I often see cynicism conflated with nihilism and they aren't the same thing. You can be a nihilist and not a cynic. The way I think about it: if life has no inherent meaning (my belief, and I consider myself a nihilist) then it is incumbent on me to define and invest in a meaning system to avoid falling into cynicism.
I often see cynicism conflated with nihilism and they aren't the same thing. You can be a nihilist and not a cynic. The way I think about it: if life has no inherent meaning (my belief, and I consider myself a nihilist) then it is incumbent on me to define and invest in a meaning system to avoid falling into cynicism.
There was a great podcast on CBC that outlined some thinking around this: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/15844916-good-news-nihilists
We may be surprised to end up in the opposite situation: more bits of data produce less coherence, not more.
That just sums up exactly where I ended up before my friend Dimitri sent me this review. Fate? I think not!