It was a pleasure. It is always good to have a conversation about these things, and I am pleased you were open to one.

By all means pay attention to rocks, you don’t want one to fall on you, or to trip over one. Just remember if you kick it, or try to persuade it, you will suffer and it won’t.

I’m more than happy to be moved off the position if something presents itself, so far nothing has. Nor do I reject a general spiritual position, I would even say I have had experiences best described as mystical but I don’t see that as anything separate from the mind.

That we inhabit a small corner of something so vast that we can in a very real sense never interact with most of it. That even if we could, makes no special allowances to us and would end our lives simply by its nature. Is what leads me to conclude that there is no intrinsic meaning. What would be the meaning of a star? What even would be the shape of it’s meaning?

We have no reason to think that the moon would be much different if we never were as a species never were, aside from some tyre tracks and some litter. Of course, the man in the moon, or the rabbit wouldn’t be there without humans to see them, but those are things we project onto it.

Yeah, people like that are a where a big chunk of my misanthropy comes from. To pin any kind of philosophical label on them though I think is wrong. I think it is more accurate to say that they don’t engage with any. You can equally complain about their fatalism, except fatalism doesn’t preclude taking action. Even their brand of doomerism is boring.

If they really believed and understood the position they appear to take, they would likely have killed themselves already.

I would pay them the same mind you would a rock.

The error is conflating nihilism to doomerism. The lack of intrinsic value or meaning doesn’t really have anything to do with the idea that our (personal or collective) destruction is inevitable.

To use myself as an example, I have a strong doomer tendancy, which is rooted in my misanthropy. I believe that the weaknesses of humanity undermine any strengths we have and will lead to our destruction. My nihilism tells me that the destruction of humanity by our own hubris is, in a cosmic sense, neither good or bad. The universe will keep ticking paying our disappearance as little heed as it paid our presence.

Thing is, lack of intrinsic value doesn’t mean there is no point in trying to save us. That we live in an uncaring universe means that we are our only real chance of getting out of this jam we are in. There isn’t a god to save us, there isn’t some second chance at life coming after death. Even if there is no hope in the struggle to survive, you can still struggle.

Ultimately nihilism is a question, not an answer. It is a statement of what is, and has no bearing on what one should do.

Maybe you should learn about a philosophical position before you offer your critique. Especially if you want to take a position that people should be ‘informed’.