Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 09:42:56PM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >
> > denis bider wrote:
> > >
> > > Samantha Atkins writes:
> > >
> > > > As far as I see you deny the very concept of meaning being meaningful.
> > >
> > > This interpretation is probably not what you intended, but - you're entirely
> > > correct. There is no meaning. Even 'meaning' has no meaning, in a universal
> > > sense of things.
> >
> > Actually it is precisely what I intended. Thank you for verifying that
> > I was seeing you accurately. Now that I have, I bid you adieu. I have
> > nothing to say to philosophical nihilists as you have removed any means
> > of my reaching you any way. I hope you get over it soon.
>
> He's not a nihilist; he's simply following the commonest theory of rights
> on the planet -- one that's used by just about everyone except Americans
> who've been indoctrinated with their state's peculiar constitutional
> theory -- which is that rights are negotiated and conditional.
>
Is the nature of human being negotiated and conditional or is the nature
of human beings a given? If it is a given then it just might imply that
certain rights, certain fundamentals of how people treat one another,
are fundamental to the well-being of human beings based on their
nature. Yes?
> A nihilist would deny that there's any _point_ in negotiating with others.
>
If there is no standard of reality like the nature of the entities we
are talking about to fall back on then negotiation probably is
pointless.
> You, for your part, appear to be as much a fundamentalist as a member of
> the Southern Baptist Congregations: you believe in some absolute underlying
> Truths (either revealed by the Lawwd God Almighty, or the Singularity, or
> Human Nature(TM), or some other big source of revelation) against which
> everything can be measured. This point of view has its pros and cons, but
> you need to bear in mind that many other people see it as a blind spot.
>
Thank you for the insults. They certainly make your point more strongly
than your argument did. There is nothing mystical about the notion that
existing creatures, us, have particular properties rather than being
whatever society decides somehow to define us as.
- samantha
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