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Comment by bigwavedave | Hacker News Reader

Really? Personally, if I died and there was a deity that gave me a choice to either be reincarnated into a slave that would be tortured from birth to death only to be eaten by my slavers at the end or the deity would go back in time to make it so my parents never met, I'd wholeheartedly choose the latter.

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I'm not much of a philsopher, but if you're at all interested in the other side of thinking I would suggest Viktor Frankl. He was a jewish person in a nazi concentration camp and he make a much stronger argument than I can for this point of view.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl

> After enduring the suffering in these camps, Frankl concluded that even in the most absurd, painful, and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that, therefore, even suffering is meaningful.

Not to minimize his suffering, but spending ~3 years out of his 92 year life being tortured isn't the same as a whole life of torture with no meaning or hope of escape.

Yeah, it's not like the Nazi's were breeding Jews for the express purpose of a life of slavery, torture, and slaughter.

I think comparing it is a false equivalency. Also Godwin's Law.

Thank you for the link!

After reading a little bit about meaning, it seems that it's something that has to be found first

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(existential)

so even if there's meaning in the most miserable of lives, it's not guaranteed that it will be found. However, I haven't found anything suggesting that meaning makes life worth living, only a passing mention of it bringing happiness, which doesn't square with my understanding of torture or concentration camps. Am I misunderstanding what meaning is?

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