I have had more than one conversation about this recently and this is kind of a “why I really dislike a lot of philosophers” thing. They are looking for things that just aren’t real. It comes off a lot like religion, which I think is a very similar mindset.

When you’re talking about the real world, I care only about the “HOW” of things. How did things happen? What processes came about to make the thing that happened possible? They only care about the “WHY?” The supposed larger “reason” behind it all.

What if there is no reason though? That’s where it all breaks down.

This is incredibly common in religious discussions and it pisses me off to no end. In fact, I think it is a fundamental part of the religious mindset. If you sit down and talk about evolution with the religious, even if it’s a normal person who accepts the reality, they don’t really care about evolution. They want the REASONS behind it. They want to assume that it happened for a PURPOSE!

It didn’t. It just happened. We know how it happened. We know the mechanisms behind it, at least in the broad strokes. We know that it happened. There’s no question that it happened. Asking “WHY?” is a pointless, empty endeavor.

Yet there are a lot of people prone to pointless, empty endeavors, aren’t there? If you get into a car crash, there is no larger meaning to the event. It just happened. We can work out how it happened and who was responsible, but there is no larger explanation than “someone fucked up”.

There was a very minor earthquake here the day before yesterday. I got an alert on my phone a few seconds before it hit, and if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. There was no damage whatsoever. It was just a common seismic event. It didn’t mean anything, yet there were people who started asking what it meant. Not just “is this a precursor to a larger earthquake?” but “what does it mean?”

It means the tectonic plates slipped. That’s it. I really have a hard time dealing with people who are so far out in la-la land that they can’t figure out where reality is. This is an entirely emotional problem on their part. They can’t deal with the fact that reality is just stuff doing what stuff does and there’s no larger purpose behind it.

These people are dumb. I really think they are. How  do you even have a rational conversation with these people when their entire frame of reference is so hopelessly skewed?

Honestly, you can’t. That’s why virtually all religious discussions go sideways. They are not using the same language as you are. They don’t want to live in the same reality that you do. It’s why I think outlook is mostly what matters and these people have problems.

It’s no wonder the world is in the state it is. There’s just way too many dumb people out there who can’t rationally justify their positions and just don’t care.