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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

This is really only one possible interpretation of the absurd. The collective absurdist philosophers all tended to agree that when confronted with the apparent meaninglessness of life there were 3 general responses possible.

1. Suicide (not widely advocated for in philosophy circles)

2. A leap of faith (essentially to impart your own meaning to life)

3. Embrace of the meaninglessness

It seems to me like you may be advocating for the 3rd option? Logically speaking, it’s equally as valid as the other two, but it does have one major shortcoming in that it doesn’t naturally lead to any conclusions. Personally I see more value in the 2nd option, but it does come with the added baggage of settling on or coming up with your own values system.

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Taking a leap of faith option is probably the most common and orthodox solution. While religious themes comes to mind, it's not really limited to religion, tons of people find non-religious causes and beliefs to hold onto, like humanism, skepticism, trans-humanism, social justice, or other variants.

Common to all of these is a specific narrative, a foundational belief that deep down, once you wash away the topsoil, it all makes sense, that there is an unshakeable and unmovable bedrock waiting. Sure, there is sand and water shaking our feet today, but deep below awaits solidity and surety. That ultimately, Truth is our steadfast ally. And that the only real way to find meaning and sanity is to root yourself to that bedrock.

But what happens that day when we dig down and find nothing? When we realize that we are floating aimlessly in space towards nowhere, untethered from all meaning? If we have tied all our worth, thoughts, and values to that imaginary rock then we'll have nothing left.

I agree that the leap of faith is the most common way people choose to live. But you seem to be describing it from a perspective of somebody who’s never asked themselves the question, or who gave up trying to answer it.

To properly arrive at the leap of faith, you need to first accept that there are no universal truths. Then you can choose some axioms to base meaning on, and build outwards from there. I don’t believe that this approach is truly that orthodox, even if it may arrive at a similar destination to not asking the question to begin with.

There is no universal truth anywhere in life. Even empiricism is based on our subjective experiences, and rationalism is also flawed in exactly the same way. Life itself doesn’t offer any bedrock of truth, but that doesn’t mean truth doesn’t exist. You can take the leap of faith and create your own truth in life.

There are no universal truths? Math is quite universal. For all intents and purposes empiristic measurements have margin of error small enough to be more than just a subjective experience. In fact you are experiencing a universal truth right now through a small and a distorted glass. Saying that there's no universal truth anywhere is just full on defeatist poo-poo.

It’s not defeatist at all. Empiricism derives truth from sensory experiences, which are by definition subjective. Rationalism derives truth from logic, and all statements in logic are constrained from discovering universal truth by the munchausen trilemma.

I think what you’re talking about would be better described as a personal truth, which _is_ a leap of faith.

Calling sensory experiences subjective subtly implies that they carry zero bits of useful information and that everything is up to interpretation. That is profoundly defeatist. Whereas I maintain that there is a universal truth, and that individual sensory experiences are mere samples. The more samples from as many sensory devices and vantage points the closer your approximation to the universal truth it is.

Given a person A and person B, while both have a very small subset of the 'univeral truth' one of them is closer to it than the other approximation. And better yet the combined sample sets are likely to be even closer.

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"--As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."

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