Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

The internet is other people, and what we get is what people, on the whole, want. It's like the olympic gold medal in Cool Runnings: if your life is meaningless without it, it's still going to be meaningless with it.

> These are the most boring people on the planet.

Yes, we are. That's the real revolution here: that you don't have to be "wacky" to participate, to set the agenda even. Facebook forces us to accept that most people are boring. Forces us to at least consider the possibility that terrifies the politico-artistic-humanities complex - that maybe it's ok to be boring.

> if our data is the oil of the 21st century, then why aren’t we all sheikhs?

Or maybe our data isn't actually that valuable. Maybe it's worth approximately what we sell it for.

> There’s no sneering, no sarcasm, and no self-deprecation. Everyone is just sort of floating along in an earnest tranquility. As if each anecdote about “that cool loft I found on Airbnb” contained some deep spiritual significance beyond my grasp.

Isn't this a good thing? What do we think the author would have written if everyone were being cynical and snarky?

> magical cloud of squandered human potential

No such thing. Data isn't destroying these things - it's just forcing us to realize that they were myths all along. I think the author kind of acknowledges this with the statement about how "those invisible power structures continue to thrive."

The Internet only amplifies what's already there. It can, and does, help you do what you want with your life. But you have to decide what that is for yourself.

I could reply point-by-point, but it's pointless (pun intended).

Here is one thing I learned over the years.

There are people of type A who believe there actually are meaningful things in life. This belief requires to acknowledge that there are also meaningless things. And yes, sometimes identifying those things can get a bit depressing.

There are other people, type B, who believe there are no meaningful things in life. This same statement can be given a positive spin by negation, but the essence remains the same. This is the type that lectures everyone on how subjective and relative everything is, like it's some kind of revolutionary idea we have not heard before.

But that's not it. What I really learned is that having a conversation relating to meaning or value of anything is entirely pointless if you're speaking with people of type B. Eventually, they will fall back on stating the same core belief (the one I just described above) in a myriad different ways.

And here is a question worth asking. If people of type A can have a productive conversation about things that type B considers non-existent, which belief system makes more sense?

There is nothing inherently meaningful about anything, you can choose what is meaningful to you, but that meaning isn't automatically universal to everyone else.

> This is the type that lectures everyone on how subjective and relative everything is, like it's some kind of revolutionary idea we have not heard before.

I thought what romaniv wrote was interesting, but now it's just illustrative. ;)

He also states:

>There are other people, type B, who believe there are no meaningful things in life.

Which isn't what I am saying. There are many meaningful things in my life. I'm not saying that meaning doesn't exist, I am saying that meaning is personal and that there is no universal meaning.

I always find it very weird when people have debates about whether life is "meaningful" or not. "Meaningfulness" is just a feeling inside a human psyche. If it feels meaningful, then it is meaningful to you. Other people may have different feelings about what is meaningful.

How can a person of type A claim any kind of universal or objective meaningfulness of anything? How would you build a meaningfulness detector or write a meaningfulness algorithm to discern what is meaningful and what is not? What evidence is there to suggest that meaningfulness is a concept that exists outside of our own minds and experience?

I spotted the type B person!

It seems so weird to me that so many people confuse someone saying a phenomena is a mental process for saying that phenomena doesn't exist.

I find they often miss the key fact - human brains are made of the same template; we do have universal values and thought processes. Things that are universal to humans are not arbitrary to us (even though they might be in the grander scale).

> we do have universal values and thought processes

If there was universal agreement about what is meaningful, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think you would be pretty hard-pressed to find very much that is absolutely universal to the human experience.

But even if there are things which are highly prevalent in the human experience, that is not evidence that these feelings are "truth." We have direct evidence that our brains are pre-programmed with tons of cognitive biases and nonsensical beliefs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

It's probably because there are many people who say "this is a mental process" when they really mean "this does not exist".

Also, come to think of it, the proper term for this is "abstract concept" not "mental process".

Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.

Suppose an anti-vaxxer says "there are two types of people: type A who believe vaccination is a personal choice and type B who believe that everyone has a duty to vaccinate when they can."

If you make a case for why people should vaccinate, and the anti-vaxxer says "oh look, I spotted a type B person," that isn't an actual response to the argument.

Classifying my position is not the same as answering it.

Classifying your position shows that there is no point in answering it. In other words, the important thing here is not whether you're being classified, but why and how. You analogy is invalid.

And no, I am not going to directly address your original post either. What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway? From what I see, you're defending a rather boring dismissal of the original article. A long, though-out, well-written article with tons of interesting observations.

> What is your actual point within the context of this particular newpost anyway?

I was curious whether anyone had compelling reasons for believing in the idea of objective or absolute meaningfulness. What I have learned is that the reasons people have offered are extremely weak, in my opinion.

If you don't know how to count, you learn arithmetic from people who do. Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists". Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence. Such is the nature of abstract concepts.

Nonsense. You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies, counting apples or sticks or so on. You demonstrate that the abstract thing exists because there's something the same about putting two apples and two more apples together or putting two stones and two more stones together, and by observing one you can learn something about the other.

"You teach someone arithmetic by showing them concrete instances where it applies [...]"

What do you suppose the article above is doing?

I don't think the article makes any claim to objectivity.

> Nobody owes you a proof that it "objectively exists".

And I don't owe anybody belief in weak arguments.

> Neither does denying it constitute a valid disproof of every theorem in existence.

Thomas Aquinas also offered "proofs" of God's existence that few people outside the Catholic faith take very seriously. For example you can read what Bertrand Russell wrote about him. Other arguments that purport to have "proved" things about religion (and this argument only barely escapes being religious in nature) rarely stand up to rational scrutiny, IMO.

> What evidence is there to suggest that meaningfulness is a concept that exists outside of our own minds and experience?

Why would you need or want to?

I exist. My mind exists. My consciousness exists. My experience exists.

I mean that in the perfectly ordinary, uncontroversial sense that we use every day. There is no particular mystery or problem when I say, "My cat exists" or "My socks exist". I can provide evidence for them, in the same way I can provide evidence for my own existence and the existence of my experiences. If you can read and understand this post you have evidence for my existence and the existence of my experience.

Furthermore, because we are beings of a particular kind, the things we find meaningful--like the things we find nutritious--fall into a relatively small number of categories. Particulars won't be the same for everyone, but so what? It would be very strange to say that because I like meat and you like fruit there's no objective or universal standard of nutrition, and anyone can eat anything--rocks, trees, nothing--and get along equally well.

Simply because our nature does not determine what we find meaningful or nutritious does not mean it does not constrain it. This is again a perfectly ordinary phenomenon that for some reason people get all confused about when it applies to the contents of our minds rather than the contents of our stomachs.

Not only that, but in fact the kinds of things that are meaningful and valuable to people are often shared with other people, which then provides us with the additional meaning kick of sharing, which, I am told, is caring.

The question is not whether you experience you exist but what it is that exist.

So it doesn't help your argument that you can point to a sock and say it exist. What you have to show is that there is only one way to interpret what you see before you can prove that what you see is in fact what you see. Only then is it truly "a thing" regardless of perspective.

In other words. The rock exist in your head as a concept, it's not a concept in nature. A pattern perhaps but not an universal object and the pattern that it is is only one perspective.

I think that truth is getting lost in your abstractions. You are comparing the human feeling of something being "meaningful" to the idea of nutrition, which is a general concept of how the food we ingest affects our overall health.

Nutrition is a complex and multi-dimensional idea. If there is a food that makes most people healthy but kills other people because of an allergy, is that food "nutritious", in a universal sense? And it's tied into another complicated abstraction: the idea of health. If a person is addicted to a drug but functional, is it more "healthy" for them to stay on the drug indefinitely or is it more healthy for them to go through a potentially horrible withdrawal period to get off it?

The abstractions of "nutrition" and "health" are complicated and ultimately based in our experience, just like the idea of "meaningfulness." And while you could make an argument that certain statements would be universally agreed by everyone in all circumstances (like "eating an apple is more nutritious than eating a rock"), that is far from being able to say that the general ideas of nutrition or health are universal or absolute.

> How can a person of type A claim any kind of universal or objective meaningfulness of anything?

For arguments for objective meaningfulness (or good), I'm partial to natural law theory, which is basically that what is good for a human being is what fulfills the nature of a human being. I don't have time to get into details here, but suffice to say that murder, adultery, lying, and stealing do not fulfill the nature of a human being, whereas justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance are examples of things that do.

I recommend the following for arguments for natural law theory, by philosphers of an Aristotelian/Thomistic bent:

[Book] Aquinas, by Edward Feser. Chapter 5 is on Ethics.

[Article] The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law, by David Oderberg: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7SKlRTfkUiebnUxMUEtc1B4VTQ/...

>If people of type A can have a productive conversation about things that type B considers non-existent, which belief system makes more sense?

Type B. Replace "meaningful things in life" with God, fairies, the aether, Pokemon, or any other fiction, and those in type A can still have "productive conversation" about things that do not exist at all.

I love how well these comments here demonstrate the GP's point. I mean, woa life must be dull for you B people! I love having productive conversation about God, fairies, the aether and Pokemon. Warmly recommended!

Preference orderings may be abstract, but they surely exist.

Preference orderings have very little to do with "meaning in life" or "meaningful things in life".

"Meaning in life" is a vague, ill-defined phrase whose referent is not a real thing.

Both. Both make perfect sense to the people within each system.

That one thing you learned over the years is a false dichotomy. There are no As and Bs. Most people value something. They just value different things than you.

Neal Stephenson goes into this a great deal in Anathem. it's worth a read.

If you by type B means something akin to Nihilist or Relativist then I think you are missing the point many of them are trying to make. Otherwise there is people of type C.

It's not that everything is the same But that you can't claim something to be objectively better just because you think it's subjectively better. That does not mean type B do not believe there are somethings that are better, just that they are subjective.

Or put another way. You cannot not have values.

Needing to pee means you will prioritize something over others. And so type B people have plenty of meaning in life they can even discuss why they think a is better than b but they don't take whatever claim to be conclusive.

Most conversations fall down to people stating what they believe. Your post reads like it's deliberately obfuscated, to insinuate an insult in a way that won't get you modded down; if you're sincere then please say what you mean more clearly.

There are people of type A who believe that there are some things so meaningless that it is impossible to find any meaning in them. And yes, they also think there are meaningful things out there too.

There are other people, type B, who believe meaning is something personal and different for everyone. Of course, this means that the meaning will not seek you out, but that you have to seek it out yourself. And that can be hard for some.

But that's not it. What I really learned is that /u/romaniv doesn't even want to talk to you if you disagree with him, because he's heard it all before.

> The internet is other people, and what we get is what people, on the whole, want.

This seems a little simplistic because you take manipulation, hacking, externalities and profit motive out of the equation. In the real world, did people want despots and obesity epidemics?

On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?

> On the Internet, did people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy?

You have to consider it in terms of tradeoffs instead of absolute "wants," but yes. We apparently want banner ads more than subscription services. DRM is apparently a cost we're willing to pay in order to enjoy entertainment, and privacy seems to be less valuable than convenience and connectedness.

Not saying I, or anyone in particular, values things that way, but I do think we've ended up with what "we" want.

It's wrong to say that the outcome we've arrived at is necessarily the one we wanted. Local/initial conditions, availability and options, and a whole mess of other things make it so that's not necessarily true at all.

We didn't end up with what "we" want, we ended up with what Moloch[0] wants. Its an important distinction. Market economy and other feedback loops we run on produces results that are only partially aligned with human needs. There can be literally solutions that no one on Earth wants or needs, and yet they get created because they're local optimas. People have every right to reject and fight results they didn't want. It's how we keep the system aligned with human goals.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

I would suggest people really just want the effortless nature of banner ad consumption. They don't want to do work. Banner ads (advertiser pays) are opt-out and subscription services (or consumer pays) are opt-in. Further each site has to be opt-ed into manually over and over, and then you get to deal anxiety over the whole can I actually unsubscribe thing etc. So you are just trading being juiced in one way for be milked in another.

Further even if we had consumer-pays-for-content sites as low friction as advertiser-pays-for-content sites they still would likely converge towards having advertisements (ultimately maybe less, maybe not) to maximize earnings.

I think there are solutions to these problems but I think they require us to first rethink the assessment and reward of creativity, talent and effort in scarcity-free systems.

>people want banner ads, DRM, and a loss of privacy

People wanted social services, the ability to watch cat videos yesterday, and to not have to pay anything for it.

Other people wanted money for those services. So a trade happened.

This is like asking "In your manstion, did you really want to pay $10,000,000 for it?" Sure it would have been nice to have a free mansion.

People getting robbed tend to prefer losing their wallet to getting shot. Doesn't mean those are the options they'd prefer to choose between.

If asked, people tend to prefer getting everything for free on a silver platter. That doesn't mean it's workable, even assuming we could come up with enough silver to get everyone their own platter.

I'll take my free stuff on a machine-stamped tray of 316 steel. I don't need anything fancy, just so long as it's piled high with the fulfillment of my every desire, provided completely gratis.

Now that you mention it, I think I would like a silver platter. Just put it on the steel one. Actually, make it two, so I can still use one while the other is being polished. And have a silver polisher bring the next tray. And make sure she has read Dune, and has a D.V.M. with a specialty in herpetology.

What's that? My choices are actually between a gaping stab wound and a turd sandwich? I'll take the sandwich, I guess....

It's a little more complicated than that. Many consumers of these services don't realize that they've made the bargain of trading privacy for cat photos. Even the ones that do may not fully understand what they've given up.

I'm reminded of the news story a few years ago where Target effectively broke news of a teen pregnancy to the girl's dad.[0] I doubt the teen realized that by shopping at Target she was agreeing to divulge information about her teen pregnancy, but that was the deal she brokered when she bought lotion and prenatal vitamins using a credit card instead of cash.

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

That really doesn't sound much different than people not understanding they could have bought an identical panel TV at half price if they just bought a different brand. Information asymmetry makes some people rich.

Very accurate and observant comments. Someone (person A) was once explaining to me how boring this other guy was (person B). Person A was bored with person B's conversation. Person A said "this guy was so boring, why didn't he do something exciting or talk about anything interesting? You know, I have a smart phone here and the ENTIRE INTERNET IS IN MY POCKET. But Person B didn't even care! How boring! Scoff guffaw pfah!"

I thought it was pretty sad, firstly because person A was judging person B's worth through his own perception of what was interesting (everything's interesting if you take an interest!), and secondly because having the Internet in your pocket doesn't really mean anything by itself.

It's like walking around with a dictionary in your pocket but never reading it. If you keep reading the blank opening page over and over again whilst proclaiming how wonderful the dictionary is, it is missing the best bits (the rest of the book and word definitions, etymology etc.)

As you state, having lots of people connected together doesn't magically make it a wonderful place if they have nothing in common and the people have meaningless lives in the first place, in the same way that having a library close to you doesn't magically mean that you'll be knowledgeable on everything inside the library if you just hang around outside.

Thanks for the food for thought. Now on to evaluate my use of time and frequently visited sites to see if they are actually enriching my life.

Some people are blessed with some kind of inherent sense of meaning. Maybe you are one of them.

For others, the absurd dominates if all else is stripped. Myths and spirituality were (and still are) helpful things.

Extreme empiricism and knowledge acquisition in pursuit of omniscience, in my view, is not good for a human on a personal level. Perhaps it's good for society.

Would you elaborate on your last sentence (well, on every sentence, if you have time)? Why is not good?

> if our data is the oil of the 21st century, then why aren’t we all sheikhs?

We are, but we dig up only about 5/100th barrel of oil a year. Making money out of data is a matter of scale and expected average revenue / person / year.

Nice post!

Of course, in part, with high irony, that horizon ideal point of the C. P. Snow humanities culture, wrong as in your self contradictory:

> > These are the most boring people on the planet.

> Yes, we are.

Nope! Instead, you wrote a significantly non-boring post!

The best of the Internet is terrific stuff -- curiously in a novel sense: For any interest X, if that is your interest, then there's likely some just terrific stuff for X on the Internet. So, net, the net can be terrific for nearly everyone.

Revising a little we get

> magical cloud of human potential

Well, my college sophomore English prof (I was thinking about math, physics, and the pretty girls) kept saying things like that, and I didn't believe him then or something like the OP now!

For

> These are the most boring people on the planet.

sorry, OP, I long ago concluded that description applied to the journalism community with their message tightly harnessed by the medium as in the McLuhan "the medium is the message".

Data? Okay, finally, after several years of refusing to connect a TV to my free (with phone and Internet, get TV for free) cable TV service, for the 2015 Superbowl I did connect and, maybe for the first time ever, did like the game. Why? Data! What data? Sure, NBC had how many dozen cameras, with a lot of zoom lenses and fast video editing and after a big play could show what the heck had happened, to the pass rush, the pass patterns, the pass defense, the blocking on the runs, etc.

So, finally, with all that extra data, I began to see what the heck was going on. Terrific.

So, Brady saw that the Hawks were good at defending the long pass so went for very quick, about 3 seconds from the snap, short passes. And he saw that sometimes a Hawk lineman became a pass defender and used that data. So, in the last quarter, Brady was able to make two long drives, down by down, bang, bang, bang.

Good to see -- finally, with the extra data, begin to see something about how the game really works!

With more irony, finally, with all the new data, a big sporting event on TV is changing to reality from what it was. And what was it? Sorry, sports fans, really largely want it was was drama as in formula fiction. How? Have characters can identify with and get interested in and then follow to the conclusion -- while staying around for the ads.

So, it was taking a sporting event and turning it into drama. As in pro wrestling or some fantasy story, reality didn't matter -- only the elements of drama mattered.

Why? Because TV was, from producers, directors, camera operators, video editors, etc., all from the Hollywood drama culture. They knew drama so treated sports as drama.

Well, a good coach and quarterback who want to win have no such luxury and, instead, have to understand the game. And, that's what I want: To understand the game, the actual game, the real game, as it actually is, and to heck with the drama or identifying with a team.

Identify? Not a chance! Heck until just a day or so before the game, I didn't even know what teams were playing, and I had never even heard of the Seahawks! So, no way would I identify. Instead, I just wanted to see some good football tactics and strategy, and, thanks to the extra data, did.

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