Let hear them conjects
The event horizon of a singularity is the area where time is non-linear and that is where trans-dimensional travel will be achieved where you can time travel if you build a vessel strong enough to survive the experience.
1950’s Roswell aliens were simply time traveling cyborg scientists from the future of earth, studying humanities first nuclear test ranges and made mistakes assuming humans were not sophisticated enough to detect them and were shot down.
Does being religious count?
I’m going to ask you to limit it to more material claims if thats ok ☺️
I believe that the reason why so many people are going crazy in America at least is because they are approaching the end of their life and they have been told the whole time they’ve been alive that they would be living through the end of times, and if it becomes true then their lives have not been wasted but if it is not true or if it doesn’t happen until after they die then their lives have been wasted and it’s driving them crazy.
“Christianity is a death cult,” essentially. Why bother to make it better here when paradise is guaranteed?
I heard “the moment you start praying is the moment you’ve given up trying” the other night. I almost spat my tea.
absolute truth.
Example?
I mean its hard because if I had an example of an absolute truth then that would be proof of it. I could make an argument for existence but still hard to say I would meet the absolute requirement of it.
What led you to use the example of absolute truth in the first place?
Its sort of more or an abstract noun rather than a specific case example one can engage with, no?
Just that is was the answer to the question posed. Im sorta obsessed with truth and believe there is absolute truth but can’t prove it.
I mean, would you consider something like “if X is true, then X is true” to be an absolute truth?
I mean I see what your getting at. The concept holds regardless of the existence of X but its rather meta. Im looking for something more about our reality. I mean absolute truth exists in terms of the words absolute and truth exist and can be put together as the concept but not with any basis in reality. Is it really a truth then? Superman exists as a concept for the writer and in the readers imagination but the character certainly fictional in our experiences. So you can say he is a truth in that he exists in concept but he certainly is not real.
So you’re looking for absolute truths about our physical reality? You’re right that it’s impossible then, other than tautological or trivial truths like the above that rely on a conditional (“if that box really exists, then it really exists”). The possibility of reality being simulated, Boltzmann brains, Last Wednesdayism, etc. preclude unqualified absolute truths about our physical reality because our observations cannot be truly verified.
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies.
You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
- Hub, Secondhand Lions (2003)
Most of my moral convictions aren’t provable because the most basic ideas are simply axioms. “You should be a good person” cannot be justified in a way that’s non-circular, and defining “good” is also similarly arbitrary. The only true “evidence” is that people tend to agree on vague definitions in theory. Which is certainly a good thing, imo, but it’s not actually provable that what we consider “good” is actually the correct way to act.
I have started creating a moral framework, though. I’ve been identifying and classifying particular behaviors and organizing them in a hierarchy. So far it’s going pretty well. At least my arbitrariness can be well-defined!
You should watch The Good Place and/or read the book How to be Perfect by Michael Schur. He made the show too.
He starts from the same standpoint as you and then explores moral philosophy to find answers.
I think it is easy enough to argue without making it circular. As for “good”, I don’t think an objective absolute and universal definition is necessary.
The argument would be to consider it an optimization problem, and the interesting part, what the fitness function is. If we want to maximise happiness and freedom, any pair of people is transient. If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them. Kinda like the “do unto others”, except less prone to a masochist going around hurting people.
If we want to maximise happiness and freedom
But that’s what I’m saying, that choice is axiomatic. I think most people would agree, but it’s a belief, not an unquestionable truth. You’re choosing something to optimize and defining that to be good.
If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them
Only if you believe that everyone fundamentally deserves the same treatment. It’s easy to overlook an axiom like that because it seems so obvious, but it is something that we have chosen to believe.
But that’s what I’m saying, that choice is axiomatic. I think most people would agree, but it’s a belief, not an unquestionable truth. You’re choosing something to optimize and defining that to be good.
I’m not really arguing against this tho (perhaps the choosing part, but I’ll get to it). I’m saying that a goal post of “axiomaric universal good” isn’t all that interesting, because, as you say, there is likely no such thing. The goal shouldn’t therefore be to find the global maximum, but to have a heuristic that is “universal enough”. That’s what I tried to make a point of, in that the golden rule would, at face value, suggests that a masochistic should go around and inflict pain onto others.
It shouldn’t be any particular person’s understanding, but a collectively agreed understanding. Which is in a way how it works, as this understanding is a part of culture, and differs from one to the other. Some things considered polite in the US is rude in Scandinavia, and vice versa. But, regardless, there will be some fundamentals that are universal enough, and we can consider that the criteria for what to maximise.
I’m also playing with the idea, of considering “good” as global optimization of freedom.
Here is what I was thinking lately:
Imagine there is a cage, once you enter the cage you cannot leave, so your freedom is restricted. Should you be allowed to enter the cage? What’s more important freedom to make a choice or freedom of having choices?
Real world examples that are related to this: entering a monastery, addiction to hard drugs, euthanasia.
Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.
When people are left to enter deals and economic arrangements as they see fit, it produces the most overall wealth, both for those at the top and those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy.
the libertarian pipe dream
You’re right, but we don’t care because wealth has diminishing marginal returns on utility.
Either greed or religion has killed the most people before their time. One of them has to go.
That might be provable
Can we get rid of both?
How about god complexes? Should those be on our radar?
People are basically good
Weird. I think the opposite.
Yeah, I believe that too. As an actual proportion of all living people, actually (as in from birth, with a pathological lack of empathy or similar) bad people are most likely a very thin minority.
The rest come from nurturing (friends, family, economic situation), political choices (affordable healthcare, housing, food safety), and bad luck.
We are also gullible and ignorant most of the time, which probably doesn’t help either.We are social animals that evolved to work cooperatively. We have deeply ingrained mechanisms that encourage pro-social behavior.
I agree. People are by default “good” and want happy lives within their communities. It’s when tribalism steps into the scenario that most problems arise.
Thing is, that tribalism is what drives the good parts.
It falls apart with distance or numbers, though.
Yes! Cooperative behavior can that result in kin selection, where the individuals of the community have similar fitness. However, selfishness and deception are exceptionally beneficial behaviors for increasing the fitness of a particular individual. That is just within the same species. Perhaps tribalisms are another form of kin selection?
People are basically good, but criminally ignorant on average.
Just look at Asmond Gold’s recent ban. I doubt the dude would ever even think about shooting a Palestinian himself, but boy will he happily dehumanize an entire culture as easy as taking a sip of water!
Yes. I looked that up, it seems he said something very nasty on his Twitch stream and was temp-banned.
Do you think a fourteen day ban is an effective deterrent? Why?
I think he is at least in part rewarded with publicity. We are currently discussing him, right?
Dunno’. I hope so, but Asmond has proven to be a bit … uh… dense. Hopefully he at least learns not to use such negative language when he supposedly doesn’t mean the entire meaning.
Do you think (on the balance) its more nurture than nature to be shitty to other humans?
This question has gone back and forth a lot, and the data says: both! The overall development of organisms depends the sum of the effect of the genes, the environment, and the gene-by-environment interaction. In conclusion, to predict human behaviors and personalities, we need a new zodiac system that accounts for multiple hemispheres, precipitation, elevation, socioeconomics, pandemics, popular movies, climate change, and the genome.
“I was a Porky’s kid, born in the southern hemisphere, I ate well, was raised in good home, I had access to education, and it was back when climate change was still deniable. Most people did not know what a pandemic was. I’m genetically predisposed to hair loss.”
“Ma’am, you are, what we call, a Jaguar-5-hypercrab-superbear, and I’m going to have to ask you to go with the nice officer now.”
I definitely do. Those who act the worst towards others were usually raised that way, or encountered some kind of struggle that made them bitter.
I strongly believe that if everyone was raised with compassion, and if everyone was supported and had their needs met, then we would see very little evil in the world.
Our society seems structured to bring out the worst in us, and rewards those who behave unethically. A better world is possible though.
This is pretty harsh on people whose children turn out badly in spite of anything they did. And there are many such cases.
On this subject it seems best to stick to the science rather than to cling to intuitions.
Maybe I phrased this badly, but I definitely don’t think it’s 100% on parents, society and life experience play a huge role as well.
There will always be a very small percentage of people who just turn out cruel, but I believe 99.9% of people are fundamentally good. It’s just fear or pain in their past or present that causes some to be bad to others.
Also I think this is pretty firmly in the realm of philosophy, at least for now. I’m not aware of any research that can really answer this, although more broadly nurture seems to matter more than nature.
I’m not aware of any research that can really answer this, although more broadly nurture seems to matter more than nature.
In my understanding, the research shows it’s rather the other way round. But these things are pretty hard to quantify so the debate is always going to be a bit sterile.
I do however take objection when science is instrumentalized in the service of political ideology. As you surely know, a core tenet of Marxism is that human beings are socially constructed. Therefore, rather like religious fundamentalists on the subject of evolution, doctrinaire leftists have a strong incentive to deny science on this subject.
I do however take objection when science is instrumentalized in the service of political ideology.
I didn’t bring up politics at all, and I don’t think that really applies here. It feels like you have an agenda to push…
You agreed that nurture is “definitely” is more important than nature. That’s a scientific truth claim, it can be answered without philosophy, and the scientific jury is out on it. And yet the claim is often deployed in the service of Marxist political ideology as if it’s a proven fact. Which it’s not. Maybe you’re not aware of this context. It’s true you didn’t explicitly bring up politics.
Have you heard of DeVone Boggan and how he managed to reduce gun violence in Richmond, CA?
How does a nature-over-nurture person interpret the success of such a program?
I never said that it’s unimportant, just that it’s not the whole story.
My BS, unprovable hypothesis: The Golden Age of Piracy was actually a successful Socialist movement, with Nassau being a disruptively successful enclave of Socialism in action. The pirates deeply threatened the budding power structures in the US (not conjecture) and the entrenched powers in Europe. While some powers, most notably royalty, were willing to use pirates as mercenaries (privateers), there was an excess of democracy and human concern (somewhat my conjecture) among the Nassau pirates. The Nassau pirates had pensions, a form of worker’s comp, disability, democratic command structures at sea, and healthcare (such as it was given the era). According to the historical texts on the Nassau pirates, there were almost no written records, which strikes me as especially odd since they had so many long-running financial and governing processes.
That I’d be a fool to strongly hold a belief without equally strong evidence.
Did this man just call himself a fool?
Everyones a fool and knows nothing :)
I’d argue we have lots of evidence that people who believe things strongly without evidence are dumb.
That humans are apex predators, and we have been so for upwards of 2.5 million years. Following from this, I believe that most chronic illnesses that we have today (e.g. obesity, diabetes, mental illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, PCOS, etc.) are caused by us straying from eating diets with lots of fatty meat.
I believe that there are metaphysical aspects of reality and unfalsifiable truths science and mathematics will never be able to prove.
Likesuch as?Like consciousness being greater than the sum of its parts and there being spiritual aspects to the universe. Like emotions existing as non localized complex energy frequencies, and karma existing.
I used to be a hardcore scientific determinist athiest. The scientific method, mathematical logic, and unfalsifiablility were collectively my God. My version of the universe was a mechanical box our fates predetermined by an uncaring system. There was no room for magical thinking or maybe invisible unicorns. Thing either existed or they didn’t, yes or no, 1 or 0. Everything not absolute verifyable truth was worthless.
Then I had a psychedelics phase, astral projected, experienced ego death, had telepathic communications with divine / cosmicbconsciousnesses using plants as mediums, looked at myself from third person with nonexistent eyeballs, ect, ect.
I will never be able to prove to anyone my experiences are real, but what I experienced was real to me from my subjective reference frame in every way that matters.
There is a scientific method for spirituality. But it requires accepting that consensus reality is socially constructed.
This is very interesting but feels deeply uncooked, needs some time in the oven to cement itself a little bit more
It’s a manifesto. An introductory text. If you want more soulist theory applied to specific issues, I suggest reading My blog
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/did-trolls-go-extinct-commentary-on-partisan-realism-fa380ac4af4b
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/the-commodification-of-myth-2e0e68b7f1ec
I’ve been reading through some of your blog articles, and I wanted to ask if there are any other platforms you’re active on? I wanted to have a more in depth conversation but lemmy might not be the best place for that. I still think that some extrapolations of the theory need work, but the core is pretty solid and fairly in line with my beliefs. Would definitely be interested in getting more context to better inform my path in life going forward.
I know that this isn’t what you mean, but paradoxically mathematics has been used to prove that it can’t prove everything: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel’s_incompleteness_theorems
Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is one of the main things that I like pointing to when talking about stuff like this, thanks for bringing it up. Its a good supporting piece that helps show there are limits to logic and knowability. I think physics models will eventually have their own version that puts theories of everything in jepoardy.
I do think our current physics theories are inaccurate at the extremes. To quote Zach Weinersmith:
Now, we’ve basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time.
That P != NP.
Also, that all non-trivial Riemann zeros in the critical band are at 1/2.
