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It comes with all the blindness and limitations of materialist thinking

by oska 2y ago

smokedetector1 2y ago
For some reason materialism is so popular among tech people that it's almost considered foolish/primitive/superstitious to think any other way. Why is that? Is it the fact that programming is a god-like experience that gives one the illusion the mind is as comprehensible as the complex program I wrote in Java? Or is it a shared personality trait of people that get into tech, that they are disconnected from an experience of their own aliveness and soul?
- oska 2y ago
  Good questions
- anon84873628 2y ago
  I would call the shared personality trait "pragmatism". Since tech people generally recognize that the preponderance of the evidence points towards a purely physical explanation for the human brain. Even considering the hard problem of consciousness, there's no compelling reason to believe it can't have a physical basis, or can't be replicated in other complex systems. Going back to the original comment, the perspective that "the earth is a computer that created AGI through humans" is not inherently wrong, though it may be a uselessly broad definition.
  - smokedetector1 2y ago
    > preponderance of the evidence Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness. What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness? As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever. However the reality is: - Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience. Therefore, the belief that science will, at some point, explain consciousness is not an inherently rational position, it is based on a sort of faith that science will succeed and apply everywhere. It masquerades as rational because of the materialist bias.
    - kbelder 2y ago
      - Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience. Similar argument could be made about every other subject that science has explained, prior to science explaining it. This is just an argument from the gaps.
      - smokedetector1 2y ago
        Wait wait.. I thought nothing is allowed besides rigorously-justified scientific inference. But you've made your position unfalsifiable - there is literally nothing you believe science can't touch, even if it has failed so far to make progress. Is there anything you could imagine that would make you reconsider? Sounds unfalsifiable to me, and many would say that makes your theory logically unrigorous. I like to call your belief system "science of the gaps." You have no evidence that science can touch the question, but you have faith it will, but worst of all you believe that your faith is superior to other well thought-out theories, which you dismiss automatically as foolish superstition. Look up refutations of materialism to learn more.
        talldayo 2y ago
        Science is a process - it leaves room for "we don't know" or "this is wrong" in it's methods. But that alone doesn't mean that determinism and causality are a fraud, it just means that we lack the tools to record and observe what we want. The mystery of the aeolipile did not preclude 20th century aviation, and a lack of particle colliders doesn't revise the recorded history of physics. Science, when applied properly, really is a gap-filling measure. The "God of the Gaps" fails because it collapses as we learn more about our surroundings; in many ways, immaterial epistemology has been driven out of scientific research for the same reason. You can't have your immaterial cake and understand it too. > Look up refutations of materialism to learn more. Most refutations of materialism are just observably wrong. I don't disagree with a lot of the concepts, but most of them are used as means to nonsensical ends that only work if you reject the logical basis for everything that currently exists in reality. Anti-materialism is uncomfortably close to "revisionist objectivism" and sends you down a slippery-slope of trying to reframe all of science under a satisfying theory of everything. Therein lies the conflict of modern traditionalism. Do you want to be correct, or do you want to be happy?

It comes with all the blindness and limitations of materialist thinking

by oska 2y ago

It comes with all the blindness and limitations of materialist thinking

For some reason materialism is so popular among tech people that it's almost considered foolish/primitive/superstitious to think any other way. Why is that? Is it the fact that programming is a god-like experience that gives one the illusion the mind is as comprehensible as the complex program I wrote in Java? Or is it a shared personality trait of people that get into tech, that they are disconnected from an experience of their own aliveness and soul?

oska 2y ago
Good questions
anon84873628 2y ago
I would call the shared personality trait "pragmatism". Since tech people generally recognize that the preponderance of the evidence points towards a purely physical explanation for the human brain. Even considering the hard problem of consciousness, there's no compelling reason to believe it can't have a physical basis, or can't be replicated in other complex systems. Going back to the original comment, the perspective that "the earth is a computer that created AGI through humans" is not inherently wrong, though it may be a uselessly broad definition.
- smokedetector1 2y ago
  > preponderance of the evidence Theres evidence for the fact that the human brain affects consciousness. What is the evidence that the brain causes consciousness? As far as I can see, the only evidence people can produce is a general sense that science has successfully produced materialist explanations for everything it has tried to, and will continue to do so successfully forever. However the reality is: - Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience. Therefore, the belief that science will, at some point, explain consciousness is not an inherently rational position, it is based on a sort of faith that science will succeed and apply everywhere. It masquerades as rational because of the materialist bias.
  - kbelder 2y ago
    - Science has, up til now, failed to make even the slightest progress on the origin of consciousness. - Science does not even claim to attempt to answer all questions about the human experience. Similar argument could be made about every other subject that science has explained, prior to science explaining it. This is just an argument from the gaps.
    - smokedetector1 2y ago
      Wait wait.. I thought nothing is allowed besides rigorously-justified scientific inference. But you've made your position unfalsifiable - there is literally nothing you believe science can't touch, even if it has failed so far to make progress. Is there anything you could imagine that would make you reconsider? Sounds unfalsifiable to me, and many would say that makes your theory logically unrigorous. I like to call your belief system "science of the gaps." You have no evidence that science can touch the question, but you have faith it will, but worst of all you believe that your faith is superior to other well thought-out theories, which you dismiss automatically as foolish superstition. Look up refutations of materialism to learn more.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        Science is a process - it leaves room for "we don't know" or "this is wrong" in it's methods. But that alone doesn't mean that determinism and causality are a fraud, it just means that we lack the tools to record and observe what we want. The mystery of the aeolipile did not preclude 20th century aviation, and a lack of particle colliders doesn't revise the recorded history of physics. Science, when applied properly, really is a gap-filling measure. The "God of the Gaps" fails because it collapses as we learn more about our surroundings; in many ways, immaterial epistemology has been driven out of scientific research for the same reason. You can't have your immaterial cake and understand it too. > Look up refutations of materialism to learn more. Most refutations of materialism are just observably wrong. I don't disagree with a lot of the concepts, but most of them are used as means to nonsensical ends that only work if you reject the logical basis for everything that currently exists in reality. Anti-materialism is uncomfortably close to "revisionist objectivism" and sends you down a slippery-slope of trying to reframe all of science under a satisfying theory of everything. Therein lies the conflict of modern traditionalism. Do you want to be correct, or do you want to be happy?