Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

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>Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above.

in what way is it personal? In that he's attacking his conclusion for all of Kierkegaards' work? Or that he's trying to characterize your actions into a specific motivations?

Being called wrong , even in the softest ways, is now a personal attack?

I think it's fair to say that a 3-5 word sentence is a bit too shallow to characterize Kierkegaards' entire body of work. 'Sickness Unto Death' totally changed my outlook as a teenager reading it at the right time.

Here's the thing that's missing : life is as deep as we give it credit for, and many philosophies seek to enrichen and deepen the experience of life.

In my opinion, someone with the stance 'life isn't very deep' is in the perfect position to try to honestly absorb some of the pasts' philosophers and step away from the mammalian life of eat-sleep-breed.

In other words : our biological life is shallow in reason, philosophy and human thinking itself is what fills the world with reason, objective, and depth.

Anyone with the take-away that 'life isn't very deep' receives my greatest sympathy and sorrow. I remember how I felt when I came to the same conclusions, and i'm glad I have shifted away from that perspective with the help of philosophy and dialogue with others.

Re-imagining the world with the tools that philosophy gives you through practice is a fantastic experience, and I hope that the parent who believes that life isn't as deep as people give it credit for has the chance to undergo that epiphany themselves one day.

Man is the measure of all things.

I am not addressing any of these points about either of our own value judgments about life, because they do not address the point I have made, which is that nothing else matters if some particular person interprets the meaning of their life in a particular way. No amount of your belief in some philosophy or religion will change their interpretation of the meaning (or lack thereof) in their own life. If this person posted for example that nothing Jesus said matters, because they think life is completely without depth, that's the end of it. They don't have to respond to any external reasoning or justify dismissing some philosopher's entire body of work, because they assign the depth of their own life. You and I can discuss what that means with respect to our own value judgments, but it has no bearing on what that person thinks of their own. If you want to proselytize to that person for finding meaning in life, that's great, have at it. But you can't say that person's dismissal of some system of reasoning is invalid because his dismissal is based on value judgments entirely up to that person alone, and no amount of external reasoning on your part will "override" their value judgment.

About the reply above with the personal attack, here are a selection of phrases used to attack the author of the post, and not the author's argument: "internet edgelords", "pretty disgusting", "'insights turn out useless: life just isn't a very deep thing' is incredibly trite", "i don’t mean this to come across as a personal attack, but...", "a pithy reference", "an attempt to signal knowledge (or worse yet, understanding)", "just incredibly weak."

Give me a break, that's a personal attack.

>I am not addressing any of these points, because they do not address the point I have made,

Fine, i'll afford you the same favor and ignore everything you said, too. One sided judgements isn't discourse.

Just to let you know, though, I was quite obviously replying to the first sentence you wrote in parent.

>Look, I have no horse in this race, but this is clearly a personal attack in the reply above. Regardless..

Let me ask you a simple question.

If you were driving with someone, and they slowly drove through a red-light and said "You only have to slow down on the reds." would you question that persons' understanding of traffic laws?

I don't care who finds value in what philosopher, but when the only thing you can tell me about Nietzsche is that the word has an S in it[0], then I question your objective knowledge on that topic. If someone dismisses a philosophical point of view without the objective knowledge of what that philosophy entails, then I do not believe, personally, that their opinion is worth value with regards to philosophy.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa0bCzwSNA0

p.s. since you edited in a bunch of stuff about personal attacks after your initial post, let me mention : that word cloud you posted is devoid of who it was towards. Go re-read; the attacks are on 1) the idea 2) the motivation towards the idea -- not the person. That's exactly the difference between a personal attack and someone who is trying to disagree with that persons' idea.

I find it amusing you seem to believe that you are capable of adjudicating another person's value judgments as they pertain to their own internal belief structure, and furthermore that you have literally referred to the use of some "objective knowledge" to do so. You have made a point, to be sure, but it's definitely not the point you think you've made.

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