Evolution.

Why let it determine your moral compass? — Banno

Why not? Evolution is the best theory around and at the very least, it should be able to give us a satisfactory answer to questions about human issues. We are living things, right? :chin:

Untrue. That's something an apologist would argue. Altruism has huge survival advantages for tribal creatures like human beings. Some people suggest that all altruism is self-interested altruism. — Tom Storm

Noted! However, if it (altruism), as you say, has "...huge survival advantages..." why are there only a handful of altruists around [I'm sure you know about the top 1% who own more than then bottom 90%]? Furthermore, why is altruism so damned difficult to adopt as one's philosophy?

Thanks for alerting me to the evolutionary advantages of altruism and continuing along the same trajectory, there's a good profit margin in terms of maintaining a good ecosystem, one conducive to the well-being of humans if our altruism extends beyond the human family to other living organisms.

Is it the case that altruism needn't be a universal requirement as in not everyone has to be one for the entire human race and the biosphere as well to accrue benefits? Looks like the altruist population need only number in a few hundreds/thousands to keep billions of selfish individuals living peacefully with each other. I might've answered my own question.

Another thing to consider maybe the trend in the number of altruists and their health - mental and physical - over time. Evolution is a dynamic process after all and if altruism is losing popularity, explaining it in terms of "...huge survival advantages..." amounts to a gross error for the simple reason that Darwinian processes may in fact be phasing out this particular feature (altruism) from the gene pool. Never thought of it that way but it does seem completely within the realm of possibility.

I think it might have been better had you stopped there. — Banno

Touché sir! Touché but the alternative to an honest discussion about such a sensitive issue amounts to burying one's head in the sand. Tough choices, sir, tough choices.

That said, it's odd that evolution should've installed in us a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong, which, you yourself being an example, raises objections to the tactic of letting the weak and helpless die - you feel anguish when trans kids take their own lives.

This isn't something new though, right? People who are proponents of evolution have a tough time explaining how altruism and evolution hang together as a coherent story of life. — TheMadFool

Did I not redeem myself?

48% of trans kids attempt suicide. It's 2.4% in the general population. Au stats. Telling trans kids to get over it an move on is child abuse. — Banno

I don't want to downplay the real and extreme suffering involved whether its trans kids or any other demographic. Neither do I want to come off as an inconsiderate jerk but what if we approach this issue from a military strategist's perspective within a Darwinian context and learn to accept that no victory, in this case an evolutionary one, comes without some losses in "the struggle for survival". Apparently, humans are upsetting the natural order by defying the evolutionary maxim that life is about "survival of the fittest". Let those who can't handle the truth meet their end whatever form that might take. This simple strategy has led us to where we are it (a highly successful species by all accounts), it might be dangerous to abandon what is quite obviously a good gameplan for life in general and humans in particular.

That said, it's odd that evolution should've installed in us a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong, which, you yourself being an example, raises objections to the tactic of letting the weak and helpless die - you feel anguish when trans kids take their own lives.

This isn't something new though, right? People who are proponents of evolution have a tough time explaining how altruism and evolution hang together as a coherent story of life.

Someone must've mentioned this already but just in case no one has, I'll say it.

The possibility that reality could be an illusion is predicated on our inability to distinguish reality from illusion (deus deceptor, brain in a vat, simulation). In other words reality is, in every sense, identical to illusion. If so, it doesn't matter if we're in an illusion or reality, right? Both are, if you really think about it, one and the same thing. Were they not, the question, "are we in an illusion?" would never have seen the light of day so to speak.

Teaching resilience is good; so being in challenging situations is important for growth. But not to the point of suicide. — Banno

:chin:

But aside from that, lets say you're using a dispenser that is able to dispense coffee at a maximum rate of 100 ml/s, are you going to take advantage of that faster rate of 100 ml/s and save yourself 2.5 seconds or are you going to go with the slower rate of 50 ml/s and take an extra 2.5 seconds just because you want to be patient? If the only dispenser you can use has a maximum rate of 50 ml/s then it would make sense to be patient because as you put it, being impatient is pointless, but if you're able to use a dispenser that has a rate of 100 ml/s would you use it and by using such a dispenser does that mean you're impatient? — HardWorker

Good question. I was just mulling over this about half an hour ago and what I concluded is that impatience, despite being maligned as a vice, is actually your intuition asking one question1. Can we speed things up? and telling you 2. time is of the essence. These are two sides of the same coin of course; after all if time is a limited, thus valuable resource, we need to use it sparingly and wisely, thus the felt-need faster is better (to save time...for other things).

On this view, an intriguing aspect of the idea that patience is a virtue emerges, to wit, time isn't as big a deal as it's made out to be. A shocking claim but necessarily true if patience is regarded as something good (or not?). Perhaps, by being patient you offer to others your dearest possession - time - and that, it's believed/assumed, brings you one step closer to sainthood.

Saw this sign on a road once:

Be patient on the road if you don't want to be a patient in a hospital — Road Sign

Last I checked, it's still there.

Anyway, there might be something in it for a person who's patient. As they say, haste makes waste.

Giordano Bruno's speculation of "thousands of other suns with other earths" (which got him burned at the stake in 1600 CE), it took nearly four centuries before humans walked on the moon and the Hubble telescope, etc had found apparently Earth-like exoplanets around distant stars; likewise, the problem of testing "string theory" is currently intractable, and besides there are other candidates such as "LQG" being worked on toward prospective experimental testing. (NB: Carlo Rovelli, Sean Caroll, Kip Thorne, David Deutsch, Frank Wilczek, Mag Tegmark, et al are among the current popularizers of fundamental physics that I've found most informative.) — 180 Proof

Giordano Bruno :up: :clap: RIP "bro"


Thanks for putting the issue I raised into (the right) perspective. The timeline of science, though at times a rapid succession of discovries, seems to also consist of prolonged effort spanning over decades and centuries and perhaps even millennia.

My understanding is that the energies involved to show that 'spacetime is quantized" with these models, or that it is not, are still orders of magnitude higher than can be produced. i suspect scientists are looking for extremely high-energy naturally occurring events out somewhere in the universe to be used as "living laboratories" just as they'd found and used colliding neutron stars & black holes which generated gravity waves they could then detect as GR predicts. And nagging problems like "inflation" (re: Einstein's fudge factor aka "my greatest mistake" the cosmological constant), "dark energy" & "dark matter" also need to be solved too in order to complete a ToE, so "string theory", though popularized for almost the last two decades by Brian Green et al isn't the only, or even most, promising game in town. Anyway, that's my oversimplistic layperson's understanding of the situation at the moment. — 180 Proof

I see. So, the situation ain't as bad as I've been thinking it is. Astronomy then will play a huge role in string theory as I've been told the energies of cosmic events - black holes, supernovae, etc. - are colossal. Perhaps string theorists should tie up with astronomers and do what's the most sensible thing to do - wait and watch, fingers crossed.

Patience — HardWorker

To my knowledge, everything that can be said to happen - those things (phenomena/processes/procedures) that constitue the setting in which the concept of patience is meaningful - have a rate at which they occur. For instance, if you're filling your cup with coffee, the coffee will pour into your cup with a certain flow rate which the manufacturer of the coffee dispenser considers appropriate.

Now, the upper limit for any rate is the mind-boggling speed, a rate, of light which is, according to Google, 299,792,458 m/s but the rates we usually encounter in our day to day lives are tiny fractions of the speed of light. The takeaway from this being that rates have maximums and also minimums.

Suppose now that you're waiting for your cup to fill up with coffee. Your cup has a capacity of 250 ml, the maximum rate of flow of your coffee dispenser is 50 ml/s. No matter what you do, you will have to wait, at the very least, 5 s. Given these circumstances, losing one's patience because 5 s is not something you feel you can put up with is pointless and unnecessarily stressful.

That said, there's a minimum rate too and if your calculations show that whatever it is that's of interest to you is happening at a rate less than the minimum rate, you have the right to be impatient and your complaint if any is fully justified.

I've heard that "patience is a virtue" but then nobody likes a person who "takes his own sweet time."

fallibility — James Riley

Everything seems to turn on that single, 11-lettered, 5-syllabled, word. The death penalty presents itself as an option of punishment when innocent lives have been taken. This, to me, implies that the judicial system that sentences people to death, that system must itself be infallible. After all, if it isn't and it isn't, innocent people could be executed and that's exactly what capital punishment is reserved for. Basically, given that to be human is to err and we are human (right? :chin: ), we should use extreme caution when we're considering hangmen, firing squads, electricians, prison doctors, as an option - they're all, as the police are so fond of saying, "armed and dangerous."

also feel that doing the right thing shouldn't be a situational decision which makes me learn towards my initial opinion of doing the right thing no matter what. — Tex

:rofl:

Before you can do the right thing, you must know what the right thing to do is. The former, for certain, isn't a walk in the park but the latter is known for causing people to tear their hair out in extreme frustration.

Off the top of my head, death loves "real" men but the feeling may not be mutual.

Disclaimer: Idiosyncracy warning!

Does gun powder refute a ToE? — Gregory

It definitely does but it's got to be in a bullet, the bullet in the firing chamber of a gun, the gun's muzzle pressed against the temple (right/left, your choice) of the person who proves the ToE. Your index finger should be on the trigger.

Argumentum ad baculum - very persuasive in the right hands.

Gravity waves were unfalsifiable for a century or more yet not "woo woo", you know why? Because in principle they were always testable, but the technological means to do so were lacking until recently. Same with string theory: the energy required to test it are far beyond even foreseeable technological capabilities at the moment but it is in principle testable nonetheless. Neither "pseudo-science" (falsified and not the best explanation available e.g. "Lamarckism") nor "woo woo" (unfalsifiable in principle and doesn't explain anything that it purports to explain e.g. "Jungian Synchronicity"). Though I'm not persuaded of its approach compared to, say, Rovelli's LQG, I hold that string theory purports to explain a great deal (re: quantum gravity) but that so far there aren't any technically feasible ways to falsify its explanatory model (i.e. science). — 180 Proof

I'm not as informed as I'd like to be on string theory. What exactly is string theory? I only recall that it, employing higher dimensions, succeeds in unifying gravity with quantum mechanics. I also remember a video featuring American theoretical physicist Brian Greene making statements that string theory weaves a coherent story around the four forces (fundamental interactions) which to physicists is a big deal I suppose.

Thanks for clarifying why string theory isn't falsifiable. It looks like that it can be disproved even if, for the moment, only in principle. What's missing is the technology to make the string theory experiments a reality. I wonder what the level of urgency is though. Given string theory is one that's widely publicized as a candidate conceptual framework for The Theory Of Everything (TOE), shouldn't scientists be racing full-throttle towards developing the technology to test string theory? The fact this isn't the case is puzzling and also amusing too: we know what the holy grail of physics is (TOE), we've found an object that could very well be it (string theory) but we need some kind of foolproof method of authentication and that's where this exciting story of discovery is left unfinished. What's up with that? On second thought, don't answer.

Don't know about scientism as opposed to science. But there are many secular humanists - advocates of science who would argue that science provides the best models of reality based on the evidence available and makes no proclamations about truth. It is a tool, no more. To say there is no God or to say that there are no other truth sources does not fit with many secular humanist science geeks I know — Tom Storm

Google definition of "fact": a thing that is known or proved to be true.

I guess to err is human...

By the way, I consider Richard Dawkins to be one of the greatest living luminaries of our times.

Some would say the sole article of faith required is absolute commitement to the non-existence of God. — Wayfarer

That's a fine point. I suppose scientism is just a wolf (atheism) in sheep's (science's) clothing.

On a different note, your little exchange with @180 Proof reminded me of a video interview of actual string theorists and though they spoke of string theory in glowing terms they did make it a point to mention its fatal flaw viz. it makes no verifiable/falsifiable claims that could be lab-tested. In a Popperian sense, this definitely is a serious setback for string theory for it relegates what to me is a very promising mathematical model to pseudoscience (woo-woo). The only thing that keeps physicists from abandoning string theory is its similarity to a really powerful idea in science - Einstein's theory of relativity. I can see string theorists telling themselves, "we're on the right track!" and their detractors going, "maybe they're on to something". Einstein was no ordinary person.

There’s the biological theory of the evolution of species. Then there’s Darwinism as a philosophy. Sometimes, there’s a connection. — Wayfarer

That a connection exists maybe true but a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the theory of evolution is, as creationists insist, "just another theory" among many others I suppose. Scientists. fortunately or not, are sending out mixed signals on this score - some like Richard Dawkins vehemently maintain that Darwin's theory is a "truth" and others like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Lawrence Krauss admit that a scientific "theory" is only a tentative explanatory framework, liable to revision or even, sometimes, to expunction.

For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that scientisim's bedrock foundation is a firm conviction that science is a, the sole dealer/purveyor/agent of "truth" which is clearly not true.

it seems any theory of everything would be about "falling" — Gregory

Interesting! Do you realize though that such an interpretation is rather parochial? "Geocentric" is the right word I suppose.

I agree with the sentiment, but I don’t know if even the firmest propagandists of ‘scientism’ would put it that way. It’s more the way that the ‘scientific worldview’ filters through to what everyone thinks is the case. That the universe is mechanical, that life arises by chance, that humans are no different to animals, that reasoning is no different to computation. It shows up in these kinds of underlying sentiments. — Wayfarer

Evolution is JUST A THEORY — Unknown

Scientists have to realize this simple truth. They can't deny it for the simple reason that a better "theory" will immediately and with minimal to no resistance knock Darwin's "theory" of evolution off the pedestal its been put on for nearly 200 years now and counting.

My initial and gut feeling is that yes, doing the right thing is the right thing to do. Not only for your integrity but also your conscience. — Tex

:rofl:

As a man you should not complain too loudly about difficulty or pain, you should expect hardship and bear the burden, you should never use your physical strength to harm those weaker than you, you should use your strength to help those weaker than you, you should be the first to volunteer, et al. — BigThoughtDropper

:rofl:

I think we are on the same page there. After Alexander the Great, the western world including parts of the Middle East was very much Hellenized and Hellenistic and Indian culture obviously intersected or overlapped to some extent as shown by Indian temple art and astronomy/astrology. — Apollodorus

I thought Alexander the "great" returned home or at least tried to quite soon after only reaching the borders of the then Indian civilization. He never had anything the likes of a military campaign to conquer India and so never did. In other words Alexander the "great" couldn't have contributed much towards the Hellenization of India, assuming that happened at all, for his interaction with India was too brief and also only occurred at the periphery of the contemporaneous Indian empire.

I’m fully aware that there is a difference between parallels and diffusion. But if we can establish a number of parallels beyond what can reasonably be regarded as “coincidence” or "multiple discovery", then I think we have good reason to at least try to look into the problem of diffusion or origin. — Apollodorus

Agreed! That there seems to be a by and large 1-to-1 correspondence between Greek and Indian thought can't just be a coincidence. Some sorta exchange of ideas having taken place is as good as explanations can get.

In my humble opinion Buddhism along with Jainism of course bears the unmistakable signature of "expansive inclusivism" on steroids so to speak. By this I mean to bring to the fore the fact that Buddhist (& Jain) moral theories encompasses not just humans but is intended to cover all living things, life as a whole with no exceptions at all.

Compare this to communism which is rather provincial in this respect, making a big deal of only a specific stratum of the human socio-political strucure to wit the so-called proletariat.

That out of the way, I have to admit that on this view the difference betwixt Buddhism (& Jainism) and communism is a matter of degrees and not kind, that the religion is faring much better than the political theory begs an explanation; after all, communism with its concern for the working class (only humans) is close to home while Buddhism is, in this respect, a completely radical outlook. It's as if a person performs better, is more successful when fae takes care of strangers rather than faer own family. A paradox in its own right.

The paradox of capital punishment is this: to my reckoning, mind you this isn't an indepth analysis, the most heinous crimes, crimes that seem to fit the death penalty like a glove - made for each other - are usually committed by people who seem to have one or other severe psychological pathology. The irony is that such people qualify for the insanity defense and are for that reason saved from the gallows. This might be a gross oversimplication though but the general rule, if we could call it that, seems to be that, paradoxically, the more appropriate the death penatly is the less appropriate it is (only an insane person would cross the line between crimes punishable by incarceration and crimes that carry a mandatory death sentence). It's the inverse of the catch-22 scenario in which a person is declared sane because he wants to be declared insane, the desire to be declared insane serving as the evidence that he's sane. Likewise, a person who deserves to be put to death shouldn't be, the reason for that being that person deserves to be put to death The caveat here being the criminal sentenced to death must suffer from some kind of mental illness that severely limits the choices he/she can make.

To be honest, I'd like nothing more than for there to have been some kind of two-way knowledge/ideas transfer between Greek and Indian thinkers. It would be a tremendous source of inspiration and also set a fine precedent for modern Greeks and Indians and by extension other world cultures.

However, there's the small matter of Multiple Discovery. Nonetheless, linguistic evidence of near-identical words seems inexplicable in terms of multiple discovery theory. What's probably even more fascinating is how these memes - these are memes after all - found willing hosts in both cultures separated by vast tracts of ocean and land; it suggests that the lives, hopes, aspirations, fears, porblems, etc., the overall mise-en-scéne of the two culutures were by and large alike.

In historical dramas, whether western or asian, poor people are humble around rich people. It's part of how heirarchy works. Is that what you mean? — frank

I'm surprised that I have to explain it more than I already have. If it doesn't make sense then I guess it doesn't. Insofar as I'm concerned, it's a work in progress. I'll get back to you if I can crack this ethical puzzle. I don't know how but I'll try. Sayonara.

I am also interested in how one can otherwise deal with the Münchhausen Trilemma? — Trestone

J = There are good justifications

M = The Münchhausen trilemma is a good justification [because circularity, infinite regress, and axiomatic premises don't matter]

Argument A
1. IF J THEN M [Premise]
2. IF M THEN ~J [Premise]
3. J [Assumption if one believes there are good justifications]
4. M [1, 3 MP]
5. ~J [2, 4 MP]
QED

You might want to take a closer look at premise 2. Is the Münchhausen trilemma a good justification? How many different types of justifications are there? Current consensus is that the trio of circularity, infinite regress, and axiomatic premises exhausts every possible manner of justification. That being the case, given that none of the three is adequate, we must perforce concede that the Münchhausen trilemma is a good justification.

If you refuse the above argument then either you must put on the table an acceptable mode of justification outside the Münchhausen trilemma or cast doubt on one the premises I employed. The former option is going to be an uphill task given great many thinkers who've come before us have failed. The latter option is a dead end as it leads back to the Münchhausen trilemma.

Ergo, like it or not, for better or worse, you have little to go on insofar as falsifying or putting into question premise 2.

Remember, I'm justifying the Münchhausen trilemma which necessitates that I'm also assuming there are good justifications. All of this eventually boils down to the simple argument that IF you believe there are good justifications, you have to admit that the Münchhausen trilemma is one and if you do that, you also have to accept that there are no good justifications.

The alternative that's available to you is to reject the proposition J = There are good justifications and that's exactly what the Münchhausen trilemma states.

P.S. I have no idea what layer logic is. Sorry, can't say anything worthwhile on it.

The war was inevitable of course but we realized that only retrospectively; hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. The last battle was fought in fort Xasa. The enemy got into formation in the wee hours of the morning when the first rays of the sun hit the treetops of the nearby forest. The sight of the entire Y'sa army of battle-hardened troops spread out over the adjoining plain evoked in me a sense of both great awe and high terror.

It wasn't too long before we heard the horns of war blaring, signalling the Y'sa troops to begin their assault. In a matter of minutes, the gates of Xasa fort were creaking and moaning under the force of the Y'sa battering rams. Our troops inside the fort did all they could to maintain the integrity of the large wooden gates but alas, luck was not on our side that day.

After but a quarter of an hour of punishment the gates finally gave way. Through the breach the Y'sa soldiers poured in like a swarm of ants - there was nothing we could do to save the day.

Amidst all this, our general Sw'e was unmoved. He stood on the highest point on the wall and ordered our archers to draw their bows and aim at the Y'sa soldiers still outside the walls. For a brief moment, even in all the confusion of firece fighting, we locked eyes - he smiled at me and I, for some reason that I can't still wrap my head around, smiled back. The fort fell, the battle was lost, and the war too.

Like what? — frank

Moral relativism claims that good and bad are culturally or historically defined concepts but that's not an open and shut case as far as I'm concerned - you're ignoring the fact that ignorance of morality may have a role. Thus, moral relativism has no relevance to the issue of humility or any other moral issue for that matter. There's something else that's at play here. What that "something else" is is, as of the moment, a mystery to me.

Morality. All relative. — frank

:lol: If you say so but I'm pretty sure you're confusing moral relativism with something else.

Arrogance is the sail on the boat. Unfurl it and you'll go far. The person who believes humility is inherently good will stay at the dock and never know where she could have gone. — frank

:up:

The highest virtue is not virtuous — Laozi

or something like that

It's all relative. Fake humility isn't worth much is it? — frank

What do you mean by "it's all relative"?

Fake humility? Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I know you're on the right track - I can feel it - but you should, given the complexity of the issue and the rather poor quality of our reasoning, things you seem to be fully aware of, cut people some slack. It's not easy, no?

Plus, if a person is feigning humility, at the very least he's aware of the concept and how much it means to people. Contrast that to someone who's arrogant - fae either doesn't know or doesn't give a rat's ass about humility

I like the spirit of it, but did you notice — j0e

I seem to have overlooked that side of the issue - universal claims can't be verified. However, if it were up to me, I'd prefer to forfeit the right to universal claims rather than lose the ability to distinguish lies from truths. Just to be clear, this is just a gut-feeling and I have nothing by way of a good justification for it except that it feels right to me.

As for how knowledge is built up of an interconnected network of propositions that provide support to each other and in being such is vulnerable to catastrophic structural failure even if only one proposition fails (is proven false), we're on the same page. However, it's not all doom and gloom as such events have occurred in the past and have been dealt with quite well and without the need for a major overhaul of the existing framework of knowledge. The future though may be an altogether different story.

Indeed, at this juncture I'm reminded of the creationist trope in re Darwin's theory of evolution which is, it's just a theory - a rather rude reminder to science that despite its reputation and despite its achievements if we can even call it that, at its heart it'll always be just one of countless different ways of understanding the universe, Homeric gods being one of them.

I hope I didn't misunderstand you.

logical positivism — j0e

A drive-by of the Wikipedia article on logical positivism informs me that it's a epistemological position that only observationally verifiable claims/propositions count as knowledge and anything other than that is nonsense.

The rationale for logical positivism is under one interpretation a very good one. Take falsehoods/lies for instance. That a claim is a faleshood/lie is predicated on it not being verifiable via observation. Thus, claims that can't be confirmed by carrying out an observation are indistinguoshable in this respect from falsehoods/lies. In a nutshell, anything that fails the verification principle falls into the same cateogory as faleshoods/lies - in both cases attempts to verify claims fail or are impossible. The choice, a hard one I suppose, is to either reject the verification principle and, by doing that, legitimize falsehoods/lies or stick to a policy that no matter what else it does or is in what ways it could be wrong, it at least keeps falsehoods/lies at a safe distance. Just saying...

To 'naturalize' esotericism would be to take it as myths and metaphors. To the degree that cognition is intrinsically metaphorical and that metaphor does the heavy lifting in the works of the great philosophers, there's no sharp boundary between the esoteric and the rational. The vague boundary is more a matter of a second-order willingness to assimilate critics' objections. Consider that Witt wants to show the fly the way our of the bottle, which is like Plato showing fools the way out of the cave. The core principles of rationality (in my view) don't exclude myths and metaphor but only an anti-social refusal to recognize and respond to criticism. — j0e

Do you mean to say that those who promote rationality as the be all and end all of cognition as we know it are wrong to the extent that it's (rationality's) intolerant of criticism? Care to elaborate on that point? As far as I can tell, rationality is dead against any and all claims made sans evidence and this epistemic rule applies to itself too. If anything this highly commendable feature of rationality - it demands of itself what it demands of others (justification) - clearly points to a willingness to heed & respond to criticisms levelled against rationality. :chin:

Yes. Just as a pinprick has something tenuously in common with agony, posthuman well-being will have something even more tenuously in common with human peak experiences. But mastery of the pleasure-pain axis promises a hedonic revolution; some kind of phase change in hedonic tone beyond human comprehension. — David Pearce

I like what you said earlier:

Members of a civilisation with a hedonic range of, say, +20 to +30 have no real insight into the nature of life in a supercivilisation with a range that extends from a hedonic low of, say, +90 to an ultra-sublime +100. With pleasure as with pain, "more is different" – qualitatively different. — David Pearce

Perhaps I'm way off the mark in the way I interpret it but for what it's worth I'll give you an idea of how I made sense of what you said. To begin with, you've been regularly employing numbers in your posts on transhumanism. My guess is you have some kind of a numerical hedonic scale which you're using to make rough or perhaps even precise measurements of hedonic parameters (pleasure & suffering). What struck me as deeply insightful is, I quote, "'more is different' - qualitatively different". The word "more" implies the hedonic scale I was talking about earlier and one can imagine a slider on it that marks off differences in what I suppose is the intensity of pleasure or pain that's numerically i.e. quantitatively expressed.

I don't know if it matters to transhumanism or not but my intuition informs me that if there's a large enough quantitative distance between two hedonic states, the difference might be perceived as a qualitative one. In other words, a hedonic value of +20 may still be comprehensible in terms of pleasure or pain but one that's +100 may be experienced not as either pleasure or pain but as something about which we can only speculate at the moment.

An analogy might help. I've been to gyms and done some weight training. I recall trying to lift some weights and what I did was slowly increase the weight I was lifting which in effect is quantitatively increasing the stress on the muscles of my arms. In the initial stages, all I could feel was the strain on my muscles gradually rising but at a certain point, the strain transformed into pain. This, to me, seems like quantitative differences, if big enough, might be perceived as qualitative differences. Sorry if my short anecdote fails to do its job of elucidating my point but it's the best I could do.

The implication for transhumanism is this: A hedonic value of +90 or +100 may not be experienced as pleasure at all; at the very least, what we suppose is pleasure at hedonic levels +90 or +100 may be so radically different from what is pleasure at hedonic levels +20 or +30 that we would be forced to make a distinction between them - one is pleasure in its present recognizable form and the other is...???...anyone's guess.

I have a feeling that this isn't either a fatal flaw or even a minor irritation for transhumanism but I'd like your opinion nonetheless.

G'day.

So perhaps the real issue is the concept of rationality — j0e

Esotericism is associated, rightly or wrongly, with personal authority — j0e

This sounds like you want to sell the idea that esoteric knowledge isn't something one acquires via rational inquiry - the clarifications of definitions, the rigorous application of logic - and that there's another route to it which either bypasses rationality or might even violate its core principles. If such is true then sure sages have what is an exclusive monopoly over esoteric truths; after all, to someone like you or me who are what sages might refer to as "uninitiated" (into the ranks of the chosen) the radically different approaches/techniques/methods employed therein would be so alien to us that we would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to get a handle on what sages consider true knowledge or real wisdom.

Socrates is a complex figure — j0e

You can say that again.

Sorry, I should clarify. Even extreme hyperthymics today are still recognisably human. But future beings whose reward circuitry is so enriched that their darkest depths are more exalted than our "peak experiences" are not human as ordinarily understood – even if they could produce viable offspring via sexual reproduction with archaic humans, i.e. if they fulfil the normal biological definition of species membership. A similar point could be made if hedonic uplift continues. There may be more than one biohappiness revolution. Members of a civilisation with a hedonic range of, say, +20 to +30 have no real insight into the nature of life in a supercivilisation with a range that extends from a hedonic low of, say, +90 to an ultra-sublime +100. With pleasure as with pain, "more is different" – qualitatively different. — David Pearce

:ok: :up:

So posthumans, as the name suggests, wouldn't exactly be "humans." Posthumans would be so advanced - mentally and physically - that we humans wouldn't be able to relate to them amd vice versa. It would be as if we were replaced by posthumans instead of having evolved into them.

This is another reason for compassionate stewardship of Nature rather than traditional conservation biology,. — David Pearce

Bravo! I sympathize with that sentiment. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of unflagging effort to see the light and this for me is one such instance of deep significance to me.

I agree about potential risks. Presumably our successors will recognise too that premature amnesia about Darwinian life could be ethically catastrophic. If so, they will weigh the risks accordingly. But there is a tension between becoming superintelligent and superhappy, just as there is a tension today between being even modestly intelligent and modestly happy. What now passes for mental health depends on partially shutting out empathetic understanding of the suffering of others – even if one dedicates one's life to making the world a better place. Compare how mirror-touch synesthetes may feel your pain as their own. Imagine such understanding generalised. If one could understand even a fraction of the suffering in the world in anything but some abstract, formal sense, then one would go insane. Possibly, there is something that humans understand about reality that our otherwise immensely smarter successors won't grasp. — David Pearce

I absolutely agree. My own thoughts on this are quite similar. I once made the assertion that the truly psychologically normal humans are those who are clinically depressed for they see the world as it really is - overflowing with pain, suffering, and all manners of abject misery. Who, in faer "right mind", wouldn't be depressed, right? On this view what's passed off as "normal" - contentment and if not that a happy disposition - is actually what real insanity is. In short, psychiatry has completely missed the point which, quite interestingly, some religions like Buddhism, whose central doctrine is that life is suffering, have clearly succeeded in sussing out.

I'm speculating so cut me some slack. Good, whether we comprehend it for what it really is or not, has to my reckoning a particularly intriguing characteristic viz. it's self-abnegating. Good regards any and all kinds of self-promotion as inherently bad. This peculiar side of good probably stems from the overall theme of what good is which is that it's about others and that necessarily requires that the self (here good itself) be relegated to a lower position in the list of what matters (paradox warning!). Good wouldn't want to make a grand entry in any situation at all even if it were the case that if it did that it could eliminate all that's bad for doing that amounts to sounding one's own trumpet and that's decidedly bad.

Nice point. This fits in with the idea that esoteric statements are (serious) 'poetry' expressing worldviews and self-concepts. The sage is often unworldy, not a seeker of riches, a seeker instead of a simple life that leaves him free to think, to contemplate and compose this esoteric 'poetry,' to share it with others, edit it with others. — j0e

I don't mean to be disparaging of sages but I find it rather implausible that there could be knowledge that only a select few can get a handle on. Of course, the fact that I find mathematics near impossible to comprehend works against me is not lost on me. Maybe there is such a thing as knowledge that only a few chosen ones can fully understand.

I wonder how the Socratic Paradox (I know that I know nothing) fits into all this?

I'm not sure if I'm anywhere near the ballpark but the notion of esoteric knowledge is amenable to a rather mundane interpretation which is that so-called sages and ordinary folks, despite similarities, are poles apart in terms of, among other things, values. This immediately creats a rift, unbridgeable it seems, between sages and the hoi polloi and the world of the sage and the world of the average person become mutually unintelligible.

What I want to stress on though is that the sage doesn't actually possess knowledge that's special or transcendental, knowledge that's beyond the reach of the masses in the sense of being intellectually challenging to grasp. Truth be told, the sage sets himself apart from the rest only because his values don't coincide with the values of the general population. In other words, esoteric "knowledge" is a misconception/misnomer if it's understood as a deeper more truthful account of reality requiring genius and perseverance to wrap our heads around.

For the sparkling diamond that is the knowledge of sages, it's not about depth. It's about facets.