JobseekersHave you gone down any rabbit holes that gave you an existential crisis?
medienlampeFor me that would be Vacuum Decay, greatly explained by Kurzgesagt:
Gödel Incompleteness Theorem and the boundary of our understanding of the universe.
I call it Gödel’s curse
So modern math is proven to be incomplete and we cannot prove that it is consistent either. Those 2 words, incomplete and consistent have a very technical meaning here.
The first is that there is a statement in modern mathematics, which is true, but cannot be proven. And even if we expand it, there will always be such a statement.
And the second, we cannot have a system that proves everything as that system will be inconsistent. Basically if a system can prove everything, then we can easily prove 1=1 AND 1 ≠ 1. If both are proven, then we lose meaning since there is no “truth”. But a consistent system cannot prove its self consistency. Ergo, with modern math, we cannot know if math is consistent.
Now, the problem lies in that we use math to model our perceived reality. It means there is a limit to human knowledge, or put simply, there will be something in the universe that we may never know the answer to.
My favorite is the busy beaver function. There exist, at a certain number, that our modern math cannot make any meaningful statement about the function. Here is a great video about it. (youtube link warning). But you can also look at veritasium video for more in depth explanations.
What happens at the Boundary of Computation?
Buddhism.
(I hope any Buddhists here find that as hilarious as I do.)
Good one
Fucked me real good
Great Filter Events come to my mind first.
Then Gamma Ray Bursts.
Smart astrophysics people I’ve talked to are excited when we see gamma bursters further out in the universe than before, because that means that the universe is bigger than previously known.
Free will.
It's hard to accept, but free will is just not compatible with reality. It's like geocentrism. It seems obvious on its face because of our limited perspective, but nothing else in the universe makes sense if it's true. We live in a mechanistic universe and cause and effect doesn't suddenly stop when the atoms are part of a human.
I freaked out for about a week once I came to realize how much of our society is based on a scientific impossibility. Redesigning justice, ethics, healthcare, the very concept of blame, etc. to account for this is a daunting fucking task.
Here’s the thing, though: it’s doesn’t matter if free will is real or not.
WeirdmusicWell, it does if our entire justice system is based around the concept of free will.
But we never could have designed it any other way (assuming no free will)
Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
possibly a catCulture is not a static system. Elements may be destined to be counter-rational for now, but a better of awareness could also destine us for a more fair and effective system in the future. Just because something hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean that determinism dictates it never will.
Absolutely. I’ve gotten myself spun up about determinism before and eventually decided that I’m going to believe in free will for the time being. Much like theism is for many, the idea of free will is kinda comforting for me and it helps me cope with reality to feel like I (and everyone else) has agency. Plus, if I’m wrong it doesn’t really matter and I never could have been right at this point in my life anyway.
Plus, if I’m wrong it doesn’t really matter and I never could have been right at this point in my life anyway.
It’s kind of like the free will version of Pascal’s Wager, amazing
That also does not matter. Spinozan Determinism can be summed up as:
“If it could have happened any other way, it would have.”
Yup. Determinism doesn’t actually change anything-- but it tricks people into thinking it does by giving them permission to remove all meaning from the world. You can accomplish the same thing by believing in nihilism.
But if we are truly deterministic beings, the factors determining our environment are incredibly important. Even (not freely) acknowledging that free will doesn’t exist we could very well (not freely) decide that we need a justice system in this society because we (not freely) want less crime, and people will (not freely) do less crime in a society where such a system is in place.
In the end it doesnt matter if people work based on free will or entirely predetermined. Or society developed as we are, and we put systems into place that seem to work. Sure, someone robbing a bank might do so for reasons that were predetermined in his brain and surroundings, but getting prosecuted for it would in turn become something that determines every future moment of his life.
The only think determinism really changes is perspective. It enables us to say: Okay I understand why I/they/you acted this way, or maybe I don’t understand, but can assume that there were reasons. That’s it. It lends understanding; it doesn’t have to chance anything.
Subatomic particles act in insane ways that are absolutely not mechanical or predictible. A very limited size of object behaves “normally”. I think believing that the universe mostly acts like our everyday objects is the skewed perspective.
Our current understanding is not enough to state that with confidence. We used to be so confident with classical mechanics and even claims that physics is almost complete. God knows how long our current probabilistic model will last before we find another better model. It may be probabilistic, or it may not.
And what if its a pseudorandom generator all the way down
Unless FTL or time travel is possible, we do know that quantum particles don’t simply have an inherent hidden value, and do actually choose their state probabilistically.
Random behavior of subatomic particles doesn’t make free will any likelier either though.
If they act at random on a makro level their randomness would average out to zero. And that actually checks out, since the mechanical forces of the atomic and molecular level are known, observable, and provable. An apple drops from the tree to the ground, every time. Causality is still a thing, even if not observable at the subatomic level.
The only way to imagine a subatomically based free will would be some mechanic over which we, at will, could change the randomness of subatomic particles to behave in a predictable pattern and on a scale that’s grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward. Or at least make or synapses do something that they physically speaking wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Free will is as likely as magic. In fact it would actually be some form of magic - a volitional breach of causality itself.
on a scale that’s grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward
Not necessarily. An apple teetering on the edge of a cliff requires no grand change in initial conditions to have two very different journeys. If “you” are a metaphysical entity capable of altering the signals in your physical brain, your brain could amplify and enact your will. If you have a metaphysical existence, this is a pretty reasonable mechanism for it to work.
Colonel PanicI was destined to post this comment.
Robert Sapolsky agrees.
absGeekNZSapolsky’s perspective ignores reality to generate talking points.
Just because a person has a limited set of choices, mostly determined by upbringing does not mean that we can predict any future action based on previous actions.
At best you may be able produce a chaotic model that gives probabilities of potential actions in any situation.
You know, there’s a very, very strong emotional incentive to feel agency, and endless aspects of experimental psychology has shown that you stress people or frazzle them or give them an unsolvable problem, and they get a way distorted sense of agency, at that point, as a defence.
That is all well and good.
I’m an engineer, so I look at this from a physical sciences point of view. The main problem with the “no free will” argument is it provides no predictive power, there is no model that can say person X will do Y (instead of A, B, C or D) in situation Z.
What is possible is giving probabilities of Y, A, B, C or D in experimental settings. But in the real world, there are too many variables interacting in a chaotic manner to even give reasonable probabilities; this is why we can only use population level statistics rather than individual level predictions.
I present, the Jim Twins:
Twins separated at birth find each other and discover they’ve led identical lives source
The two men had married wives with the same first name and had similar interests and hobbies.
Similar <> identical.
This story has little to add to the debate about free will. How many identical twins separated at birth didn’t have similar lives?
It is anecdotal, but compelling. Determinism can’t be falsified, but neither can free will. The neuroscience is interesting, and shouldn’t be dismissed. Sapolsky’s debates are informative.
Do We Have Freewill? / Daniel Dennett VS Robert Sapolsky
It only seems compelling, there is no base rate of non-similar twins separated at birth. Is this 1 in 2 sets end up like this, every one, 1 in 100,000?
The neuroscience is interesting, but it is not in any way predictive. It is all post-hoc rationalisations of what did happen.
As I said above, I’m an engineer and look at this from a physical sciences point of view. There is no model (as far as I’m aware) that can predict what will happen except in very specific psychological experiments.
Well, you’re an engineer, not a neuroscientist like Robert Sapolsky so his research carries more value than your opinion.
There’s a really good Kurzgesagt (in a nutshell) about this topic. (Also their videos are excellent in general, highly recommend their YouTube channel).
My thoughts on this are: we may not have free will but it still feels like we make choices so I will continue to choose to do things which matters to me and enjoy my time in the universe.
Why do people always stop one step too short?
If there is no free will, the concepts of justice, blame, etc. still survive funtionally intact. If “chemical you” commits a crime, “you” are only not responsible if “you” is a metaphysical entity separate from the chemical you. But there’s no evidence that “you” aren’t simply the “chemical you”, and therefore fully responsible for your crimes. If “you” are a metaphysical entity separate from the chemical you, then “you” do actually have free will.
This is only not true if the metaphysical you exists but cannot control the chemical you, which seems reasonable but like… you can move your arm right now, by willing it to be so. Either metaphysical you has free will, or your conscious experience is the chemical you. Either way, your conscious experience is either the same as or commands your physical form, and therefore is responsible for the actions that you take, and can be blamed and given justice.
underscoresMost philosophers think free will and determinism are compatible.
The Mandela Effect caused by running the Large Hadron Collider for the first time, shifting us into an alternate universe.
I thought that was Harambe. Or was he the first sign of deviation?
Harambe was 2016, we shifted in 2010.
rektdeckard“This is not a place of honor”
CALIGVLAThat’s fucking creepy as shit for some reason.
I mean, it’s supposed to be.
Probably still won’t stop future humans from opening the vault, sadly.
Considering I’ve seen it printed on booty shorts, yeah, probably not.
Call me Lenny/LeniI’m sure my very existence has left behind such a rabbit hole. I’ve always been left in constant self-reflection because people for some still-mysterious reason genuinely lay on me bigger burdens and less benefits that they lay on other people or that which fit in with their way of doing things outside of interactions with me. In all spheres of life, aside from a sense of reflection, all interactions are set up in such a way as to be able to be cited later, with or without hopes to shatter this barrier, and in return there’s just demoralization. If anyone were to remember a certain idea I had that is complained about for poor manifestation each time, people were harassing me everywhere for weeks about “communication” even though even AI said I was fine, this being the kind of thing some of us will attest affects outlook. And if you were to investigate context for everything I mentioned experiencing, with a lot of it leading to it, I would bet any mind flexible enough to understand would melt under the sheer chaos.
It’s somewhat specific to someone with my type of background; namely growing up in a family of young-Earth creationist, fundamentalist Christians, and learning that things like science and evolution are lies from Satan.
At some point curiosity got the better of me and I realized I didn’t even know what evolution even is, so I read up a bit about it. Then a bit more. You know, this actually kind of makes sense. Eventually the rabbit hole led to the existence of God. I remember watching a bunch of debates and expecting the most learned representatives of our Christian tradition to make some really great arguments. And… they… never… did.
Same experience. Right down to debate watching hoping for something to hang on to!
geneva_convenienceHere you go youtu.be/uSwJuOPG4FI
Lawrence Krauss vs Hamza Tzortzis | Islam vs Atheism Debate
I only recently tossed a Handbook Of Christian Apologetics by Tacelli & Kreeft. I was never devout, let alone outright brainwashed into anti-science nonsense, but at the cusp of my reddit atheist phase I figured a question this big deserved a fair shake. So I got a big ol’ book of the best arguments anyone had. They all sucked. So that was that.
The one that made me put the book down and go ‘yep, atheist’ was “the argument from magic.” You think about moving your hand. Your hand moves by thought alone. Magic! Therefore, Jesus. I fucking wish I was exaggerating.
Took another decade to figure out the people pushing these arguments don’t actually give a shit about being right. The point is performing loyalty to the ingroup. There’s a conclusion, and it comes from people above you, so your job is to make whatever mouth noises get there. A monotheistic god is only the purest expression of that tribalist worldview.
I’m taking a grad school course about the psychology of decision making, and the science behind how we process and use data hurts my mind and soul. At some level, we are biological logic machines. The implications of that terrify me.
Interested in reading more, can you mention the textbook(s) your course uses?
Larning about how AI (LLMs) work, what output they generate and comparing that to kids growing up, I have a similar experience.
DaleGribble88Toxoplasma Gondii - a parasite bred through cat poop. It is extremely common, easily spread through undercooked food (especially meat). It can affect your mental state to engage in riskier and more self destructive behaviors. Testing for Toxoplasma Gondii is not standard, but it is believed that 10-15% of the US population is infected with the parasite at any given time.
Oh I’ve been there too! Read about it while planning my pregnancy. It made me feel so paranoic that I got the test done twice just in case. I never got sick with it, but paranoia was a removed.
Since then I have gotten mental health help to deal with anxiety etc.
That’s actually my favorite parasite! Toxo really wants to live inside a cat’s digestive tract, so much so that, when a rodent gets it in their blood, the baby toxos produce cysts in the brain (and liver and muscles) that hypnotize the rat into being attracted to cat poop. This leads to the rat hanging around where cats poop, and therefore getting eaten by the cat, and ending up happily back inside the cat’s GI tract.
ssmRoko’s Basalisk / Pascal’s Wager scared me for a little while. Then I realized it was stupid.
Tri-omni God problem. The God that we are told is worthy of worship is
The presence of evil in the world demonstrates that no more than two out of those 3 can possibly be true at the same time. Thus if God does exist, he’s not all that and a bag of gummy bears.