BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Jan 26, 2025 5:40 pm
Alexis, your response is a perfect example of
why this conversation is so infuriating for anyone who takes the future of humanity seriously. While real people are out there trying to improve lives with tangible, verifiable knowledge—derived from those "scientific principles" you so smugly dismiss—you waste your breath spinning mystical nonsense and pretending that unverifiable speculation somehow elevates the discussion. It doesn’t. It cheapens it.
Let’s be clear: anyone who genuinely wants to make the world better for actual, living, breathing people engages with the facts. They deal with the reality of the conservation laws and the fundamental interactions of nature because those principles shape the very fabric of our existence. Dismissing that as "extreme" isn’t just lazy—it’s a tacit admission that you have nothing substantive to offer. Instead, you hide behind pretentious vagaries about "higher intellect" as though hand-waving your way through the conversation makes you some enlightened sage. It doesn’t. It makes you a coward.
Your inability—or unwillingness—to grapple with the hard truths of reality is telling. You say these laws hold up under scrutiny, yet you reject their conclusions outright without bothering to explain where or how they fail. And no, Alexis, "an exercise of higher intellect" is not an answer. It’s a cop-out. It’s an excuse to dodge accountability for your ideas.
Meanwhile, the rest of us—the ones you arrogantly dismiss as "aggressive physicalists"—are too busy solving real problems to entertain your self-indulgent ramblings. Medical breakthroughs, technological advancements, and even the possibility of tackling systemic social issues all stem from understanding and working within the framework of scientific principles. That’s the realm of people who care about making life better—not some "intellectual realm" that exists only in your head.
So, Alexis, here’s the challenge again: if you think this framework is flawed, then
show where the flaws are. Spell it out. Otherwise, your metaphysical musings aren’t worth the pixels they’re displayed on. They’re not an intellectual contribution—they’re just noise. If you’re unwilling to step into the realm of verifiable, actionable ideas, then at least have the decency to admit it instead of pretending your incoherent mysticism is anything more than a distraction.
1) …why this conversation is so infuriating for anyone who takes the future of humanity seriously.
It is important to let you know that the entire conversation that you initiated has been super-interesting to me. So I have to say that I am thankful for your presence here. With that said, I believe you will get more out of the conversation, and the opposition that you receive, if you actually understand the reasons and the motivations about why I (and we — some of us) oppose you.
A couple of preliminary statements are necessary. Have you noticed that though I might (and I do) defend Christian belief (the core metaphysics) that I can hardly bear what I understand as Immanuel Can’s religious fanaticism? How is it that one man, who sincerely feels the need to preserve a relationship with the invisible (what God means, what a relationship in a real sense with divinity means, and also what a relationship to *higher metaphysics* means) find himself in such opposition to a supposed co-religionist? The more the reasons for these differences are brought out, the more interesting and useful the conversation becomes.
I recognize that you actually, and I assume sincerely, believe that you represent some sort of vanguard whose purpose is to take the future of humanity seriously. When you talk like this I recognize that I am speaking with an intellectual child. What do I get out of the act of presenting you with information about how
potentially misguided you are? You make a serious mistake. You assume that because science (here is one example) pioneered vaccines, and vaccines stop diseases from occurring, that this is equivalent to addressing the needs and problems of man in any profound sense. My view of your discourse? You have failed to actually understand man. So your anthropology and your physiology — according to what you write about — is ignorant of giant realms of knowledge. This fits actually, because what you reveal about yourself is that you are a mathematician, one interested in physics, and that your mind is trained in a certain way. Your entire discourse takes this form, and each of your posts is a restatement of what you have said dozens of times before. Your entire discourse operates with
idées fixes. If I had to describe it in harsh terms I would describe it as *intellectual pathology*.
Now, I have just made a harsh assessment of your methods and you will not — you cannot! — take any of it into consideration! But it will become for you a prod to rearm yourself for your Epic Fight and you will come back that much more *aggressively* and trying to *prove* your points.
In this sense, weirdly, I place you and Immanuel Can on a similar plane. He also has idées fixes — I assume you have been amused (if not horrified) by his elaborate performance about an Original Mating Pair? Do you see? His mind is locked into a view from which he
CANNOT DEVIATE without (what I assume feels like to him) irreparable harm to his *belief-system*. Intellectually, he has no choice but to double-down on an absurd belief and to give
NO GROUND to any view that punctures the certainties of the system.
So your anthropology and can see, and all of us see, that ‘belief systems’ are held to for psychological reasons. The structure of the self, the integrity of the self, seems to be held together by what has been concocted as a perceptual system that must be maintained. What happens if the system is *punctured*? Well, put yourself in his shoes and then turn back to yourself and try to imagine what you would have to go through if your Marvelous Machine of Certainty would receive a blow that began to deflate it for you.
Perhaps what would result for you is what also would result for Immanuel Can? That is, you’d have no alternative but to fall into nihilism’s grip. And here I assert again that, when examined honestly my dear dear child, you are in a
MIGHTY BATTLE against that nihilism that, at a peculiar level, does seem to have you in its grip. Thus your views take on notes of
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM.
2) Let’s be clear: anyone who genuinely wants to make the world better for actual, living, breathing people engages with the facts.
However, if you were to find those people — say a group of a couple of dozen of them — who dedicate to making the world *better* (and who are said to succeed) it is highly doubtful that their philosophy of life would concur with yours!
You have
NO IDEA what actually makes life better! Or, put another way, you have involved yourself in an obsessive project through which you puff yourself up in a rather
GRANDIOSE manner. You have concocted a forum personality dedicated to that purpose.
3) Your inability—or unwillingness—to grapple with the hard truths of reality is telling.
I think, my dear boy, that you are projecting. The *hard truths* you say? How can you know if I or anyone else has or has not grappled with hard truths? Are we to assume that you have? But wait, your discourse is very very shallow and you give evidence of being *locked* into specific obsessed-over *beliefs*. How do you expect to be trusted when your discourse is so
skewed?
4) Meanwhile, the rest of us—the ones you arrogantly dismiss as "aggressive physicalists"—are too busy solving real problems to entertain your self-indulgent ramblings. Medical breakthroughs, technological advancements, and even the possibility of tackling systemic social issues all stem from understanding and working within the framework of scientific principles.
Now here you say something that I can only agree with. Physical science, medicine — what they do within their realm is of tremendous service and has great value. But what
YOU DO is to elevate those attainments, those endeavors, to levels that are in no sense a part of science’s domain. I.e. those issues and question having to do with value and meaning on those planes that you are incapable of considering!
5) show where the flaws are.
I have just indicated where I
PERCEIVE there to by many different sorts and levels of error. But for you it amounts to *water off a duck’s back”.
Like Immanuel you only hear what you want to hear!
As I have told you both: I am a late incarnation of
The Hyperborean Apollo. I have descended here from regions of thought and knowledge that have been excluded from man’s world for oh so long! Yes, I come with cold breezes that, realistically, can kill with their intensity. But I will show you Mike how you can be killed and then
RESURRECT into levels of truth that you cannot even dream of!
I'm just asking you what evidence you would accept. That's a perfectly simple question. Why not just answer it?
