3 ms·

"Humans didn’t appear out of a void of randomness" They did though, at least according to the materialist position which we now mostly accept as being 'science

by jariel 6y ago

"Humans didn’t appear out of a void of randomness" They did though, at least according to the materialist position which we now mostly accept as being 'science'. We basically define the universe 'as having a bunch of rules, which can be modelled' - in which case ... there literally is no life or rather a 'bag of random particles' (you) in a random environment, interacting according to some rules ... which is just net randomness. A researcher once said that evolution is no more interesting than a rock rolling down a hill - and he's right, from a materialist perspective. Nothing is 'evolving' any more than the ball of wax in a lava lamp lumping together and apart - it's just 'stuff happening randomly'. The problem with this materialist view when taken to it's full extent, is that it completely denies the most important reality to us - that we are 'life'. What we care about is the expression of life, we don't write laws to protect 'random bags of talking jelly' - our entire cultural foundation surrounds this notion of our being alive. And FYI - most common definitions of life exhibit this 'consciousness' problem, in that they may use biological terms, reproduction, all of that, but it's ultimately mechanical and materialist. So scientific materialism essentially denies the existence life as we commonly understand it preemptively, causing some deep existential problems. 'The Problem With Physics' I think is not 'Dark Matter' - it's the fact that it really hasn't brought us any closer to understanding what we actually are, which is the big question. There is a movement called 'emergence' which starts to move the needle on this, starting from a fairly material perspective but is ultimately metaphysical, at least it's a start.

imtringued 6y ago
>The problem with this materialist view when taken to it's full extent, is that it completely denies the most important reality to us - that we are 'life'. What we care about is the expression of life, we don't write laws to protect 'random bags of talking jelly' - our entire cultural foundation surrounds this notion of our being alive. And FYI - most common definitions of life exhibit this 'consciousness' problem, in that they may use biological terms, reproduction, all of that, but it's ultimately mechanical and materialist. Valuing life is a purely emotional and cultural thing. We care more about the lives of our relatives and friends than random strangers but we also care more about random strangers because they are the same species as us than we care about the lives of other species. Sometimes humans (by that I mean the Nazis) think other humans (e.g. Jews) are "inhuman" and deserve death as a punishment. (e.g. Holocaust) There is obviously no scientific basis in valuing life. It's a choice everyone makes for themselves. The HN submission about male chicks being shredded or even gassed is basically the same thing as the Holocaust but for chicken. Industrial killing of life, yet we don't care as long as we get our eggs. Thousands of years ago the world used to be lawless even for humans. Tribes were constantly engaging in violent conflicts. They didn't care one bit about the life of someone or something they deemed unimportant. We care about life because we are selfish and if someone takes a life away that we care about we want to satisfy our selfishness and engage in revenge against the killer.
- jariel 6y ago
  So your comment misses two important points I'm trying to convey: 1) "It's a choice everyone makes for themselves." You cannot make a choice (According to Materialist Physics) You are nothing but random noise. A random equation cannot 'make' choices, it cannot 'make' anything there is nothing being 'made'. There is no such thing as 'intelligence' in random noise. So take a moment to grasp that for a second, because it reveals something about the first part of your statement: 2) "There is obviously no scientific basis in valuing life." What you mean to say is maybe there is no 'Materialist Scientific Basis' for valuing life. Because according to physics, why should we? But again from (1) there is no such thing as 'value' or 'emotion' or even 'choice' in random noise - you can see they hypocrisy of the statement. You're caught in a 'Chinese Finger Trap' of Scientific Materialism. You cannot on one hand talk about 'choice' 'values' because physics says those would be 'emotional' choices, when at the same time, materialist physics also tells us that there is no choice, emotion, intelligence, consciousness to begin with. Physics is telling us that you and I are just rocks rolling down a hill. We hit a bump, we go one way or another. That's it. No choice, no intelligence, no science, no discoveries, nothing is 'evolving' - just pure random noise like the fuzzy screen on the old TV sets. Remember that physics has not proven that the universe exists according to a certain set of rules. Physics is postulating that. We assume the Universe can be described as a set of equations, so we go about trying to describe things using equations. Because these equations have been very objectively helpful to us over the last few hundred years, and using them we can get rid of a bunch of fairy tales and ridiculous ideas ... we've come to believe that Physics itself is the search for truth. But it's not - Physics is only the search for material truth within the constraints that it's set for itself. By definition, physics may not be able to help us understand the meaning of life because they've resigned themselves to studying the lego blocks of life. Now consider an alternative: the perspective of 'the observer' and that Science is merely a tool for understanding the Universe around is - that Science is not a 'Truth' but a 'Tool'. That 'life' is the basis of our existence, and that it expresses itself via materialism, but is not entirely constructed of that materialism. The only reason we take any real interest in Materialist Science, ironically, is because of our creative impulses. Obviously - it's abstract, and not prone to equations, and can easily devolve into 'magical thinking' but that doesn't invalidate the ultimate premise of non-materialist thinking. Below the 'tree trunk' of Physics is 'Metaphysics' and it's worth remember that physics at any given time is only one way of interpreting the universe.

by jariel 6y ago

imtringued 6y ago

>The problem with this materialist view when taken to it's full extent, is that it completely denies the most important reality to us - that we are 'life'. What we care about is the expression of life, we don't write laws to protect 'random bags of talking jelly' - our entire cultural foundation surrounds this notion of our being alive. And FYI - most common definitions of life exhibit this 'consciousness' problem, in that they may use biological terms, reproduction, all of that, but it's ultimately mechanical and materialist. Valuing life is a purely emotional and cultural thing. We care more about the lives of our relatives and friends than random strangers but we also care more about random strangers because they are the same species as us than we care about the lives of other species. Sometimes humans (by that I mean the Nazis) think other humans (e.g. Jews) are "inhuman" and deserve death as a punishment. (e.g. Holocaust) There is obviously no scientific basis in valuing life. It's a choice everyone makes for themselves. The HN submission about male chicks being shredded or even gassed is basically the same thing as the Holocaust but for chicken. Industrial killing of life, yet we don't care as long as we get our eggs. Thousands of years ago the world used to be lawless even for humans. Tribes were constantly engaging in violent conflicts. They didn't care one bit about the life of someone or something they deemed unimportant. We care about life because we are selfish and if someone takes a life away that we care about we want to satisfy our selfishness and engage in revenge against the killer.

jariel 6y ago
So your comment misses two important points I'm trying to convey: 1) "It's a choice everyone makes for themselves." You cannot make a choice (According to Materialist Physics) You are nothing but random noise. A random equation cannot 'make' choices, it cannot 'make' anything there is nothing being 'made'. There is no such thing as 'intelligence' in random noise. So take a moment to grasp that for a second, because it reveals something about the first part of your statement: 2) "There is obviously no scientific basis in valuing life." What you mean to say is maybe there is no 'Materialist Scientific Basis' for valuing life. Because according to physics, why should we? But again from (1) there is no such thing as 'value' or 'emotion' or even 'choice' in random noise - you can see they hypocrisy of the statement. You're caught in a 'Chinese Finger Trap' of Scientific Materialism. You cannot on one hand talk about 'choice' 'values' because physics says those would be 'emotional' choices, when at the same time, materialist physics also tells us that there is no choice, emotion, intelligence, consciousness to begin with. Physics is telling us that you and I are just rocks rolling down a hill. We hit a bump, we go one way or another. That's it. No choice, no intelligence, no science, no discoveries, nothing is 'evolving' - just pure random noise like the fuzzy screen on the old TV sets. Remember that physics has not proven that the universe exists according to a certain set of rules. Physics is postulating that. We assume the Universe can be described as a set of equations, so we go about trying to describe things using equations. Because these equations have been very objectively helpful to us over the last few hundred years, and using them we can get rid of a bunch of fairy tales and ridiculous ideas ... we've come to believe that Physics itself is the search for truth. But it's not - Physics is only the search for material truth within the constraints that it's set for itself. By definition, physics may not be able to help us understand the meaning of life because they've resigned themselves to studying the lego blocks of life. Now consider an alternative: the perspective of 'the observer' and that Science is merely a tool for understanding the Universe around is - that Science is not a 'Truth' but a 'Tool'. That 'life' is the basis of our existence, and that it expresses itself via materialism, but is not entirely constructed of that materialism. The only reason we take any real interest in Materialist Science, ironically, is because of our creative impulses. Obviously - it's abstract, and not prone to equations, and can easily devolve into 'magical thinking' but that doesn't invalidate the ultimate premise of non-materialist thinking. Below the 'tree trunk' of Physics is 'Metaphysics' and it's worth remember that physics at any given time is only one way of interpreting the universe.