SIO298: Is Life Pointless? More from the Journal of Controversial Ideas

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm Thomas and with me as always is Garth. How's it going, Dr. Lindsey Osterman?

0:00:35 Lindsey: Fine, I guess.

0:00:37 Thomas: Brother from another podcast, Aaron Rabinowitz, host of Embrace the Void and and of course Philosophers in Space, how you doing today?

0:00:47 Aaron: What's the point, right, why bother,

0:00:50 Lindsey: Was my feeling,

0:00:49 Thomas: Yeah. Well, This podcast is justified by stuff around it, so we could, we could have a point for this podcast episode, yeah.

0:00:50 Lindsey: Yeah. That's- that's true. There are things that are external to the podcast, so everything hinges on that, apparently.

0:01:02 Thomas: Mm-hmm. They're holding up, yeah.

0:01:05 Aaron: You're right, this podcast has everyday meaning, but we should be very sad while we do it, because it doesn't have any ultimate meaning, yeah, a

0:01:12 Lindsey: Correct. That

0:01:15 Thomas: Uh, these these jokes and references brought to you by. Well, I

0:01:20 Aaron: Call forward, hey, look, if you didn't do the reading before class, you are just going to have to, you know, be confused in the A segment, that's the way it works

0:01:28 Thomas: Was vague. Don't blame our fine listeners for not knowing. I didn't tell them for sure which article. We read Ultimate Meaning. We don't have it, we can't get it, and we should be very, very sad in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. And you know, I'm looking at it now, this seems like one that very much could have been published published anywhere or nowhere, uh, cause it's, I don't know if it's worth it, but, but anyway, also, I do not think that that, so that is not a pseudonym also. This is an actual, yeah.

0:01:28 Aaron: Okay and and someone with like a decent position as far as I can tell in terms of like has done a fair number of publications around um these kinds of issues but also around like reproductive ethics, I

0:02:03 Thomas: Cause yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we could talk about the broader, uh notion of this journal of controversial ideas. We already touched on it a lot before, but I think this is another example. Uh, the fact that we are reading a, you know, fine philosophy paper. I mean Aaron is going to tell us his thoughts of course, but I don't know. It was like, all right, I've read some philosophy and it was like yeah, okay, yeah, sure. That's what you have, Journal of Controversial Ideas? This is the best you got?

0:02:38 Aaron: I mean I think it's the second very that makes this controversial. I think if she was just suggesting that this should make us very sad, that's that's you know know pretty straightforward kind of material, um, yeah, so like my background on this journal, I know that y'all have talked about it already a little bit. I was one of the early, I was a hipster about the Journal of Controversial ideas, um, as soon as it dropped I was excited about it, partly, I mean, partly because the three people involved, for all of their sort of, I think, controversy chasing behavior sometimes, are serious people in my field. They're all top level philosophers, um, so like, they have solid reputations, which I thought would produce some amount of quality control. But then also, my biggest value here, and I'll be straightforward, is fairly selfish. One of the arguments that I find most annoying online is, well, somebody has this proof of this really controversial idea, but they don't want to share it because they're going to get in trouble.

0:02:45 Thomas: Good point.

0:02:56 Thomas: Ooh, yeah. Yeah.

0:03:37 Aaron: This is called the file drawer problem. They're shoving their stuff in file drawers. So like, I love having a journal that can, people can publish anonymously, and because, you know, if anybody makes that argument, I'd say why don't they just take it to the Journal of Controversial Ideas, no problem. Um, and I, you know, conversely, I think what you see in this first issue, and we'll see what happens in subsequent issues, confirms a hypothesis I had, which is that there is not a lot of really hot material sitting in file drawers

0:04:00 Thomas: Yeah, I know. I don't know if you caught our last episode, but that was kind of the conclusion I've jumped to here. I feel like they were expecting a a whole lot of bombshells, ivermectin research or something. I don't know what, what, you know, like stuff that, of, they won't let you publish. And then they looked at what they had and they're like, oh crap. Uh, I guess this, you not even controversial philosophy paper. That's kind of boring. That's okay. It's been, it's mainly a book report of Nagel, in my opinion, like based on, based on you know cause you introduced me to some of these Nagel readings that he references. Right. And I was blown away by that.

0:04:37 Thomas: I really enjoyed the Nagel that we've read. And this feels like not as good as that.

0:04:36 Aaron: Yeah, we've covered these well, yeah, and Lindsay, I'm not sure if, I think you've done a little bit more sifting recently than I have because I was finishing up some semester stuff, um, as far as I know, none of the articles in this first journal involve any publication of new data of any sort. There's no, there's not like new groundbreaking studies.

0:04:55 Thomas: Right? Yeah. Yep.

0:04:59 Aaron: It's all theoretical argumentation, um, which I think is interesting. Like you could argue, well, of course, you know, you can't get controversial studies funded to begin with. So I'll be curious to see if, you know, now that you have this journal out there, if there is the possibility that people can get funding for more controversial data, and if we will actually see some data sets in this journal at some point. I mean, obviously the three people who are running it are philosophers, so it's not surprising that it's heavily slanted in that kind of way. But I was a little surprise that there was like nothing in the way of new IQ data, for example.

0:05:34 Lindsey: I was surprised at that, too. I thought there would at least be some social science stuff, because I think that, yeah, there- I've heard a number of social scientists that share the concerns that they're- that they are exploring, so you'd think that somebody would be sitting on some data that they can't publish. Publish, but we've

0:05:47 Thomas: Well, maybe this means that actually even those people who are worried about their field can still easily publish within their field. And, you know, yeah, people might disagree with it, but I, it's likely my hypothesis is that anything like that, anything that that would be in any way serious or interesting, will just get published in another journal, and you know, because of the notoriety and all the all the reasons that people publish another in bigger journals with their names attached to it to begin with, right? Don't you think?

0:06:18 Lindsey: Seen evidence of that, right? No, we've talked about several studies that have gotten published that I think are controversial, at least to people that lean left, those race right, and policing studies, like, those people have built, that's a lot of their careers, publishing on that specific topic, so, yeah,

0:06:25 Aaron: Right, the uh, with a Frayer or something study where he finds, yeah, about about shootings, that's a pretty uh controversial one. And yeah, I think, I first of all, I think there's always been this idea that like the truth is people are more hungry for new information than they are averse to sort sort of controversial, so with the exception of like a couple of weird cases, I do think for the most part you see like a desire to publish things that would be viewed as controversial within people's domains, and like, you know, that said, I do thing there's still value in having this journal out there because it still undercuts that like file drawer argument most thoroughly, even though like, I think if you look at the the which papers were published anonymously in this first journal, there wasn't anything that was like super controversial, so I think you looked at one of them last time, right? The um the creationism art paper, I think, was published anonymously, um, and I have my, I have my theories about which Twitter uh personality published

0:06:35 Lindsey: I

0:07:01 Thomas: Yeah,

0:07:35 Aaron: That paper, but I will respect their anonymity for the time being, um, but yeah, like that was something that could have been published under someone's name and like nothing bad would have happened to anyone involved, other than like it's little, I think, embarrassing to repeatedly cite James Lindsay.

0:07:48 Thomas: I know, I was gonna say that's not really worth putting in a journal, I think, maybe a long Facebook post that I wouldn't read, perhaps, or something, you know?

0:07:56 Aaron: That's right.

0:07:56 Thomas: Um, I'm actually surprised that there wasn't more of the kind of stuff that these people have gotten in trouble for, you Know, like give me some infanticide, give me, don't clip this out of context, but you know, kill some babies or at least or something.

0:08:08 Aaron: Well, I think, well, y'all know, I assume y'all are aware, I don't know if this is made it outside of Philosophy Twitter, but like, very recently, Peter Singer and Minerva and some other individuals published a eugenics is good, actually, like literally like an in defense of eugenic paper.

0:08:26 Thomas: I, yeah. I actually saw that after we did our episode, yeah, so otherwise I would have mentioned it. Yeah, why didn't. Yeah, they didn't publish it here they didn't publish it in their own Journal of Controversial Ideas. I, so I guess what

0:08:32 Aaron: And like what I'm saying is that got published in a mainstream journal. So like what is what are we afraid of? Yeah, it's not that controversial, I guess, to be pro-eugenic in that way. Um, so yeah, I think there is plenty of evidence. Yeah, right, right,

0:08:43 Thomas: Yeah, eugenics, yeah, give me some transracialism, you know, give me something, this, there's nothing in here.

0:08:53 Aaron: Well, the closest we get is something like the, um, you know, when you can do blackface paper, yeah.

0:08:59 Lindsey: Was going to say the same thing, yeah, yeah.

0:08:59 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:09:01 Aaron: And that one even still feels fairly hedgy to me in terms of like, it cleanly identifies a bunch, I think, cases where you shouldn't do this thing, and then it's like, well, here's some complicated social cases, and I just think, like, most people would agree that there are complicated social causes, so like, again, yeah.

0:09:14 Thomas: I know, god, It's the same with the, using the n-word that everybody, I don't know, certain people on the right are really obsessed with, like, well, what if, you know, they're creating all these scenarios. I'm like, okay, like, why are you so interested in this? They have to create, like, a George Costanza, his debit card is locked in the thing, so he has to tell someone his password, kind of, you have to create this Seinfeldian scenarios to be like, well, in that case you'd have to say it, right. Well, while wearing blackface.

0:09:31 Lindsey: Yeah,

0:09:42 Aaron: Right, right, Yeah.

0:09:44 Thomas: Right, if the aliens came down, and we're like, you know, it's like, "What? What? Okay. Why are you so fascinated by that? Weird."

0:09:51 Aaron: The similar, there's the, like, concern about the use-mention distinction, and like, I get, you know, like, some woke people will jump on you if you mention the n-word versus use it or something, but like, again, this all, like, is predicated on the idea that they're resistant to just saying the n-word as opposed to actually saying the word, like, and the very, very small number of what I would think are mostly like dramatic performance situations in which you might actually be justified in saying that word in its entirety, I see.

0:10:21 Thomas: Where's the paper about that? Give me the paper. All right. Well, why don't we delve into this pointless thing about pointlessness? Philosopher Aaron, you want to break this down for us? Want to help us grok it?

0:10:34 Aaron: How it Is, yeah, sure, let's see. So I think, let's just start by, we can just try to see if we can lay out what their central, central point is. And in doing so, we'll probably have to work through a bunch of things that they claim their point is not, which will give us a useful, I think, history of arguments about the meaning or purpose or point of life or something like that. So, right, we're dealing with a bunch of, like, cluster concepts around the idea of, you know, what it is to say that a life is meaningful, or that it serves a purpose, or that it has a point. And this paper is particularly interested in what we mean by saying something has a point. Um, now they define a point as a valued end. All right, so we do things towards a certain end, they give, like, uncontroversial examples, like you hammer a nail into a board in the process of building a house towards the end of having shelter. Um, right,

0:11:27 Thomas: I Just thought of, like, what if the peer reviewers are like, we need more controversial examples, like, what if you are wearing blackface and hammering a nail, and then, you know, there's trying to spice it up everywhere? Really.

0:11:37 Aaron: What If you're doing like a John Henry impersonation, but you're doing it respectfully, like, you are actually beating the machine. Yeah, no, I get that. Um, yeah, so we're looking for these valued ends, and sort of the, I think the most, all of this is really going to hinge on their claim that ends, so the less controversial version is the ends lie separate from the acts that provide a point for them, which I think is that they provide a point for, excuse me, which I thing is true, right, the ends are often separable from the means. But what they're also going to argue is there can be no end external to life since life includes all of one's ends. That's the.

0:12:22 Lindsey: I didn't get that point. I don't think I got there. No, like so, So, the examples that they're providing in the paper, though, like nail the, with the hammer to build the hut, right? Okay, so there's nothing external to the hut either, right. So, I don't understand how, like, but

0:12:32 Aaron: Mm hm. Mm hum.

0:12:36 Thomas: Well, But the thing in question was the hammer, though. It's like the hammering of the nail was the thing you wanted to assign a point to, and then the hut gave that meaning. I mean, are, are you just making the infinite regress argument? Which, okay.

0:12:46 Lindsey: I'm saying, well, I think that she does, or I think she's setting it up that way. But, like why can't you think of somebody's life in the same way is my point. Like, there's tons of things that are external to somebody's live. Life yeah

0:12:58 Aaron: Right. OK, so, yeah, all of these, I think, are good questions.

0:13:03 Aaron: No, yeah. I think these are all exactly the kind of questions you should have. It is interesting to hear the non philosophers try to hash through this before I bigfoot my way around. And like, but like, these are, I think, you know, like first of all, what you should be really like the red flag should be around the word external, which I think is what Lindsay is saying, right? Right. Like, what do we mean by the word external here? In what sense is something external? And the problem is the paper never, as far as I found, gave a definition of what we meant by external here. Right. It gave, it gave a recognition via examples which were not fully illuminating. Right. So we can understand the idea of the, like, finished house being external in a sense to the hammering in of the nail. But it also then, when it talked about, um, what I think the problem was, when it started to apply the word external to life, it gets very squishy about what it means by external in that particular context.

0:14:01 Thomas: I think, I'm not sure if this answers your question at all, but I think the point is that when you're looking for a point for something, an activity or whatever within your life, I I think the point is like you are the one that that point matters for. And so there can't be anything outside of your life that, you know, that you're not a part of that would make your life have a point because you're not included in that. I don't know if it makes sense, but something like that, you know?

0:14:26 Aaron: Yeah. No, yeah. No, you've now successfully highlighted two of the three arguments, at least three arguments, that she claims she is not making. Very, like, like these are the history side of the problem of like meaning and value. So the one is the regress argument that you mentioned, where it seems like this is some sort of like regress problem where, sure, the house can have meaning because we live in it, but like what is the living in it, you know, where does the meaning of that come from, and on and on until you like can't justify it. But she very explicitly says, I'm not making a regress agreement, I'm making a different kind of argument, right?

0:15:06 Lindsey: And if she's not making that argument that I don't know what her point is

0:15:08 Thomas: Well, I wasn't making a regress argument either, though. I was saying,

0:15:09 Lindsey: Yeah

0:15:10 Aaron: No. No. That's What I'm saying, the the Other argument that you presented, you just put forward, is the subjectivity problem. I think something like the idea that meaning or value is subjective, so it comes from inside of us, and so like the value is somehow internal to us in our life and can't be external to it. Is that kind of, yeah.

0:15:12 Thomas: OK, I think so. I think I think that this author would say that you are or maybe maybe she did say, I don't know, it was a long paper. I blacked out for some of it. I feel like this paper could have been an email. That was my, did you get that feeling? Like, honestly, long story short, it's like, yeah, no, life is kind of pointless. Like there's nothing when you die, you're dead. There's no, you know, doesn't matter. The sun's going to eat the earth for breakfast in the future.

0:15:36 Aaron: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:15:57 Aaron: I do think it could have been a 12-page paper instead of a 20-page paper, for sure.

0:16:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I t want to offend the branch of philosophy. Fee. You know, I know you, do they pay you by the, by the word, you know, to write these long things? Yeah.

0:16:11 Aaron: They do. No, they don't pay us by anything. There's no money involved.

0:16:14 Thomas: Yeah, that's right. Do they not pay you by the Word? Yeah, so I feel like it, you know, it's a lot of words in this paper to say something like that and, you know, maybe I'm not being fair to it, but it really felt like it reiterated the same thing over and over, which is that, yeah, you, you you know, it's hard to get purpose. Your life can't have a point. If point is defined in this way, that is kind of recursive that you need to be around for it to have a Point to you, you know?

0:16:20 Aaron: Yeah, right.

0:16:44 Aaron: Yes, I do think that part of what's going on here is a bit of definitional trickery. But again, like with the regress argument, she explicitly claimed she is not making an objectivity subjectivity argument, which is another common argument that you see in the literature. She seems to be open to the idea that there is both objective and subjective value. She just thinks that both of those kinds of value can't be external to our lives in some way.

0:17:13 Thomas: I think I'm saying the same thing as that. I wasn't saying it. The problem is it's subjective. I was saying that any, like the person who is the, the end of the point or whatever, I don't if I'm using the right word, but like, like it can't, when you're looking at your own life, it's impossible to say, according to this paper, and I actually kind of agree with this point. Like it's, it's possible to say your life as a whole can have some point to you, because that's, you know, that's like, it's like circular, you know, you wouldn't, you aren't around after you're dead for your life to have had a point to, even if that's some objective feeling or subjective feeling. I don't think it matters whether it's subjective or objective, but maybe I'm getting that wrong.

0:17:17 Aaron: Okay. I think The four, I think, before you, there, part right, and what you just said to me is the subjectivism part, like something could have objective value that would last beyond my subjective valuing of it, um, and I think this paper is suggesting that that is possible, and yet does not provide anything beyond everyday meaning, if that makes sense. Okay.

0:18:18 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that, though. I don't know. Maybe I'm just having a hard time restating the point in the precise language. That this maybe does need to be 20 pages, because you got to put in all the caveats.

0:18:21 Aaron: Um. Yeah. Well.

0:18:22 Lindsey: I

0:18:30 Aaron: So, I think I do think that, well, let me just say there is one other kind of argument that could come up here in the traditional literature that she says that she's not making. And then I think we should talk about atelic versus telic pursuits a little bit. But she says she's no rejecting intrinsic value, right? Right. So, like, the other kind of common argument about like meaninglessness or nihilism or subject skepticism about value would be, you know, every activity is only instrumentally valuable. Right.

0:19:02 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:02 Aaron: It's only valuable insofar as it produces another end. But you keep regressing long enough and there's nothing that is valuable as an end in itself. But she seems to think that certain things could be valuable as ends in themselves, that things do have intrinsic value, value. She just thinks that that intrinsic value is somehow not external to the life.

0:19:20 Thomas: Well, I think she would say, and maybe this clarifies the point I was trying to make, and why I didn't think I was making a point that relied on the objectivity subject. I think she would say that, take something that, you know, Socrates or somebody, Marcus Aurelius would have loved, you know, take some sort of virtue where you're like, you could, let's make an argument that being honest or being courageous, or what, I don't know, whatever philosophy thing you want to say is, would just, for the sake of argument, it's an objectively good thing or something, and I think you would say that while you are doing a thing, so maybe you're helping a friend, you're, you know, working, doing a soup kitchen, it could be true that objectively that has some value in the universe, you know, for, again, for argument's sake, but it's still only contained within that thing, and your life as a whole can't have that value in a way that matters to you. It's just that events within your life, for the duration of them, can have that, that value to you, I think that's what she's saying, right?

0:19:46 Aaron: Right. Yeah.

0:20:14 Aaron: No, I do, I do think that's what she's saying. So, sorry, here's, at this point, this is where I join Lindsey and say I don't know what she means by external at this point. Um, right, yeah, go ahead.

0:20:26 Lindsey: So yeah, I, I don't necessarily have a problem with the idea that there's no way to get to ultimate meaning through the, through these things, but I really don't understand how this argument connects to that. I guess it's my problem, right, like why why does it matter, why does this internal external distinction matter to it, I, I, I don't, um, I don't know, I

0:20:36 Aaron: Yeah. Well, the external maneuver is to, to try to show that, is to cut off the possibility that anything could provide ultimate meaning, but I don't think it's, you know, consistent or clear what is being meant by the word external when applied to external to one's life. Yeah.

0:20:59 Thomas: That's weird. I don't seem to have that same struggle and I'm trying to think of what, if I'm wrong or I'm not.

0:21:04 Lindsey: Just I think I think that there'S PLENTY OF WAYS IN WHICH IN WHILE THE THINGS THAT YOU DO CAN HAVE EXTERNAL VALUE i'M NOT SAYING THAT that's an argument for ultimate meaning, right? But like, I don't know. And especially if she's not making the subjectivity claim, then she would have to agree with that too, right.

0:21:14 Aaron: Well, Let's Let's. Yeah. Right. So I think, there that we can, we can give this little structure by saying there's sort of two ways that we could object to what she's saying, separate from like questions of saying, well, I just don't care about ultimate, right? That's another way you could just walk away from this problem, um, But Like, right, But if we wanted to like actually argue that there is something like what she is calling ultimate value, and except for the sake of argument that like it involves this kind of point or something like that, I think there are at least two ways you could argue that life has value that she doesn't seem to actually have a response to, which is either that life is a kind of atelic activity, activity akin To a pleasurable walk?

0:21:35 Lindsey: I don't care. And

0:21:59 Thomas: Oh, wait, did you get to define that? Sorry. You might as well.

0:22:01 Aaron: No, yeah, no, I'll define that in a second. And we'll talk about each of these objections, right? So one answer is life is an etheric activity and the external ends exist temporally within your life, and that's just fine, right. And the other objection would be not all ends are actually within our lives, that there are long-term consequences for our actions for which it is not comprehensible, as far as I can tell, to describe them as being internal to our lives in any meaningful way here that isn't just a kind of, that doesn't essentially collapse into a regress problem, I think, is So let's, let's talk first about the atelic one, and then we can talk about that one, right? Um, I'll tease you, um, so, so folks we're not familiar with telos versus atelik, right? Telos is a term that we've, I think, talked about over on Philosophers in Space before. It's just the, like, Greek for a purpose or an end, or the like, what things are aimed towards, essentially.

Um, so like a telic activity would be, you know, again, I build the house so that I can live inside of it, or something like that, whereas an atelical activity, the classic example would be I go for a stroll with no goal in mind, like no targeted place to get to, no objectives, and I just, like, like, enjoy the pleasure of the walk as I go, right?

Now, she argues, and I agree with her about this, that even in those situations, even in an atelic situation, the ends are external to the activity in a sense, in the sense that they could be separable from it.

0:22:02 Thomas: Yeah. Okay.

0:23:37 Aaron: So I'm just going to read this quote, because I think it's a good quote. She says, "Even on those cases, the atelit cases, the reason we don't find the pursuits pointless is that they do in fact involve valued ends, namely the exhilarating feeling of running or the joy of intimacy with friends, and those ends, although reached through the time engaged in the pursuit, still lie separate from the pursuit itself." Right, so these kind of ends she points to, her things like love, intimacy, joy. Now, Now, if that's, if that can be what we mean by external to the thing, right, that it can be temporally coextensive, right? You're having that pleasure while you're going on the walk, but it's external because, you know, if you get attacked by bees, right.

0:24:22 Aaron: You're still going on The Walk, but you're no longer experiencing the pleasure. Right. So it is separable in that kind of sense.

0:24:29 Thomas: Unless I like my walk covered in bees. Please. Sorry.

0:24:30 Aaron: Right? Unless You enjoy a bee walk. Right, exactly. Exactly. Like if that's, you know, if that can count as being external, then it's not clear to me why I can't just say, well, look, the flourishing that I experience in my life is external to the life, right? If I were on a torture rack, I would not be experiencing that flourishing.

But insofar as I'm experiencing it in my wife, it seems like it is giving me an end and one that is external in this sense, at least, right, in the etiolic pursuit sense. Sense. Um, so what's the problem? Why is that not ultimate um meaning or point or something like that? That would be, the I think, that'd be the way you'd sort of phrase the first kind of objection here.

Does, I think there's, that is a very plausible kind of existentialist almost kind of argument about how we generate meaning in our own lives or something. Now the alternative argument would be Not all ends are within our lives, and this is where I think part of the ambiguity is. The article, like, maybe jumps a little bit between our lives, as in like my one life, versus all the lives of all sentient beings or something like that, right? I'm not sure if that's what's going on, but that's one way that I think you could try to interpret what's being said, because otherwise I don't understand how the claims make sense, right?

It doesn't seem to me true that, like, you know, my valued end of a more just world, right, doesn't proceed on far beyond my one wife, right? So in, in that sense, it doesn't, it seems very clearly external to my life. I mean, maybe Thomas, you can sort of clarify this some, but I'm not sure why that thing is not external, or like, you know, my children growing up and being happy or something after I die or something like that.

0:26:18 Aaron: Yes, my pleasure that I derive from that is internal to my life, but if my goal is not the pleasure, if my end is those things persisting beyond my death, then it's not entirely clear to me how she can just sort of rule that out as being not external to one's life. Okay.

0:26:36 Thomas: That's a good point. I think I see what you're saying there. It's funny because one thing I was going to say from reading this was, like, well, if this were true about this paper, then, then it does still sound like we could make the point of our lives to, to be a good end, or, or to be good for somebody else. And like, we could do like a trade, you know, like, okay, my, according to this paper, my life is pointless, but you're external to me. So like, if I, if I, if I live my life and then it's great for you, and then you live your life and that's great for me, then, like, have we gotten around the problem? I'm not sure. I was gonna make that joke, but it sounds like that's almost kind of similar to this point you're making. Well,

0:27:17 Lindsey: I think that that's why I was sticking on this point, right, because I think that objection makes sense. And when she deals with it in the paper, it sounds to me, you can tell me if she'S doing something more than this, but it sounds like she'S not really addressing addressing that objection, she's just going into a regress thing. She's like, you can say that, you know, your meaning is external to you because it's other people, but, you know. Then you still have the problem of life in general. I'm like, okay, well, that seems like a different point to me. But

0:27:42 Aaron: Yeah, I think she starts to do the, like, you know, time and distance problem of, like, well, you know, how is that going to matter in the long, long term, or, you know, like, she gets into the talk of the afterlife stuff um as well, and I think, yeah, it really does feel to me like it collapses into a, a regress of, you know, anything that you value, um, and that's where I think it also switches to, like, talking about lives in general, right? Like, the value of a just universe is only existent when there are these kinds of lives. That's

0:28:13 Thomas: Is it still as simple though, as, um, you can say, okay, the point of my life was to, you know, make the world more just and whatever, and I see, I, you're make a good point where it's like, well, that outcome is external and carries on beyond your life, so in that way that could be a point that's kind of external to your life, but is it as simple as, maybe some people have a feeling, like, well, I could also just not do that, and when I'm dead, it's all the same. Like, I think it's that feeling that maybe this person is trying to describe, which is, yeah, I mean, I could decide arbitrarily, or not arbitrarily, I could decide what the point of my life is while I'm in it, but that's still a thing I'm experiencing at that time during my life, and once it's over, it will not have mattered, like, to the person that was me, once I'm, I'm dead.

0:29:00 Thomas: It doesn't matter if I was a good, uh, you know, if I was a influence on justice in the world, it literally doesn't matter. Like to you, if you die of a stroke tomorrow, I don't want curse you. And then the universe goes out of existence the next day. Like you wouldn't even know that happened, you know, like it wouldn't matter. You Um, Know, so yeah, good.

0:29:19 Aaron: You Know, that's the classic Nagel kind of absurd stuff that Nagel says, doesn't, doesn't really, like, why do we care, like, if our, if everything blinks out, out of existence tomorrow. And I also, there's a couple of quotes in the paper that I think lead me to believe that that's not what she's getting at. Though again, I'm not sure exactly what it does mean that she's giving at, but if, you know, I can read a few more key passages here. So this is talking about the achieving justice argument, right? If your end is helping others or achieving justice, think about what would happen if those ends were met. You would feel great for a bit, but then wonder, now what? And this is sort of in the context, she repeatedly, repeatedly uses this idea of, like, an end, an ultimate end can't be just like a tomato that we're trying to get to at

0:29:29 Thomas: Yeah. Is it

0:30:03 Aaron: Some point, right? And so the, the moving of the end farther away can't create ultimate value because you're just moving the tomato farther away. But in this quote about justice, it seems to me, I think she just, I, I guess maybe I just deeply disagree about what the meaning of achieving a just universe would be. That it wouldn't, like, a just university is not an end state that you get to and then you're done. It's a constant ongoing process of reassessing, of competing goods, and, like, balancing and equilibrium and stuff. So, like, I don't think that you'd ever get to a point where you'd be like, well, I've made the world just, and now I'm super bored about it. Um, but, like, but again, that feels to me like she's aiming at a kind of regress argument there, where it's like, unless your end can last functionally forever, even though she says that's not the argument she's making, then it can't really be an ultimate end, but that doesn't seem, that doesn't seem plausible to me, I guess.

0:31:00 Aaron: Also, she also has this quote about inexhaustible values, right? She says, um, you might wonder about seemingly inexhauestible values that we can aim at, such as, say, love. Perhaps unattainable is just the wrong term to use for this kind of value that can provide a point to life, a point of living a life at all. Perhaps inexhaustible values can serve as a source of ultimate meaning without leaving us at a now what point, right? But she says, I am skeptical of the plausibility of inexhausting values, and therefore think it is no accident that philosophers have recommended unattainable goals. Instead, it seems that, for, for example, assumes that for any value, we can reach a saturation point, or an achievement point, beyond which more of that value ceases to be valuable to us.

0:31:48 Aaron: Beyond a satisfying point of justice, living for it or continuing to pursue it would seem pointless and counterproductive, nitpicky, annoying, not valuable. Even love, if we have too much of it, might begin to feel feel smothering or at some point irritating, overwhelming, or just too much. So I'm curious about how that impacts your interpretation of this paper.

0:32:15 Lindsey: I mean, she moved between two things there, right? Like, so, when I say inexhaustible, when I hear inexhausting value, I think over time, right. Like, you could keep doing that indefinitely and it would continue to be valuable. The thing that she Said at the end about love was like, if you have too much love, it would be smothering. That doesn't suggest like too much time being loved. It suggests like Too Much Love At One Time

0:32:27 Aaron: Good. Yeah, exactly. I totally agree.

0:32:36 Thomas: Too much that day, that hour, like, could you get over it in a minute, you know?

0:32:37 Lindsey: Yeah, Yeah,

0:32:40 Aaron: Yeah, you're totally right. Like, you know, you think about a normal relationship, right? If you spend too much time around the other person, then maybe you get a little burned out. But that's not the same as saying that you've reached a satisfying point with your love towards them, right, like you go away for 10 minutes and you're like, oh, right, I love this person. I want to go back to them now, right? So, yeah, I do think, well, okay, you know, right. I do thinks she is definitely conflating something there in that kind of like temporal versus quantity at a given point

0:32:40 Lindsey: No, 10 Minutes Huh, Yeah, I

0:33:12 Aaron: Kind of sense. I'm also just skeptical of, like, the rejection of inexhaustible value. Like, her criticism of justice as an exhaustive is not an exhaustible, because it would end up with you being nitpicky to me, is just like answered by basic virtue ethics that would say the goal of justice is to maintain the golden mean between being too picky and being too lax. But that's still a process that you engage in for your entire life and for all time, right? So in that sense, it is a functionally inexhaustible project.

0:33:44 Thomas: Yeah, I didn't find this part at all compelling because I've none of my concerns in life have ever been like, well, what have I run out of things to do? It's like, no, there's plenty of things to do. Is just I, my problem is I have a hard time caring about doing them. Because often of this, you know, I give credit to this paper, not that it's groundbreaking.

I think it's really again, it's not anything controversial, or, you some of these problems that I've found I had, which is I think some people, and apparently not you two, but I think some people in life maybe have an issue where it's like we want something to matter to us and then we project that out of like, okay, this thing matters in life.

You hammer the nail, you build all that stuff, and then you're like, okay, I want my life to have a meaning and a reason I'm doing it for that after I die, you know, like even including after I die, but I also want to be around to experience that value, which is fundamentally impossible. And it's a contradiction that I think some non

0:33:47 Aaron: Mm hmm.

0:34:46 Thomas: Aaron and Lindsay humans have a problem. No, it's something that I've struggled with. Like it, it, it does. It has been a problem of motivation. Like part of me is like, ah, I could, yeah, I could, you know, I could clean up the weeds in the backyard or the sun will eat the earth. I don't know. Who cares? Like, you know, and maybe that's just a depressed person thing. I don't know.

0:35:05 Aaron: It No, like, I do a little bit get what you're saying that there is some of something of like, um, but it doesn't, it doesn' feel at all like what the argument she's making here is, though.

0:35:14 Thomas: No, not here. I agree. At this point, I don't really honestly know what she was talking about. I didn't find it compelling.

0:35:14 Aaron: Mm-hmm. It's

0:35:22 Lindsey: Think, I mean, I think that the the contradiction, I think I maybe, I experience it a little bit different than you do, Thomas, but like, I, I understand that that contradiction and like sometimes it feels like a really heavy contradiction. I just, yeah, I don't, there's something about the way that she's articulating it here that I, I don't I don't Like, I don't think it's

0:35:37 Thomas: Yeah, I really would recommend, Aaron, what's the Nagel paper or even that whole book that I haven't worked my way all the way through because for me, it's really hard to read philosophy because I have to go like an inch at a time to really grok it.

0:35:40 Lindsey: Right, yes.

0:35:51 Aaron: Tough, it Is hard, yeah.

0:35:53 Thomas: But I feel like Nagel does a much better job of expressing the problem. And also I think, again, I don't think there's any cure for this. Like if anybody else is like me and feels this pointlessness, I think if there was an easy cure, it'd be like, oh, just go to the easy cure of the pointlessness room and they'll charge you a hundred bucks and then you're fine for life. It is kind of a psychological thing as well. But one thing that I think the Nagel paper helps me with, if I'm remembering correctly, is the thing that you are looking for, the thing that I am looking for is fundamentally a contradiction and impossible. And I think this paper is also arguing that. I just think that that your critiques are right, that it's not doing so in a very good way. And it maybe is.

0:35:53 Aaron: Okay.

0:36:34 Aaron: Well,

0:36:34 Lindsey: It's yeah, I think the part, the part of this that's annoying is the, and we should be very, very sad about it, like, I, I think I would agree with, like, it's uncomfortable, it's A difficult contradiction, it's something that we have to keep returning to to sort of make peace with, but like, um, she, I don't know, like she seems To be

0:36:42 Thomas: Hmm. That's a good point. Sad is not the word I would use. It's we should be nothing about it. Like, I don't think we can. We should really really have, but, but that's good. That cuts both ways. You know, like it also, for me personally, it can feel completely demotivating. I don't, I don't cry about it. I'm not like, ah, you know, it's, it's not really that feeling. It's like, ah, man, what's the point? You know? And I, I think that's, that's an interesting thing to latch onto. I don't know why we should be sad about that.

0:36:50 Lindsey: Yeah. See

0:36:55 Aaron: Right. Well, Yeah, and that's, that's sort of where Nagel ends up. So the book is, um, Mortal Questions, um, and the particular Chapter Right.

0:37:20 Thomas: Mortal question. Oh, sorry.

0:37:22 Aaron: Um, great, now I have that song in my head, thank you, I appreciate that, don't need that at all. I'm, um, yeah, the chapter in mind is, I think, The Absurd. Now, again, like all of the other arguments that she said she's not making, she says she's not making Nagel's argument either, which is the Kind Of Well,

0:37:25 Thomas: Oh, okay. Well, in that case, I DON't know what the hell she's saying. I'LL be honest. Honest, I don't. If that's true, I don't know what she's saying.

0:37:45 Aaron: Well, here's what she, so the reason she said not making Nagel's argument is because Nagel argument is centered, centered around, right, exactly.

0:37:51 Thomas: Because Nagel already did that, and if I were, I wouldn't be writing this paper for the Journal of Controversial

0:37:56 Aaron: You can't publish, you could just republish his ideas. That's cheating. But like, You know, she says his problem was the view from nowhere kind of problem where the kind of meaning that you're looking for is the view outside of a life, but meaning comes from the perspective inside of a life. And so, like, that's the kind of contradiction that I think, like, you you see in the Nagel paper, but she's she's not arguing for that, she thinks that, um, it's fine to make sense of, uh, like, the viewing of the thing is not the problem, it's that the thing is non-external, the the end itself is not external, rather than the perspective that assigns, um, value to it. Let me see if we can, let me, if I can find a, um, a quote about this, let's, so she does talk about that, that it is not the

0:37:56 Thomas: Ideas. I could just retweet it.

0:38:46 Aaron: Problem of the view from nowhere, um, so again I think we are back to this, like, it not being clear. Now there's another quote though that I do want to share that I think gets a little bit at, um, so I mean what Thomas is saying, but another, like, real experience people actually have that I personally find very confusing as a alien philosopher. Um, she says, you know, um, for, you know, this is in response to the objection, well, why not just be really fine with with like, your life is happy, right? You're having everyday meaning, so like, who cares, right?

0:39:19 Thomas: Yeah. It's what my therapist says too. Yeah, I know. I agree.

0:39:25 Aaron: She says, "Those of us for whom life is more of an effort than a joy are more likely to find ultimate meaning especially important because we put a great deal of effort into leading our less than blissful lives, and without a point at all, that effort can feel like a slog." I guess I, I don't, first of all, it doesn't seem at all clear to me how ultimate meaning could serve this function, maybe that's just because, like, interesting.

0:39:31 Thomas: There you go.

0:39:49 Thomas: Wow. That's okay. Because I really identified with that just now. This is just a psychology problem, I'll be honest. And I've said this before, I really think it is. Ever since I've done any atheism related content, I've always mentioned that I have, you know, that I do kind of struggle with with meaning and motivation, all that, and then I'll just basically, some other people, like, like, you normies apparently are like, they just restate the same thing, but it's fine, and I think that's why I realized early on that, like, oh, this is just a psychology thing, like, this is just, you know, if you, if you your brain state is that you're kind of fine with stuff, then you're like, yeah, no, life's pointless and just have fun. And I'm like, life is pointless.

0:40:30 Thomas: What am I doing? What's the point? And I identified with that passage because I do think it's true that if you are kind of struggling through life, then I think the human mind and body doesn't want to kill itself, I don't think. And you're, like, is there some external thing I can look to for for the reason why this is worth it, you know, yeah,

0:40:30 Aaron: Wait,

0:40:55 Lindsey: Mean there are parts of that that really do resonate with me, um, I guess I, you know, I don't, I don't look at these problems and say, but it feels fine, right? But, like, the The act of, like, the

0:41:04 Thomas: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that,

0:41:08 Lindsey: But the, like, trying to, trying to, I, I guess I feel like I'm resigned to the fact that this is a contradiction that everybody has to live with, and that's just, that's a thing you have have deal with from time to time. And so like, but

0:41:20 Thomas: I think you represent the final Pokemon evolution that I need to get to somehow, you know,

0:41:26 Lindsey: It's not, but it's an ongoing process, right? And like, so I feel like I go through cycles of like, struggling to get back to the place where we're like, I can see things from a perspective where it's fine. And I don't know, I was trying to find a quote, too, because there's something that she says at the end that that just like, I don't, I don't know, like the way that she that she describes, just like accepting that there is this thing that we could have you know, somehow. Like, it would be possible for that to exist, and that we don't have it means that, like, we have this, I don't know, there's a deficit here that we can never meet, and I don't think that's true.

0:42:00 Thomas: That's, yeah. Well, go ahead.

0:42:01 Aaron: So, I guess, you know, part of my just try to like unpack my alien thinking for Thomas about why this doesn't make any sense to me is that, like, like, the ultimate meaning stuff feels so very abstract to me, right? It's very theoretical. And what she's describing are, like, in my mind, people who are enslaved, right, people who are suffering with crippling depression. And if I, like, wandered up to one of those persons and was like, "But look, your life has ultimate meaning," I would, they should reasonably tell me to get fucked, I think, like.

0:42:36 Aaron: Like, well, you know, like what, Let me just say, like, I think to me, I think it triggers my reaction to people being like, "Oh, well, this person is suffering from cancer, but God has an ultimate purpose for their suffering." I'm like, God's ultimate purpose could get fucked too. So, like, that, that's how, that's why it doesn't do anything for me on the like ameliorating everyday suffering question.

0:42:34 Thomas: Well, okay, let me, let me, that is for sure, I think, okay. Okay,

0:42:35 Lindsey: Yes, yeah, yes,

0:43:00 Thomas: A couple of things I got to say before I forget them. I hear you. And I think for Lindsay's point, I think the only way you could address it, even hypothetically, is to do the like step one, step two, question mark, step three profit, which is, you know, design something external. So I either God or an afterlife or some other broader magic thing and then be like, that thing is the ultimate justification for everything. And it and it all stops there. Like it ends there.

The rules are the means all the points, all that regression that all ends with this magic being that I created. And that I think because we want this like fundamentally contradictory thing, a lot of people are apparently able to accept that, like, "Yeah, oh no, yeah, God, I'll talk to God after I die," and then whatever those magic words of God says, it'll make me feel like this all made sense, you know. And, uh, as for what Aaron was saying, I think there's like a privilege sweet spot that this particularly hits. Um, I actually agree with you on, like, if you're going through major struggles, like, like if you're, you know, I honestly, a lot of people are in this world. If you're starving, if you do all that, I think that that the broader meaning doesn't really do much for that. I totally agree.

I think your body kicks in and your immediate need to fix whatever that problem is, whatever it may be, your immediate physical struggles, I think kind of take precedence over that. And I felt that way, too. Like if I'm, you know, if I've got something really serious going on, that's not at all when I'm thinking about the pointlessness thoughts. That's like, "Oh, God, what do I do?" Like, you know, like I'm in, I'm in the world.

0:44:32 Thomas: I'm trying to solve the problems. It's sort of in that like middle zone where it's like you're you're things are going fine, you know, but just like psychologically.

0:44:40 Aaron: It's a bourgeoisie problem, I think, is what you're trying to say

0:44:42 Thomas: No, I think it is. I actually think it is and not just bourgeoisie. I think it's a certain level of well-being and upward for some people, you know, where Where it is, like, if you are, you're not, not starving, you're not dying, you know, whatever, but, like, psychologically, day-to-day for some people it's difficult, you know, like things are just difficult and it's like I just, it's, it's kind of unpleasant and I, I wish there was a reason for all this, you know.

0:44:49 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, yeah! It

0:45:04 Aaron: And, yeah, just to play the flip side, I do think there are interesting arguments to be made in the non-dominant cultural capital kind of area about, like, we talked when we did Parable of the Talents or Parable the Sower about capital, this idea of having this driving ultimate purpose can help you survive the worst stuff. So I do think there is that for some people.

0:45:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:34 Aaron: I just think for me personally, I do not key into that as a coping mechanism at all. And it feels to me like it's very often marshaled a harmful kind of way.

0:45:42 Thomas: I agree when I'm hypothetically casting myself, like, what if I was put in a horrible, like, a Handmaid's Tale, you know, dystopian situation, the only thing that would justify me as an atheist, that I, where I I would, cause I've always made this joke. Like the minute the zombie thing happens, I'm like, "Oh, I'll just jump off a bridge. I don't care. What, what are you trying to, what are you guys trying to live for? What is the point?" You know? Um, but the only, just hypothetically thinking about that, the only thing that really could motivate me in that scenario would be a very earthly concern.

Like if I had a family member somewhere, if I had a, you know, if there's somebody there to my, oh, like, I really got to help this person or I gotta, I gotta stick around and fight these frigging zombies or whatever it is, the climate apocalypse, whatever it may be, you it's interesting for me just thinking it through that, like, the broader meaning really wouldn't do anything for me there. It's more like if there was somebody immediately that I felt like I could serve as a point for early, whatever, you know what I mean? Like they

0:46:16 Aaron: Yeah.

0:46:37 Thomas: Would be my external point in that situation. Yeah.

0:46:36 Aaron: So I can share, I guess, my sort of final, and this I think connects that a little bit, my final objection to this paper, which is not actually a philosophical one, it's a psychological argument, which is psychologically this paper is incoherent based on what we know about human minds, to quote, right, we just watched, uh, sorry to bother you, over on Philosophers in Space, right. If you give someone a problem and they have no way to fix it, they will just stop caring about the problem. And what this paper effectively says is, here's a problem that you absolutely cannot fix, but you should feel very, very sad about it. But my brain, psychologically, is going to be like, "Fuck that," right. Like, I'm just not going to feel very sad about this anymore. If I can't change it, I'm just going to, you know, dopamine is going to kick in and I'm going to normalize and it's going to be fine. So, like, if your, if her goal was for for us to feel very sad about it, I think she should have at least suggested there was some tiny hope

0:46:53 Thomas: That would

0:47:32 Aaron: Of achieving ultimate meaning in some way that we would then continue to clamber after and feel very bad about. Otherwise, I'm just like, I'm not going to care, right. Like it's, it's the equivalent of saying, "Well, look, we should feel very mad that maybe the sun's going to explode tomorrow," or like, "Maybe, you know, Yellowstone is going to blow tomorrow," and, like, maybe, but I'm, it, because I can't stop it

0:47:54 Thomas: Be pretty sad I

0:47:56 Lindsey: Yeah, I agree with that. If you can't, and I think that one thing we all agree on is that, yeah, there probably isn't an ultimate purpose in the way that it's being talked about here. And there's nothing we can do about that. And so all we can doing is like, try to wrestle with the experience of sort of knowing that, right? And that feels like a more interesting place to be than just, I don't know. Yeah,

0:48:16 Aaron: Well,

0:48:18 Thomas: I fully agree with your final critique here, Aaron, that if the point of this paper was so get over it, or so don't care about it, or some move on, then they'll be like, "Yeah, okay." But if the point is you should feel sad about it, that is a weird, I don't know what they're going for, I don't, what she's going for there with that. Like, I, it's a weird thing. Like that that would suggest that, like, as you say, that we should still want this fundamentally incoherent thing rather than just being like, "Therefore, let's find a way to cope with that or to take that on board," you know. It is, it's weird. That is a weird part of this paper. Yep.

0:48:55 Lindsey: Actually, I've got a good quote. Can I read a quote? Yeah.

0:48:58 Aaron: Of Course.

0:48:59 Lindsey: So she says, uh, "Sometimes wishing for or lamenting the impossible is silly, like crying for the moon or being sad that you're not a number, but when the impossible would be great for us and when its absence leaves us lacking something, it makes, that it makes sense for us to want, then it is fitting to be sad and disappointed." Disappointed, and, like, that's the point that I think I object to the most here, is, like, she's, she's suggesting that, like, yeah, this incoherent thing is something that we feel the absence of and that if we didn't have that absence things would be better, and I just, I disagree with that. Like, I, I think there are empirical facts about our psychologies that suggest that that's not true, right? We're

0:49:18 Aaron: Yeah.

0:49:33 Aaron: Yeah, I totally agree, and I think, you know, I'm not a Stoic, but I think the Stoics would, would pretty well dismantle this idea in the sense that, like, if you're saying something is impossible, then saying that you should still feel bad about it because it's really important makes no sense. Like, it's just, at that point, you, you should figure out a way to not feel bad about it because you're feeling bad about it serves zero function. If she's saying we can't help but feel bad about it, that seems psychologically false.

0:50:00 Aaron: Now, you know, it's tricky. There's a joke about philosophy papers, which is always they tell you more about the philosopher themselves than about the world.

0:50:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:09 Lindsey: I was trying not to psychoanalyze this paper. But Yeah. I'm

0:50:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:11 Aaron: Well, and that's the problem, right? You get a little like, you Know, it gets a little weird trying to psychoanalyze a paper like this in particular, right. If you're talking about symbolic logic, maybe it's not as big a deal. But that quote earlier that we referenced about for whom life is more of an effort than a joy, I did feel like I was getting a perspective of why the author personally cares deeply about this particular issue.

0:50:38 Thomas: Right.

0:50:38 Aaron: And I think it just might be the case that she's telling us she feels very strongly that she is sad that her life doesn't have a purpose.

0:50:43 Thomas: I feel like she She should She should be aware of that for this to be a better paper. I feel like, she, don't you think that maybe she would need to address that and like find a way to make it interesting in a more universal way rather than just kind of assuming everybody feels the same way in writing from that standpoint.

0:50:47 Aaron: Mm-hmm. Mm-huh. Hmm. Yeah, no, I do, I do think that is, and, and, like, it's tricky, I think, because she's trying to make a universal reasoned argument based on the logical premise that things can't be external to one's life rather than a sort of emotional, "I feel really bad about this and you should too" kind of argument

0:51:19 Thomas: Yeah. You know What? Even on her own argument, like taking everything on board, I feel like her "be sad about it" thing fails because even, even with what she says, you could be like, okay, well, then I'm going to fill my life full of the things that you've already acknowledged provide you meaning within the moment, and then there's no room for this sadness she's talking about, you know what I mean? Like even on completely her own terms, it's like that sounds like the solution, there, just do that.

0:51:20 Aaron: Yeah.

0:51:40 Aaron: It's not at all clear What's supposed to follow from this paper in terms of practical activity? Like, do I keep doing all the exact same things, but like turn down my happiness about them by like 10%? Like why? What would be point of that? So like, unless she's saying I am necessarily going to be compelled to feel sad, I don't feel like I should feel sad. So yeah, I know. And I don't think it's psychologically true that I necessarily will feel sad, but it does feel like she uses the word should in the title, right? She says we should feel sad about this. I don't see why.

0:51:45 Lindsey: Trying it's

0:51:48 Thomas: Yeah. So Yeah. I was trying to see if that's like satirical or not, satiric, but like you know, just kind of Uh, jokey. Well, but listen to the abstract, I was wondering if this was meant to be like, "This is how I would tweet." Um, and I don't have, this is an insult to this philosophy paper. Here's the abstract: "Life is pointless. That's not okay." Period. "I show that." Period. "I argue that a point is value." You know, like that's a weird, doesn't this tone seem weird? I don't know what to make of it. Is it just me?

0:52:17 Aaron: No, I don t think so.

0:52:40 Lindsey: Not just you.

0:52:41 Aaron: I mean, I do think that like maybe the title is similar, is a bit of a like clickbaity because it's in the Journal of Controversial Ideas.

0:52:45 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Well, let me, let me, uh, let me finish with this. I don't want to be too rough on this paper, you know, like it, whatever it's philosophy. It's interesting. We've got some conversation out of us and stuff, but like in terms of the journal of controversial ideas project, don't you feel like this could have been used for some more interesting writing? You could have said, all right, there's no ultimate meaning to life or whatever. So therefore what implications does that have on us? Things like, you know, maybe assisted suicide should be legal whenever, you know, like topics that are actually more controversial. Dig into it a little bit.

0:53:16 Aaron: Yeah it's weird that this didn't go and go to a place of, like, and people should be allowed to end their lives.

0:53:21 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe the Futurama suicide booths should be everywhere.

0:53:25 Aaron: Yeah. I mean, if you take her argument seriously, it does seem to suggest that taking refuge in everyday meaning is a poor substitute.

0:53:35 Thomas: All right. So were you triggered? Was it controversial enough for you, Aaron?

0:53:39 Aaron: I mean – like I said to Lindsay before, I feel like I am the sort of the captain of the office of nihilism and fatalism. And, like these guys showed up with – you know, she shows up with this report, and I'm like, you don't have it. Like, you do not have what you need here. It's not – Sorry, you just don't it. Have it, um, maybe next time

0:53:53 Thomas: I think it's interesting that we all I think we all agree, though, that this journal in and of itself, in principle, like I'm kind of fine with it. But it's just really falling short, don't you think? Is that kind of where we are? Yeah. Interesting.

0:54:04 Lindsey: That's how I feel. Oh,

0:54:06 Aaron: Far. We'll see. Hopefully you know, maybe season two, they'll get their um, they'll... their legs there,

0:54:09 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Season two, they'll hire a better, you know, another lead actor to add in the character that we can latch on to. And they'll get some, you Know, some race science data or something. I don't know.

0:54:20 Aaron: You go there, you know.

0:54:21 Thomas: All right. Aaron, thanks so much for coming on and philosophizing us. Really enjoyed it.

0:54:21 Aaron: Pleasure. As always. Yeah.

0:54:22 Lindsey: Jesus.

0:54:27 Thomas: Of course, check out Embrace the Void, Philosophers in Space. Anything else? Oh, you're writing. You want to plug that? What am I missing?

0:54:34 Aaron: I've been writing in the Skeptic UK mag a bunch with the Merseyside folks. There's lots of fun stuff there, and check me out on at ETV Pod on Twitter if you want to see me argue about pointless stuff a lot.

0:54:37 Thomas: It's fantastic work.

0:54:47 Thomas: All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks so much, Aaron, for coming along and we'll see you next time.

0:55:01 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com slash SeriousPod. The second best thing you can do, is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, follow me on Twitter at Serious Pod. If would like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com slash groups slash SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.