Optimistic Nihilism (2017)
Nihilists are often guilty of something which many teenagers are guilty of, which I call <i>epistemological narcissism.</i> Basically, they think they know it all, pretty much.<p>The cure for this is to take the extrapolation strategy which PG uses in &quot;What You Can&#x27;t Say.&quot; ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;say.html</a> ) However, you should instead apply it to &quot;what you can&#x27;t predict.&quot; Would any of our ancestors of 400 or 1000 years ago been able to predict the world of today? In many regards, they would not even have had the conceptual framework to ask the right questions in the first place!<p>If you don&#x27;t know the future, how do you know if what you do will or won&#x27;t matter in the grand scheme of things? How do you know if you can even properly conceptualize &quot;consequence&quot; or what &quot;matters&quot; for your future self? When I was growing up, books were something to be treasured. Now I&#x27;m quite aware that it&#x27;s only the knowledge in those books which really matters, and the particular form they take is only a medium with certain properties. Even our concepts of identity and mind are changing, and they are bound to change much further. Given all that, how do you know if you aren&#x27;t already a part of something of universal consequence?<p>To fully understand: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Connections_(TV_series)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Connections_(TV_series)</a>