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> Well then, how is materialism falsifiable? If it isn't, how is it a scientific hypothesis? It isn't a scientific hypothesis. You use the word "materialism"

> Well then, how is materialism falsifiable? If it isn't, how is it a scientific hypothesis? It isn't a scientific hypothesis. You use the word "materialism" to segregate yourself philosophically, but I haven't made a philosophical argument. Let's suppose your "hypothesis" is true, but given that it is beyond physical observation, we can never hope to know that it is true or even know the probability of it being true. Then what would be the benefit in assuming that it is true? We could conceivably save some time on trying to figure out AGI and instead do something "more productive". However, that's true of almost any endeavor. Anything you do in life has a chance of failure and an opportunity cost. Just imagine what could have become of us, had we not bothered to write HN comments!

yters 7y ago
Ok, then if materialism isn't a scientific hypothesis, why is it scientific?
- gridlockd 7y ago
  I don't know what "materialism is scientific" would mean exactly. I never made that claim, so don't ask me to defend it. Remember, you are the one who wants to fight this "materialism vs. dualism" battle, not me. I'm not saying your position is wrong. I'm saying your position seems inconsequential at best, but harmful at worst. To illustrate this, let's take a hypothetical "dualist" explanation for disease: "Disease is caused by spirits that attach to our bodies, but we cannot observe these spirits by any physical means and we can never interact with them in any distinguishable way." In other words, we cannot perform experiments, we cannot learn anything, so these spirits might as well not exist at all. There is no practical difference. Now that's all fine and well until you realize that disease is actually caused by physical processes than you can understand and intervene with. Had you been convinced that it was spirits all along, you wouldn't have bothered trying to figure out the physical processes. Today this example may sound ridiculous, but for most of history similar convictions held people back from turning quackery into real medicine.
  - yters 7y ago
    And on the materialist side we have similar quackery with phrenology, bogus medicines, Darwinian evolution, and the like. There is quackery everywhere. The fact that one can concoct a false explanation within either materialism or dualism means such an example doesn't help determine which paradigm is better. The important question is whether one paradigm allows us to explain reality better than the other, and dualism does this very well. There is no materialistic explanation for consciousness, free will, abstract thought or mathematics. Instead, those who follow materialism strictly end up denying such things, and we end up with incoherent and inaccurate theories about the world.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      > And on the materialist side we have similar quackery with phrenology, bogus medicines... Yes, but the key distinction here is that phrenology or bogus medicine are testable. If you claim phrenology predicts something but then statistics show that this isn't the case, phrenology is proven wrong. It's more difficult with medicine, but it's at least possible. Furthermore, we know that many of our "materialist" theories in physics are wrong. We know it because they disagree with experiment. However, they still have enough predictive power to be very useful. > ...Darwinian evolution, and the like. I'm not sure what you mean here. The principles behind Darwinian evolution are easily reproduced. Re-creating billions of years of evolution in a lab would be difficult, of course. > The important question is whether one paradigm allows us to explain reality better than the other, and dualism does this very well. I don't think it does it well at all. An explanation that you can not test isn't useful. In fact, a wrong explanation that you can test is more useful. There's an infinite number of "dualist" explanations, all of which we cannot test. So which one to choose? Why stop at dualism, why not make it trialism? Why not infinitism? Why not just say that there's an infinite number of intangible interactions, that every mind in the universe is connected with every other mind through a mesh spanning an infinite-dimensional hyperplane? You can't prove that this isn't the case, why not believe that one instead? > There is no materialistic explanation for consciousness, free will, abstract thought or mathematics. Well, so what? All of the "dualist" explanations are equally useless, so I might as well do without any explanation whatsoever. > Instead, those who follow materialism strictly end up denying such things, and we end up with incoherent and inaccurate theories about the world. Inaccurate and incoherent theories that are testable can nevertheless be very useful. Coherent theories that are untestable are useless, unless maybe you can turn them into a religious cult.

yters 7y ago

Ok, then if materialism isn't a scientific hypothesis, why is it scientific?

gridlockd 7y ago
I don't know what "materialism is scientific" would mean exactly. I never made that claim, so don't ask me to defend it. Remember, you are the one who wants to fight this "materialism vs. dualism" battle, not me. I'm not saying your position is wrong. I'm saying your position seems inconsequential at best, but harmful at worst. To illustrate this, let's take a hypothetical "dualist" explanation for disease: "Disease is caused by spirits that attach to our bodies, but we cannot observe these spirits by any physical means and we can never interact with them in any distinguishable way." In other words, we cannot perform experiments, we cannot learn anything, so these spirits might as well not exist at all. There is no practical difference. Now that's all fine and well until you realize that disease is actually caused by physical processes than you can understand and intervene with. Had you been convinced that it was spirits all along, you wouldn't have bothered trying to figure out the physical processes. Today this example may sound ridiculous, but for most of history similar convictions held people back from turning quackery into real medicine.
- yters 7y ago
  And on the materialist side we have similar quackery with phrenology, bogus medicines, Darwinian evolution, and the like. There is quackery everywhere. The fact that one can concoct a false explanation within either materialism or dualism means such an example doesn't help determine which paradigm is better. The important question is whether one paradigm allows us to explain reality better than the other, and dualism does this very well. There is no materialistic explanation for consciousness, free will, abstract thought or mathematics. Instead, those who follow materialism strictly end up denying such things, and we end up with incoherent and inaccurate theories about the world.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > And on the materialist side we have similar quackery with phrenology, bogus medicines... Yes, but the key distinction here is that phrenology or bogus medicine are testable. If you claim phrenology predicts something but then statistics show that this isn't the case, phrenology is proven wrong. It's more difficult with medicine, but it's at least possible. Furthermore, we know that many of our "materialist" theories in physics are wrong. We know it because they disagree with experiment. However, they still have enough predictive power to be very useful. > ...Darwinian evolution, and the like. I'm not sure what you mean here. The principles behind Darwinian evolution are easily reproduced. Re-creating billions of years of evolution in a lab would be difficult, of course. > The important question is whether one paradigm allows us to explain reality better than the other, and dualism does this very well. I don't think it does it well at all. An explanation that you can not test isn't useful. In fact, a wrong explanation that you can test is more useful. There's an infinite number of "dualist" explanations, all of which we cannot test. So which one to choose? Why stop at dualism, why not make it trialism? Why not infinitism? Why not just say that there's an infinite number of intangible interactions, that every mind in the universe is connected with every other mind through a mesh spanning an infinite-dimensional hyperplane? You can't prove that this isn't the case, why not believe that one instead? > There is no materialistic explanation for consciousness, free will, abstract thought or mathematics. Well, so what? All of the "dualist" explanations are equally useless, so I might as well do without any explanation whatsoever. > Instead, those who follow materialism strictly end up denying such things, and we end up with incoherent and inaccurate theories about the world. Inaccurate and incoherent theories that are testable can nevertheless be very useful. Coherent theories that are untestable are useless, unless maybe you can turn them into a religious cult.