each day making me more angry, each day filling me with hate.
i am truly disturbed -_-"
and somebody responded with
No, you're simply too idle. You've got nothing better 2 do in your spare time, and so you brood. Get a hobby and/or join a gym. You'll see what I mean :)
Haunted is a song about a situation in life and not about life in general; don't take it as anything more than that. Set incremental and attainable goals for yourself, take responsibility for the choices you've made, learn from your mistakes; and you'll soon come to realize that life isn't so shitty.
and thats where it began.
me: not shitty to you, shitty to others. there are varying perspectives and there is no objective way to establish something subjective like an opinion as true or more sound than another opinion. if you want to be right, then start trying to make the world a better place so that more people may agree with you. as for what the song is about, it is about life, a life that has been corrupted by the world around it. this is not new. all lives are affected by lives around them.
him: Nothing I've said is opinionated: I'm conveying a method, and not a perspective. Optimistists don't suffer any fewer hardships in life than pessimists do: they simply do not brood on their unpleasant experiences; therefore the "shittiness" of one's life isn't so much a property of experience as it is a property of our interpreting our experiences. One could either interpret an unpleasant situation as the world victimizing him, or he could see it as an opportunity to learn. To determine a preferance of an "opinion" (as you call it) we must first examine the facts of it's subject matter. Firstly, it is not true that existence is inherently "bad" simply because to consider something to be "bad," that thing must be lacking in a good that it is intended to have. For example, a hammer with a soft head would be a bad hammer since it lacks a quality differentiating a hammer from a "non-hammer" (head hardness), namely its ability to drive nails. Existence fulfills the quality differentiating it from non-existance (through obvious means); therefore it is not "bad".
Secondly, a person's nature is to pursue the perception of "good" i.e. we do not act unless we see some "good" in our actions. The ultimate good any person can attain in any situation is understanding: our ability to sense the world, and even to reproduce is a means by which come to comprehend more. I.e. when we desire to experience or "feel" something new, we yearn to "know" something more about our world; and when we desire to reproduce, we want to know more about our ability to parent, and we want to contribute a new individual towards mankind's never-ending aspiration to know as much as possible.
By this logic; we can see that an act which encourages learning (personal development or otherwise) is preferable to an act which does not, or does so to a lesser extent. Brooding offers very little opportunity for learning of any sort since it simply represents a situation in the light of "that's just how things are, the world is out to get me, or (even worse) none of this is my fault": a pessimistic statement aims to describe a situation as the ultimate cause of a single factor, which is often "out of our influence," thus meriting none of our time. However, no unpleasent situation can ever be attributed to a single cause, and is (or was) often in some way subject to out influence. Optimism and taking responsibility for our actions leaves our minds open to these otherwise unnoticed factors, thereby providing us with new opportunities to learn more about our world and about ourselves; therefore pro-action and optimism is preferable to brooding and pessimism, because it fulfills our nature to learn to a greater degree.
me: well a novel wasnt necessary but i will provide a rebuttal regaurdless.
firstly, your claim that optimism is preferable to pessimism due to the desire to feel being derived from a desire to learn is dependant again on whether or not you feel learning is a good thing. if one were a nihilist, and thought that nothingness was better than something, then pessimism wouldnt be preferable. your argument fails based on its presuppositions. secondly, to increase understanding of the world might lead one to a strong nihilistic position and therefore the desire to erase all sentient beings capable of perception. unless you have an argument for why something is objectively preferable, or ought to be preferred over nothing, then your current argument fails, as previously stated. also i suggest being more succinct/concise because i dont like having to keep up with an argument that has like 15 premises extended over a 7 post response. it would be easier if your points were laid out in a syllogism (not sure what the word is the form of argument with more than two premises) so as to increase the productivity of our debate. if you dont want to do that and really prefer your current method, then fuck it go ahead.
him: Insomuch as we are human being as opposed to non-human beings, some courses of action will always be preferable to others. You misunderstand by what is meant by "good," or as you say "preferable". Good in the context of humanity is that which we are naturally inclined towards: i.e. that which we cannot help to pursue. There is no state of mind in which a human being can disregard learning as a top priority, and any argument made to dissuade learning in a certain domain is made under the context of learning more about annother. I.e. "it is pointless to learn [blank] because of [blank]". We must give reasons for our assertions; therefore lack of learning cannot be an end, but rather a means to learning something other than that which is specifically not to be learnt. Whether we like it or not, we will all learn something about something or other as long as change still takes place in some form or annother. In which case, it makes sense to learn as much truth as possible whilst shunning falsehood because truth is the measure by which we have conviction in what we learn. To recap, human beings are naturally inclined to learn with truth as our end; therefore, the means by which we learn more truth is preferable.
With regards to nihilism, nothingness cannot be perused as a concept because it represents the lack of a concept: it cannot be a goal because it is the lack of a goal. I'm afraid that in arguments of reduction, we must be as verbose as necessary. The more specific an argument, the less likely it is to be rebutted on trivial matters. I'm sorry :(
me: well you strawmanned my argument, and didnt address my objections well at all. i didnt say pursuing nihilism as a concept. you say learning is a goal no matter what the perspective, i say no. if one learns enough, and decides the destruction of everything is most preferable, then learning how to destroy becomes their priority. once enough info is learned, their goal then becomes to destroy everything they can. your argument for optimism doesnt account for this. and another thing, learning is never the top priority, learning is a means to achieving a goal, and therefore the goal is top priority.
him: :) I never said that one couldn't come to the conclusion that Nihilism is a "good". I said that Nihilism in a human context is ultimately meaningless, and therefore not to be desired (before encouraging optimism). We are slaves to our need to learn, and the destruction of all which is left to learn is contrary to what it entails to be a human being. We are drawn to that which we haven't seen because we feel we can learn something new from it. Nihilism is certainly a choice, just like eating an extra slice of cake is a choice. I'm saying that, in light of the conclusions drawn from our conversation, it is by no means a "good" one. A perspective can indeed be flawed, by evidence of the perception of Nihilism itself; but, again, we can deduce a lesser degree of truth (and therefore conviction) from the argument of Nihilism, than from the argument of non-Nihilism. Let's say that you are in a room with a bomb that is set to go off in 2 minutes (according to the timer); you proceed to try to dismantle the device. Unbeknownst to you, the timer is one minute to slow; therefore you work one minute too slow. Unsurprisingly, your not knowing the exact time at which the bomb is set to explode costs you your life: your perception of there being 2 minutes left until detonation doesn't change the fact that the bomb will explode in only 1 minute. The conclusion of Nihilism is based on a false perception; therefore its principles are not to be followed because they aren't true.
me: so much question begging. so much. here are times where you begged the question.
1. "nihilism in a human context is ultimately meaningless" okay how?
2. "nihilism certainly isnt a choice" and this conclusion was drawn in light of the conclusions drawn from our conversation how exactly?
3. the whole rest of the comment that had the cake thing.
also, its hard to respond to you because of your ridiculous verbosity, wordplay, and abuses of language. just make a coherent argument. and dont try the "i am as verbose as necessary" thing. i let it go at first but now you are just getting worse with it. verbosity, by definition, is unnecessary wording, which is exactly what you are doing. your misuse of the word and other words in attempt to make an argument which is hard to address is unappreciated. whether you do it unwittingly or not, its bullshit and you should stop. i will sum up your 3 posts in one post. its so easy. here is the concise version of your entire 3 posts "to be human is to desire to learn. nihilism contradicts that and is therefore meaningless. one can conclude that nihilism is good, but a perspective can be wrong *insert bad bomb analogy*. there is more truth to be had in a non-nihilistic perspective than in a nihilistic perspective and therefore optimism is to be preferred"
now, im done arguing in comments. if you want to continue then pm me. i hate captcha and splitting posts. as a last post, i made an error with the question begging example number 2, "isnt a choice" should be "is a choice". also, you said there is less truth to be deduced from the argument of nihilism, you havent shown that you know what nihilism is, and you havent shown that truth should be preferred. you pretty much just asserted learning is a primal instinct which is part of what it is to be human and your justification was that to do anything successfuly, we need to learn. i call bs.
him: I'm not sure that I can reduce an axiom of human nature to anything other than "it is the way we are to strive to understand, and nothing will ever change that". So if you still don't see what I mean, look through my posts, and I'm sure you'll come to agree with me.
Note that in my last post, I did in fact disprove Nihilism, "we are slaves to our need to learn, and the destruction of all which is left to learn is contrary to what it entails to be a human being". Without delving too deeply into the subject of universals, think of destruction as reduction to a less ordered state of existence. The qualities of things, like a right triangle's Pythagorean side relationship, are intrinsic to those things; and cannot be destroyed - think to yourself why this assertion is so. But particular instances of things are the means by which we come to understand the essence of, or truth about, those things Therefore taking away the majority of those particular things and reducing them to something which is already understood will limit our overall understanding of the world round us, which is counterproductive to our natural goal as human beings: comprehending concepts with truth as a means of conviction in our comprehension.
Nihilism is a choice, albeit not a good one; and one fundamentally flawed: again, look back at some of my posts and think what a human "good" is I'm sorry that I couldn't make the matter of objective truth and understanding the importance of optimism more clear to you in these posts. Although I don't think they ever presented an argument for optimism, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas have some pretty interesting things to say about the nature of man. Keep in mind that moderate realism doesn't have any good counter-arguments against it. Also, try not to think of our pursuit if understanding as a "primal instinct": we can fight against our instincts...
Oh! And what is "pm"?
me: again begging the question. you just assert that a desire to learn is innate. yet you havent backed your claim up. some people dont want to learn. if what you are saying was true, there would be no such thing as suicide, no such thing as nihilism because they would go directly against that supposed human nature. a pm is a personal message. i'll respond to these posts but if you want to continue after this, then pm me. i know what destruction is. i already know something cannot be against its own nature. you arent making a point with these things. again you just assert its counter productive to your merely asserted supposed goal of human beings. different people have different goals, again see my suicide example. certain philosophies and behaviors would not exist under your views, yet they do. you still have yet to address my post where i pointed out the fallacies you committed. and about the nature of man, i object to such a concept. nature isnt a supernatural thing. im a naturalist. the suns nature is determined by its material make-up and the way it behaves. we do not yet have the human mind mapped out, nor have we completely figured out everything about our genetics. human nature is determined by genetics, and environment. and there is many humans that react differently to different stimuli. btw optimism isnt a philosophy like you say either.optimism is simply thinking that the future will lean in favor of ones desires. your argument thus far to support that optimism is preferable to pessimism is just silly. these thoughts are not logical, they are emotional. there is no way to rationally justify thinking positively or negatively. you tried to conflate optimism and some sort of opposite concept to nihilism and justify it with a fallacious argument regarding human nature and learning, which begged the question. so to recap, this is my absolute final response to you in comments. if you wish to discuss further, them pm (personal message) me because the captcha and having to split up my points is annoying as hell. oh one last thing. i object to your assertion that a desire to learn is innate. i think we are forced to learn, we cant not observe the world around us with some perception. its all we know so we continue learning throughout our lives. such is the case with any living thing which has perception. what you're arguing is like saying we cant fight our desire to be born because its in our nature. you're labeling truisms as desires.
for convenience, i put all the posts by me and him together. they were in the comments section so they were split up. from here however it went to pm'ing. and the debate isnt over. he sent me a message and i sent him one back. i will update this as it progresses. from here on it gets rather long though.
him: Again, remember that I said learning was a means to the end of ascertaining truth, which was itself the means to attaining conviction about reality. You cannot debate this obvious fact. Your realizing my "flaw in logic" (i.e. there would be no suicide or Nihilism if man were inclined towards learning absolute truth) brings up an excellent point. Man only acts out of perceived truth: it is a human good to seek truth and we cannot do otherwise. But it is important to recognize that man is not perfect: i.e. he pursues truth with learning as a means to that end, but is not entirely logical; his emotions can and do blind his reason. Your example involving a man who has lost all hope in life is still fundamentally bound by the realizations brought about from his life experiences (his learning as he lives), and his suicide desiring suicide is still ultimately brought about through a perception of truth, albeit one blinded by emotion. His thoughts are as follows: "it is true that I am in tremendous physical and emotional pain from my shortcomings; and it is true that through my death, I will no longer feel this pain - I've learned these truths because doctors have previously determined that the central nervous system, the means by which I perceive pain, no longer works when a man dies - therefore, to end my pain, I must kill myself. A man who thinks through his emotions alone, without realizing that his ultimate purpose in life is to ascertain the greatest degree of truth possible will be doomed to come to the above conclusions in the above circumstances.
We all strive to learn to attain truth, but that doesn't mean we will all come to understand the same things because our perceptions vary. Nonetheless, there IS an objective truth to be learned from any matter regardless of our perception. Taking my example of the inaccurately timed bomb; we can see that, no matter at what time the bomb explodes, the bomb is there; and by changing our perspective, thus altering our perspective, we can then see that the bomb will indeed explode in one minute.And by definition, as you said, we are indeed FORCED to learn; we cannot be human otherwise. Your trying to distinguish truisms from desires does not hold in the case. If we were to learn against our will, then it would make sense that learning is a truism and not a desire. However, you will find that we actively go out of our way to learn certain things: we take preference in what we learn based entirely on our perception; i.e. we actively will that which we learn. We MUST learn, but it is entirely up to us what we will learn; therefore learning is both a truism and a desire.
It is also wrong to assume that man's nature is entirely material given that nothing in our experience is entirely material. Let's take a triangle for example. Draw yourself three triangles. You'll observe that each triangle is slightly different; each is a particular example of that which we call "triangle". You'll also see that each of your triangles doesn't at all follow the textbook definition of "triangle": the sides you drew aren't entirely straight, and some of the vertices do not line up properly, making some of your triangles open shapes. Yet we still consider your shapes `triangles`: there is something in the shapes you drew that is triangular. Now, let`s say you drew those shapes on Mars` rust or on some distant planet. They would still be recognized as triangles. Now let`s say that you erased those shapes: there is nothing in those erased shapes that is triangular; therefore triangularity has disappeared from those particular instances of triangles. Yet, triangularity still exists. You cannot point to a particular thing and say ``there is triangle``. Likewise you cannot destroy any amount of particular things and say that the essence of those things is destroyed: if you took away all the triangles in the universe, the concept of triangle would still exist. This intrinsic property of a thing that cannot be changed regardless of circumstance or instance we call the ``universal`` of that thing. The universal of man, that which distinguishes him from all other universals, will still exist without particular instances of man; therefore there is at least one immaterial aspect to him.
There is, however, another immaterial aspect aspect to him which is unique even to each particular instance of man... But that is a conversation for another time.
In conclusion, without restating the many points of my argument and side-arguments for optimism, optimism is the way of thinking which promotes greater opportunity for ascertaining truth than does pessimism; therefore, it is logically preferred in a human context to pessimism.
me: i will respond point by point.
"Again, remember that I said learning was a means to the end of ascertaining truth, which was itself the means to attaining conviction about reality. You cannot debate this obvious fact"
i have a slight disagreement, it might just be semantic. learning, actual learning is the ascertainment of information. reality is simply it, it is what it is. our perception of it will always have slight flaws because we are flawed. we have no perfect sense of logic or reason, we actually vary from person to person so we can never have full consensus amongst ourselves. to know about our reality is the goal of learning, however learning is innate, i dont think its a desire like you say, it simply is what we do, we cant not learn, cant not perceive. we are part of reality, reality trying to know itself. but its looking at itself through a dirty mirror, if sentient beings are the means by which reality can know itself, and sentient beings are flawed due to imperfect perception, then true conviction can never be had. and we can not improve our perception or know if our perceptions are correct because it would require assessment of perception through perception. we just assume our perceptions are accurate.
"Your realizing my "flaw in logic" (i.e. there would be no suicide or Nihilism if man were inclined towards learning absolute truth) brings up an excellent point. Man only acts out of perceived truth: it is a human good to seek truth and we cannot do otherwise. But it is important to recognize that man is not perfect: i.e. he pursues truth with learning as a means to that end, but is not entirely logical; his emotions can and do blind his reason. Your example involving a man who has lost all hope in life is still fundamentally bound by the realizations brought about from his life experiences (his learning as he lives), and his suicide desiring suicide is still ultimately brought about through a perception of truth, albeit one blinded by emotion. His thoughts are as follows: "it is true that I am in tremendous physical and emotional pain from my shortcomings; and it is true that through my death, I will no longer feel this pain - I've learned these truths because doctors have previously determined that the central nervous system, the means by which I perceive pain, no longer works when a man dies - therefore, to end my pain, I must kill myself."
the first two sentences are similar to what i was just saying. we cant not learn, what we learn determines our behavior, but the conclusions we form based on what we learn are not necessarily true due to our limits of perception.
as for it being human good to seek truth, this depends on your belief, again if you are a humanist, sure, if you are a nihilist, not so much. if you believe humanity is a virus or harmful, then truth doesnt matter, one may want to destroy all humanity. you are simply begging the question here. i assume you are educated on fallacies.
as for the example with the suicidal man, logically it is the best choice, its not simply a decision which was influenced by emotion and therefore logically corrupted like you seem to imply. everything we think is corrupted logically, we have no perfect logic.
" A man who thinks through his emotions alone, without realizing that his ultimate purpose in life is to ascertain the greatest degree of truth possible will be doomed to come to the above conclusions in the above circumstances."
again you are begging the question, and i have a counter argument even though you're already being fallacious. there is no way to determine an objective purpose for us. we live, we die. this is essentially the crux of all life. some people believe their purpose is to serve a god, some believe its simply to live, some believe there is no purpose. ultimately, life has no objective purpose in the way you mean. the purpose is whatever we perceive it to be. life is what you make it. to demonstrate this i'll use an example. the 'purpose' of food, for us is sustenance. sustenance for any living thing is to perpetuate that life. if that life is intelligent enough to have desires, such as that of a human, then whether or not the human desires sustenance is based on its will to live. so the purpose of sustenance for intelligent life, is dependent on the desires of that living thing. what we desire influences a things meaning to us. information is objective, conclusions made by any sentient entity is necessarily subjective due to imperfect perceptions and logic. im not even sure perception can be "perfect" it doesnt make sense to me, in fact one might argue that nothing which comes from us can be fully truthful due to our imperfections, but thats irrelevant right now. back to the point. since our conclusions are perception based, and perception is imperfect, the conclusions will have some degree of imperfection. we can never be right, we can only get less and less wrong. to say that lifes purpose for us, is objectively to learn, is simply silly, especially with all the different desires. and of course begging the question which is a fallacy.
"We all strive to learn to attain truth, but that doesn't mean we will all come to understand the same things because our perceptions vary. Nonetheless, there IS an objective truth to be learned from any matter regardless of our perception. Taking my example of the inaccurately timed bomb; we can see that, no matter at what time the bomb explodes, the bomb is there; and by changing our perspective, thus altering our perspective, we can then see that the bomb will indeed explode in one minute."
again this is kind of what i was saying before. however im not sure there is such a thing as truth with regard to our perceptions. truth is simply what is, and what is not. looking at yourself in a dirty mirror, you cannot truly know what part of you is and is not, what is the accurate portrayal of your existence, much is the same with reality. you wipe a hand on the mirror, it smears and gets clearer and clearer over time, less and less wrong, but will never be truly clear of all imperfections. further, you just assume what you are seeing is you.
"And by definition, as you said, we are indeed FORCED to learn; we cannot be human otherwise. Your trying to distinguish truisms from desires does not hold in the case. If we were to learn against our will, then it would make sense that learning is a truism and not a desire. However, you will find that we actively go out of our way to learn certain things: we take preference in what we learn based entirely on our perception; i.e. we actively will that which we learn. We MUST learn, but it is entirely up to us what we will learn; therefore learning is both a truism and a desire."
i disagree. we start out eating food because its a basic starting desire to live. life is, and it being so leads to attempts to perpetuate itself. life with intelligence has desires, basic desire being to live, as is with all life. however, again our desires and shift and change because we are intelligent. if it were the case that living is necessarily an unchanging goal for us, then suicide and strong nihilism would not exist. we would not be able to even comprehend such things, we can not have anything against our nature, therefore we would not have knowledge of suicide or strong nihilism if it were against our nature. however, we do. so the desire to live and learn is not an absolute part of us, it just simply isnt. i stated this before, you seemed to understand but now you are restating your argument as if i didnt say it. the desire to end ones own life would necessarily come through learning, i agree. but killing ones self is absolutely an attempt to stop all perception, and therefore learning. so it cannot be an ultimate goal, or absolutely innate in us, for us to learn or live or want to do either.
"It is also wrong to assume that man's nature is entirely material given that nothing in our experience is entirely material. Let's take a triangle for example. Draw yourself three triangles. You'll observe that each triangle is slightly different; each is a particular example of that which we call "triangle". You'll also see that each of your triangles doesn't at all follow the textbook definition of "triangle": the sides you drew aren't entirely straight, and some of the vertices do not line up properly, making some of your triangles open shapes. Yet we still consider your shapes `triangles`: there is something in the shapes you drew that is triangular. Now, let`s say you drew those shapes on Mars` rust or on some distant planet. They would still be recognized as triangles. Now let`s say that you erased those shapes: there is nothing in those erased shapes that is triangular; therefore triangularity has disappeared from those particular instances of triangles. Yet, triangularity still exists. You cannot point to a particular thing and say ``there is triangle``. Likewise you cannot destroy any amount of particular things and say that the essence of those things is destroyed: if you took away all the triangles in the universe, the concept of triangle would still exist. This intrinsic property of a thing that cannot be changed regardless of circumstance or instance we call the ``universal`` of that thing. The universal of man, that which distinguishes him from all other universals, will still exist without particular instances of man; therefore there is at least one immaterial aspect to him."
i disagree completely. abstract concepts exist only in our minds. i reject any notion of supernatural entities. the "essence" you talk about is simply our knowledge of a thing. electric signals changing neuron paths and such in the brain. much like a computer editing its memory banks when it downloads something. the physical data which we made which translates to information for us is a material thing. i say it is at least. if an alien came to earth and talked to us, or tried to, it would not be information. information is only that which we can understand. information however, is material in my opinion. im not even sure such a thing as "information" actually exists. i dont think concepts are a reality in any way except to us. again, perception of reality determines what reality is for the perceiver so-to-speak. a cup doesnt have any idea of concepts, knowledge, or a triangle. the "essence" of a triangle doesnt exist for the cup, or for a conglomeration of particles which form graphite rod solidified in a wood cylinder we call a pencil which we used to project graphite onto a thing we call paper to form a thing we call a triangle. we dont determine reality. the universe is indifferent to our wants and desires, and even our knowledge. a triangle is merely a thing we made up. its a formation of sound waves emitted by our voice box which attempts to represent within the context of the english language, a specific pattern of things we call lines. there is no real essence. for us, there is only what we perceive.
i completely reject your "immaterial man" thing as well. in the words of neil degrasse tyson, "we're connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically" and in the words of carl sagan "the universe is within us, we're made of star stuff. and we are a way for the universe to know itself" and again from carl sagan "the beauty of a living thing is not the particles that go into it, but the way those particles are put together".
we are atomically no different from anything else, the only difference between me and a dog is the way the particles that are in me are arranged. thats it. we are part of the universe.
you say universals as if there is actually more than one. there is the universe, reality, what is. WE are the ones who separate the the yellow thing in the sky from the blue stuff that is fun to play in. we label different things. language is born out of a necessity to communicate which is born out of want to survive as a group more efficiently which is born out of a mutual want between people to survive. the thing we refer to as stick is no different atomically from the thing we refer to as tree. those words reference parts of a whole called reality. however not having words like stick and tree because they are essentially one, is not helpful to us. so we dont look at it that way.
and finally your last point
"There is, however, another immaterial aspect aspect to him which is unique even to each particular instance of man... But that is a conversation for another time.
In conclusion, without restating the many points of my argument and side-arguments for optimism, optimism is the way of thinking which promotes greater opportunity for ascertaining truth than does pessimism; therefore, it is logically preferred in a human context to pessimism"
i disagree with your first sentence, but im sure you could have guessed that.
thinking positively generally a better affect on survival, which in turn MAY provide better opportunity to ascertain truth.
again, the word "positive" is based on ones initial desires. if somebody wanted to torture you, and thought "yeah one day i can do this, i believe in myself" then they are being optimistic. the same is true with "im gonna go to a homeless shelter and get those poor people into some jobs and houses. i can make a difference" that is also being optimistic. "im tired of life, i want to end it. loneliness and emptiness with no end in sight. little hope left. why live anymore when there is no love" thats being pessimistic, however if you add on to that quote "why live anymore when there is no love. i know! i'll kill myself, that way i dont have to deal with it anymore. ah this is great, now i can finally stop suffering, i can do this, this is wonderful" then its optimistic, or "wait. maybe i dont have to kill myself. i know, i'll just deal with the pain and try to better myself so that i might be more attractive to people and people will want to be my friend. yeah thats it! i'll try to better myself and then people will like me" thats also optimistic.
my point is, these words "optimism" and "pessimism" dont really mean anything. you have a goal for yourself and you say you can do it, or say somebody else can achieve their goal, or say that some desire will be fulfilled, and you are being optimistic. say the opposite, and you are being pessimistic.
therefore, neither can be logically preferred. according to your rationale, one can only be preferred if it benefits the attempt to ascertain truth, if it benefits learning. and there are cases in which either can do that. but again i disagree that learning is necessarily beneficial and/or a desire which is an absolute part of our nature.
in closing, i'd like to say this debate thus far has been fun and i thank you for engaging in it with me. its rare for me to have any sort of lengthy in depth debate. thanks
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