Nihilism is a sad depressed existence Becoming a nihilist is a real pain in the arse. When you come to terms with the meaninglessness of life, it hurts. It’s like “Now what?!”. No reason to get up, no reason to fall down . No reason to live, no reason to die either, it’s all pointless. This pain of a meaningless existence is the fodder for the whole branch of philosophy called existentialism.

The good way out is to supply your own rules, the bad way out is to put blinders on your eyes and regress back into accepting dogma. It is initially shocking that there are no rules. However, once you accept that, you realise, you can make your own rules and care fuck all about what people think and expect you to do! You can do whatever you want; guilt-free! All objections are non-sensical . This phase is extremely empowering. Lived with a positive outlook, it becomes optimistic nihilism, though if I’m being honest with myself it is closer to non-survival-threatening hedonism . I just wanna have fun.

Whatever happens, happens for good This belief is actually a mixture of two patterns in our heads. 1. Belief in the Just world fallacy 2. Rationalising things And as always, it something we hope is true; because it let’s us live with ourselves a bit better. When I hear someone saying “_Oh! I couldn’t have asked for something bette_r” when they receive an okayish birthday present, I wonder how poor their imagination must be . You could have asked for a billion dollars, two ferraris, 6 pack abs and also this. But then your expectations would be high and you’d be disappointed when they weren’t fulfilled . So, you accept what you get and call it the best. I’m all for accepting what you get and valuing it, I’m against fooling yourself; sure, fooling others by telling them their present was good is ok.

It’ll all work out in the end It won’t. Chaos will get us all, everyone and everything. There may not even be an end, just your end. And it won’t be scripted like a perfect like a movie . This belief is another corollary of the Karma is real belief (see arguments above) and offered as a consolation prize to people for whom things didn’t go as planned. You can make it work, it is ambivalent to whatever happens to you.

Everything that happens, happens for a reason Yes, and that reason is the second law of thermodynamics. Yet another example of people projecting beautiful and mysterious order onto the cold dark universe . There is no one watching you from above the sky, there might be someone reading your messages though. The reason is often, luck! Also known as probability.

Reality is grounded in facts What we call reality is in fact just consensus. Even the great laws of physics weren’t found written on a stone tablet, they’re our best collectively accepted guess of what we think are the laws of physics . The Sun orbiting the earth was reality for a long time. That women are the property of their fathers and husbands was also a reality. The facts have never changed, our understanding of them has . The very human nature of this consensual progress was expressed bluntly by Max Planck when he said “Science progresses one funeral at a time” . Reality and facts are mutually agreed upon hallucinations, fully valid until we agree upon a new one. And we agree upon on new ones for really stupid reasons (like during bubbles)

All statements are either true or false This is objectively false in the domain of life and culture. Many early risers are successful, so are many night owls. You can startup at 19, or at 42; there are good examples for both . But what should you do? Something that combines whatever you want and whatever suits you best. Funnily, an insanely brilliant mathematician proved it too . Kurt Godels Incompleteness theorems tell us that 1. There are questions to which the answers are unknowable, and 2. You’ll never be able to prove that there is an underlying logic to a given system.

Sad, but true (!).