Let hear them conjects
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.
We likely live in a simulation.
Assuming it’s possible to create a simulation, the odds of us being in a simulation is 50%
But if you can create one simulation, maybe you can create 1 million. Or maybe you can create nested simulations.
So even if the chance of creating a simulation is 1%, but the creation of one simulation means millions are created, the odds of us living in a simulation are above 99.99%.
Another theory is the Boltzmann Brain. Basically the idea that a brain can spontaneously appear in space:
By one calculation, a Boltzmann brain would appear as a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum after a time interval of 101050 years.
Which means if the universe lasts forever, but has already reached a point where worlds can’t form, there’s infinite time for something as complex as a brain to suddenly spawn. Which also means it’s more likely that you don’t exist and are just a brain that will last for a nanosecond before disappearing, and none of this is real. In fact, in a universe that lasts forever, the fact you are a brain that will disappear in a nanosecond is more likely than you being a human with a real past.
It’s been a looooong nanosecond.
That’s what you think!
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 believe that life as we know it exists somewhere else in the universe .
Tied to this, I believe there is no intelligent life close enough to ever reach us physically (short of freezing themselves and traveling millions of years, but we really aren’t worth that trip lol) I don’t believe faster than light travel will ever exist.
Yeah, I’ve lost my interest in their being other intelligent life in the universe. It’s pretty clear we’ll never be able to meet and quite likely never be able to even see the evidence for their existence. So, how does it matter?
I believe the opposite.
I think there’s so much evidence of intelligent alien life visiting us that it takes a massive act of denial and self-delusion to ignore it.
In fact, I think the idea that alien evidence is all faked is a massively unbelievable conspiracy theory. The alien hoax would require a level of secret conspiracy that puts chemtrails or CIA mind control conspiracy theories to shame.
The organization necessary to produce the constant stream of alien evidence would dwarf the Manhattan Project.
What “evidence”? Lmfao what the fuck are you talking about?
In the same respect the level of organization and silence required to hide such evidence is extraordinary. It’s every government of every country that would have to keep what they know under wraps. The more people involved in a conspiracy the more likely it is for the silence to be broken. It’s not that every bit of “evidence” is faked, it’s that the majority of it that comes from a government source is misinterpreted from someone who wants it to be aliens as opposed to having an independent expert in whatever field study it.
As far as we can tell, other than people looking to sell books, all the “evidence” we have of visitations/technology has been disproven by either independent analysis of footage, or the eventual release of government documentation that shows it was an experiment “we” conducted. Those kinds of things are kept confidential for a certain amount of time in case they are connected to potential military research.
There is absolutely nothing from what we currently understand about physics that would allow for traveling the kinds of distances necessary. The vast majority of what is left to understand about how “physics” works is in relation to the types of energy/particles that don’t interact with matter as we currently understand it so it couldn’t carry anything “physical” with it, unless we’re now talking about “dark matter” aliens, but if that were the case then we’d have no evidence of their existence because we can’t observe that as it doesn’t interact with the matter we have access to. A camera cant capture a “dark matter” substance.
I say all of this as someone who WANTS aliens to exist and be able to visit us. It’s very upsetting to me to think it isn’t possible lol
Yeah, I don’t think there’s intelligent life in our galaxy. Life definitely, on the level of microbes. But probably nothing higher.
Has anyone calculated like “the odds” of it probabalistically?
We don’t have enough data about the frequency of life to say for sure, since we only have one data point (our planet). If we knew more about how life can arise originally, then perhaps we could make a prediction.
I’m not sure exactly how else you might calculate it, but, we know life is possible, so in an infinitely large universe, containing infinite stars with infinite planets existing for an infinite amount of time, the odds of life existing on another planet can’t be less than 100%.
The Drake Equation is a probabilistic formula meant to derive the number of civilizations which humans could potentially communicate with.
The fermi paradox does challenge the formula though, as it implies fi and/or fc are very small or zero.
What if the earth is a singular and universal outlier?
Chances are they won’t be oxygen breathers anyway.
Don’t be too sure about that. If you look around online, you should be able to find chemistry predictions for intelligent life. While not assuming any compatible chemistry, we can look at some of the basic types of reactions needed to support a life form and the type of environment we assume. Apparently carbon and oxygen based chemistry is most favorable
Do we already have that with the crazy anerobic volcano or the high-temperature deep sea vent dwelling microorganisms or something?
That’s just arrogant.
Please subtract the assumptions and respond to specific claim. Life is a lottery. What are the equivalent chances of that in coinflips analogy and then give the response in the approximate amount of times that could happen over an eternity or minimally the “death of our galaxy or universe” context
I’ll break it down further.
We know life is possible, because we’re here.
Nobody knows the exact odds of life being created, but we know it’s >0. One in a billion? Trillion?
So imagine a trillion sided die. If you roll a 1, life is created.
If you get only one chance, you probably aren’t creating life, but if you are allowed to roll the die constantly from the instant of the big bang, until the end of time, you WILL roll a one. Now, imagine an infinite number of planets rolling an infinite number of trillion sided dice for billions of years.
Sure, it’s very unlikely for any individual roll to be 1, but it’s downright IMPOSSIBLE for NONE of them to EVER roll it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming that there are aliens flying around and probing people. I don’t believe that’s true at all. But there is life out there. Maybe it’s just plants or bacteria, or some form of living rock that we’ve never encountered before, but it’s out there.
I say it’s arrogant because Earth is a tiny insignificant speck in the universe, and assuming that only YOUR planet can randomly produce life is a very self centered point of view.
Bold of you to assume life on earth originated on earth.
For life in general I would agree but for human level intelligence I’m not so sure, in our galaxy anyway. The number of things that had to line up for us to be the dominant lifeform on the planet is enormous.
Goldilocks zone. Life. Large outer gas giants. Complex life (someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe this has only happened once in 4B years / all complex lifeforms have a common ancestor) Oxygen tolerant life. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Multiple mass extinctions. Planet habitable for enormously long periods. Evolution of large brains for the first time. Etc
It was calculated decades ago. I remember Carl Sagan talking about it.
I think you’re referring to the Drake Equation, but that’s more of a thought experiment, there’s no way to calculate any of the required probabilities inputted to the equation to be able to calculate the output.
If you take standard cosmological assumptions (the universe is infinite and homogeonous) then the odds are 100% as everything that is physically possible happens infinite times.
unless you mean the observable universe, in which case we dont know, but given the vast scale of it is likely very close to 1. We cant calculate it without knowing how likely life is to form in the first place.
The reason John Mulaney got divorced was that after getting off cocaine he realized that he did actually want kids but Anna didn’t
Once I got sober I realized immediately that I married the wrong person. Part of that was her absolutely not wanting to have kids, whereas I just wasn’t ready for them yet.
People are basically good
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.
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.
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.
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?
Thing is, that tribalism is what drives the good parts.
It falls apart with distance or numbers, though.
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.
"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)
I’ve mentioned them before and they’re semi-related, in a broad sense:
I believe the Congressional baseball game shooting was likely intended to benefit Trump.
I believe it’s likely that the Russian government has knowingly promoted interracial cuck porn, in some capacity.
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.
When I started working decades ago, we were taught how to use bent bits of fence wire to find underground pipes before digging
I literally found scores of pipes that way, and saw dozens of other people do it regularly. It was even taught at a local agricultural college as part of the horticulture course
Then someone told me it was a myth and doesn’t work, so I set up a blind test with a hidden bucket of water and I utterly failed to find it
I simply cannot explain this
Fascinating twist. Its like it was a subcultural mass delusion
There’s a part of me that believes that magic/psyonics/spirit whatever intentionally and willfully does not respond to the scientific method.
Whatever entity is behind it refuses to be subjected to scrutiny and furthermore refuses to be turned into a machine with an on-off switch.
You can have your magic or you can have your proof that magic doesn’t exist but you can’t have proof that magic exists and magic at the same time.
If something is tested and proven, it falls outside the realm of magic and just becomes normal everyday science or technology. It’s like the saying about alternative medicine. Anything that is proven to work is just called medicine.
I was taught this too growing up in rural america. Did it myself at some land my grandparents had.
Best explanation I’ve heard for why it “works” is that when looking for places to first install pipes the location tends to be obvious or intuitive, so then years later when someone needs to find it again we naturally trend to the same rough area, pull out those stupid rod things and when they randomly cross there’s a pipe there cause we’re already standing in the general right spot. Get a high enough success rate and our brains start to think there is causation to the correlation.
It’s because the water does not flow in “pipes” underground. It is nearly everywhere, and so you have “found” it most times… You just don’t know at what depth you will find it - until you ask your neighbor :)
It’s called Dowsing
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations (radiesthesia), gravesites, malign “earth vibrations” and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus.
I had the opposite experience. Consistently derided and dismissed it as woo. Went to my parents’ land a couple of years ago and my dad told me to try it. I didn’t want to, that’s how ridiculous I found it. But those things were moving in my hands in a way that had me halfway believing.
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!
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.
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.
Ancestor simulation.
Explain pls?
Technology improves to the point where after being born you cannot cope with reality. You’ve gotta go through the ancestor simulation and learn your way out so you can actually enjoy all the amazing stuff of life afterwards.
The ancestor simulation is where I’m at.
That’s fascinating
I also really hate their methods and don’t really want to reach reality.
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.
You’re right, but we don’t care because wealth has diminishing marginal returns on utility.
the libertarian pipe dream
Inductive reasoning. I don’t have any non-circular reason to believe that previous experience should predict future events. But I’m gonna believe it anyway.
That’s… huh. Yeah I guess you’re right
That P != NP.
