Existential dread. I know that feeling. Don't let the circular thoughts wear you out. Get rest and think about it later when you don't have more important things to do. Just remember "truth" is kind of in flux and there's an infinite amount of information about literately anything and worrying about any one thing non stop serves no ultimate purpose but wearing you out. That "bubble" of the extent of your worries should shrink down to the things that ultimately matter most to you in the here and now and you manage to reconnect to those close to you. What helped me immensely was just watching the birds on my walks home.
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
I have had the opposite problem you’ve had with direct observation versus dictation from scientific sources.
It is why I struggle with chemistry concepts. Sure, I can see the reactions, but I cannot see the atomic structure of compounds. It requires trust in something you can’t observe.
I learned that much of what I was taught as a child was either not completely true or entirely false, which led to apathy toward knowledge building. What was the point if so much collective knowledge is falsehood? How can one ever determine what’s truly true or really false? There are, of course, objective truths we’ve established through science, but what about things like the food pyramid, the sugar industry telling us that fat was the problem, or learning that our government does, in fact, spy on us through the telecommunications infrastructure? That last one was once the stuff of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.
Anyway, you sound smarter than me. I’m envious.
Interesting read.
Idk I trust logic well, but not "my" logic - but a more formal logic system. I certainly never trust something as silly and malleable as my own observations and gut feelings and conclusions.
The things I see and causational relationships my brain tries to churn out could really be anything, like for instance with the toupee fallacy, it requires effort to figure against it and maintain at least an aspiration towards some degree of intellectual rigor.
If my reasoning is sound (not fallacious) and is based on valid premises (such as on sound established facts determined via the scientific method), then my conclusions from that process must also be valid propositions, as opposed to nonsense e.g. ("Sky is blue therefore it will rain next Tuesday").
I can speculate upon this information and guess as to theories, or I can act upon this information - again - as a mere guess if I'm sufficiently confident and hold it as a justified but untested belief.
Or if I wanted to really know the truth I could attempt to deduce it further via conceptual and other forms of analysis to seek other explanations (e.g. via Occam's Razors) until I arrive at a hypothesis that can be empirically & scientifically tested, and if this hypothesis is proven via repeated observation then I consider this as meeting the criteria for me to personally hold it as a Justified True Belief that may or may not be also Knowledge.
In either case though it's unproductive to dismiss a JTB as above, if it is a theory with predictive power (it's observations can be applied to other adjacent things and hold true for them) or - if we're very lucky - can even be extrapolated to other subjects as a principle - then we should hold it preciously and defend it from ignorant attacks because many such theories have been used to massively improve the quality of life for humanity worldwide from medicine to engineering miracles and infrastructure and civilization that has literally made life possible where for many of us it wouldn't have been and improved it endlessly for others.
(I'm near sighted, have ADHD and am trans, I would've been in a heckuva lot more pain without civilization and technology for instance, I often consider myself as a partially artificial being where a lot of important things in my body did not emerge "naturally" whether it's my very physical traits, sex hormones, genitalia or dopamine or serotonin that gets me to actually do things).
I think skepticism is valid and we must be harsh towards even foundational beliefs and especially those that in any way are formed by experiences of the senses rather than reason and evidence, but I don't think it's useful or productive to throw your hands up in the air and say truth can't be known or that we know nothing.
Maybe that statement is true, but this is an unfalsifiable proposition and as such is useless to us with our current reasoning devices, it is much more productive to accept and learn that being wrong is part of the road to being somewhere near correct, which is a momentous achievement even in fairly banal circumstances if you think about it, given the options and possibilities out there.
I was recently upset by my girlfriend when she told me atoms aren't held together by gravity but by some insane bullshit known as the "weak force" and my archenemy in every attempt to understand anything about the natural world - electromagnetism. God I hate electromagnetism. Inductance is magic.
Why was I upset by this? I'm not a physicist, I was in the lowest set for science at school and in fact failed both that and mathematics, idk, just an emotional irrational reaction, but after a bit I calmed down, and admitted I was wrong - and in retrospect I realize that in the grand scheme of things my reasoning towards that previously held belief was full of non-sequitur extrapolations and reasoning by analogy and other nonsense™️.
I'm not philosophy major or remotely knowledgeable about epistemology, so anyone please feel free to correct me on anything here including my usage (and likely abusage) of the field's terminology.
Thanks for that response, it was really long and thoughtful, and I appreciate the time and effort taken.
(This is not an attack on you as a trans person but an attack on your reasoning)
You say you are trans and that you don't trust your gut feelings and subjective observations?
Isn't gender dysmorphia based on internal feelings and observations?
I had to rely on measurable, repeatable truth [...]
(I will ignore the context for the sake of argument)
The measurement itself can't be trusted. If you have a 1m stick and you measure it, its still is 1m stick. But if it's moving really fast (close to the speed of light) the stick is somehow shorter. We have made models to predict that but still we can't measure the true length of the stick. We can't know the true length of the stick. Just the approximation within quality of our measurement device.
There are actually two truths: subjective truth and objective truth. We can't really know objective truth but we can get really close to it with our subjective truth.
Subjective truth is really powerful concept as it can be modified by ourselfs. If your subjectivity taints your thinking then change it so it reflects your values.
The philosophy is a study of "How to think" even in the face of hormones and emotions. Thinking logically can be trained and it can be learned. It can also help state right questions and not all questions are logical.
Also not all thoughts come from logic. Some come from emotions or some other place some people call soul. The question "Do I prefer being right or being happy" is not a logical question. It can't be answered logically. The question should be: "Should humans strife for being happy or being right?" Is closer as it can be argued for one side or the other but emotions don't play a huge role in swaying the consensus of arguments.
You might like the dialogues in Bateson's Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind.
We may be part of a simulation. Our entire universe may be a microscopic component of a much larger one. We may be weird 3 dimensional beings living on a planet inhabited by beings living in other dimensions that we cannot perceive. Their actions may affect our lives.
There are so many possibilities, I don't think it would ever be possible to truly know anything for certain.
I don't know for sure what I am, where I am, or why I am. But I am.
Other people and animals seem to have this same knowledge of their own existence. So I try to treat all humans and animals as I would like to be treated.
We don't know if we have a purpose but being kind, helping others, spreading joy and finding peace in beauty and love seems to be a pretty good way to go for me.
I think you're torturing yourself because you're smart. Do you have a thing about morality too?
I'm not sure what you mean. What is a 'thing about morality' and why would I have it?
Do you consider the morality of your thoughts and actions excessively?
No. But I doubt anyone would judge their own consideration to be excessive, I consider it exactly as much as I think I should, and do what I emotively feel is right.
I'd consider your consideration excessive.. Most people would, I think. I can recognise my own over thinking, in that I can get stuck in loops which go nowhere and only annoy me.
The reason I asked is that I've spoken to someone about this before, both of us had a similar over consideration, but he also moralised his every action, thought and feeling excessively due to an illness called pure O, a variant of OCD. So I thought that might be worth looking into, but otherwise, like I said initially, in my experience this over consideration (or overthinking) is a feature of (a variety of) smart people.
You have to kind of come to the conclusion that you're only a puny human with ultimately a puny human intellect. You aren't ever going to come to a satisfying conclusion... Which can be a conclusion, if not satisfying.