This discussion between physicist (and vegan) Brian Greene and psychology professor Paul Bloom is mostly very good. I love how Professor Bloom mocks panpsychism! 10/10
Three quick notes:
1. Like nearly everyone, Dr. Bloom just can't bring himself to give up the idea of free will. Luckily, Dr. Greene is a hard-core determinist, including about his own accomplishments (as is the even more awesome Dr. Green).
2. Dr. Bloom is the perfect example of the irrelevance of reason. He knows (and elsewhere has acknowledged) all the arguments for eating vegan. (Earlier this month, he even promoted an author whose purpose in life seems to be saying, over and over and over, that everyone who isn't vegan is an idiot.) But Dr. Bloom isn't even a vegetarian, and in a conversation with vegan Dr. Greene, talks about eating fishes and chickens.
3. I disagree somewhat with Dr. Bloom about the importance of voluntary suffering; that is a longer discussion.
However, I actively dislike the idea, attributed to Viktor Fankl in this interview, that the people who survived the Nazi death camps were the ones who had purpose. I understand the attraction of Frankl's views, but I think it is cruel to even imply that people who died in death camps had any culpability (i.e., they could have lived if they had chosen to have a purpose). (Also, survival at all costs is not a good thing.) (And second-guessing Danny Kahneman - c'mon!)
You can talk about what you see as the benefits of purpose without this. (But maybe you shouldn't go all-in on purpose; the Nazis certainly had "purpose.")
And let's stop praising suffering (e.g., Frankl's "If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering." Not true not true not true!)
You can recognize and accept the fundamental indifference of the universe and still have a very good life.
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