in thread "Going to bat for "hard materialism"": I believe there really are fundamental, deterministic physical laws. (At least, modulo the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. However, I don't lean on the latter for higher-level conclusions, so I'm willing to bracket it for most further analysis.) ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 66 I believe there real (view hidden) 66 Separate "semantic" point, but adding to what I said above, I think "materialism" is just a horrible name for this position. It historically has more to do with early Enlightenment metaphysics than with science, and it's super misleading. Modern fundamenta... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 77 Separate "semantic" (view hidden) 77 Absolutely correct, on this hypothesis. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 66 Absolutely correct, (view hidden) 66 A great way to confuse yourself is to try to jump between the highest and lowest levels of the system and see at one glance how they relate. That's not how science works. That's not how any rigorous thought works. You can't just pick out big-picture featur... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 99 A great way to confu (view hidden) 99 Yes, I agree that this is the key disagreement. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 99 Yes, I agree that th (view hidden) 99 I agree it would be silly to define matter that way. But I think that much Enlightenment materialism, and much popular materialism today, pretty much does this. There is a prevalent, quasi-Newtonian view of matter as undifferentiated "stuff" with form as "... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 99 I agree it would be (view hidden) 99 Francis Bacon is pretty explicit about this and was widely followed, most immediately by Hobbes. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 99 Francis Bacon is pre (view hidden) 99 If you look at the table of the Standard Model, and ask "How are these different entities characterized?," the answer has nothing to do with "matter" in any sense that Newton and his contemporaries would have understood (which was something like undifferen... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 55 If you look at the t (view hidden) 55 Yes, the precise structure of the interaction and composition are what is important, and this is what I mean by form. This is so true that if you keep drilling the analysis of form down, from the "monkey" down to the Standard Model, you finally arrive at a... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 99 Yes, the precise str (view hidden) 99 I think AGI is certainly possible. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 77 I think AGI is certa (view hidden) 77 I have no objection to this hypothesis. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 77 I have no objection (view hidden) 77 This is an important point. We see the results of failing to cultivate feedback from reality in certain dog breeds that become increasingly fragile and ridiculous. 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 22 This is an important (view hidden) 22 I don't believe in "nature" in this modern, abstracted sense. There is only the world. Any world-spanning abstraction analogous to "the economy" is superfluous. ... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 44 I don't believe in " (view hidden) 44 I agree that this notion is important for the delineation of life. I might call it "internal autopoiesis" rather than "basal," as I'm not sure the autopoesis has to be at the "bottom" of an organism. I'm not even sure that the "bottom" is well-defined. Why... 12mo ago (collapse hidden) 33 I agree that this no (view hidden) 33