And that's where you're being deceived by maths. We can't have counted down from infinity because there is no first number and so we can't have counted up to infinity because there is no last number. — Michael

Can we not count the intervals starting with 1? Would that number not tend towards infinity given time is infinitely divisible or approach a certain value and terminate given a smallest sliver of time exists?

I thought about it even more and came up with another argument. I hope you and Bob haven't hashed this one out yet, because I'm not going to read your guys' entire conversation right now.

I start by defining an amoral act as: an act that results from deliberation that is not intended towards a moral end. Note that this is a statement about intent. I also define an amoral judgement as: a non-hypothetical ought judgement resulting from consideration of non-moral hypothetical oughts (a non-moral all things considered judgement).

You might argue that the new category of "amoral" act I am talking about above could still be good or bad based on whether it violates some arbitrary set of rules. I admit that it could be. What if it doesn't break any rules? What if there is an amoral act that flows from an amoral judgment that neither breaks nor acts in furtherance of any rules that could be made? Not only would it be neither good nor bad, but it would be amoral in the sense of being informed purely by non-moral hypothetical oughts and considerations, and thus would not be subject to moral scrutiny; given no intended moral consequences, there is no calculation that could be considered moral if you accept my definitions.

You could, of course, expand the moral sphere by eliminating space for such amoral acts and judgements, but they could never be fully eliminated, I think.

I thought about it some more and came up with a somewhat convoluted counterexample that, under certain constraints, might show that your first thesis is wrong.

Alright, so let’s suppose someone has two rules:

1. Benefit humanity
2. Benefit humanity maximally through advancing knowledge

This person holds benefiting humanity as the highest good, and they probably have some set of naive ideas about it. These two rules may interact, but the more specific rule, 2, is informed by 1 insofar as what benefits humanity is achieved in 2 through advancing some knowledge. So, everything appears to be pretty straightforward at this point. But let’s inspect 2 a little more closely.

2. can be optimized if we move from a non-hypothetical ought like “we ought to benefit humanity maximally through advancing knowledge because we want to benefit humanity”, to “because we want to benefit humanity maximally by furthering advancements in knowledge, we ought to define what it means to benefit humanity so as to maximize benefit to humanity through advancements in knowledge.” In fact, this evolution seems inevitable because in attempting to maximize benefit to humanity, the only important consideration is that which maximizes that arbitrary value - and redefining what “benefits humanity” theoretically does this.

Accordingly, if we bring “that which benefits humanity” into line with “that which advances knowledge”, by redefining that which benefits humanity to be the effects of advancements in knowledge, we end up with a one-to-one relationship between the two that does indeed maximize benefit to humanity through advancements in knowledge.

We are now operating with a new premise: that which advances knowledge benefits humanity. If benefiting humanity is still the highest good, we can say that that which advances knowledge is good, and that that which hinders advancements in knowledge is bad. But this admits of some acts that must be neutral - not subject to moral scrutiny - because not every act furthers or hinders advancements in knowledge. This is different from the spectrum you describe in objection 2 because there are plainly acts that have no relation to what is good or bad now, even if there is still a sort of bifurcated spectrum.

Your OP is brilliant and everyone should read it. It will undoubtedly inform my own views on ethics, so if you were shooting for changing people's minds, you've changed at least one. :up:

Thinking about it some more: I suppose that if someone like William Lane Craig that claims to be a rational Christian or whatever couldn't contend with this, or any other reasoned argument and regressed to dogma, such a shift could be pointed out as evidence that Christian apologetics as a whole is ad hoc insofar as it is necessary at times for obfuscating the space that religion and religious arguments should occupy. Whether or not that would be enough to convince anyone else of anything other than that what they believe in is dogma regardless of how it is dressed up, I'm not sure. But, from a tactical standpoint, opportunities to point that out should be seized when they arise.

One part of knowledge is belief. In order for someone to know something they also have to believe it, at least with respect to propositional knowledge.

That's what the "persuasion" part is about -- it justifies the belief such that a person is persuaded to believe it for such-and-such a reason. — Moliere

Yes, I get that, I was just operating on the assumption that we were talking about people with beliefs about the afterlife, or people that might have beliefs about the afterlife at some point. I get that my argument is only persuasive if you have some sort of belief about the afterlife already and are open to being reasoned with.

if a Christian believes in an eternal hell because this is what they learned at Church, and that's where you go to learn truths about the afterlife, and your argument is not persuasive, then they'll continue to believe in an afterlife that's not-earthlike — Moliere

Is my argument the last line of defense against erroneous religious beliefs? Because you really seem to want me to come up with a rigorous philosophical argument that can convince religious people that they shouldn't believe in hell, and I don't know if it's possible to do such a thing unless their faith has already been eroded significantly.

In fact, beating someone over the head with the fact that going to hell for rebelling against tyranny in the form of the more extreme religious institutions - which can be exposed as structures that largely maintain power through consent from those who thereby allow themselves to be controlled by those structures - is fundamentally inhumane, might be one of the few ways to open someone up for some sort of philosophical argument on the subject.

They'd claim to know, instead, that hell is an eternal torture, and you ought not do the bad things else you'll go there. — Moliere

Once again, purely theoretical, abstract arguments are not the way to do it: someone must be convinced that the bad parts of believing in hell could outweigh the good parts, and from there we can make persuasive, abstract arguments about likelihoods and logically connected events and so on and so forth.

My argument should reduce anxiety, actually: it should be comforting to know that one's beliefs and guesses about a potentially comfortable, earth-like afterlife are more likely to be correct than any given guess a magical supercomputer could make about a correct hell. If people know that, then there is less to worry about concerning what might happen when we die, and we can all focus on the important stuff.

You might argue that most people have never considered the kind of hell I have potentially brought to the forefront of hundreds of people's minds, but humanity at large will eventually be exposed to such an idea anyways. Not to mention I think this hell exists in the minds of many Christians in one form or another.

We need to take that cold plunge eventually, so why not get it over with?

You presume that I am trying to persuade people to believe in a certain account of what the afterlife is. What I might try to persuade people of is more specific, such as: you are more likely to be correct in guessing at whatever earth-like afterlife you might believe in than believing that there is a correct unknowable hell that might ever be guessed. People who believe in unknown hells might reconsider their beliefs with this knowledge - or so I hope.

No I don't think you've set up antinomies -- I just mean any use of "infinite" in a philosophical argument -- "potentially infinite" would count from my perspective. Outside of mathematics it's a pretty fuzzy term. (EDIT: I ought say that I don't believe this means we should never use it outside of mathematics. Levinas uses "infinite" at times, and I think it works. But it's not like he's making analogies to calculus with it either)

The part where you seem to be relying upon the mathematical notion is where you say:

a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.
— ToothyMaw

We can take the limit of a function as it's variable approaches some number, and sometimes we can take the limit of a function as it approaches infinite.

But how is that applicable to guesses being right? Are guesses a function?

The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things. — Moliere

When I say that the likelihood of guessing the correct UH approaches zero, I mean that any possible guess instantiated by the perfect selector has an almost zero percent chance of being correct because they are randomly guessing at a combination formed from a tremendously large number of unique events. Additionally, the larger this number of events the less likely random selection and combination would yield anything correct because it's a relatively unsophisticated, brute force algorithm.

So, no, I'm not saying guesses are functions, and I don't think the term "approaches" must always denote limits of functions or concepts in calculus.

The way I see it we either say something true, false, or nonsensical when making assertions about the likelihood of things. — Moliere

And I'm saying that it is true that it is almost impossible that even a perfect selector could guess the correct hell. That I said the likelihood of making such a correct guess approaches zero was a convenient way of saying what I just said earlier in the post. So, I'm not making a mathematical statement on whether or not something could be said to be likely or unlikely to exist, but rather that it might be incredibly difficult to ascertain the qualities of that thing, and, thus, guesses at those qualities are probably doomed.

I'm more arguing for when a predictive model is appropriate. Sometimes they are appropriate, and sometimes they aren't. One of the times they aren't is when we know nothing on a subject. It's not so much that there's an infinite amount of possibilities here as we are simply unable to adequately create a predictive model.

It could be the case that an afterlife exists, that said afterlife is earthlike -- but that "could" is also true of an afterlife that is not-earthlike. Here I'd de-emphasize the "hell" aspect and focus more on the "afterlife" aspect. Since we are ignorant about the afterlife we cannot say which guesses are better. What we believe could be true, but we lack justification, and so cannot claim to know. — Moliere

Would you agree that if an earth-like afterlife exists, we could indeed make guesses at its contents? I should have called the "good guesses" I talk about in the OP "better guesses", it seems, and we should keep in mind that I was comparing the likelihoods of earth-like afterlives to others - namely unknowable hells. So, there isn't a whole lot of reason to belabor this point if you at least agree that the afterlife could be earth-like and, if so, could be guessed at if only via the kinds of connections between events we can perceive in this life.

Your issue with my assertions about useful, relevant predictive models existing is that I am presuming that earthly events that can be logically connected have no particular reason to occur in the afterlife. Well, I admit that. But if we know that guesses at certain afterlives are probably more correct than guesses at others, we know that any given guess at an earth-like afterlife is probably far more likely to be even partially true than one at hell. So, while the guesses don't indicate any hard probabilities with respect to which afterlife is actually right, they do indicate the possibilities within the different potential afterlives.

I would not agree with the supposition "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife" — Moliere

You are twisting what I said. I said "given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife", not "these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife." And what I meant was that my argument would hold if it were the case - and if it weren't the case, I grant that my argument would be faulty or incoherent. This is clearly a red herring.

How do we know that?

Using "infinite" in a philosophical argument is always a red flag to me: it's easy to set up antinomies with respect to infinite space and time, for instance, as Kant explored. — Moliere

I did not say "infinite" but rather "potentially infinite", which is different insofar as I when I use that term, I am denoting a set of unique events that are effectively unbounded in number, while if I said "infinite unique events" that would clearly correspond to the concept you are right to be wary of. I do not believe I have set up any antinomies, as I have made no references to anything actually being infinite apart from the potential different ways to be made to feel pain in an unknowable hell - but that is definitional and, thus, essential to any considerations of unknowable hells.

He persuades me that such things are unknowable, and so we're free to say anything we like for as long as we like about the afterlife -- we will never know anything about the afterlife while alive in any sense. It is noumenal. We can believe in it for practical purposes, and a reality is, thereby, created by people living together in a community with similar beliefs about the afterlife, but that's not the same thing as to make claims on what makes a good guess on what the afterlife is like. — Moliere

While the afterlife is essentially noumenal by virtue of us not being able to directly ascertain its details with our senses, that doesn't mean that what we can ascertain could never occur in the afterlife, or that phenomenal attributes perceivable in this life could not correspond to it. In fact, I argue that it is possible that we can predict some of these attributes, and I'll address your contentions about it further on in this post. But you are, at this point, making an argument against predictive models, not just predictable afterlives; just because we don't, or can't, know for sure, what is actually correct, doesn't mean no good guesses at what might be correct exist.

Also: my OP compared guesses at earth-like afterlives with unknowable hells and should be considered in that context.

1. when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events.

(Example to support 1)

2. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife.

When you say "the logic behind it", I read "the logic behind that kind of complaint", so it reads "There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint, and I can only imagine that the logic behind that kind of complaint would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife"

3. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.

Which I'm reading as an enthymeme, so the implied premise is "it would", and therefore by modus ponens: we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others.



Can you justify "it would" in premise 3? — Moliere

If there is an event in this life that is logically related via its content to other events, and the content of that event does not change if it happens in an earth-like afterlife, then we know that the logical connections between that event and others that are similar in this regard are the same as they would be on earth, and we have no reason to think otherwise; therefore, if certain events on earth can be predicted via these kinds of logical connections, they can be predicted similarly in an earth-like afterlife. That leads to my conclusion that, given these kinds of earthly events occur in the afterlife, certain combinations, based on the transcendent logic according to which the events are related, are more likely than others.

Essentially: the content of an event and, thus, the logic underpinning that event's relationships to other events, transcends whether or not an event occurs in the afterlife. Given this, my argument stands.

Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.
— ToothyMaw

I'm referring to any hell at all, earth-like or otherwise. It's the part where you say "We are much more likely to be right..." that gets me. I just don't understand how we could make that claim. — Moliere

We can make that claim because a perfect selector is selecting from a potentially infinite number of unique events to form guesses at an UH (unknowable hell), and the chances of guessing the right combination from this potentially infinite set of unique events approaches zero.

Alternatively, there is the earth-like afterlife, which you must be familiar with by now. If we can form predictive models about it, then we have a greater chance of guessing at this afterlife because the guesses can be formed based on these predictive models.

All that is left is to compare the chances of one to the other via the results of the perfect selector thought experiment, which leads to the conclusion that we are more likely to be right when we make a certain guess at an earth-like afterlife than a guess at a combination generated from a potentially infinite set of unique events - the correct unknowable hell.

Evidence not needed, as this is a probabilistic argument at its core. As for your contention that we cannot form any meaningful predictive models:

Only experience justifies knowledge, we don't experience after-life, and so we have not justification to claim knowledge about the afterlife. For less esoteric topics I'd be more willing to give leeway, but for claims about the afterlife I'm less inclined to grant charity because there are so many divergent accounts of the afterlife that cannot all be true, and people tend to insist that their version of the afterlife must be true in spite of this. — Moliere

And I grant that all of these interpretations could be true, but a proliferation of diverse views on a subject doesn't mean that some of those views could not be determined to be more or less likely to be true via inspection and interrogation. And I'm saying we have the means to do such a thing - highly developed brains that can reason both abstractly and statistically.

In fact, such mechanisms dictate how we live our lives as individuals, so I don't see why we couldn't do it on a larger scale. That some people might be unmoved by these predictive models is their own fault, and they can believe what they want - but that does nothing to change reality.

I'd extend this skepticism to guesses about the afterlife: it seems to me that the only way to find out is by dying. So since I am not dead I cannot say much about it. And if I were dead I couldn't say much about it either. So there's just not a good guess either way. — Moliere

This is a non-argument at this point. The perfect selector accounts for this uncertainty without violating the properties of unknowable hells insofar as guesses can be made. From there it is about probabilities.

You say we can form predictive models about the afterlife from this life, yes. But that's the claim I'm questioning. It doesn't seem to me that we can because we'd have to die in order to do so, and after we die we couldn't make many claims. — Moliere

There are two things I think you might be conflating here. First off, the perfect selector is imbued with magical powers that allows them to guess at what might comprise an unknowable hell for the purposes of forming an argument. So, from the point of view of the selector, they can indeed guess at what might comprise hell without dying per se. Second: the issue of predictive models has almost nothing to do with hell, but rather is related to guesses at earth-like afterlives, and, if that is what you are stuck on, here is the relevant paragraph from the OP:

Before we can get to my thought experiment, there is one other thing I must address: when certain events occur on Earth, they are often followed by other events as reflected by consistent logic determined by the content of those events. For instance: if we mandate a vaccine for everyone in the US, we can expect a reactionary response characterized by vast protests and a general denigration of the medical apparatuses in place. This is because many people view it as a challenge to their autonomy, which is a consistent gripe. There is a clear logic to what might trigger that kind of complaint - in this case being injected against one’s will - and I can only imagine that the logic behind it would apply to a similar schema in an earth-like afterlife. If it would, then we know that certain combinations of certain types of events in the afterlife are more likely than others. I hope that isn't too reductive; I’m not saying we can extrapolate indefinitely far or even far at all from a given event, but rather that they might be able to be connected locally according to some inherent logic. Think something like Marxist critiques but in areas other than history. — ToothyMaw

OK so it sounds to me like you have a specific idea about what hell is not, and that this is what you're trying to get at. — Moliere

Are you referring to an unknowable hell or a hellish, earth-like afterlife here? If we are talking about an earth-like afterlife: I totally concede that an earth-like afterlife could be hellish, so that might be a misunderstanding. If we are instead discussing an unknowable hell in which cause and effect doesn't break down, then you are wrong: my argument is about guessing, and it doesn't say that the afterlife is not, or could not be, an unknowable hell just because the right one is virtually impossible to guess, but rather that we are much more likely to be right when we guess at an earth-like afterlife.

I'm afraid I remain unmoved, though that's common in philosophy. — Moliere

I'm not sure what your position is, really, so I don't know what it would mean if you did move. Is it just that since there is no evidence for any afterlife we can't have better or worse guesses at it?

The only way we could ...
possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details
— ToothyMaw

... is if we are alive after we die. To initiate the process of knowing what's after life is to end the process that is life, which makes it rather hard to know about while still alive. — Moliere

Did you read the OP? I specifically say that we could form predictive models for what could be the case in the afterlife from observing the relations between events in this life. In practical terms: when events are found to be likely to follow or precede others, we can take these relationships into account and integrate them into our predictive models, which would be a continuous process until we cannot discover any more relationships, or these relationships become too difficult to ascertain.

If you mean know all, or even most, of the details before dying, however, then yeah, you are right.

Right.

So you still don't understand that shit even after four years.

Coming up with the OP you read (or are still reading) was a difficult process, and I hope it is clear enough to be thoroughly understood by people other than me. I'll admit that when even I read parts of my arguments it doesn't always make sense immediately in terms of a whole.

For instance, you would think that the number of discrete hell events would be limited by the number of unique causes, when really, since there is both an unknown number of unique causes and an unlimited number of these unique causes that can correspond to a single event, and, since the finite number of qualities corresponding to each event are part of an infinite pool, you end up with a potentially infinite number of discrete hell events. This is already difficult to understand, but when you think about the fact that those events are the totality of what every hell could be made up of - every possible hell is represented - and that that is what the perfect selector is actually selecting from to form a given guess, one gets something very difficult to hold in one's mind as a coherent, reasoned line of thinking.

Camus says "[Stupidity] is sin without God" — 180 Proof

It seems to me Camus was trying to make that utterance's meaning ambiguous, and it comes across as pretentious. I would've just said: "Religion provides cover for and legitimizes stupidity" or something. Unless of course there is some context for it that you are not providing.

Dostoyevsky says "Hell ... being unable to love" (i.e. perpetual failure to learn from failure). — 180 Proof

I like that one more, but I don't know what being unable to love has to do with not being able to learn from failures perpetually. Unless you are saying that people who hate others because of religion, for example, have no ability to learn from their mistakes in hating, and, thus, have made their own hell for themselves?

So, I guess you are saying that hatred arising from the stupidity inherent to religion leads to hateful people making their own existence a sort of hell for themselves?

edit: trying to say. That was even more ambiguous in meaning than usual.

My interest here is in wondering how it might be possible to rationally think about such imaginings that are widespread in human culture.

So the more interesting question is where you have trouble. Obviously this is just a hypothetical since neither of us believe -- but I'd encourage you to talk more about where you have trouble in thinking through this thought. That's the best stuff. — Moliere

It isn't so much that I have trouble thinking about it, but rather that I don't possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details. I could help initiate the process, though. That is, if people actually want to guess at what happens to us after dying or what has happened to all of the people preceding us.

But then again people have always sought out new, novel experiences via art, psychedelics, music, etc., so we ought to just keep on going the way we are I guess in the meantime.

Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my argument, as far as I can tell, is that there are, although not infinite, myriad ways of torturing someone by manipulating the chemicals in their brain, which inflates the number of earth-like events to gargantuan numbers if there is no limit to the unique causes of these painful neuro-chemical events. Not to mention the presence of these possible events in this life implies that an earth-like afterlife could consist of many of these painful neuro-chemical events if they are at all likely - although many of the worst ones would probably be very unlikely by virtue of being difficult to produce via events external to whatever is happening in the brain, i.e. even psychiatric medications, which are designed to produce certain mental outcomes, can only produce so many of these reliably.

That might still sound bad, but even in the worst-case scenario, there is a limit to how much pain you can experience via such manipulations, and there is no limit to how much pain you might feel in the kind of unknowable hell I talk about in the OP. So, the existence of brains kind of complicates things a little, but my argument remains almost totally unaffected.

Suppose you present your reasoning to a literal fire-and-brimstone Christian where sinners go to hell for eternity unless they are saved by Christ.

The task for you, as I see it, is to argue how you can know any one afterlife is more likely than another while simultaneously denying others' appeals that likewise do not rely upon evidence.

Do you think your reasoning here would persuade someone with different good guesses? — Moliere

As I say in the OP, what makes one earth-like afterlife (even one you might call hellish) any more likely than another is how well it abides by the logical rules we might develop and whether or not it exists within the boundaries of possible human experience. So, if that is what you are talking about, then I would have trouble with that. If instead we are talking about the kind of unknowable hell I expound upon in the OP:

I would tell this person that it is far more likely that any valid guess at an earth-like afterlife is almost certainly more likely than whatever hell they believe in by virtue of the content of the correct hell being almost impossible to guess even by someone who knows far more than them - a perfect selector. To believe in this eternal hell is arrogant, and they should feel bad about it.

I mean, when this person says they believe in an eternal hell, they are saying they believe that, out of all the things the afterlife could be, the afterlife would be a certain, likely incredibly complex, combination of a potentially infinite number of possible unique events in that hell, and, as I think I have shown, that is so much less likely than an eternity of Simpsons reruns or something.

You might say that believing that one needs to believe in Jesus to not go to hell is some sort of anchor for earthly experiences in the afterlife. It isn't. It is a prediction at who goes to an (unknowable if I'm understanding you) hell based on arbitrary criteria and says nothing about what could be the case in the afterlife in terms of earthly experiences. So, it doesn't fit the bill for being a prediction at an earth-like afterlife that is confirmed in terms of events in an earth-like afterlife, which is a criterion for the good guesses I conclude exist.

This person, if they cling to their beliefs about hell, is not concerned whatsoever with what is probable.

but there is no evidence of a black legend perpetrated against, what?
— ToothyMaw

Black legend does not just mean smear campaign. Black legend has a specific meaning, look it up.

People revere the Pope the world over, revered more so than MLK ever was
— ToothyMaw

I don't know how that connects to my post, I didn't bring up reverence. — Lionino

I know what a black legend is, and I used the term correctly.

My point in bringing up the Pope is that you wouldn't assert that there is an equally likely black legend including a representation of MLK just because there is a difference in perceived stature, and recognition of the accomplishments of, a group of people - namely black Americans - and another group of people. And, even if you did, it would likely be explainable by something other than a black legend. You need to supply some serious evidence for your claim that modern Catholics are the victims of such a thing.

As for microaggressions or generational trauma - they are modern constructions that developed alongside an increasing desire to accommodate disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals
— ToothyMaw

Yeah it is constructed aka made up, that is my point. It is not a real thing, but they pretend to undergo it because it gives them attention/benefits/privilege, and people believe them. But when a Spanish or even Russian person says that they are constantly misjudged and stereotyped in the press and movies and whatnot, people demand "evidence". — Lionino

Okay, the concepts are technically invented by a mind, but people's feelings and difficulties are as real as anything else you can perceive with your senses. To say that the difficulties that someone raised in a violent Ghetto experience are just made up because the idea of generational trauma is an idea is really stupid. The same goes for the assertion that they are feigning difficulties for benefits and privileges. Nobody who has to worry about being robbed by a crackhead has time for that.

It is curious however that lived experience are not enough to accept the existence of the black legend or that there is slander against Catholics or South Europeans in general. However lived experience is more than enough to accept the existence of "microaggressions" or "generational trauma". — Lionino

Wow. You really just said that. No one said that the lived experience of Catholics or Southern Europeans is invalid, but there is no evidence of a black legend perpetrated against, what? Modern white European Catholics? People revere the Pope the world over, revered more so than MLK ever was. Is it part of a black legend perpetrated against black Americans that MLK is not more revered than the Pope? No, the Pope is just the Pope, and people across the world have limited knowledge of the history of the United States.

As for microaggressions or generational trauma - they are modern constructions that developed alongside an increasing desire to accommodate disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals. Totally irrelevant to your black legend.

But it stops being curious when we realise that it is simply another example of that society's Gramscian reverance for their own minorities but contempt for many European nations. — Lionino

What do minorities and European nations have to do with each other? I mean it sounds like you are complaining about minorities - whatever minorities they be - being elevated over white people.

The more I think about what alan meant, the less ambiguous it becomes. He presents a ham-handed, but consistent dichotomy between Christianity and secular forces, so I would think that when he (flippantly) claims that ISIS or the Taliban's thought processes can be explained by the OT he would say something like: "We need look only to the OT to understand the motivations for much of their most pernicious beliefs", but he fumbles it and just says that their thought processes are explainable purely by the OT.

It's probably because he views them as being so embroiled in a war against modernity that he can just totally write them off as barbarous idealogues that clean, western secularists have no common ground with. Which is sort of close to being true in some of the ways that matter - but to tie it all together that way is arrogant. We can all appreciate a good ice cream cone.

And a wonderfully big, rich book it is! You can fish in it for justification of any damn thing you want to do.
It's the leaders who decide which bits to extol and which to ignore; the flock simply follows them, even to their own detriment, so strong is the desire to belong. — Vera Mont

There are definitely more or less plausible interpretations of the bible, even if a lot of stuff can be justified. So, that is never a good point. That the leaders extol certain interpretations doesn't mean that the leaders aren't influenced by other Christians or scriptures which, once again, can be more or less plausibly interpreted.

I don't have the mental wherewithal to go over these arguments, and I doubt I could sway you, so I'll just let it ride.

If we wish to understand the thought processes of the Islamic State or the Taliban, we need only read the Old Testament
— alan1000

Quite a stretch don't you think?

We can't understand the thought processes of the Jews by looking only to the OT, and that's their sacred literature, as opposed to the Muslims who obviously rely upon other texts.

Every religion, culture, nature, civilization, and even person has a long complex history. You've got to look at the whole picture, from their wars, their successes, their struggles, important leaders, events, and on and on and on. — Hanover

I think alan was not clear about what he was trying to say here. I can't read his mind, but I don't think he was saying that every Taliban member likes vanilla ice cream because of the Quran, for example, but rather that we can see the content of the Quran clearly reflected in their behavior.

If he was indeed saying what you think he was saying, then he is definitely wrong.

If we wish to understand the thought processes of the Islamic State or the Taliban, we need only read the Old Testament.
— alan1000

No that is not all we need. We need to understand as well, the neuroscience of tribalism, along with other things. — wonderer1

Alan is clearly talking about those thought processes as determined by belief here, and if that is the case:

Do we really need to understand the neuroscience of tribalism to determine that someone holds a belief because it exists in their holy book? Are you implying that maybe they don't actually hold the beliefs they claim to hold for the reasons they supply? They literally say that they hold their beliefs because God ordained that they are true. I don't see how neuroscience can negate such a thing.

I mean, neuroscience could explain the physical processes behind such things, but knowledge of the exact physical processes is unlikely to be a hard pre-requisite for their admitted beliefs to be genuine.

If we are instead discussing how tribalism works on a neurological level, then the neuroscience of tribalism becomes more powerful in terms of explanatory power. But we are not discussing the nature of tribalism, but rather why they hold the beliefs they hold.

I get that, I'm just pointing out that this thread has been thoroughly de-railed and that we should try to at least engage with the OP in some way. I get that every discussion evolves, but this one appears to have devolved into a bunch of really tired, insipid arguments.

We are members of a species inherently wired for tribalism. Surely if systemic racism and sexism are worthwhile concepts, (and I'm inclined to think they are) then systemic anti-Catholicism doesn't sound implausible. — wonderer1

Yes, but anti-Catholicism, or any discrimination due to tribalism, is not the same as the kind of criticism in the OP. This is because, if you think tribalism is unavoidable because it is wired into humans, but that it also is what leads to discrimination against a group you are arguing shouldn't be discriminated against, your argument is against tribalism, not random anti-Catholic people on the internet who probably belong to no recognizable tribe. So, most of your post has nothing to do with the discussion started by the OP. I know that's obvious, but I still felt the need to say it.

Christianity is not a good or bad influence on people.
People are a good or bad influence on Christianity. — Vera Mont

Christianity is made up of a bunch of different people with beliefs that exist on a spectrum, but they are all derived from the same scriptures from the same book. So, there is a reason why certain beliefs are more ubiquitous than others - such as the maligning of homosexuals.

I mean, do you think most Christian anti-homosexual bigots would be as fervently horrible if Christianity instead taught that homosexuals have as much inherent value as a straight person? If people just bring their own preconceptions and pre-formed beliefs to their religion, then why do Muslims hold different beliefs from Christians? Surely Arab people are not so different from white, blue-collar Christians in the rust belt by virtue of their race?

So we compare Afterlife 1 to Afterlife 2. How do we do this comparison? — Moliere

By evaluating whether or not Afterlife 1 is a better guess than Afterlife 2. Really that is all we can do - guess at whether or not our guesses are good. I don't know if that really counts as comparing probabilities from a mathematical standpoint, but from my point of view it certainly seems like a guess on something constrained is more likely to be true than a guess made unconstrained. This is how I see it:

This whole thing is about guesses and their potential accuracy, not hard probabilities that we can precisely nail down, and I still say that a prediction in favor of an earth-like afterlife has more predictive power than ET+.

A guess at an earth-like afterlife must be accurate insofar as it allows for the after-existence to be affected by one’s time on earth given one remains oneself continuously even through dying and then experiencing the afterlife. That is, if the guess is indeed towards an afterlife that is made up of events that can be predicted before dying and that are reflective of the predictor's time on earth - what I have defined as an earth-like afterlife. The predictive power concomitant with beliefs corresponding to an earth-like afterlife stands to be greater as a function of this limitation, as not just any predicted afterlife will meet these conditions - such as ET. ET might be equally likely, or even more, than the afterlife being earth-like, but that doesn’t mean that it has the same potential to be as good a guess from where we stand.

This is because what makes a guess good is not just whether or not it satisfies the condition “the afterlife is an eternal hell” or “the afterlife is earth-like”, but rather that it predicts specific events, how many of those specific events occur, and in what order. Also, their causes and consequences, but that introduces much more complexity, so I’ll leave that alone. But how many events can we truly guess if it is ET? Probably very few - even if we accurately guess that it is indeed ET for everyone across the board.

I kind of rushed this reply out, I hope it makes sense.

Should I even continue with this?

No, the slavery scripture is not twisted. It literally says that slaves ought to obey their masters. You are also committing the no true Scotsman fallacy. Just because some specific Christians might have been opposed to slavery doesn't mean that Christianity at large has not defended or condoned slavery.

Bartolomé de las Casas fought against slavery. — javi2541997

Yes, one random Christian guy fought against slavery a long time ago.

I know you know, and you know everyone else who knows anything about this knows, that the bible defends slavery and that certain scriptures were, for instance, used to justify slavery in the southern United States at large before the confederates were defeated.

You can claim that we have to delineate exactly which Christians we are criticizing, but they all take inspiration from the same scriptures from the same damn book - even if they don't all share the exact same interpretations.

I agree; my point is that, in the way morality works, tying the AI and its outcomes to who let it loose is the best way to put us “in check morally”—like a serial number on a gun which can tell us who shot someone. — Antony Nickles

I agree - we need to crush whoever initiates the robot apocalypse. Unfortunately, not every group of people working towards developing AIs at breakneck speeds would agree, or would even care, if we say we will lock them up in prison for doing so. If prisons would even exist at that point.

So, even if we do come up with a punishment so severe that it just scares the shit out of everyone, how do we actually enforce it? We could, I guess, establish a global commission for investigating the misuse of AI, but that would require significant cooperation between disparate groups.

Maybe it would take a horrible blunder to scare everyone into setting up such a commission? Maybe people need to be exposed to the abject horror that can accompany the misuse of AI? Although you might not guess it, I actually have a grasp on just how bad the misuse of AI can be, and it can be bad. Like, really bad. In ways you might not expect. But you already made that point, and we are in agreement.

Honestly the only thing I have to say about your theory of accountability is that it just might be too little too late; so what if the crime is punished? It doesn't help the people harmed in any way. That isn't to say we shouldn't punish people - we should - but is that deterrence really going to be substantial? Can we really get the cooperation we need before an extinction level event?

only a human can regulate based on how they might be judged in a novel situation — Antony Nickles

I'm sorry, are you saying here that an AI can't predict how it might be judged in a novel situation? I think it can if there is a compunction to consider how it might be seen by humans, and that it could be programmed to possess such a quality. That it can only consider novel situations based on already established laws is no different from how a human operates. A human just has a drive to conform, or to make sense of the world in such a way as to justify certain pre-existing biases, unlike an AI. I don't see anything preventing an AI from wanting to avoid internal threats to its current existence from acting poorly in the kind of situation you consider truly moral.

It might be counter-intuitive to allow an AI a desire to survive so as to avoid actions taken due to a lack of a fear of censure, but that could solve the problem of it acting counter to our interests in situations considered truly moral. We would just need to form some sort of agreement on what kind of consequences are concomitant with an action considered to be a threat to humanity's existence or human wellbeing at large.

So, we would find ourselves pivoting to consequentialism to fill in for the cases in which our rules fail us. Whether or not such a thing is rigorously, philosophically defensible doesn't matter, because we are talking about preventing horrific outcomes for humanity that we would all almost certainly agree should be avoided.

But the distinct actual terror of AI is that our knowledge can not get in front of it to curtail it, to predict outcomes, because it can create capabilities and goals for itself—it is not limited to what we program it to do. It’s not: build a rocket. It’s: design a better rocket. And it can adopt means we don’t anticipate and determine an end we do not control nor could foresee. — Antony Nickles

Yes, this is inevitable if we let things get out of hand. Maybe allowing the AI some more human-like qualities might actually cause it to be more predictable in the ways that matter? I mean a cynical, jaded mostly-human with weaker superintelligence is better than a superintelligence that is willing to decimate all the rainforests on earth to produce as much paper as possible because we gave it a poorly thought-out command. I mean, at least one can be reasoned with and talked out of most things, provided we try hard enough (probably).

It's kind of like that show 'House'. The brilliant, fucked up "doctor" with very little in terms of scruples or emotional intelligence might be a dick, but he more or less aligns with the goals of everyone in the hospital - even if it is difficult to anticipate what he might do in any given situation. But he's still a human in the ways that make his goals align. Or, at least, that is what I have gleaned from what exposure I've had to the show, but the point stands even if that isn't how the show is.

Alternatively, you have ChatGPT999 walking around dispensing as many diagnoses as possible (perhaps even with inhuman accuracy), because we commanded it to do so, until it decides to reference questionable information from the internet because its medical databases ran dry, and somebody gets killed.

I get that the difference between a real superintelligence and a person and the difference between House and a regular person are not the same, but I still think the example holds because the common ground between such a super-intelligence and humanity would help keep the intelligence from effecting unforeseeable, catastrophic ends.

I appear to have misunderstood a lot of what you posted. Honestly, I agree with almost everything you are saying. Not even much room for discussion. You appear to have thought this out. Maybe I'll try to cobble together some critique or something later on today.

Good post. :up:

Why would the proliferation of ideas about any unknown influence its chances of being true? — Moliere

I'm not saying that an earth-like afterlife is more likely because there are a lot of guesses, but rather that those guesses, if they stand to be truer given that it is unknown if they are more or less likely to be representative of the afterlife than ET+ (unknowable eternal torture or anything else unknowable), we can only guess that it is more likely that our predictions regarding earth-like afterlives are more likely to be truer than any other guess(es) even in the context of not knowing the nature of the afterlife.

If what you're saying is that assuming the afterlife is earth-like then it would be more predictable then isn't that a bit obvious? — Moliere

I'm not just saying that an earth-like afterlife is more predictable, but rather that we can compare the likelihood of an earth-like afterlife to any other, and conclude, based on the potential for accuracy within each possibility - earth-like or ET, in this case - that the earthy predictions stand to be truer than other guesses. This doesn't affect or reflect the actual probabilities of what the afterlife consists of, but rather is a statement on which ideas about the afterlife are more likely to be truer.

If we are to judge whether an idea is more or less likely to be true then we can either --

Stipulate the likelihoods in order to make a computation.

Or have some measurable in order to compute likelihoods or at least be able to make comparisons between probabilities. — Moliere

The comparison between probabilities is this: if one or the other afterlife is true, which is more likely to lend predictive power to people's ideas of the afterlife? There is a spectrum of potential afterlives, and where it overlaps with people's ideas is where this predictive power exists. So, the actual probabilities of what the afterlife consists of don't matter if the most predictive guesses - from our point of view - are constrained by something like our limited beliefs on Earth.

As such I think neither proposition -- ET or Earthlike -- can be evaluated on the basis of likelihood since there is no evidence for either. — Moliere

If it is true that one or more guesses are more likely to be truer as constrained by something like the dichotomy between an earth-like afterlife or ET+, do we really need evidence to say so? After all, I'm not saying "the afterlife is earth-like", or "the afterlife is eternal hell".

In moral philosophy, historically there was a desire to externalize ethical behavior to make it determined, like a law—even if just a law I give myself (with Kant). If you follow the law, you are good, even if you just try for something good. These frameworks want the rules to be clear, so that judgment can be certain — Antony Nickles

I don't quite agree that many moral philosophers would consider you moral for following just any self-imposed rule, if you are saying that. Otherwise sounds good to me.

The fact that sometimes we are not certain what the rules will be or how they apply or what we do when there are none, is cause for most to view the situation as impossible. — Antony Nickles

Yes, I think a lot of people look at it that way, too, even if it is kind of short-sighted.

Now I’m not an AI expert, but we can’t seem to create rules or goals because AI is too unpredictable (and we want rules to tell us what will be right). And there is also much comparison to humans. But these moral frameworks imagine something special about us because the fulcrum of their judgment is choice (did I follow the rule? or go against it?). So the discussion of whether AI is special like us is actually a figment of the projection of our desire for ethical clarity.

More modern descriptions of morality focus on responsibility. We may not know what to do, but I am nevertheless answerable after it is done (even without rules). So then what ethics regarding AI turns on, is identity. — Antony Nickles

Okay, I think there is a difference between reigning in an AI via necessary programming and ascribing moral responsibility to its actions, or whatever kind of moral angle is taken. I don't think the morality issue is so unpredictable as the job of keeping powerful AIs from inadvertently causing whatever doom scenarios the experts claim could befall us.

Doesn't it matter though if the AI can choose between an effecting a moral outcome or a less moral outcome like one of us? I mean, if it can do that, shouldn't we treat it like a human, if we must follow through with holding AIs responsible? I mean otherwise we can just change the programming so that it chooses the moral outcome next time, right? Its identity is that which we create.

And wouldn't we be almost entirely responsible for creating the AI that effected a bad outcome, anyways? It seems to me that we are the ones who need to be put in check morally, not so much the AIs we create. That isn't to say we shouldn't program it to be moral, but rather that we should exercise caution for the sake of everyone's wellbeing.

we are not just judging outcomes, but also checking ourselves (a la Kant) because it would be tied to me, whether already determined bad, or yet to be justified. If, however, mythically put, god no longer sees us, we have no moral realm at all. — Antony Nickles

I'm not totally sure what this means. Could you maybe explain?

I am also arguing not that there is only one most likely afterlife based on the fact that earth-like afterlives can be more accurately predicted, but rather that the proliferation of ideas about earth-like afterlives stand greater chances of being more true when compared to any one unearthly possibility - such as ET. Whether or not my previous assumption that we can find commonalities in these ideas that stand a greater chance of being true is likely is unknown.

By the way, I'm using the term "earthy" to mean "of or reflective of earthly qualities", and "earth-like" to denote an afterlife that is sufficiently earthy to be considered potentially predictable by people before dying. I think I was consistent in my usage in my latest post, sorry if not.

In you first example you're talking about things we know about.

But the afterlife? Because we don't know about it we cannot say what is more likely. — Moliere

The point I was making was that given constraints, one guess about the afterlife could be more likely than another. If the afterlife is more earth-like, then people who believe generosity is the key to being admitted to an afterlife in which they are rewarded for their virtuous behavior are more likely to be right than someone who makes the claim that the afterlife will consist of the kinds of things we associate with an unknowable eternal hell.

So, I'm not saying one or the other thing is true, or has to be true, but rather that, given constraints, one is more or less likely to be true, even if both explain why the afterlife might consist of some event(s) - the condition of pigs flying, in my example. We don't have to know if pigs can fly to evaluate if the jetpack is more likely than sprouting wings.

But then I think -- we have no evidence of an afterlife being a particular way. At least I would not count various intuitions of persons as "evidence", though it seems you might. — Moliere

I don't take people's intuitions as evidence in my argument. I argue that those with ideas of an earth-like afterlife have more predictive power even if the likelihood of either ET or an earth-like afterlife can only be estimated to be equal - or even if we must be totally agnostic about the likelihoods.

Furthermore, there are no constraints regarding what might be possible if the afterlife is not earth-like. Thus, if there is a similar chance of the afterlife being some sort of eternal hell or earth-like, the fact that the equally likely earth-like afterlife could be more accurately predicted indicates that those who have ideas about an earth-like afterlife have more predictive power regardless of the truth of whether or not it is earth-like.
— ToothyMaw

I think this is the bit that's causing me to reply most -- if there are no constraints then there's no predictive power. It's an imaginary. Just like since there's no evidence for any of the afterlives, we cannot infer that one afterlife is more or less likely than another -- we have no evidence as these are just beliefs that arise due to the fear of death. — Moliere

I agree: There is no way of knowing if ET or something like it is more or less likely than an earthy afterlife. And since, as you recognize, there are seemingly no constraints on an afterlife that is unlike anything we might experience on Earth, there is very little predictive power involved in trying to ascertain what such an afterlife might consist of. On the other hand, an earthy afterlife, as I made the point, can be more accurately predicted - even if not in its entirety, in all likelihood. So, there are constraints on what an earth-like afterlife could consist of but no constraints on which, or how many, earthy events can be guessed.

Thus, given that we are agnostic about the likelihood of any one kind of afterlife existing compared to another, we can only try to predict the afterlives that we can fathom - which are almost entirely earthy - and they stand to be more accurate as a function of the inherent constraints and combinability of somewhat familiar, earthy events.

That beliefs about the afterlife merely arise due to the fear of death is likely, I admit that. But that doesn't mean that they are false, or not worth analyzing. A man on death row will often do or say anything to be acquitted. Does that mean that his attempts to evade death are invalid? I would say that if the man is committed to living, his fear is his own greatest ally.

People don't try to make me feel better, so why should I toil to do so for other people? Philosophy isn't meant to comfort people. If someone wants a safe space for their phobia they shouldn't engage with people on a philosophy forum, which is the equivalent of the wild west but populated by pedants and egotists instead of just egotists.

Suppose on Vulcan they host an Olympics, very much like our own but instead with Vulcan sports. By virtue of the form "Either one goes to the Vulcan Olympics or one does not go to the Vulcan Olympics after being evaluated to go to the Vulcan Olympics by the Vulcans"

Does this sidestep whether or not the Vulcan Olympics exist in order to then talk about the more probable paticulars of the Vulcan Olympics? How could we possibly evaluate something which we have no familiarity for?

To bring it back to the difference between Eternal Torture vs. an Earth-like afterlife: With how much we know we'd be just as much in the right to claim that the Eternal Torture afterlife is more likely. — Moliere

This is my best attempt at defending something quite difficult to defend, it seems:

First off, I don't see how you could support the assertion that eternal torture is more likely. I think you would need some evidence. Also: is the dichotomy of going to the Vulcan Olympics or not going to the Vulcan Olympics similar to the dichotomy of experiencing an earth-like afterlife or eternal torture? I would say not.

Not knowing if one goes to the Vulcan Olympics or what exactly constitutes Vulcan sports doesn’t equate to it being equally or more likely that the Olympics consists of eternal torture. I grant that the afterlife might consist of eternal torture, but there is no reason to believe that every idea about the afterlife is equally likely to be true insofar as the distribution of the actual possible events in the afterlife that might happen are concerned - even without supplying evidence.

Is it equally likely, for instance, that someone might mount a jetpack on a pig and send it flying, or that a pig might sprout wings? In both instances the condition that pigs can fly, which is unlikely to be true, is met, but, given certain constraints, such as the near impossibility of sprouting wings, one conclusion is more likely than another.

Thus, a guess about what might happen in the afterlife, although unlikely to be true, could be more likely than another, even if both could accurately explain why the afterlife consists of certain events - why pigs can fly.

Why certain guesses are more likely is reflected in how much potentiality they contain: that people should live modestly and donate money to charity is reflected more heavily in the behavior of people who believe such a thing than those who might only believe in an afterlife of eternal torture. Furthermore, those who believe in ET (eternal torture), can and will do next to nothing to affect their plight, probably.

You might claim that we all go to the same afterlife, so what does this matter? The modest people and the ET people go to the same place regardless of their beliefs.

This is true, but the people who allow their behaviors to dictate, at least partially, what happens in the afterlife if they are right are committing to predicting what will happen as a function of time and their existence on Earth - unlike ET. That they are indeed predicting what might happen has a much greater chance of being true than ET if the afterlife is earth-like, and, in all likelihood, much less chance if the afterlife is not earth-like. So, what would indicate whether or not the afterlife is earth-like?

I think that's the wrong question.

There is an infinite combination of ways to add the numbers 4 and 5. However, they always add up to a whole number greater than 8. Let's say that there is a hidden whole number greater than 8 we are trying to add to. Since, no matter what combination of ways the numbers 4 and 5 are added, we get a whole number greater than 8, any combination of ways those numbers are added are valid guesses for the hidden number. That doesn’t mean that we will, or even can, accurately guess the hidden number with 4 and 5, but every sum is a valid guess made up of 4 and 5. Therefore, we can predict that the hidden number could consist of some sum of the numbers 4 and 5, if not necessarily both of them.

The analogue to summation is to guess what the afterlife consists of, with the numbers representing events. We know that the afterlife might be earth-like, and if it is (the condition that the hidden number is a whole number greater than 8), we can guess at the actual composition of the afterlife by combining potential elements - the building blocks - we might be aware of on Earth.

Thus, if the afterlife is earth-like, we have significant guessing power, which we don’t have if the afterlife is not earth-like; there are many different (perhaps infinite), overlapping ways to combine earthly predictions of events that could each be discrete events in themselves included in, and “adding up” to, approximations of the real afterlife.

Furthermore, there are no constraints regarding what might be possible if the afterlife is not earth-like. Thus, if there is a similar chance of the afterlife being some sort of eternal hell or earth-like, the fact that the equally likely earth-like afterlife could be more accurately predicted indicates that those who have ideas about an earth-like afterlife have more predictive power regardless of the truth of whether or not it is earth-like.

Why wouldn't there be brains in the afterlife? Maybe upon dying one's memories, for instance, are copied and stored on a computer that then encodes the information into a new, less fleshy brain that will last almost indefinitely? That one died in the process is a given - but one would basically still be the same person, at least as far as memories go. Other aspects of being might be replicable too.

That such an eventuality seems too obviously tailored to human experience and understanding does not mean that it cannot be the case.