“The human obsession with objective is merely a distraction from the absurdity of existence.”
… Nikolai Gogol (unverified)
Let’s begin with existentialism.
For a very long time, I’ve believed that you simply create your that means throughout your existence on this planet. You get one life, and when it’s over, it’s over. I’ve by no means embraced the thought of a legacy, as I care extra about what I do whereas I’m alive than what folks say about me after I’m lifeless. And, I’ve all the time been deeply intrinsically motivated by studying, so the extrinsic rewards of life, whereas good, aren’t a core motivation for me.
Once I’m depressed or offended, I get nihilistic. My inside voice says, “Nothing fucking issues.” This explicit inside voice hardly ever escapes the deep, darkish edges of my mind and, when it exits an orifice referred to as my mouth, it’s often stated underneath my breath. I do discover the Nihilists within the Massive Lebowski significantly amusing, though Donny and Walter confuse them with Nazis.
A couple of months in the past, I began saying that I used to be an existential nihilist. A number of folks informed me there was no such factor. Amy disliked this quite a bit as she aggressively pushes again on my nihilistic tendencies, largely as a result of she is aware of that I’m feeling depressed or offended once they come out.
I made a decision Google would know, so a search on existential nihilism and just a little hyperlink following lead me to absurdism.
Absurdism is the philosophical idea that the universe is irrational and meaningless, but people try to seek out that means on this meaningless world, which the irrational universe doesn’t care about.
There are quite a lot of phrases on the Absurdism Wikipedia web page so I made a decision to make use of AI to depend them. I attempted Gemini 2.5 Professional and it failed however urged I strive Internet Web page Phrase Counter which informed me there are 11,342 phrases on the web page. I then requested Gemini to strive once more and this time it stated there have been between 4,500 and 5,500 phrases on the web page. I then went into one other occasion of Gemini 2.5 and requested the identical query. This time it stated there have been 10,256 phrases on the web page. I attempted Claude and it informed me that it hit the utmost size for the dialog. I requested ClosedAI and it informed me it couldn’t do that. I modified the ClosedAI mannequin to deep analysis and it received began. I requested Perplexity and it stated it couldn’t give me an actual quantity, however may estimate it at 3,000–3,500 phrases. I seemed on the Wikipedia Web page Info and it stated the web page had 78,436 bytes. I highlighted the article, copied the textual content, pasted it into Google Docs, and did a Phrase Rely, which was 8778 phrases. ClosedAI Deep Analysis remains to be going and is as much as 21 sources.
Dave Jilk turned the Gogol quote round deliciously: “The obvious absurdity of life is a distraction from our changing into who we’re”. I believe that’s a superb abstract of what I’m getting at.
ClosedAI Deep Analysis took 9 minutes and used 25 sources. It got here up with 8,227 phrases.
Now that’s absurd.
