They each came up with the same idea independently. Isn’t that what you’ve told us? What other ground do you need? — Luke

He’s asking on what grounds can the independent inventions of two people be called “the same thing”, unless we’re talking about the abstract eternal idea, not the specific instances of them. If Alice and Bob are both programmers and both independently come up with the same new image compression algorithm (say because they’re both programming image software and so facing the same kinds of challenges to which the same solutions are applicable), we must be talking about the idea of that algorithm, not some specific instantiation of it, because Alice and Bob did not both write the exact same (numerically identical) lines of code at the exact same time.

Separate concrete instances of ideas are not the same as each other, only the ideas themselves are the same. But it is only the instances that are clearly made or invented, not the ideas themselves.

How Americans think income should be distributed, how they think it is distributed, and how it actually is distributed:



So clearly Americans generally think things are economically worse than they should be... and in fact, things are actually much worse than they even think it is.

Source: Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don't Realize It)

a vast majority of people are generally content with their lives — whollyrolling

citation needed

But as has already been shown in this thread, just being spontaneous doesn't produce something we would count as creative either. If Google Image search spat out random usually-wrong identifications, we wouldn't call that "creative" any more than it always spitting out the same wrong (but understandably wrong) answer. (My bush photo did look like a field of corn or something, and my flower photo looked a bit like a jellyfish or some kind of blobby sea creature).

In any case, we don't know for sure that human behavior is significantly random either, any more than any other macroscopic system is. It seems very likely to be chaotic -- to produce vastly different outputs from tiny changes to the input, and thus to be very difficult to predict -- but machines can be chaotic too. Chaos doesn't require randomness, it can coexist with determinism.

The middle class, which isn't the favorite class divide of Marx. — ssu

You're looking at the "middle income class". Marx doesn't divide classes up by their income; he divides them up by whether or not they own the means of production.

Almost everyone in every income class, except a tiny fraction of people at the very top, are in the "lower class" (proletariat) by Marx's reckoning, inasmuch as they do not own the means of production, they just sell their labor.

The only "upper class" on Marx's reckoning are those who own so much that they don't have to work.

There is in theory a tiny boundary layer (who Marx AFAIK doesn't recognize) of those who own exactly enough for their own needs and still have to work to cover their own consumption, neither living for free off the labor of others nor paying to borrow the capital of others. But capitalism makes that an extremely unstable position: once you're there, it's really easy to either work more or slack off and fall to one or the other side of that divide, and then capitalist forces take over (you have to start borrowing and working more to service that debt, or you can start lending out or hiring poorer people to do your work for you) and you fall quickly into one or the other class.

:up: :clap:

Notice how we haven't had a Civil War yet in the US — turkeyMan

:brow:

What about fictional concepts/characters? Surely they are invented and not discovered? — Luke

The casual English speaker in me wants to agree that they’re simply invented, but the philosopher in me thinking about what they actually are demands they get the same treatment as everything else we’ve discussed: invention and discovery are the same thing here. It seems like the less obvious a “discovery" is the more inclined we are to call it an "invention", and the more obvious an "invention" is the more inclined we are to call it a "discovery", but they're really the same type of thing, just with a spectrum of obviousness.

find it odd to speak of the "invention" or "discovery" of abstract ideas (only). I had assumed - with respect to creativity - that you weren't just talking about the ideas, but also the realisation of those ideas. — Luke

Yeah, as far as invention vs discovery goes, I'm talking about the ideas themselves in the abstract. The realization of them is different... sort of like mapping out the "space of ideas". You're "drawing in" stuff that "wasn't there before" on the map, but you're doing so by "figuring out" stuff that was "always there" in the space.

As far as determination vs randomness goes, I'm talking about that "mapping" process, with the background understanding that such "mapping" is not cleanly either all invention or all discovery. It's that process, and the determination or randomness of it, that's my main concern.

This sounds more concrete than abstract. — Luke

I'm giving examples of concrete procedures to algorithmically explore spaces of abstract possibilities. Counting numbers is just as concrete. You can count numbers in your head, but you could also, with sufficiently sophisticated imagination and good memory, step through these other algorithms in your head too.

Perhaps the difference between "discovery" and "invention" in these terms could be viewed as whether the space of possibilities exists completely - awaiting to be discovered - or whether the invention of new ideas help to create and open up new spaces of possibilities. — Luke

"Opening up new space" is the exact language I use when talking about the process. In the "mapping" analogy, it's like you've got... actually, let's use a different analogy. You've got literally space, like outer space. It's fully of invisible etheric structures but we can do things to pull them into reality and make them solid. If you pull a structure into being somewhere way away from the inhabited structures everybody's on, that's kind of useless... nobody can get to it, it's inaccessible even though it's now solid out there. If you extend the structures everybody's already on, though, you open up the space that people can move around in... and if you build a bridge between one big structure and another, you really open up space for people from each big structure to now move about to a whole other new kind of structure without having to take a scary disorienting spacewalk to get between them.

I'm unfamiliar with the explicit idea that creativity is a result of "nondeterministic randomness". Perhaps creativity could be viewed in contrast to following the same deterministic pattern that went before. — Luke

Contrast with determinism is exactly what I mean. Randomness is the absence of determinism, so those who think determinism is an impediment to creativity (like say, Searle, or anyone who thinks strong AI is flatly impossible) are saying that randomness is required. I'm saying neither randomness nor determinism matters; it's the details of the process (which thus needs to be somewhat determined at least) that make for the creativity.

Anyway, I broadly agree that creativity is a "process of connection and contextualization". — Luke

Those details, exactly. :up:

I'm not seeing how creating anything new could add to or, the obverse possibility, subtract from, either of these "spaces of possibility". I would rather say these spaces of possibility subsist than "exist"; they are not actual, but "sleep" inherently, in logic and physicality respectively. — Janus

:up: :100:

OK, so the valid distinction then seems to be that possibilities are discovered and (novel) actualities are invented. I — Janus

Eh, except the ephemeral "existence" of possibilities makes calling it "discovery" about them kinda wonky too. That's why I think "invention" and "discovery" merge in that regime, and it's not clearly one nor the other but in some ways both or neither.

Was the steam engine invented or discovered? Or penicillin? — Janus

Yes. These are cases where the distinction doesn't make sense; the possibility of steam power was always there, and inventing the steam engine consists of discovering and making known that possibility; the fact that certain substances produced by molds kill bacteria was always there, and inventing penicillin consists of discovering and making known the usefulness of that fact.

When I write a poem, am I inventing or discovering it? I would say inventing because that is different than, say, calling to mind a poem I have previously memorized, which would be an act of discovery of or finding something already there, however complete or incomplete it might be. — Janus

Writing a poem is again that combined invention-discovery of abstract things. Discovering a pre-written poem is the discovery of a concrete artifact, or at least some record of a historical fact that such artifacts were created; the original poet discovered-invented the poem, and you discovered that he had discovered-invented the poem.

Of course I am not suggesting that invention is an act of creation ex nihilo, but it is, I would say in any context, the bringing of some novel form and content into the world, something that had not previously existed. Since discovery is not bringing anything new into the world, either in the physical world or the world of ideas, but rather of revealing something pre-existent, I continue to think the distinction between discovery and invention is a valid and useful one. — Janus

Sure, that is the distinction between invention and discovery: one is making, the other is finding and revealing. But all the things that could possibly be made exist already as possibilities in the "world of ideas" as you say -- it didn't only become possible to write that poem because you thought to write it, that was always possible, you're just the first to think of doing so -- so that distinction breaks down when we're not talking about concrete things that come into and out of existence.

That's really the crux of the matter there, actually. Concrete things are temporal: there are times where they don't exist, and times when they do. Bringing them into existence is inventing them; finding out that they already existed is discovering them. But abstract things are timeless, eternal; all possibilities always existed and always will, but their "existence" is just as a thing-that-could-be-made, so neither "finding" them nor "making" them really completely applies -- or both do, at the same time.

The rentier likes to claim the virtue of the entrepreneur who provides a service of distribution, and the entrepreneur likes to claim the virtue of the innovator/producer — unenlightened

:up:

If communism adheres to those tenets, then why does the state take everything for itself and leave common people destitute, and why are the state and its closest affiliates, for example organized crime syndicates and puppet CEO's, the only ones who benefit, and only as long as they are in total ideological alignment with the regime. — whollyrolling

Because states are not communist. Communism is definitionally stateless. The states you’re talking about called their system “state capitalism”, which is elsewhere a synonym for fascism. They claimed to be using it as a steppingstone to create communism, but that clearly never happened.

All of these exchanges are optional — whollyrolling

You may have a choice who you rent from, but you don’t have a choice to not rent at all — unless you’re already wealthy enough to own your own home. (Interest is just rent on money, so saying “you can always buy instead”, when you mean get a mortgage, is no rebuttal; you still have to pay someone else or GTFO, until you get rich enough).

anyone can become wealthy based on merit, popularity, hard work and good fortune — whollyrolling

I’m glad you included that last point, but it undermines the “anyone” part entirely. Lots of people of merit work hard their whole lives and never escape poverty because they never got a lucky break, whilst others by luck of birth can screw up and slack off their whole lives and never worry about going broke.

What you're calling extortion is feeding and clothing a large portion of the world — whollyrolling

Rent-seeking and profit-seeking don’t feed or clothe anyone. Hard working people do. Rent and profit are just siphoned off the top of that value they create.

That's the world you're promoting — whollyrolling

I think you don’t understand at all what I’m promoting. It’s absolutely not Mao or Stalin.

Where in the West do police kill someone for not paying rent — whollyrolling

Try not paying rent and refusing to leave when evicted and resisting the eventual attempt to arrest you for refusing to leave. Try just continuing to live where you live without paying someone for that, and see if no violence ever comes to you. Why would anyone ever pay rent if they could just choose not to and face no consequences?

or for not going to work — whollyrolling

I never said “not going to work”, I talked about not paying the business owner “his share”, the workers just keeping all the money they, the business, make for themselves. You said that’s theft. You think nobody’s going to get arrested for that “theft“, and that they can just ignore the attempts to arrest them without it coming to violence, from the police?

Both of these can easily be avoided by not stealing or illegally occupying someone else's property. — whollyrolling

The point is that what rightfully belongs to who may be questioned, and whatever answer is settled on is then enforced by violence, in any system.

Communists believe that the means of production are not in fact the rightful property of the people falsely called their owners, but rather of the people who live and work there, and that forcing people at gun point to pay business owners and land owners is a criminal theft in itself. They see their violence as justified defense against the crimes perpetrated by capitalists, just like you see the aforementioned police violence against workers and tenants who don’t pay up as justified defense against those supposed crimes.

Capital owners can easily avoid the violence of communist revolutionaries by just not extorting money from their workers and tenants, after all.

This isn’t about knowledge, so the Rationalist vs Empiricist debate you’re invoking here isn’t relevant. I’m not talking about an “idea that...” something IS the case — a belief, which may or may not constitute knowledge, to which the distinction you’re talking about applies— but rather the “idea of...” something BEING some way, without claiming anything about whether or not it IS that way. Having the idea of a unicorn (imagining such a thing as a unicorn, such as so to write a story about or paint a picture of one) is not the same thing as having the idea (i.e. belief) that unicorns really exist, much less knowledge about their (non)existence.

an economy that can only be held in place by threats and in turn acts of violence. — whollyrolling

Like how the employees of a business can’t just keep the profits of it for themselves and not give any to the owners without the owners showing up with armed police to do something about that? Or better still, how a tenant can’t just keep living where they are and not pay any money to the landlord without the landlord showing up with armed police to do something about that?

It seems you are attempting to re-define invention as discovery, i.e., to assert that any case of invention is actually a case of discovery. I doubt you would agree to the reverse: that any case of discovery is actually a case of invention, as this would imply, e.g., that Wiliam Herschel "invented" Uranus, or that Californians "invented" the gold in them thar hills — Luke

No, I’m saying that in the case of abstract objects like ideas, it makes no sense to differentiate invention from discovery. Not that invention goes away and only discovery is left; discovery is every bit as problematic when it come to abstract things as invention is. Your talk about planets and gold is missing the point: there is a difference there, in concrete cases. But not in abstract ones.

What similar algorithm exists in order for us to "discover" the supposedly pre-existing ideas of the Mona Lisa or the toaster? — Luke

Trivially, one could mechanically iterate through every possible series of brush strokes on the canvas (more clearly illustrated if we think of a digital image and iterate through every possible series of pixels) and eventually get the Mona Lisa. Likewise one could iterate through every possible arrangement of atoms and eventually get a toaster. Or instead one could randomly throw together brush strokes or atoms until eventually one got the thing in question — like the infinite monkeys with typewriters producing the complete works of Shakespeare.

But neither of those processes would actually seem like creativity, which is the main thrust of my OP if we can get past the more trivial opening comments. It is not the determinism or the randomness that makes for creativity, but something else aside from that issue—something I already covered in the OP.

I am broadly an empiricist, but I don’t know in what way you mean like Locke specifically.

I don’t understand your second question.

But no, this isn’t just mean to be about humans specifically, but a specific function of intelligence more generally.

The "concrete having of an idea by a person" is not relevant to whether ideas are discovered or invented? — Luke

Only the distinction between that and the content of those ideas is not relevant. Of course any idea is had by someone, but bringing that up has nothing to do with where the contents of those ideas “comes from”. I’m just saying that distinguishing between “coming from the person” (invention) and “coming from the world” (discovery) makes no sense when were talking about ideas; they amount to the same thing.

Consider just things like numbers, even just the counting numbers. There are an infinite quantity of counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, etc forever. There will always be some number in that series that nobody has counted up to yet, that nobody has had any reason to instantiate in any concrete way. Does that mean that such a number doesn't exist yet? Are there not actually infinitely many counting numbers, just because we can't ever finish counting to infinity? NB that that would mean there is such a thing as "the biggest counting number", and which number that is would be constantly changing, as people count up to, and so "invent", new numbers.

I'm not asking about the status of abstract objects here, just saying that, in whatever sense it is that we mean when we ordinarily say "there are infinitely many counting numbers, even if nobody has counted to them yet", there are likewise already infinitely many ideas available to be had, even if nobody has actually had them yet.

Like numbers, consider different mathematical structures. Take complex numbers like "i" for example. Was that invented, or discovered? I think there's no sense to be made of any difference there: the possibility of doing math involving two-dimensional quantities (which is all complex numbers are) was always there, and someone was the first person (recorded by history to which we have access) to "come up with" the idea of doing that, but to ask whether that person "invented" or "discovered" complex numbers is a nonsense question, because those amount to the same thing.

As every imaginable thing, every idea, can in principle be rigorously described if we care to do so, and so made equivalent to some mathematical structure, this principle that mathematical structures are equally "invented" and "discovered" applies to all ideas.

those possibilities aren't "out there" somewhere to be discovered [...] Sure you could say someone discovers novel ideas in themselves — Janus

That this language of "discovery" doesn't make a lot of sense (where were they sitting, waiting to be discovered?) goes to my point that in the context of abstract ideas there isn't any difference between "invention" and "discovery". I am not saying that there is no invention, only discovery. I'm saying that neither of those, in senses distinguishable from each other, really works as applied to abstract ideas. In that context, they are the same thing, indistinguishable; we equally make and find ideas, kinda both, kinda neither.

What you say about finding patterns, rather than just extending them, sounds like it's very much in line with what I say creativity is in the OP. It's not just enumerating on instances of an existing pattern or structure, and it's not just random possibilities unconnected to any structure, but rather it's finding/making new/previously-unknown structure in the abstract space of possibilities, contextualizing and connecting those possibilities to each other in a way that gives them meaning.

Consider the creativity of conspiracy theories for example. They are often very creative and irrational explanations for some event or phenomenon. I think this is the issue with AI being creative. AI’s must follow a code; their programming — Pinprick

Conspiracy theories are often the result of over-eager pattern matching. Often times, there really is a pattern, and the conspiracy theorists just get it wrong. See for example alt-right nutbars who think The Jewish International Bankers control the world because of a laundry list of reasons... reasons that actually point at a pattern of the failures of capitalism. They're seeing signs a real pattern that's there, but falsely attributing it to a racial, individual-conspiratorial issue (a handful of evil Others working together to intentionally keep Us down) instead of a class-based social-structural issue (a handful of fortunate people selfishly doing what most people would do in their position because the rest of us let them get away with it).

Computers can do pattern recognition. They can even (mostly) do bad pattern recognition: I asked Google Lens to identify a bush the other day and it told me it was a "plantation", then I asked it to identify a flower and it told me it was "marine life". And have you seen things like Google Dream? Google would make a great conspiracy theorist. It'll take a lot of work to make it less "creative", and better capable of critically weeding out its flights of fancy.

To me, discovery means not changing whatever it is you found. So like you say, part of creativity is simply finding an unusual idea and expressing it, but if someone finds two ideas, and then combines/synthesizes them to form a new idea, that seems different than just discovery. — Pinprick

But the possibility of combining those two ideas was already "there", in whatever sense the possibility of the simple ideas were "there" too.

As I said before, I’m not saying that ideas are only discovered not invented, but that there is no sense to be made of any distinction between discovery and invention.

There is a sense to be made of the difference between the abstract content of an idea and the concrete having of an idea by a person. That is the nature/photograph difference. That’s what you say I’m conflating, but that difference is a trivial one that I take for granted and am not talking about at all. I’m only taking about the content of the ideas, which I’m saying is like the content of nature photographs.

I’m not arguing for determinism, but rather for the irrelevance of either determinism or non-determinism.

Sure, but what we're talking about is how the content of the ideas gets there. What you're talking about is trivially true and I'm not contesting it at all.

I just said I'm not conflating them; one is like a picture of the other.

...and then after collapsing invention vs discovery into a distinction with no difference, I'm talking about what makes for a "creative photograph", so to speak. One could mechanically go about taking every possible picture in order, but we wouldn't find that creative. One could (we can imagine at least) teleport the camera around randomly taking pictures at random, but we wouldn't find that creative either. What then makes for a creative "photograph" (idea)?

The rest of the OP, which nobody seems to have gotten to yet, is all about that.

I'm using "idea" as something like "mental picture of a possibility".

We can think of the "coming up with" process as something like nature photography, then. All the stuff you're taking pictures of is already out there. The photographer just goes out and picks a specific part of it to capture. (This isn't to denigrate photography at all; I've just been sorting through my own photography for my portfolio just a moment ago). This thus blurs the lines between "making" and "finding" something, between "invention" and "discovery". I'm not saying there's only one and not the other; I'm saying there really isn't any difference between them when you get down to it.

We as sentient beings not only discover possibilities but actualize realities — javra

Yes, but the production of an idea in a concrete medium is not usually what we take to be the act of "creativity": it's the coming-up-with of ideas themselves. This is why I wrote...

...any act of abstract "creation" (prior to the act of realizing the idea in some concrete medium)... — Pfhorrest

...in the first paragraph. It's that mental creativity that's the topic here, not the physical production of those ideas in concrete artistic (etc) artifacts.

I'm contesting the seemingly common notion that such mental creativity can only come from sort of non-deterministic process, the likes of which (for instance) could not possibly ever be programmed into an AI. I'm arguing that abstract creation is indistinguishable from discovery, either way it's just plucking an idea out of the abstract space of possibilities, and the determinism or randomness of that "plucking" process is completely irrelevant: it's a specific pattern in the (at least adequately determined) process that constitutes the thing we call creativity.

I'm not sure what more I can say in response to this that wouldn't just be repeating something from the OP, but I'll try.

Surely every possibility is already possible, right? There is some (infinite) set of things that are possible, and by discovering that something is possible, we don't thereby become the cause of its possibility; it was already a possibility, we just found it among that infinite set of possibilities.

What I say "idea" here I'm talking about roughly a picture of some way that things might be; a possible state of affairs. All of those possible states of affairs, those ideas that could be had, are already possible; when we "come up with" an idea, we may feel as though we're inventing something, but as the thing we're "coming up with" is just a possibility, and all the possibilities were already possible, then really we've just discovered something.

That doesn't mean we can't have been the first person to discover it, or the first person to write it down, or the first person to popularize it. But that's just like it's possible for someone to be the first person to walk upon a new land, or the first person to map that land, or the first person to settle that land; despite all of that, the land was still already there. Finding it didn't cause it to come into being.

will to power — ChatteringMonkey

Will power — JerseyFlight

Different things.

Smith and Marx agree more than you'd probably think.

Agreed.

Surely then a situation where most people own practically nothing (because almost everything is owned by a very few) will be one in which hardly anyone is motivated to take care of anything.

Only if you assume maps are meant to be replicas. — bongo fury

I’m not saying anything at all about what they are meant to be. A map or model in the usual sense is useful precisely because it is a simplification. But maps/models and replicas aren’t ontologically different kinds of things, they’re together on a spectrum; if you simplify irrelevant details out of a replica you get a map or model, and if you add sufficient detail to a map or model you get a replica.

Talking about a literal map of a city is probably a clearer illustration.

You can walk down a real city street, but you can’t walk down a street on a map of that city... unless it’s an enormous map the size of the actual city.

But still, you can rest in the shade of the buildings in the real city, but not on the enormity map... unless that map also includes depth.

But still, you can enter the buildings in the real
city, but you can’t enter the buildings on the map... unless the map includes the detailed 3D interiors of the building too.

But still, you can use the toilet in a real
building, but not in a map building... unless the map also includes full 3D fully detailed plumbing in it.

And so on. Whatever you can do in real life but can’t do with the map, it’s because there’s some detail that’s been left out of the map. So a map that did include absolutely every detail would just be a replica of the territory it is a map of.

So a “map” of reality that includes every detail down to the most fundamental physical level would be a replica of reality. And it would thus include humans like us in it, who would function just like we do, and experience that “map” as their reality.

There is thus no reason to think that maps and territories are ontologically different kinds of things. Our actual reality is completely indiscernible from “just” a map, representation, model, etc, of it. Which doesn’t require that there be some “original” reality that we’re a copy of; rather, it just DOESN’T require that there be more, ontologically, than informational, mathematical structures. If it functions exactly the same (because its structure is exactly the same), then it just is the same.

So our reality can just be taken to be an “abstract” mathematical object like any other; the only thing that makes it “concrete” to us is that it’s the one that we are a part of.

We can hold people responsible in the sense of demanding restitution: whether you had a choice to do so or not, you caused some harm, so now we’ll make you make it better again.

We can also hold people responsible in the sense of rehabilitation: whether you have a choice to do so or not, you are prone to cause harm, so we’re going to do things to you to recondition you to behave differently in the future.

But wait. We are ourselves also people just like those we’re judging. Can we not therefore also judge ourselves, and do things to ourselves to recondition ourselves to behave differently in the future? Is that not then free will: the ability to change what we desire or at least which desires we act on? It’s not an indeterministic process, sure, but how exactly would indeterminism help us recondition ourselves, rather than at most hindering the process but most likely having no noticeable effect at all?

That's sweeping the problem under the rug. You haven't dealt with the problem but decided to ignore it. — TheMadFool

No, I’ve concluded (like many before me) that it’s not a problem. “You don’t have good enough reason to think that” cannot be good enough reason to think otherwise, otherwise we end up in absurdity, forever rejecting everything, which is a great way to guarantee you never form correct beliefs. Critical rationalism is the only rational alternative.

Even if we’re not brains in vats, all of our experiences could conceivably be hallucinations. It is always possible to be radically skeptical to the point of solipsism or even complete nihilism, and once you’re there there is no argument that could reasonably convince you otherwise, because anyone making the argument or any evidence they present (or evidence that you find on your own) could all just be an illusion. That’s why such radical skepticism is not pragmatically warranted, and instead of justificationism like that (“I won’t believe anything until it can be proven from the ground up”), we must instead adopt critical rationalism (“I’ll believe whatever seems true until I find reasons to believe otherwise”). On a critical rationalist account, it is possible that we should have experiences that are inconsistent with the hypothesis that they originate from what we might falsely think is the natural world, and thought there are always infinitely many possible alternative hypotheses, the one that says we are brains in vats may seem far more likely, in which case we are warranted to believe it until we find evidence to the contrary.

Say, for example, that a human figure with apparent omnipotence appears to you out of thin air, tells you you’ve been a brain in a vat experiment, but the experiment is over now and they’re going to put your brain in a clone body, and let you join the real world. After discussing the whole thing at length you have a discontinuity in your experience and wake up in a different body in a different world. You live in the world for decades, a long fruitful life, but your clone body ages, and as you are on your death bed you are offered a chance to upload into a virtual reality that your brain in a vat experiment helped enable. You agree, and wake up in a beautiful world, in a young perfect body, and you can do stuff like fly and shoot fireballs from your hands with VR magic. You can also communicate with people’s in the world you’ve been experiencing for decades, and those people confirm that you are an uploaded mind in VR now. You continue living like that for thousands of years, keeping up on the news in the outside world too while you live in your virtual paradise.

What is more likely, which are you going to believe — that that experience is reflective of actual reality, and you really were a brain in a vat, or that you just had a millennia-long uninterrupted hallucination, or that there never was any reality to begin with, or something?

the problem is that we can't know the difference — TheMadFool

Except we can, in principle; it’s just very very hard to get at that information.

You’re basically just saying “nuh uh” here. I am explicitly endorsing the equivalence of physical reality and a mathematical object, so pointing to that as an absurdity is unpersuasive.

All maps, models, etc, are effectively descriptions, even if they are not descriptions in human-readable verbal languages. A visual map can be encoded in binary on a computer, and a human could read off those ones and zeros, even if they didn’t understand what they were reading. All the information in the picture would be retained in the sound of the human voice. If that picture were to be perfectly detailed down to the subatomic level, it would have to be animated or at least include temporal information in it like momentum, and all of the structural details that give a complete picture of its function, and contain within it all the exact information that the physical thing the “picture” it is of does.

Fine to gloss description as map or model, but not map as working model or replica or simulation — bongo fury

Structure is function; to be is to do. If you were to make a truly complete map or model of something, you could not help but replicate its function, and so build a replica, a simulation.

You know that famous prayer asking for the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”?

Stoicism emphasizes the first and last points (having the wisdom to know whether or not you can change something, and the serenity to accept when you cannot), but it never denies the middle part, the courage to change the things you can.

If anything, it is taking for granted a background of people always trying to change everything under the assumption that they can, and just advising to notice where you cannot, and accept that... so you can refocus your efforts on the things you can change, and so be all the more effective at those things.

I broadly agree, I think, which is why I wrote before that drama (comedy+tragedy) is “sort of mirror image of beauty”: you can still see something via its reflection in a mirror, but it’s sort of turned around. Given my view in that earlier thread about the nature of beauty, that beauty is about something seeming “right” (either good or true), comedy and tragedy, both depending on something seeming “wrong” (bad or false), are, as I said before, “in some way un-beautiful. Yet both can nevertheless be, in the end, beautiful in their own way.”

Because this mirror of beauty, a reversal of it, indirectly shows what is “right”, in a different way: “Comedy, in making light of bad things, shows them as not so bad, and so correspondingly good, at least relatively speaking, and thereby beautiful in a way. And tragedy, in treating bad things as weighty matters, can speak hard truths about bad experiences that people can really have, and so, for that truth, also be beautiful in a way.”

I agree that Cash’s cover of Hurt is beautiful in that tragic way.

What I mean is that if there really is such a thing as a real, objective aesthetic standard, then, by nature, the standard is ethical. — Noble Dust

Agreed, and I think I pretty much said as much. Art is only objectively good inasmuch as a work of art is a kind of speech-act and speech-acts like all acts are subject to moral judgement. Pleasing people is good. Teaching people is good, especially Socraticly by raising interesting questions for consideration. So art that does those things effectively is good, in an objective sense, not just good as in effective at whatever, but good as in effective at doing something good.

I think it's fine to compare rhetoric and art and notice similarities in delivery and interpretation of the two, but I don't think it's correct to lump them together (which I'm not sure if you're doing or not, but I'm not assuming you are. Just making a remark here). — Noble Dust

I’m referring back to my earlier thread about the relationship between rhetoric and the arts, where I characterize rhetoric as being about style and presentation and appealing more personally to passions and feelings (in contrast to logic being about form and structure and appealing more impersonally to dispassionate thought), and put forth that rhetoric holds the same relationship to the arts more generally as logic holds to mathematics more generally: each is a foundational part of its respective larger field and where that field intersects with both philosophy and the more abstract study of language, with both mathematics and the arts being kind of broad explorations of opposite aspects of language.

It's important here to distinguish, as always, between good ends and just means.

On a utilitarian account of what makes for a good end (the greatest pleasure for the greatest number), a universe full of happy people enjoying their lives is better than a universe with no people in it. And, perhaps only slightly more controversially, a universe full of miserable people suffering eternally is worse than a universe with no people in it. Whether or not a universe with people in it is better or worse than a universe with no people thus depends on the overall suffering or enjoyment of those people.

Whether pursuit of those ends justifies any particular action, like conceiving new life, is a different question. But people here seem to be treating them largely like they're the same question. Might be useful to tease them apart.