Deleted my previous post because I felt it came off as too caustic. Here's a gentler approach: I disagree with your interpretation of the nature of the universe. Everything physics tells us is that there is no morality or meaning in this universe. All humans are matter evolved to seek pleasure to pass on genetic copies. Your talk of "strengthening familial bonds" is just a conscious experience formulated by evolution to make you pass genes and increase universal entropy. You're right that the brain's mechanism results in hedonic treadmill but none of that means seeking pleasure is futile because you must realize that everything a human does involves seeking pleasure including these "active undertakings" that you describe with nonsensical words like "meaningful" and "transcend". Such terms are extremely superficial and lack any connection to fundamental nature as there is no "transcending beyond happiness"; the neurophysiological pleasure/reward circuitry is the end all be all of behavior. I recommend you study hedonism and its arguments more.
"Everything physics tells us is that there is no morality or meaning in this universe."
Well, no physicist or theory ever said that. Physics is the study of the forces of nature, not human consciousness and morality. That is why we have philosophy.
Try to get off your science worshiping unchecked opinion.
You're actually proving my point by stating the evolutionary reasons behind the importance of familial bond.
And again, this phase of life is common in life, been through it with a similar amount nihilism. I hope you get well soon. ❤️
Try helping your mother in the kitchen instead of watching porn to seek pleasure, and tell me the difference after that.
I will also recommend you to read Viktor Frankl and Kant's work.
I guess I'm not surprised this was your response as me attempting to teach the implications of physics for materialism, reductionism, determinism, evolution, and neuroscience, and to outline the nuances of egoism and hedonism in a short blog comment is near impossible. But alas, I will try as too many people lack an understanding in this. I also acknowledge that I may have explained things poorly previously. I will respond to each of your counterarguments:
1) The first thing you must understand about the mechanism of pleasure/pain is that the most pleasurable state a person can experience from one point to another is constantly changing depending on external and internal stimuli. E.g., If I’m extremely hungry, I would gain very little pleasure from seeking reproductive mates as being rid of the pain of starvation would give me significantly greater pleasure than sex (which is why sexual pleasure isn’t always the most pleasurable state); if I fed myself now, I can have much more sex later. This is because evolution programmed the brain to gain higher pleasure from not starving to death than to have sex at all times since having sex at all times will quickly drain resources of protecting oneself and protecting fertile offspring (this is also why a refractory period is programmed into us).
2) People would raise a family because raising a family produces greater net pleasure for most people than most other activities. Hence why people make so much sacrifice to work extra and pay housing/schooling for their children; raising children is one of the strongest pleasurable experiences and almost any sacrificial cost is outweighed. This is because evolution programmed the brain to acquire great pleasure from raising children to help pass on genes; if the brain didn’t acquire great pleasure from this, no one would bother raising children and the gene pool would shrivel and die away. This applies to your argument of my parents raising me instead of becoming hippies; they raised me because being hippies didn’t give them as much pleasure as raising me. There are however people who truly gain greater pleasure from sex and drugs and don’t bother having kids and hence why the proportion of the population like that is very small since their genes are removed from the gene pool when they die (but they exist at low levels due to random fluctuations in genes and environmental pressures that produce such people).
3) A monk can burn themselves to fight racial discrimination in Vietnam because of another important property: pain and pleasure work analogously; moving away from pain is the same as moving towards pleasure. The monk realized that burning himself will be the most effective way to rid himself of the greater pain of experiencing racial discrimination as he thinks that burning himself will gain attention and put an end to racial discrimination. Thus he gains net pleasure by decreasing the pain he feels from discrimination even at the sacrificial cost of the burning sensation and of his life. This is also why people with severe depression commit suicide: the pain of depression can be so great that the only way to diminish it and move towards a more pleasurable state is to kill themselves. You’re right that there is no pleasure after death, but there is also no pain after death which is why moving away from pain is a converse process of moving towards a more pleasurable state; in this case, the people move towards a more pleasurable neutral state of nothingness that is death rather than the painful state of severe depression/mental disorder that is their current life.
4) There would be technological development because people gain greater net pleasure by inventing things that improve their lives and other people than sticking with status quo. E.g., the pain of inventing a shovel is much less than the pain of digging with your hands. The pain of building a rover and sending it to Mars is much less than the pleasure gained from knowing what’s out in the cosmos. The pain of inventing cellphones is much less than the pain of having to write mail that has weeks of response latency. This is why awards like Nobel prize exist: to motivate people to invent and discover things by increasing the pleasure earned from the discoveries to outweigh the pain/cost scientists go through when undertaking such lifelong commitments.
5) I can agree that there’s no physics formula/law that says there is no morality or meaning, but the implications and inductions from those laws tell us that humans are made of matter, thus obey the laws of physics, and since all matter obey the second law of thermodynamics to increase entropy in the universe, any sense of purpose/meaning for human life, what physics tells us, will be to increase entropy until the eventual Heat Death of the Universe (if you’re willing to call that meaning/purpose, then so be it, but there is no meaning beyond that and anything else will simply be social constructs). The reason physics doesn’t directly tell us anything about morality is because there is no objective morality to be found. Any idea of ethics like “killing is bad” or “stealing is bad” is human constructed and is explainable from natural selection: humans think killing comrades is generally bad because it results in lack of cooperation and thus lack of survival of the group and thus the genes that promote constant killing are removed from the gene pool; same applies to constant stealing. Same principles apply to all other ethics like treating people poorly. Thus evolution programmed our brains to feel pain and unhappiness from doing such activities. (but the reason they still occur at low levels is because the human gene pool can handle small amounts of such activities as opposed to large amounts).
6) You’re wrong that science can’t make claims about morality and philosophy. It has done so for centuries: why do you think so many people are atheists/agnostics? Because science reduced the Bayesian credence for god to such a degree that it makes more sense to not believe. It has shown the meaningless of forbidding gay marriage or trans people. It has shown that free will is an illusion and human behavior is a byproduct of neuronal action potentials obeying electromagnetic forces. It has answered many questions through natural selection about why we are the way we are: why we like food, sex, social friends, parents, children, and play. Abiogenesis is describing how life arises from inanimate molecules. Neuroscience is already making tremendous progress in describing the nature of consciousness and its associations with nervous system. I can return you the same claim that you used to be like me; I used to be like you. I used to think humans were special and had meaning greater than what evolution and entropy set out for us and that objective ethics and good and evil exists (and honestly, those may somehow still exist if we learn more about fundamental nature and why the universe and reality are the way they are and why it started, etc.), but given what we have, it’s clear that there is no such thing. Try to get off your philosophy worshiping unchecked opinion.
7) I do help my mom in the kitchen because helping her gives me great pleasure. This gets into the philosophy of egoism: we all seek selfish desires; however what people fail to understand is that those selfish desires can include things like helping our loved ones, making sacrifices, and ignoring immediate pleasures like sex/drugs for greater pleasures in the future; it all gives us greatest net pleasure and is still selfish in the end, which is why there’s nothing wrong with selfishness as we all already are (this is very hard for people new to egoism to understand). The correct framework is to accept that humans are selfish and seek net pleasure and that, despite this concept being hard for people to understand, selfishness and pleasure seeking still produces beautiful things like love and children and sacrifice and family and career and curiosity and even the illusion of ‘meaning’ and feelings of ‘transcendence’. I currently help my mom, interact with friends, and work as a scientist attempting to help the world because that is my selfish net pleasure.
I thank you for your recommendations of Frankl and Kant. I’ve studied Kant (but more can help). I disagree with many of his ideas on categorical imperatives as much of it lacks what determinism and physics tells us. And I will look more into Frankl.
quick addition: you mentioned an important counterargument people raise against hedonism: "They also involve a certain amount of discomfort to get started. It is as Ben Francia once said: “Great Things Never Came From Comfort Zones.”". You may ask, how can happiness be the end goal of humans if, e.g., people make sacrifices in their lives for loved ones or future goals? Well the answer is that the brain cares about net pleasure: if the pleasure gained from an activity is greater than the sacrificial cost, then the person will do it even if it's not 100% blissful. Thus, in all scenarios people will seek the most net pleasure which is why your point of "seeking happiness is futile" is wrong.
If that is how our brain worked no one would have ever raised a family. Yes, the natural state of brain is to seek pleasure, but no it is not the only thing that defines human cognition. If that was true there would have been no technological development whatsoever.
Also, I still don't know a man who died to have sex, considering the fact that sexual pleasure is the most stimulating one.
But I know a monk who burned to fight racial discrimination in Vietnam. And as far as physics is involved, there is no pleasure after death.
The reason you're healthy and alive is because your parents instead of turning hippie in their 20s, seeking pleasure in sex and drugs, decided to bear the struggle of raising you, to feed you, and live with less resources to get you educated enough to have such a brilliant vocabulary.
I hope I wasn't harsh. Apologies, if I was. Take care and have a healthy meaningful life.
Ps: I've been at that stage couple of years, and I know it feels really cool to think that everyone around you is stupid to struggle, while they can simply relax and seek pleasure. But trust me, that mindset is a very degenerative place to be in.
Great article.
Thanks mate!
Inspiring!
Thanks buddy!
Amazing piece!
Thanks Praneet!
Deleted my previous post because I felt it came off as too caustic. Here's a gentler approach: I disagree with your interpretation of the nature of the universe. Everything physics tells us is that there is no morality or meaning in this universe. All humans are matter evolved to seek pleasure to pass on genetic copies. Your talk of "strengthening familial bonds" is just a conscious experience formulated by evolution to make you pass genes and increase universal entropy. You're right that the brain's mechanism results in hedonic treadmill but none of that means seeking pleasure is futile because you must realize that everything a human does involves seeking pleasure including these "active undertakings" that you describe with nonsensical words like "meaningful" and "transcend". Such terms are extremely superficial and lack any connection to fundamental nature as there is no "transcending beyond happiness"; the neurophysiological pleasure/reward circuitry is the end all be all of behavior. I recommend you study hedonism and its arguments more.
"Everything physics tells us is that there is no morality or meaning in this universe."
Well, no physicist or theory ever said that. Physics is the study of the forces of nature, not human consciousness and morality. That is why we have philosophy.
Try to get off your science worshiping unchecked opinion.
You're actually proving my point by stating the evolutionary reasons behind the importance of familial bond.
And again, this phase of life is common in life, been through it with a similar amount nihilism. I hope you get well soon. ❤️
Try helping your mother in the kitchen instead of watching porn to seek pleasure, and tell me the difference after that.
I will also recommend you to read Viktor Frankl and Kant's work.
Have a great day!
I guess I'm not surprised this was your response as me attempting to teach the implications of physics for materialism, reductionism, determinism, evolution, and neuroscience, and to outline the nuances of egoism and hedonism in a short blog comment is near impossible. But alas, I will try as too many people lack an understanding in this. I also acknowledge that I may have explained things poorly previously. I will respond to each of your counterarguments:
1) The first thing you must understand about the mechanism of pleasure/pain is that the most pleasurable state a person can experience from one point to another is constantly changing depending on external and internal stimuli. E.g., If I’m extremely hungry, I would gain very little pleasure from seeking reproductive mates as being rid of the pain of starvation would give me significantly greater pleasure than sex (which is why sexual pleasure isn’t always the most pleasurable state); if I fed myself now, I can have much more sex later. This is because evolution programmed the brain to gain higher pleasure from not starving to death than to have sex at all times since having sex at all times will quickly drain resources of protecting oneself and protecting fertile offspring (this is also why a refractory period is programmed into us).
2) People would raise a family because raising a family produces greater net pleasure for most people than most other activities. Hence why people make so much sacrifice to work extra and pay housing/schooling for their children; raising children is one of the strongest pleasurable experiences and almost any sacrificial cost is outweighed. This is because evolution programmed the brain to acquire great pleasure from raising children to help pass on genes; if the brain didn’t acquire great pleasure from this, no one would bother raising children and the gene pool would shrivel and die away. This applies to your argument of my parents raising me instead of becoming hippies; they raised me because being hippies didn’t give them as much pleasure as raising me. There are however people who truly gain greater pleasure from sex and drugs and don’t bother having kids and hence why the proportion of the population like that is very small since their genes are removed from the gene pool when they die (but they exist at low levels due to random fluctuations in genes and environmental pressures that produce such people).
3) A monk can burn themselves to fight racial discrimination in Vietnam because of another important property: pain and pleasure work analogously; moving away from pain is the same as moving towards pleasure. The monk realized that burning himself will be the most effective way to rid himself of the greater pain of experiencing racial discrimination as he thinks that burning himself will gain attention and put an end to racial discrimination. Thus he gains net pleasure by decreasing the pain he feels from discrimination even at the sacrificial cost of the burning sensation and of his life. This is also why people with severe depression commit suicide: the pain of depression can be so great that the only way to diminish it and move towards a more pleasurable state is to kill themselves. You’re right that there is no pleasure after death, but there is also no pain after death which is why moving away from pain is a converse process of moving towards a more pleasurable state; in this case, the people move towards a more pleasurable neutral state of nothingness that is death rather than the painful state of severe depression/mental disorder that is their current life.
4) There would be technological development because people gain greater net pleasure by inventing things that improve their lives and other people than sticking with status quo. E.g., the pain of inventing a shovel is much less than the pain of digging with your hands. The pain of building a rover and sending it to Mars is much less than the pleasure gained from knowing what’s out in the cosmos. The pain of inventing cellphones is much less than the pain of having to write mail that has weeks of response latency. This is why awards like Nobel prize exist: to motivate people to invent and discover things by increasing the pleasure earned from the discoveries to outweigh the pain/cost scientists go through when undertaking such lifelong commitments.
5) I can agree that there’s no physics formula/law that says there is no morality or meaning, but the implications and inductions from those laws tell us that humans are made of matter, thus obey the laws of physics, and since all matter obey the second law of thermodynamics to increase entropy in the universe, any sense of purpose/meaning for human life, what physics tells us, will be to increase entropy until the eventual Heat Death of the Universe (if you’re willing to call that meaning/purpose, then so be it, but there is no meaning beyond that and anything else will simply be social constructs). The reason physics doesn’t directly tell us anything about morality is because there is no objective morality to be found. Any idea of ethics like “killing is bad” or “stealing is bad” is human constructed and is explainable from natural selection: humans think killing comrades is generally bad because it results in lack of cooperation and thus lack of survival of the group and thus the genes that promote constant killing are removed from the gene pool; same applies to constant stealing. Same principles apply to all other ethics like treating people poorly. Thus evolution programmed our brains to feel pain and unhappiness from doing such activities. (but the reason they still occur at low levels is because the human gene pool can handle small amounts of such activities as opposed to large amounts).
6) You’re wrong that science can’t make claims about morality and philosophy. It has done so for centuries: why do you think so many people are atheists/agnostics? Because science reduced the Bayesian credence for god to such a degree that it makes more sense to not believe. It has shown the meaningless of forbidding gay marriage or trans people. It has shown that free will is an illusion and human behavior is a byproduct of neuronal action potentials obeying electromagnetic forces. It has answered many questions through natural selection about why we are the way we are: why we like food, sex, social friends, parents, children, and play. Abiogenesis is describing how life arises from inanimate molecules. Neuroscience is already making tremendous progress in describing the nature of consciousness and its associations with nervous system. I can return you the same claim that you used to be like me; I used to be like you. I used to think humans were special and had meaning greater than what evolution and entropy set out for us and that objective ethics and good and evil exists (and honestly, those may somehow still exist if we learn more about fundamental nature and why the universe and reality are the way they are and why it started, etc.), but given what we have, it’s clear that there is no such thing. Try to get off your philosophy worshiping unchecked opinion.
7) I do help my mom in the kitchen because helping her gives me great pleasure. This gets into the philosophy of egoism: we all seek selfish desires; however what people fail to understand is that those selfish desires can include things like helping our loved ones, making sacrifices, and ignoring immediate pleasures like sex/drugs for greater pleasures in the future; it all gives us greatest net pleasure and is still selfish in the end, which is why there’s nothing wrong with selfishness as we all already are (this is very hard for people new to egoism to understand). The correct framework is to accept that humans are selfish and seek net pleasure and that, despite this concept being hard for people to understand, selfishness and pleasure seeking still produces beautiful things like love and children and sacrifice and family and career and curiosity and even the illusion of ‘meaning’ and feelings of ‘transcendence’. I currently help my mom, interact with friends, and work as a scientist attempting to help the world because that is my selfish net pleasure.
I thank you for your recommendations of Frankl and Kant. I’ve studied Kant (but more can help). I disagree with many of his ideas on categorical imperatives as much of it lacks what determinism and physics tells us. And I will look more into Frankl.
here's an interesting path to go: https://qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wireheading_done_right/
quick addition: you mentioned an important counterargument people raise against hedonism: "They also involve a certain amount of discomfort to get started. It is as Ben Francia once said: “Great Things Never Came From Comfort Zones.”". You may ask, how can happiness be the end goal of humans if, e.g., people make sacrifices in their lives for loved ones or future goals? Well the answer is that the brain cares about net pleasure: if the pleasure gained from an activity is greater than the sacrificial cost, then the person will do it even if it's not 100% blissful. Thus, in all scenarios people will seek the most net pleasure which is why your point of "seeking happiness is futile" is wrong.
If that is how our brain worked no one would have ever raised a family. Yes, the natural state of brain is to seek pleasure, but no it is not the only thing that defines human cognition. If that was true there would have been no technological development whatsoever.
Also, I still don't know a man who died to have sex, considering the fact that sexual pleasure is the most stimulating one.
But I know a monk who burned to fight racial discrimination in Vietnam. And as far as physics is involved, there is no pleasure after death.
The reason you're healthy and alive is because your parents instead of turning hippie in their 20s, seeking pleasure in sex and drugs, decided to bear the struggle of raising you, to feed you, and live with less resources to get you educated enough to have such a brilliant vocabulary.
I hope I wasn't harsh. Apologies, if I was. Take care and have a healthy meaningful life.
Ps: I've been at that stage couple of years, and I know it feels really cool to think that everyone around you is stupid to struggle, while they can simply relax and seek pleasure. But trust me, that mindset is a very degenerative place to be in.