agreeing with you if their moral code is that different. Now, on to the meaning thing. I'm speaking of objective, provable and impossible to deny meaning that holds true across all people and cultures. It doesn't exist. Now as they mentioned in the video, you can work from that point, deconstruct and break down pretty much anything until there's no real meaning to anything anymore. This is a pretty favorite tactic by nihilists when they want to justify doing something that's either against most moral codes, or just egregiously stupid. Break a concept down till it has no meaning, now since everything is meaningless you can do whatever you want whenever you want because nothing really matters in the first place. I prefer going the opposite direction. I grant the point that nothing has an inherent meaning that is objective and agreed upon by everybody. However, I then choose that which I care about and assign it a meaning that has relevance to me. I choose my own values, my own moral code, and I'm aware that not everyone will agree with me. I'm fine with that, but I'm also not going to associate with someone who's chosen values are too different from my own. For instance, a person who believes that religion is the meaning of life, and thus spends most of their time in worship is as far from me as someone who believes in rampant hedonism. I wouldn't waste time with either of those people. Lastly, your assumption that atheism goes against "what I know in my heart," and your assertion that there's an absolute morality that's explained by the existence of a creator. You're using some twisted logic. You believe that there's a creator, and you're simply declaring this belief to be an objective fact and then using that "fact" as the basis for your entire belief system, all your morals, and pretty much everything else. I'm not an atheist, but it has nothing to do with my heart, it's just that I find it mathematically unlikely that the universe would exist precisely as it does completely by chance. There's a lot of very circumstantial evidence that suggests to me that there's some sort of design. I could be completely wrong, there might be nothing, and even if I'm right I can only guess at the nature of any potential design or creator. Because of this uncertainty, the concept of a creator plays very little part in my personal system of morality and meaning.

@@SunwardRanger83 My point was not to say that everyone agrees pedophilia is wrong. Obviously pedos do not, and there have been pedo societies in the past, as you said. My point was to say that you believe pedophilia is objectively wrong, for all people, not just for you and me. That is only possible if a creator exists. They only think it is okay because their consciences have been numbed by practicing it (Pederasty). Looking at cultures throughout history actually provides evidence of objective morality, as we see that they have more similarities than differences. You may have a point that meaning is not provable or impossible to deny. But I would argue that the harm caused by violating objective meaning/truth/purpose is provable and impossible to deny. Effectively, you're able to justify anything just like a nihilist does, you can just say it fall within your chosen moral code. You say it seems mathematically improbable for there not to be a creator. I think its logically impossible. If the universe has a first cause, that first cause must be uncaused, making it eternal. If the universe has no first cause, then it must be eternal, like a god. It seems like you think there is most likely a creator and therefore objective morality, but you're living in hedonism. Living in hedonism is something someone does who doesn't believe there is a creator.

Of course the correct answer is that there is no evidence that your religious beliefs are true and that there is no reliable method to distinguish religious beliefs that are true from religious beliefs that are false.

This is called Presuppositional Apologetics. Doug Wilson uses it pretty humorously against Hitchens and Dan Barker.

@@ramigilneas9274 I don't think that's true at all. We have centuries of Evidentialist Apologetics. We use the same methods we use to verify any historical claims.

The great irony is that "Science is the only path to truth" is a PHILOSOPHICAL statement, and is itself not a statement provable by science.

@@SeraphsWitness How many miracles have been confirmed to be true by applying the historical method? Exactly zero. But of course you are correct… historians use the same methods to find out which of the stories about Jesus are historical, which are exaggerated or embellished and which were invented entirely.

He does psychedelics to re-boot his brain, his words.

there is probably a very reddit'esque reply to what i will say but its funny that most of these types people claim everything is meaningless and just a bunch of chemicals, atoms and cells, but are outraged on behalf of oppression and war, and evil done by one form of cells and atoms to another which all are meaningless at least by what they claim. strange world if everything is meaningless then human beings living or dead are insignificant just as everything else.

"We're just animals, relax" and "Im a degenerate monster" tend to go hand in hand

I don't get the sense that he's doing it out of an impulse towards nihilistic reductionism though. It's more that he's being critical of the hubris and cosmic/biological ignorance that has been produced by modern technology/society. And I applaud him for that. Unlike nihilists, he's trying to remember what we actually are. I'm not sure he's succeeding but I believe that's what he's trying to do.

@@cerebralm I think he’s attacking hubris, sure, but I’m not so sure he’s pointing to anything positive in return. Unless it’s some “return to monke” primitive mindset thing. I don’t know though, it’s been years since I’ve really listened to him.

reduction is one of his tools, but he mostly favors "everything is infinite so nothing really matters". I remember coming to the conclusion that he was a moron masquerading as an intellectual back in college and being confused as to how anyone took him seriously. All he does is avoid meaningful conversations with word salad bullshit.

@@dash4800 perfect assessment

and 60% water 😂

@@josephtravers777 and alot of hot air.

3 hurrays for hydrogen oxygen carbon clump of cells!!!1

I forgot keratin in his moustache 👺

Atheist: nothing matters; we are just advanced apes. But I want to spend hours and hours convincing other advanced apes to think like I do even though I believe that nothing matters.

@@sliglusamelius8578 Well I can only speak for myself but the only reason I care about the truth and about stopping the spread of lies is because I don't like the thought of my children struggling unnecessarily with lies... do my children matter? To me, yes, to the universe, of course not. "matter" and "meaning" are human concepts that (only) make sense from a human point of reference. I mean, even Christians argue that the only reason for us mattering is because of God's love, so love is truly the only emotion from which meaning derives, even in Christianity.... the only difference is that for me, it's human love that causes meaning, not Godly love.

@@KangMinseok Who cares? Nothing matters. You only think it matters because your brain evolved to think that it matters but it really doesn’t. Chimps gotta chimp, chimp on brother chimp!

@@sliglusamelius8578 Correct, I think it matters. It doesn't matter outside of my brain, but it matters inside my brain. That's basically all there is to it. Is there anything hard to grasp about this? Is that even such a controversial revelation? The answer to "who cares" is: "I care". That's it. Why are people so frightened by the fact that meaning derives from us rather than outside of us...

@@KangMinseok Why does human love matter? It’s just your brain chemicals. Chimps seem to love their kids too.

stop where?

@@KangMinseok They will reduce something to its elements and stop there and treat them as more real than the one that's reduced and they won't reduce any further. The problem with them doing that is they do reduction to any arbitrary level they like and make narratives in terms of that, perpetuating their narratives in favor of the one they reduced, while pretending they find meaning in nothing. For example they'll say something like emotion is just certain hormonal activities in your brain but they won't go further and even reduce those activities to more smaller scale until they reach quantum field or whatever smallest model current science has for the universe. Why do they not just describe it in terms of the smallest model? According to them if something can be reduced then it's not real, but why do they stop at the level of certain hormonal activities for certain emotion and treat that description as any more real or meaningful than the emotion itself when those chemical reactions themselves xan be reduced further. They can always just say everything in terms of the smallest particles or the smallest model and they won't. This is a similar example: humans are just evolved apes. You can just say humans are just ecolved rats or evolved microorganism. It's totally arbitrary. But those who say humans are just apes will make narratives about humans in terms of the commonality between humans and apes and perpetuate that narrative. Why not treat humans like evolved rats or molecules and why should you view humans as evolved apes out of all things they evolved from? You might say that they are just stating the fact but the problem is they are treating that particular fact more meaningful than others without a good reason. They are being dishonest by giving meaning to some facts they like while making other facts people value(eg that people have certain qualities absent or minimal in animals) insignificant, while claiming there's no meaning to anything.

@@revermightstar8004 I agree that the word "just" is incorrectly used in the examples you gave. "Just" makes it sound diminishing and final, when neither is the case. Humans are not "just evolved apes", we are, demonstrably and factually, a sub-species of primates, who have evolved very differently from other sub-species in our group. There should be no judgement implied and also no finality, the word "just" is completely misplaced. We are also related to all other living creatures through common ancestry, and we are all made of matter that was once part of stars. There is nothing "reductionary" about our existence, it's all super fascinating and amazing actually.

@@KangMinseok It's not just the wording of "just" that's problematic, but it's how they arbitrarily place more meaning to a certain reduced level more than any other levels while claming there's no meaning to anything. The topic is not about those who just find science fascinating, but reductive nihilists.

@@revermightstar8004 Well, I guess the reason for going to the next "lower level" rather than to go another level down or further is simply because going further down does not prove the point more or less and is just increasing distance. Life has not suddenly less, more, or "more less" meaning only because we look at another level of human ancestry. I think the point that reductionists are trying to make is that trying to pretend that "meaning" can be found anywhere outside of our own heads is futile given the reality of our nature. One doesn't even have to be a reductionist, you can go the opposite direction as well... humans are part of this solar system, humans are part of this galaxy, humans are part of this universe... that doesn't generate any meaning either.

That's the great irony, by deconstructing meaning, they're intending to say something meaningful.

Eh.. I wouldn't call it evil.. Just dumb and misguided.

I came here to ask the same question, but I don’t think this is the way to go about it. People who do this in your life aren’t Neil Degrasse Tyson, they’re your annoying cousin who spends too much time on Reddit. They’re going to zone out when you start talking like that. I think the correct response to something like “you only love your children because of the chemicals in your brain” is to point out that we don’t live in the world of chemicals. You can only see “chemicals” by thinking abstractly about them or looking at them in a textbook. If you try to live in that world you will find yourself disconnected from your actual experience of love (in that case). There comes a point where you can’t really convince people, and you just have to show them that if they want to view the world that way 1) it leads to misery 2) they themselves are inconsistent with acting that out. You can point out that this reductionist attitude allows you to crush anything THEY love about life as well, including any moral claims they might make (despite the fact that they believe morality too is mere chemicals). There’s no reason to care about anything if it’s all just “chemicals”.

Turn it on itself and reduce reductionism Reduction is just saying what something is at its elements, but reductionism says its elements are what it is, therefore it's just reiterating what is already present at hand, and according to its own system it does not posit any argument whatsoever et cetera. Often times they're not actually using reduction to prove something through reduction, but they have some other hidden assumption underlying it, like the assumption that elements are solely empirical phenomena and the eidetic does not exist, therefore meaning which is also assumed to be solely eidetic cannot exist through elements, and so on. What people don't say can tell a lot more than what they do say. Ultimately though for most people logical argument is a dead end, as the classic question "hey if christianity is true would you believe?" would demonstrate, also 1cor1-2 would back up

@@harvey1676 yea good point. “You’re just trying to reduce things down to it’s various components and parts in order to make it seem inconsequential, as if those components don’t mean anything in of themselves.” Sort of like OP was saying too I think.

You could take all the individual chemical elements that make up a human and put them on a petri dish and mix them up and it wouldn't create life. Clearly there's something more than just the chemical components.

It's hard to respond because it's actually an untrue statement. Human beings are NOT just a bag of chemicals. We have souls. The person will then say that we don't have souls, but now they have absolutely nothing to throw against you other than "nuh uh!". The people who really have a problem dealing with nihilists are the materialists.

Thanks for the perfect example of Pageau’s point!

@@richfarmland4547 He's yet to slap me in the face so it's rather unclear what you're on about bud.

'Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear as magic to the uninitiated." What if the wand could be reproduced? Would it still be magic? A caveman would think the computer you are using right now is magic. But it's not.