“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 which 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 concept of a legacy, as I care extra about what I do whereas I’m alive than what individuals say about me after I’m useless. And, I’ve at all times 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 indignant, I get nihilistic. My inside voice says, “Nothing fucking issues.” This specific inside voice not often escapes the deep, darkish edges of my mind and, when it exits an orifice often known as my mouth, it’s normally mentioned beneath 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 individuals instructed me there was no such factor. Amy disliked this quite a bit as she aggressively pushes again on my nihilistic tendencies, principally as a result of she is aware of that I’m feeling depressed or indignant once they come out.
I made a decision Google would know, so a search on existential nihilism and slightly hyperlink following lead me to absurdism.
Absurdism is the philosophical principle that the universe is irrational and meaningless, but people try to seek out which 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 advised I strive Net Web page Phrase Counter which instructed me there are 11,342 phrases on the web page. I then requested Gemini to strive once more and this time it mentioned 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 mentioned there have been 10,256 phrases on the web page. I attempted Claude and it instructed me that it hit the utmost size for the dialog. I requested ClosedAI and it instructed me it couldn’t do that. I modified the ClosedAI mannequin to deep analysis and it bought began. I requested Perplexity and it mentioned it couldn’t give me an actual quantity, however might estimate it at 3,000–3,500 phrases. I seemed on the Wikipedia Web page Info and it mentioned the web page had 78,436 bytes. I highlighted the article, copied the textual content, pasted it into Google Docs, and did a Phrase Depend, 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 feel that’s a great 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.
