Interesting......

 

The cure for nihilism is to look to yourself as the source of your own misery not the world around you. It's a bitter pill to swallow but it will eventually cure you or kill you. But as Nietzsche says, 'Whatever doesn't kill you will only make you stronger'. I say wherever you find nihilists you'll also find exuberant optimists. Ebbing and waning in relatively equal numbers. So its hard to imagine a civilization that is entirely nihilistic or entirely optimistic. But it will likely be one of the nihilist that initiates the civilization ending event on purpose. However an optimist might do it accidentally!🤪

Edited December 10, 20232 yr by FBW737

Without discipline, values, a sense of self sacrifice, and a sense of worth for both yourself and the people around you there cannot be progress.  Our technology would not have advanced to where it is today in a nihilistic society.

Curiosity.  A sense of self worth.  A drive to learn and achieve.  Thinking beyond what you can see and feel.  No society can survive without people who have those attributes.

Nihilists to not make scientific or technological progress.  Nihilists do not create great works of art like like Rembrant and Van Gogh produced.  Nihilists do not write great books like War and Peace or Centennial or Shogun to name a few of my favorites.

Nihilists do not have what it takes to develop space travel.

If we were to go into space and find a planet full of nihilists we would find a virtually dead planet with primitives who only think about feeding and pleasuring themselves.  They would be incapable of developing beyond that.

Noel

2 hours ago, FBW737 said:

The cure for nihilism is to look to yourself as the source of your own misery not the world around you. It's a bitter pill to swallow but it will eventually cure you or kill you. But as Nietzsche says, 'Whatever doesn't kill you will only make you stronger'. I say wherever you find nihilists you'll also find exuberant optimists. Ebbing and waning in relatively equal numbers. So its hard to imagine a civilization that is entirely nihilistic or entirely optimistic. But it will likely be one of the nihilist that initiates the civilization ending event on purpose. However an optimist might do it accidentally!🤪

I think the video pointed out there were several degrees and flavors of Nihilism that might capture a given civilization, and explored diverse causes such as individual and cultural longevity, possibly demoralizing findings about the nature of the universe; or discouraging discoveries regarding the difficulty or near impossibility of expansion via interstellar travel.

Even 'moral' decay via sheer long term boredom and ennui.....

2 hours ago, FBW737 said:

So its hard to imagine a civilization that is entirely nihilistic or entirely optimistic. But it will likely be one of the nihilist that initiates the civilization ending event on purpose. However an optimist might do it accidentally!🤪

Only if they have the power to do so. Scientists bringing on revolutionary new and powerful technologies are empowering. Nobody else is capable.

Well I didn't watch it all. The first 5 minutes was enough for me. Have I mentioned I highly doubt the existence of ET even extinct ET.🤣

1 hour ago, FBW737 said:

 Have I mentioned I highly doubt the existence of ET even extinct ET.🤣

 

Then you are a strange boy. 🤔 Given the hugeness possibly infinite nature of the  universe, the existence of some form of life is a good bet. Some would say certain if the universe truly is infinite.

I mean we have ice moons in our own solar system with vast oceans beneath that contain more water than the Earths oceans combined and all the ingredients for life to evolve. Not to mention a multitude of rocky planets discovered, in the goldilocks zone, with water too. 

Edited December 10, 20232 yr by martin-w

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

Nihilists to not make scientific or technological progress.  Nihilists do not create great works of art like like Rembrant and Van Gogh produced.  Nihilists do not write great books like War and Peace or Centennial or Shogun to name a few of my favorites.

Pretty broad-brush there....

Off-hand, I can actually think of several famous people in history who were nihilists, including well regarded writers and some of our most well known philosophers, etc.

I usually try to avoid absolutes, so would just say that I think a large number of nihilists 'merely' have nihilistic tendencies.

Because after all, how many people not trying to make some sort of point, actually identify themselves as 'nihilist' the same way one might identify themselves as a vegetarian, communist, atheist, etc?

I do know that as far as creating art, there are famous nihilist works, as well as nihilist music, books and sculptures, with Alberto Giacometti (for instance) being just one example... And of course, who hasn't heard of Nietzsche?

 

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

Off-hand, I can actually think of several famous people in history who were nihilists, including well regarded writers and some of our most well known philosophers, etc.

But no scientists, engineers, doctors, explorers, etc., which is kind of birdguy's point.

Edited December 11, 20232 yr by dmwalker

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

Then you are a strange boy. 🤔

Correction! A strange Man. My epistemology is different from yours. So that would be a debate that would have to happen first before you could get beyond that strangeness. You probably don't want to got there though because it would crack your whole world view open like an egg for frying and there's no undoing that. I can see that materialism or physicalism would lead one to believe that there is a high probability of ET provided that one is willing to make some assumptions that appear reasonable because they are consistent with the paradigm but you have to consider the paradigm to be certain first. In my view, it makes more sense to consider the paradigm to be already falsified. Anyway we have had this conversation before I respect your point of view.

Edited December 11, 20232 yr by FBW737

49 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

But no scientists, engineers, doctors, explorers, etc., which is kind of birdguy's point.

 

7 hours ago, birdguy said:

Nihilists do not create great works of art like like Rembrant and Van Gogh produced.  Nihilists do not write great books like War and Peace or Centennial or Shogun to name a few of my favorites.

 

I answered what was actually said, but, beyond that, I will repeat what I said about nihilistic tendencies....

For instance, Steven Weinberg, the (Nobel Prize winner in physics) when he won his Nobel Prize, was asked what he had learned from his scientific accomplishments. His answer was along the lines of “The more one knows about the universe, the more one sees that everything is nonsense".

(In fact there are some who claim nihilism is actually a natural outcome of science and reason.....)

 

Weinberg actually wrote (Apparently balancing carefully on the knife's edge, much as nietzsche did)

Quote

The worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.
What, then, can we do?

 

In the context of the posted video about Nihilistic aliens.... 

Whether or not such a thing is likely (or is a plausible answer to the fermi paradox) I do think that in the interests of fair and balanced inquiry, the possibility deserves thoughtful exploration.

 

 

Edited December 11, 20232 yr by HiFlyer

 

Forum glitched and reated previous post.

Edited December 11, 20232 yr by HiFlyer

26 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I answered what was actually said, but, beyond that, I will repeat what I said about nihilistic tendencies..

I was thinking more about birdguy's statements such as "Nihilists to not make scientific or technological progress".

I found this  about Weinberg, which, perhaps supports your point about tendencies:

"Although he believes that science paints a picture of a "chilling, cold" and pointless universe, he also insists that we human beings can give the universe a purpose through the way we live our lives - "by loving each other by discovering things about nature, by creating works or art." We may not be the stars in any great cosmic drama, Weinberg says, but "faced with an unloving and impersonal universe" we can nonetheless create for ourselves " a little island of warmth and love and science and art." It is a deeply humane statement from a man often associated with a cold, impersonal vision. What is most surprising, perhaps, is that here an avowedly atheistic scientist expresses a view not dissimilar to that of some religious believers."

11 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

I was thinking more about birdguy's statements such as "Nihilists to not make scientific or technological progress".

Which is why I countered with the example of a physicist doing exactly that.

11 minutes ago, dmwalker said:

I found this  about Weinberg, which, perhaps supports your point about tendencies:

He certainly would not be the first person caught between our rational discoveries of the observable universe, and our inner desires to nonetheless find meaning, even if that meaning is only to make the best of it all that we can.....

Paraphrasing him, I would repeat his question: "What, else, can we do?"

Edited December 11, 20232 yr by HiFlyer
spelling error

I don't think it deserves an ounce of serious consideration. It is all rather a monumental flight of fanny and enormous speculation and hubris. One might even say it was decadent to waste ones time on what Weinberg would undoubtedly call more nonsense.