Alex O'Connor walks through "The Existential Crisis Iceberg"

 Alex O'Connor walks through "The Existential Crisis Iceberg"

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkR83fxKOFs

 

I don't know what it says about me... that I'm a sociopath, or that I'm dead inside, or what... but.... I've considered most of these problems a long, long time ago, and arrived at the tentative conclusion that they're not problems.

I would classify these items thusly:

For the things we don't have access to, for example, whether reality operates on the A or B theory of time... The answer is out of reach.  We can speculate, which might be fun while stoned... but all the evidence available to me suggests I can't know, and I can't change it.  The best solution I have come up with for a situation like that is:  Work the problem based on the evidence you have.  If more actionable evidence comes along, modify your plan accordingly.

For the things that are, at least superficially, undecorated navel-gazing... the "Why is there something rather than nothing?" questions... I'm an atheist and a mereological nihilist, so... I naturally fall toward the answer, "There's no evidence I know of to suggest there's a reason other than that this is what matter and energy do at these temperatures and pressures."  It's outside of my ken and control.  Accept the world as it presents itself, and stop trying to smear your hang-ups all over it.  Work the problem based on the evidence you have.  If more actionable evidence comes along, modify your plan accordingly.

For the things which follow the pattern of, "What if there's no afterlife?" I can't help but arrive at the conclusion that the person who considers such a question is really, really, really overthinking it, and making unwarranted assumptions about the world and their place in it.  Work the problem based on the evidence you have.  If more actionable evidence comes along, modify your plan accordingly.

For things like "Being born before immortality" and "Simulated universe conjectures"... I put these mostly in the "You're overthinking it" pile.  This also seems to connect with the justification for not pulling out of Afghanistan or Iraq (or Vietnam) much earlier than we did: "Nobody wants to be the last one to die for a mistake."  Personally, I'd much rather be the last one than just the next one.  Work the problem based on the evidence you have.  If more actionable evidence comes along, modify your plan accordingly.  

For the things I would regard as "obvious to anyone who stops and thinks about it for 10 seconds", like "everyone has their own complex lives" and "acknowledgment of death"... yes, and?  What is to be done about it?  This may seem callous or detatched, but... that's where I'm at.  Work the problem based on the evidence you have.  If more actionable evidence comes along, modify your plan accordingly.  

As far as "the big questions" are concerned, I'm a methodologigcal naturalist, and a pragmatist seeing the world through faintly Tao-colored glasses.

I tend to use what I perceive to be "external reality" as the grounding for my understanding of just about everything, except what's going on in my own skull.  As a result, I immediately have a problem when people try to propose that metaphysics has primacy over physics.  Idealism and the "you have your reality and I have mine" crowd do not impress me.

Your thoughts?