From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Tue Jan 23 2001 - 05:56:06 MST
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.
A nihilist would deny that there's any _point_ in negotiating with others.
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.
-- Charlie
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