Hello everyone,

I hope you're well. I've been wrestling with two "philosophical" questions that
I find quite unsettling, to the point where I feel like life may not be worth
living because of what they imply. Hopefully someone here will offer me a new
perspective on them that will give me a more positive outlook on life.

(1) Why live this life and do anything at all if humanity is doomed to go extinct?

I think that, if we do not take religious beliefs into account, humanity is
doomed to go extinct, and therefore, everything we do is ultimately for nothing,
as the end result will always be the same: an empty and silent universe devoid of human
life and consciousness.

I think that humanity is doomed to go extinct, because it needs a source of
energy (e.g. the Sun) to survive. However, the Sun will eventually die and life
on Earth will become impossible. Even if we colonize other habitable planets,
the stars they are orbiting will eventually die too, so on and so forth until
every star in the universe has died and every planet has become inhabitable.
Even if we manage to live on an artificial planet, or in some sort of human-made
spaceship, we will still need a source of energy to live off of, and one day there
will be none left.
Therefore, the end result will always be the same: a universe devoid of human
life and consciousness with the remnants of human civilization (and Elon Musk's Tesla)
silently floating in space as a testament to our bygone existence. It then does not
matter if we develop economically, scientifically, and technologically; if we end
world hunger and cure cancer; if we bring poverty and human suffering to an end, etc.;
we might as well put an end to our collective existence today. If we try to live a happy
life nonetheless, we'll still know deep down that nothing we do really matters.

Why do anything at all, if all we do is ultimately for nothing?

(2) Why live this life if the development of civilization will eventually lead
to a life devoid of fulfilment and happiness?

I also think that if, in a remote future, humanity has managed to develop
civilization to its fullest extent, having founded every company imaginable;
having proved every theorem, run every experiment and conducted every scientific
study possible; having invented every technology conceivable; having automated
all meaningful work there is: how then will we manage to find fulfilment in life
through work?

At such time, all work, and especially all fulfilling work, will have already
been done or automated by someone else, so there will be no work left to do.

If we fall back to leisure, I believe that we will eventually run out of
leisurely activities to do. We will have read every book, watched every
movie, played every game, eaten at every restaurant, laid on every beach,
swum in every sea: we will eventually get bored of every hobby there is and
of all the fun to be had. (Even if we cannot literally read every book or watch
every movie there is, we will still eventually find their stories and plots to be
similar and repetitive.)

At such time, all leisure will become unappealing and boring.

Therefore, when we reach that era, we will become unable to find fulfillment and
happiness in life neither through work nor through leisure. We will then not
have much to do, but to wait for our death.

In that case, why live and work to develop civilization and solve all of the
world's problems if doing so will eventually lead us to a state of unfulfillment,
boredom and misery? How will we manage to remain happy even then?

I know that these scenarios are hypothetical and will only be relevant in a
very far future, but I find them disturbing and they genuinely bother me, in the
sense that their implications seem to rationally make life not worth living.

I'd appreciate any thoughts and arguments that could help me put these ideas into
perspective and put them behind me, especially if they can settle these questions for
good and definitively prove these reasonings to be flawed or wrong, rather than offer
coping mechanisms to live happily in spite of them being true.

Thank you for engaging with these thoughts.

Edit.

After having read through about a hundred answers (here and elsewhere), here are some key takeaways:

Why live this life and do anything at all if humanity is doomed to go extinct?

• My argument about the extinction of humanity seems logical, but we could very well eventually find out that it is totally wrong. We may not be doomed to go extinct, which means that what we do wouldn't be for nothing, as humanity would keep benefitting from it perpetually.
• We are at an extremely early stage of the advancement of science, when looking at it on a cosmic timescale. Over such a long time, we may well come to an understanding of the Universe that allows us to see past the limits I've outlined in my original post.
• (Even if it's all for nothing, if we enjoy ourselves and we do not care that it's pointless, then it will not matter to us that it's all for nothing, as the fun we're having makes life worthwhile in and of itself. Also, if what we do impacts us positively right now, even if it's all for nothing ultimately, it will still matter to us as it won't be for nothing for as long as humanity still benefits from it.)

Why live this life if the development of civilization will eventually lead to a life devoid of fulfilment and happiness?

• This is not possible, because we'd either have the meaningful work of improving our situation (making ourselves fulfilled and happy), or we would be fulfilled and happy, even if there was no work left.
• I have underestimated for how long one can remain fulfilled with hobbies alone, given that one has enough hobbies. One could spend the rest of their lives doing a handful of hobbies (e.g., travelling, painting, reading non-fiction, reading fiction, playing games) and they would not have enough time to exhaust all of these hobbies.
• We would not get bored of a given food, book, movie, game, etc., because we could cycle through a large number of them, and by the time we reach the end of the cycle (if we ever do), then we will have forgotten the taste of the first foods and the stories of the first books and movies. Even if we didn't forget the taste of the first foods, we would not have eaten them frequently at all, so we would not have gotten bored of them. Also, there can be a lot of variation within a game like Chess or Go. We might get bored of Chess itself, but then we could simply cycle through several games (or more generally hobbies), and come back to the first game with renewed eagerness to play after some time has passed.
• One day we may have the technology to change our nature and alter our minds to not feel bored, make us forget things on demand, increase our happiness, and remove negative feelings.

Recommended readings (from the commenters)

• Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World by Nick Bostrom
• The Fun Theory Sequence by Eliezer Yudkowski
• The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
• Into the Cool by Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan
• Permutation City by Greg Egan
• Diaspora by Greg Egan
• Accelerando by Charles Stross
• The Last Question By Isaac Asimov
• The Culture series by Iain M. Banks
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hägglund
• Uncaused cause arguments
• The Meaningness website (recommended starting point) by David Chapman
• Optimistic Nihilism (video) by Kurzgesagt

Really hoping there’s an easy fix for this, because it’s making using my phone a pain. Relevant info:

• I never actually set up a fingerprint, and have only used passwords.
• phone memory is almost full (I have too many photos I still haven’t offloaded, I don’t use iCloud)
• I did drop the phone earlier today, but there was no visible external damage
• case does not cover the home button
• I’ve tried force restart, it didn’t work

Hello! My wife's grandfather would say the phrase "ʃɛkrɛplj jɛɽɛ" from what I can decode from the phonetic alphabet on Wikipedia, or my best English estimation "shikrepple yere" with a flipped r if that makes no sense. He would say this when he lost a hand in poker, when she repeated it as a kid got chewed out and told not to say it, and he died without having ever said what it meant. He was stationed in Germany during the Korean War, so our best guess is something Polish..? But we can't find much that matches.

Tilderinos, can you translate what horrible phrase my wife has been casually repeating to people trying to figure it out and what language it's even in? Apologies if this is a slur or something... And thanks!

I’ve been looking for a good system for my friends and I to share TTRPG character sheets (primarily DnD) with one another.

We’re not interested in a full-digital VTT, but the ecosystem is pretty fragmented for charsheet-only apps (many immature and abandoned projects). Self-hosted webapp makes the most sense for our needs, but I’m open to suggestions for some other sync method that’s not PDF-based.

This seems like a viable candidate:

https://github.com/Orcpub/orcpub

…but I’d love to hear better options if anyone’s found em.

Kid's vision just keeps getting worse: it's -3.0 now in one eye. The rate at which I have to get the kid's vision tested and new glasses (plural because kid) is alarming.

My husband and I both have 20/20, as did both our parents before they got old people eye stuff....so I'm really new to the world of prescription glasses.

What's real and what are just old wives tales? Go outside more, get sun, limit screen time, don't read in the dark, these are kind of obvious but are they scientifically backed? I take super terrible care of my eyes and eyeballs are nearly touching the screens all day and I still have 20/20.....

Eye drops that fix your eyes? Omega 3 do anything or just in general a good nutrient for everyone?

Myopia control lenses (Miyosmart) -- legit or marketing hype? They seem to be a bunch of money and the brochures / site reads a bit like marketing nonsense...... How does a piece of lens fix eyeballs?

Did you get Lasik? Is it still the thing to do for correction, and has it gotten better? Could my kid reach a point where even Lasik can't help?

When did you get glasses and did the uh, progression (?) slow down or get better with age?

Edit: what about blue light lenses?

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This is a thread to discuss 2024 releases that have recently arrived on our doorstep, or been announced for the future. Feel free to share albums, singles, EPs or reissues that have caught your eye and interest, or share your thoughts about any new music that you've had the chance to listen to this week.

Discussion Points
Is there anything you've been looking forward to listening to?
Any releases that have surprised you?
Have you listened to any new music recently? What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past? How does their latest work compare?

Links:
Pitchfork - Out This Week
AllMusic - All New Releases
Stereogum - New Music

~~ Feedback on the format welcome

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like polyamory, caramelization and parking. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was studious.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

I thought younger people may find it interesting to experience what older, very popular, word processors were like.

Here's WordPerfect 6.0, emulated in the browser: https://archive.org/details/msdos_wordperfect6

Here's a link to the instruction manual: https://archive.org/details/wordperfectversi00word/mode/2up

Here's a bit of history: DOSDays - WordPerfect $495 in 1983 is roughly $1500 today.

Here's the recommended specs (not the minimum specs)

Personal computer using 386 processor
520k free conventional memory
DOS 6.0 or memory management software
Hard disk with 16M disk space for complete installation
VGA graphics adapter and monitor

F1 is the default help key.

Page 409 of the manual talks about menus. This is version 6 so they give you a drop down menu. To get an idea of how version 5 and earlier would appear by default (without the menubar, just the blue screen), hit alt v, then p. T (To get the menu back hit alt =, then V, then P) People might find it weird but those drop down menus first appeared in 5.1, and were a bit deal: "On 6th November 1989 WordPerfect released what would be their most successful version - WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, selling for $495 in the U.S. This was the first version to support Macintosh-style text-based pull down menus to supplement the traditional function key shortcuts and mouse support."

I'd be interested to know how easy people find it to use. At the time I had the keyboard overlay (example for WP5) and the muscle memory, but that's all gone now.

I've been using syncthing for a while now and more recently I've started to use a VPS but I find it to be a mild pain in the ass to setup and I'm wondering if there's a better way or just how are you administering?

I've been just editing the config.xml file and restarting it. It feels clunky editing it in nano especially when I have to delete a folder or remove a device.

I'm starting up on a new VPS and doing this initial setup again is mildly frustrating.

Another question, a friend is also going to be backing up some files onto this server (both of us treating it as untrusted), would it be better practice to set up 2 users each running their own syncthing@user service or just have it all under one?

I bought a Pixel 6 Pro unlocked a couple of years ago as my long term phone. It's what I like to do, buy a phone for 5+ years of use and get a cheap sim card. It's fine. If I could choose again I would have got the Samsung flagship instead.
I've since moved country and I'm in need of a dual sim phone (because I don't want 2 phones) for my home country and new one. But guess what, Pixel 6 pro is a single sim phone.
So that puts me in an uncomfortable position where I don't want to get a new phone yet (I'm 3 years out what I wanted to run this phone to) but I'd hate to get a second, crap phone just for a new number.

If I need to replace the Pixem, I would like to get another flagship (or close to) if possible. I like the bells and whistles. I simply wanted to avoid rebuying so early and see if there were options I had not yet considered.

It was suggested to try and recycle the Pixel, I'd get maybe €200 for it if I'm lucky, and it would help taking the cost out of a replacement flagship, but would still be expensive.

Any other suggestions for how I could navigate this?

Edit: thanks to @thecakeisalime for the esim suggestion. I've contacted my home network and got transfered to an esim in genuinely 15 minutes. That's opened the sim slot for the new number. Pretty much perfect solution!

I have, at times, experienced that opinions I share online fails to win people over, to the extent that the essence of the thread transforms from that of an exchange of ideas into that of a shitstorm.

Curiously, this is seldom caused by me having controversial views. I’m not especially hateful, and I don’t hold any conservative core ideas, such as advocating for an even less equal society or attacking or belittling various minority groups. If it were just that, then there would be no mystery; my views horrible, and for that reason, they provoke a strong reaction. But despite this not being the case, my views, which are truly very civilised and boring indeed, are sometimes intepreted in interesting ways.

I think the issue is me not expressing myself as well as I could. Assuming this to be the case, what follow is my own notes on how to better get your (mine) ideas across without misunderstandings.

Beware of the shortcoming of contemporary writing

Most of todays readers do not read. Rather, they impatiently give the text a quick glimpse, their brain already craving the next bit of novelty. I've noticed this in myself when I impatiently select random random test when trying to get my brain to read a text online. What's more, those who write has begin taking into account that their audience does not read. This has spawned a peculiar writing style which, for the first time in history(?), is designed not to actually be read, but merely glimpsed through.

It mostly consist of short paragraphs.

Often just a single sentence.

Sometimes two sentences. Maybe three. Four sentences are considered the max.

To help readers easier skim through it.

Read more: How can you write web content that people can skim?

If actually read, it has a staccato-like feel.

Almost like free verse poetry.

There are other characteristica too.

• Scattering links throughout.
• Inserting “Read more about“ references to other articles.
• Inserting list such as this one.
• Adding heaps of headlines.

I guess pretty much everyone have seen this particular style, and, to some degree, adapted it themselves. So there is a tendency to naturally try to boil everything down to a single, ultra-short paragraph. However, human language is not computer code; trying to destill a deeper set of ideas down to a Xwitter-length sentence will inevitably cause its fragile essence to be lost in translation. There is a reason why books are the length of, well, books, and not just the SparkNotes summary thereoff.

To build upon this idea, note that most dog-whistles comes in the form of a single, short sentence, as the shortness, unlike computer code, make it vague, opening it up for multiple interpretations. Indeed, some dog whistles doesn’t contain any words at all, but consists of a single emoji, such as “milk” or “the OK sign”.

If you write about more elusive fluffy ideas, ideas where your angle runs the risk of being read the wrong way, your writing has to go all the way, fully exposing your point with absolute clarity. You have to show it from every angle to make your vision travel through the written words and into the mind of the reader.

Sleep on it

If you aren’t sure you got everything right, no rush. You can always wait a bit, and go over it later.

Don’t accidently target other users

Lets say that someone posts the notorious recipe “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, and say that they don’t think society should go vegan because a balanced diet is better than a green one. You just happen to have a bunch of replies to that. For one thing, flesh food is not traditionally balanced, but centered around the meat, with everything else being mere decoration. Also, there are lots of protein sources other than meat. But most importantly, the vegan movement is not about what is the most healthy diet, but about it being morally wrong to kill a sentient creature just to eat its meat.

But this is a general argument about veganism. If you write it as a reply to someone recomendinging a “Chicken and ham extravaganta”, you’re essentially calling them a bad person.

So don’t reply. If you want to push your point, at least wait a bit and then create a new post, so you don’t target a specific user.

Don’t drink and post

Nope. Just don’t.

Avoid provocateur headlines

I might have given this post the headline “How to speak honestly without being banned for misogyny, racism, transphobia, and fascism”, or maybe “I was banned and censored on tilde.net. Here’s my conclusions.” Headlines which are undeniably more juicy, more clickbaity, if you will. You can almost smell the raising adrenaline. Controversy! Read all about it!

To me, this is hard to resist, because I really love the aethetic of blatant, vulgar marketing. But it also tends to backfire more often than not.

Also, even if the actual content of my post is okay, people who have experienced racism or transphobia might not be super thrilled about me playing around with racism and transphobia in my headline. Saying something “jokingly” is still saying it.

As an aside, me being temporary banned and having my posts deleted was what inspired me to write this post. I don’t have anything much to say about this itself, other than I would have liked it if removed post had a line about the reason for removal, and I would also note that, if you get banned, the red text bleed into be backgrund in a way which is aestetically displeasing.

Diversity reading

You might try mentally test reading your post from the perspective of groups which play a role in the content of your post. After all, if you talk about someone, you should be able to say it to their face. Also, it is entirely possible that your post will be read by those you talk about.

Take the rules for being a good listener, then invert them

Listening is a skill which most people haven’t learned. So when you speak your mind, it is worth taking precautions for the likely scenario that your readers will not follow the rules for the optimal listener. So let’s try inverting the rules:

When listening to others, always give their view the most generous intepretation —> If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

Truly listen to others and try to understand them before giving your answer —> Assume that people will skim through your post.

I want to point out that (in bold and uppercase just for the heck of it) I DON’T SAY THIS TO WHINE ABOUT BAD PEOPLE READING MY POSTS UNFAIRLY. Nope, absolute nope. My point is the exact opposite; I have a deeply held belief that any writer or author who is “misunderstood” could have avoided it by writing better. The writer should be expected to know his audience and know how to write in circles around any potential misintepretation.

Got that? Ok. Let’s look at what we can do to address those two issues.

If your words can be interpreted as ignorant, biggoted, or fashy, they will be, always.

When writing a post, I sometimes get the notion that something I write might be taken the wrong way. But then I forget about it, because I’m busy building a clever metaphor finding just the right word. And without fail, my post get misinterpreted in exactly that way I thought it would. So always listen to that little voice. In my experience, it is seldom wrong.

This is not just to avoid you getting trashed online. Another more important aspect which is typically overlooked, is that if your post can, somehow, be misinterpreted in horrible ways, it may also be read as such by people who truly hold those views, people who then sees you as an ally. You really don’t want that.

Sometimes it is a simple matter of changing your phrasing. Other times, directly stating what you do or do not believe is in order.

Assume that people will skim through your post.

While you can’t predict exactly how our post is going to be skimmed through, It is likely that they will have read your headline. So use that as leverage to push your most important points, or the general vibe of your post. Your first paragraph is likely to be read too. If your post is longer, you can also add subheaders with key info. You can also use the inverted pyramid structure, leading with the information any reader must know, followed by things which will grant them greater understanding, and ending with the interesting nice to know stuff.

This is what I got so far! If you got any advice of your own, please share!