anon_bwti received

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.)... 1y ago received

I believe there real received

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... 1y ago received

Separate "semantic" received

Absolutely correct, on this hypothesis.... 1y ago received

Absolutely correct, received

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... 1y ago received

A great way to confu received

Yes, I agree that this is the key disagreement.... 1y ago received

Yes, I agree that th received

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 "... 1y ago received

I agree it would be received

Francis Bacon is pretty explicit about this and was widely followed, most immediately by Hobbes.... 1y ago received

Francis Bacon is pre received

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... 1y ago received

If you look at the t received

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... 1y ago received

Yes, the precise str received

I think AGI is certainly possible.... 1y ago received

I think AGI is certa received

I have no objection to this hypothesis.... 1y ago received

I have no objection received

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. 1y ago received

This is an important received

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.... 1y ago received

I don't believe in " received

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... 1y ago received

I agree that this no received