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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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In 1921 Wittgenstein wrote a nearly incomprehensible book that, if i understood it correctly, puts forth the idea that trying to find definitive answers to questions like 'what is truth?' and 'what is justice?' is stupid. We might come up with a definition that we find personally amenable, but in creating this definition we have not made a discovery about the world itself. In rat-speak Wittgenstein might have said that trying to find answers to big mysterious questions is trying to map an unseen territory. My personal answer to the big questions is that the questions are stupid.

Despite this Wittgenstein did believe in God, and passionately, but rejected intellectual proofs. Whether that's enough really depends on what it is precisely that you're grappling with. Do you want assurances of immortality? Comfort in mortality? Belief that what you do matters?