I read the VAMP this week, and was rather unimpressed. Much respect to the authors, but I suppose the writing styles didn’t really appeal to me. The dialogue series, though highlighting important issues, seems somewhat stilted. I didn’t really enjoy the interjections from “a student in the future”, though I respect the fact that they aimed to highlight the absurdity of some of the inequalities of the current world. What appalled me the most was the usage of ligatures in the monospaced font.

I liked “The AI menace”, though the transition to the florid humanism is a little sharp. “The Human Menace” is just bog-standard misanthropy, linked weakly to usage of technology that misses the point on many criticisms. Also, the memes dotted throughout the magazine are weak, especially at the end of this article.

“I.” is alright.

Then, there comes “My ‘Absurdist’ Worldview” which isn’t even absurdist (as the author notes), but nihilist. Now I’m not sure if this is the actual view of the author or hyperbole from the perspective of a disillusioned teenager, but I thought I’d write on the topic.

The narrator is awfully selective about what exists and what doesn’t. “Nature” exists and is “harsh and cruel”. “Life” exists and is “unfair and meaningless”. “The Universe” exists and is “cold, dark and indifferent”. However, “happiness […] doesn’t exist.” From this, it should be clear that the fundamental argument — that the world around us is bad — is circular: Happiness and other good things are excluded. This is a nihilist no-true-scotsman.

As a matter of fact, not only is the “Universe” alleged to exist, but its perspective is apparently also more important than ours — by this logic, our views are excluded as insignificant. Now we may ask ourselves, what is the universe? Do we see the universe when we go to uni, when we take the train, when we go for a walk in the forest? Well, we certainly see part of the universe, if we take the universe as the “collection of all physical objects”.

But the universe is homogeneous and anisotropic and our world isn’t. The universe follows simple laws (derived from very simple symmetries) whereas ours follows the immensely complex laws of chemistry, biology, politics, society. What we consider as the “universe” is merely an extrapolation from looking at our world and reducing everything to its fundamental qualities, such as “having mass” and “taking up space”. The universe is just something we made up — there is no objective reason to put “everything” in one box labelled universe. We just did it because we were curious what else that box could be labelled by, finding things that all objects have in common.

So why should we care about what the universe thinks about us? All the narrator is doing is crying over orders of magnitude, a privilege normally reserved for physics exams and the like. The universe is mere extrapolation and what really exists is what we see in our day-to-day lives. The people, the trees, the ground under our feet — all these things are part of our immediate reality. Why should something outside that influence how much we care about them?

Consider, for a moment, a tree. All the tree’s actions throughout its life serve to aid it in its mission: to survive. The tree can’t be said to care about itself, but there’s something there, some kind of “help”. In fact, a plant in a symbiotic relationship helps the other symbiote survive. If we are to transfer the property of “caring” to inanimate objects, this is where we ought to start: Through its actions, the plant allows and aids the continued survival of the symbiote.

In this fashion, we can say the universe does “care” about us. In an act of simultaneous genius and coincidence, the universe took the state necessary for stars to form, planets to be created, asteroids to collide and life to begin. In the heights of my suffering, there still persists a certain awe at the utter improbability of my own existence in this world. It is the universe that allows our sustained existence even through its sheer unlikelihood. The universe “cares” through allowing.

So what we have in our world is precious even at the overbearing scale of “literally everything”, as the universe continues to allow our world to exist. And for this reason, we should act and think accordingly. Proper caring is an emergent property of humans, made somewhere in the immense number of ridiculously simple interactions of atoms inside our bodies. Atoms cannot care, the universe cannot care either. And yet, we can. So the idea that we can transfer the burden of caring to the universe is wrong. Proper caring is something only we can do.

Does nothing really matter? Does it make no difference whether you’re being insulted or complimented, no difference whether you have a stone in your shoe or not, no difference whether you’re dying, dead or alive? I think these things all matter and the choice between them is easy.

Of course, in times of suffering, we have to limit our caring. Things get bad in everyone’s life. But it’s important to be able to know what matters and what doesn’t, even when the fan is enshittified. You always matter. You matter to yourself, you matter to the world.

Everything you do will have an irreversible influence on the future, even if it’s only as uninterpretable noise. The butterfly effect applies to our actions, so every action you take changes the future, whether you want it to or not. Maybe in a century, nobody will know your name, but if you fight for what you care about, they will be able to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

What we do with this knowledge — that there are things that matter, that we have a profound effect on the future and that existence is precious — is up to us. I feel that we should work towards allowing as many people as possible to enjoy those parts of existence that make the bad parts worth going through. But just knowing this fact, that more-or-less everything we do matters, helps me achieve an epiphanous peace of mind — I can chill and become the best possible version of myself now, and do things that matter with astonishing effectiveness later.

Right now, my happiness matters, so I’m working towards optimising that. That includes doing things I’m not comfortable with in order to be happier later on. The only reason I can make such sacrifices is that it matters to me. Mattering is the basis of all goal-oriented action. So, I ask: What matters to you?

Anyway, I’ll continue my short review:

Later on in the magazine, there are futuristic music recommendations. I wanted to propose adding some albums, particularly Solid State Survivor by YMO and Die Mensch-Maschine by Kraftwerk. These two bands basically invented electronic music and really have a futuristic feel to them (especially when Kraftwerk pretend to be robots).

I like the switch from English to German in the burger blog.

Me and a friend discussed the exam statistics. Unfortunately, physics was below maths in every category last year. I suppose it’s time to reverse that.

By the way, Ludic has dropped another banger: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/why-i-will-always-be-angry-about-software-engineering/. Read it.

Also, read this: https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39. To understand it immediately, you need a baseline understanding of statistics (or a lexicon with the word “fat tail” in). But it shows Taleb’s cutting intellect in action under the hood, dissecting studies and statistics to find bullshit under a golden veneer. This is a man whom it pays to think like.

In summary of all this: There are things worth caring about. Act accordingly.