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tester45710/01/20241 replyview on HN

If the activities of the soul are so beyond mortal comprehension, then the futile attempt at understanding them should widen the soul in appreciation of the infinite depth of human creativity.

Failure at comprehension does not deaden, any more than only seeing a minute fraction of the cosmos deadens the soul. All that remains beyond our understanding should inspire awe.


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smokedetector110/01/2024

Its not that the soul is completely beyond mortal comprehension - art, philosophy, etc do a good job of exploring it. But this (philosophically) materialist way of viewing the world, where everything is caused by evolution and so everything is mechanical to the point where you can almost feed it to a computer -- that doesnt inspire awe to me at all. That makes me feel that my actual existence is being denied, because I'm "really just" this simple process. It's blatantly false but for some reason as tech people we like to put ourselves into a box rather than admit some things are beyond mechanical formalization.