Philosophy Now Forum

Greta wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:... and care more for the one crying for release, than all the satisfied customers. (Negative preference utilitarianism.)

I'm not sure what I prefer or what is right as regards the big picture, aside from preferring life (that is not constant suffering with no hope of release) to death. I guess that's my bias, but I'm probably not Robyn Crusoe there.

I'm just considering what appears to be the case. I still vote for humanitarian and environmentally minded political parties because I think it's important to slow population, environmental damage and inequity as much as possible. However, with population and resource pressures leading to wars (these wars aren't about religion, they are about resources and money) the processes are accelerating. That may be an issue for option #7.

From what you say, or I think you're saying, you lean against preference, preferring happiness to the majority ie. classical positive utilitarianism. Again, I stress when I speak, I am talking about lives not begun. By your very existence, you prefer existence. That does not speak to that which does not know of existence.

Put yourself in the position of the void, ~ nothing. Try to describe to yourself what's right and wrong with it, that is, being void. I'm not trying to belabour this, but it's necessary to see my position.

Dalek Prime wrote:From what you say, or I think you're saying, you lean against preference, preferring happiness to the majority ie. classical positive utilitarianism. Again, I stress when I speak, I am talking about lives not begun. By your very existence, you prefer existence. That does not speak to that which does not know of existence.

Put yourself in the position of the void, ~ nothing. Try to describe to yourself what's right and wrong with it, that is, being void. I'm not trying to belabour this, but it's necessary to see my position.

The issue I have with the antinatalist model, apart from assumed negative forecasts that may not be correct, is that it's not realistic. Whether we are all better off being rocks or animals is moot because, not only did abiogenesis occur, but the more we learn about it, the more abiogenesis appears to be a predictable result of fairly specialised conditions over time, not a freak occurrence.

So, if life is going to keep popping up, there would ultimately be less suffering if it evolved beyond the predator/prey model, to find gentler ways of exchanging energy and information. If life is going to lose heart and commit hari kuri every time it just starts working out how to reduce the hard edges of life somewhat, then we all might as well surrender to the void.

However, there is a problem with voids - they are unstable. Hence the universe. It would seem that voids can't abide themselves, not wildly unlike the stuff they spawn :lol: . Maybe the void provides no more escape than matter from the unbearable beingness of being?

Maybe reality just needs to loosen up a bit and reserve judgement? Existence is harder than it looks so I'm loathe to judge too much these days. Not the people, the animals nor the universe and cosmic order (or lack). Greta's haiku:

We are all just bumbling on,
Here now, flying blind
Maybe we won't stuff it up.

Greta wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:From what you say, or I think you're saying, you lean against preference, preferring happiness to the majority ie. classical positive utilitarianism. Again, I stress when I speak, I am talking about lives not begun. By your very existence, you prefer existence. That does not speak to that which does not know of existence.

Put yourself in the position of the void, ~ nothing. Try to describe to yourself what's right and wrong with it, that is, being void. I'm not trying to belabour this, but it's necessary to see my position.

The issue I have with the antinatalist model, apart from assumed negative forecasts that may not be correct, is that it's not realistic. Whether we are all better off being rocks or animals is moot because, not only did abiogenesis occur, but the more we learn about it, the more abiogenesis appears to be a predictable result of fairly specialised conditions over time, not a freak occurrence.

So, if life is going to keep popping up, there would ultimately be less suffering if it evolved beyond the predator/prey model, to find gentler ways of exchanging energy and information. If life is going to lose heart and commit hari kuri every time it just starts working out how to reduce the hard edges of life somewhat, then we all might as well surrender to the void.

However, there is a problem with voids - they are unstable. Hence the universe. It would seem that voids can't abide themselves, not wildly unlike the stuff they spawn . Maybe the void provides no more escape than matter from the unbearable beingness of being?

Maybe reality just needs to loosen up a bit and reserve judgement? Existence is harder than it looks so I'm loathe to judge too much these days. Not the people, the animals nor the universe and cosmic order (or lack). Greta's haiku:

We are all just bumbling on,
Here now, flying blind
Maybe we won't stuff it up.

Well, voids could be seen as perfection, with the universe as the aberration in it's perfection.

Anyways, just try the exercise of putting yourself in the place of 'nothing' then, if you prefer that term, and ask yourself what's right and wrong with it. That's all I ask; just a thought experiment.

Dalek Prime wrote:Well, voids could be seen as perfection, with the universe as the abberation in it's perfection.

Anyways, just try the exercise of putting yourself in the place of 'nothing' then, if you prefer that term, and ask yourself what's right and wrong with it. That's all I ask; just a thought experiment.

I've done nothingness thought experiments before. It usually ends in vertigo. Another way is to try to hone in on the exact present, which is why meditators so often carry on about reality being nothingness and stuff being an illusion.

I consider perfect voids to be like singularities, just theoretical constructs that do not exist in reality. There's a fellow on another forum who's a huge fan of the Void (yes, capitalised) and we had a lengthy debate. He claimed that voids were an ontic reality and I said that all that we have ever known is "stuff", so there probably always has and always has been stuff.

I suggested that a void would be stable and so no change could occur, game over. He said that voids, being not limited by physical laws, have unlimited possibilities. We eventually agreed that if an absolute Void existed then it would immediately create something and thus no longer be a void. So we're looking at voids with a lifespan of a Plank time, which to a void might as well be infinite. There's the vertigo ...

I don't see the attraction but I might if I was in a refugee camp.

Greta wrote:In truth, I am the one facing reality without emotion.

I sincerely doubt that. Anyone who, as often as you do, projects the human into periods hundreds of millions or billions of years into the future based on what appears feasible to you in the NOW cannot be acknowledged as facing reality. Astronomical periods of time into a future are not something any intelligent species would concern itself with while it progresses unless its history confirms it and not merely subsumes in advance.

Greta wrote:It seems to me that people cannot bear to consider is that the selfish bastards at the top of the tree and their technology who appear to be the future of humanity - and the rest of us are just expendable resources to help them persist. It's like the bad guys winning at the movies - and many simply can't countenance it. So instead we vent our preferred result - that they be destroyed with the rest of us. I don't think they will be so unprepared.

Basically the wealthy are doing to most of humanity when humanity did to the animals - they are taking a disproportionate amount of resources and using the masses as tools and fodder for their systems.

So why am I not outraged at the idea of this selfish subset of humanity being our destiny? I cannot imagine that, the kind of disasters that will befall the poorest, weakest and unluckiest will leave even the hard-hearted super-wealthy untouched, aside from the very most psychopathic. I do think that humanity can and does learn moral lessons from history, although it's slow going due to frequent backwards steps. So I'm optimistic, not based on emotion, but the evidence so far.

Talk about going off on a tangent, I don’t know according to my posts how this of a sudden degenerated into the super-wealthy inheriting the future and depending on their kind mercies take the less fortunate with them. Perhaps so! After all they will require serfs I imagine.

This kind of elitism now rampant and in total disrepute may not even exist in the future if humans are actually to progress beyond any such Dickensian scenarios. Instead of compounding human enhancement as time advances we depend on the most greedy who are ever ready for handouts when their plans go awry and so far, receiving it from the pleb tax payer; CEO’s and central bankers who get paid and receive bonuses in the millions for failure, etc.

If these and their ilk are to be our masters in the future then the human race should be consigned to the dung heap. If we can’t or refuse to clean up the mess then be eaten by it. Such a shallow beast only has a future in its imagination projected to any mythical period it wants to fantasize on.

Dubious wrote:

Greta wrote:In truth, I am the one facing reality without emotion.

I sincerely doubt that. Anyone who, as often as you do, projects the human into periods hundreds of millions or billions of years into the future based on what appears feasible to you in the NOW cannot be acknowledged as facing reality.

You misread my post. I never projected humans so far into the future. Humans will be replaced like everything else.

Most people believe, as you do - but with zero evidence - that humans are the end game of life. It all ends in a blaze of mindless destruction because we are so very bad [sic].

I think it more likely that, like every species before us, humans are not the end of all life. Everything we have ever known is a transitional form so I don't see why we would not also be transitional. The idea that humans are an end product has been inadvertently borrowed by secular society from Abrahamic religions. Many so-called atheists unquestioningly believe that myth.

Dubious wrote:

Greta wrote:It seems to me that people cannot bear to consider is that the selfish bastards at the top of the tree and their technology who appear to be the future of humanity - and the rest of us are just expendable resources to help them persist. It's like the bad guys winning at the movies - and many simply can't countenance it. So instead we vent our preferred result - that they be destroyed with the rest of us. I don't think they will be so unprepared.

Basically the wealthy are doing to most of humanity when humanity did to the animals - they are taking a disproportionate amount of resources and using the masses as tools and fodder for their systems.

So why am I not outraged at the idea of this selfish subset of humanity being our destiny? I cannot imagine that, the kind of disasters that will befall the poorest, weakest and unluckiest will leave even the hard-hearted super-wealthy untouched, aside from the very most psychopathic. I do think that humanity can and does learn moral lessons from history, although it's slow going due to frequent backwards steps. So I'm optimistic, not based on emotion, but the evidence so far.

Talk about going off on a tangent, I don’t know according to my posts how this of a sudden degenerated into the super-wealthy inheriting the future and depending on their kind mercies take the less fortunate with them. Perhaps so! After all they will require serfs I imagine.

This kind of elitism now rampant and in total disrepute may not even exist in the future if humans are actually to progress beyond any such Dickensian scenarios. Instead of compounding human enhancement as time advances we depend on the most greedy who are ever ready for handouts when their plans go awry and so far, receiving it from the pleb tax payer; CEO’s and central bankers who get paid and receive bonuses in the millions for failure, etc.

If these and their ilk are to be our masters in the future then the human race should be consigned to the dung heap. If we can’t or refuse to clean up the mess then be eaten by it. Such a shallow beast only has a future in its imagination projected to any mythical period it wants to fantasize on.

I'm sorry that I cannot bend my mind to believe that things will happen that probably won't happen, ie. the complete extermination of humanity and most of nature in the relatively near future. I don't believe what I want to be true, only what I think is most likely to be true. Don't blame me - I'm just a correspondent, not a backer.

If reality was different I'd think differently. If humanity had a long history of being a big happy family that scrupulously shared its spoils and had always worked to minimise its effect on the rest of nature, then I'd talk about different scenarios.

I don't much bother with judging any more. Not people, societies, whatever. All I see is relative levels of maturity and immaturity. I don't judge children and neither do I judge the universe. Each is young with an unknown future. Humanity has a long history of ignorant wastefulness, yes, but I think you'll at least agree that reality is about to teach humanity a lesson in frugality and sustainability. How harsh a lesson is unknown.

However it happens - and I've given some views on the likelihoods - I DO hope that somehow humans or their replacements (or their replacements etc) will carry all of our history and information out to other planets and create new biospheres. I'd like the journey of life to continue and for information to be built upon. That's where Dalek and I differ.

Greta wrote:Most people believe, as you do - but with zero evidence - that humans are the end game of life. It all ends in a blaze of mindless destruction because we are so very bad [sic].

I'm beyond kindergarten and the biblical apocalypse scenario and have only responded to what you wrote.

Whether humans are playing out the penultimate act of a tragedy where everyone dies remains to be seen. I would say not likely in spite of the probable consequences of his bad behavior. Consequences which have consequences of their own. They say the "after shocks" are the worst. The new era medievalism which you describe as the concentration of technologies by the Gordon Gekkos of the world does not paint a rosy picture either even though it is logically possible to argue against it.

The way forward is to subtract from that which inhibits us from doing so but to do that we have to realize and acknowledge that which prevents us from doing so in the first place. By what mindset to we sail into the future is a question more important than any derivative technology we develop with the means to diminish or enhance. Thus far this kind of investigation has not been an ingredient in our 'business as usual' paradigm.

I agree with Dalek. To carry forward our original sin gene to some other body adding another shareholder in future miseries is not a service most would wish for if they knew in advance.

Greta wrote:#7

As per my earlier posts, I'd be more inclined to refer to "they" rather than "we", although in a best case scenario at least most will pull through and continue, albeit in ever more compressed conditions. It's expected that some areas around the equator will become uninhabitable and climate refugees will have to travel north and south. ...

Going to be lots of room for them, Antarctica and the Tundra.

Some concerns with #7 could be the growing number of wicked pollution, population, infrastructure and ecosystem problems we face in the interim, and the costs and risks of space travel.

Well it's true that it might all go down with eco-disaster but if not the pressures would maybe make the risks and costs less and if we'd not had the Test Ban treaty we could have been there already with Dyson's pusher-plate ships.

Dubious wrote:The new era medievalism which you describe as the concentration of technologies by the Gordon Gekkos of the world does not paint a rosy picture either even though it is logically possible to argue against it.

It's a very long way from a rosy picture (at least in the short to medium term). However, I'd expect moral development to emerge again.

Dubious wrote:The way forward is to subtract from that which inhibits us from doing so but to do that we have to realize and acknowledge that which prevents us from doing so in the first place.

That's quite a sentence but I think I know what you mean ...?

Dubious wrote:By what mindset to we sail into the future is a question more important than any derivative technology we develop with the means to diminish or enhance. Thus far this kind of investigation has not been an ingredient in our 'business as usual' paradigm.

I agree with Dalek. To carry forward our original sin gene to some other body adding another shareholder in future miseries is not a service most would wish for if they knew in advance.

We haven't yet discussed the kind of mindset to be brought into the future. As far as I can tell there is no cohesive mindset globally; the circumstances in different localities are too different for that. This appears to be a sticking point for global climate action, along with the western media's manipulations driven by big money. The road ahead is obviously not going to be smooth.

Okay, so neither you nor Dalek think that humans can improve morally. I think we take our moral progress for granted. Consider the career of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not long ago he wouldn't have been able to get an education. He would have been treated like dirt. Now he is a brilliant scientist, analyst and commentator that people of all colours and nationalities respect. Consider Giordano Bruno, imprisoned and killed by the church for the heretical idea of believing the universe to be infinite.

Of course humanity can do better, but that takes time, which is the issue. Do we have enough? How many will get by okay? Unknowns.

Arising_uk wrote:

Some concerns with #7 could be the growing number of wicked pollution, population, infrastructure and ecosystem problems we face in the interim, and the costs and risks of space travel.

Well it's true that it might all go down with eco-disaster but if not the pressures would maybe make the risks and costs less and if we'd not had the Test Ban treaty we could have been there already with Dyson's pusher-plate ships.

Interesting thought. You never know what might be pivotal or if anything will be pivotal. It looks like private industry will be doing most of the spacefaring as government funding tightens.

It's hard to imagine how off-Earth mining could, pardon the pun, get off the ground economically. The startup costs and risks would be prohibitive, especially given the inevitability of teething problems.

Sadly there never will be any significant space-faring.
We are evolved from the need to live on earth and not surprisingly earth has everything we need to live. The chance of getting another planet within a million years of space travel that comes close to earth without being completely hostile from every bacteria, and macro-organism we have not evolved to defend against, is next to impossible.
Add to that the unimaginable amounts of energy needed to get there, which could other wise be more wisely spent protecting what we have on earth make the prospect void.

Greta wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:Well, voids could be seen as perfection, with the universe as the abberation in it's perfection.

Anyways, just try the exercise of putting yourself in the place of 'nothing' then, if you prefer that term, and ask yourself what's right and wrong with it. That's all I ask; just a thought experiment.

I've done nothingness thought experiments before. It usually ends in vertigo. Another way is to try to hone in on the exact present, which is why meditators so often carry on about reality being nothingness and stuff being an illusion.

I consider perfect voids to be like singularities, just theoretical constructs that do not exist in reality. There's a fellow on another forum who's a huge fan of the Void (yes, capitalised) and we had a lengthy debate. He claimed that voids were an ontic reality and I said that all that we have ever known is "stuff", so there probably always has and always has been stuff.

I suggested that a void would be stable and so no change could occur, game over. He said that voids, being not limited by physical laws, have unlimited possibilities. We eventually agreed that if an absolute Void existed then it would immediately create something and thus no longer be a void. So we're looking at voids with a lifespan of a Plank time, which to a void might as well be infinite. There's the vertigo ...

I don't see the attraction but I might if I was in a refugee camp.

After I wrote that, I was thinking I should have said pretty much any inanimate object, as a rock, to avoid (pun) the overhead of the void we might encounter. Void in my context is absence of consciousness, not absense of physical laws, although I've been thought experimenting with the universe being within a physical void.

That's the thing; voids or nothingness dont give me vertigo. I get them; long fugue states, in the context of consciousness. In this 'fugue', the first 13.772 billion years of the universe went really smoothly and quick for 'me'. And then someone created the wetworks to house this consciousness, and I've felt the next 52+ years, bumpy and slow. Once this has passed, I won't recall this, and the rest of universal time should go swimmingly again.

Dalek Prime wrote:That's the thing; voids or nothingness dont give me vertigo. I get them; long fugue states, in the context of consciousness. In this 'fugue', the first 13.772 billion years of the universe went really smoothly and quick for 'me'. And then someone created the wetworks to house this consciousness, and I've felt the next 52+ years, bumpy and slow. Once this has passed, I won't recall this, and the rest of universal time should go swimmingly again.

I guess that's called living on 'borrowed time' since time itself would not exist for what never existed or ceased to exist. For such the beginning and end of any universe would be an instantaneous event which even excludes a void from existing. I always imagined a void as paradox, extant but without content which doesn't make sense.

An interesting comparison to mild fugue states as one gets older temporarily losing content or identity is its seeming opposite in Deja Vu which usually happens in childhood as a newcomer to the planet. My own experience of having been here before was almost scary. One time I still recall being temporarily paralyzed until the feeling subsided. The question 'at that moment' of my actually being here became extremely foggy and it felt as though time hardly moved at all. These chemical storms in the brain are truly capable of metaphysics especially when one process doesn't properly join to another creating a palpable feeling of dissociation.

Dubious wrote:

Dalek Prime wrote:That's the thing; voids or nothingness dont give me vertigo. I get them; long fugue states, in the context of consciousness. In this 'fugue', the first 13.772 billion years of the universe went really smoothly and quick for 'me'. And then someone created the wetworks to house this consciousness, and I've felt the next 52+ years, bumpy and slow. Once this has passed, I won't recall this, and the rest of universal time should go swimmingly again.

I guess that's called living on 'borrowed time' since time itself would not exist for what never existed or ceased to exist. For such the beginning and end of any universe would be an instantaneous event which even excludes a void from existing. I always imagined a void as paradox, extant but without content which doesn't make sense.

An interesting comparison to mild fugue states as one gets older temporarily losing content or identity is its seeming opposite in Deja Vu which usually happens in childhood as a newcomer to the planet. My own experience of having been here before was almost scary. One time I still recall being temporarily paralyzed until the feeling subsided. The question 'at that moment' of my actually being here became extremely foggy and it felt as though time hardly moved at all. These chemical storms in the brain are truly capable of metaphysics especially when one process doesn't properly join to another creating a palpable feeling of dissociation.

That's some deja vu, Dub.

That's why I always say consciousness is fragmented and fragile at best. Even memory can't be trusted entirely.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Sadly there never will be any significant space-faring.
We are evolved from the need to live on earth and not surprisingly earth has everything we need to live. The chance of getting another planet within a million years of space travel that comes close to earth without being completely hostile from every bacteria, and macro-organism we have not evolved to defend against, is next to impossible.
Add to that the unimaginable amounts of energy needed to get there, which could other wise be more wisely spent protecting what we have on earth make the prospect void.

The natural systems are already groaning under the weight of humanity's recent achievement of seven billion people and the Earth's surface will be sterilised by our growing sun in a billion years at the latest. So what you are suggesting is a relatively short term project of restoration and you are are resigned towards the end, just as we can be with our ow lives. Individuals can resign to oblivion but I don't think that larger, pluralistic groups do. Like an amoeba, the body of humanity will try to survive any way it can, even if the cause seems hopeless.

I agree that humans won't travel far in space. Ultimately we need to find a way of putting as much of ourselves into durable machines (that actually can have a future) as we can. Data - the genetic, natural and human knowledge and histories of the Earth - will be their most valuable cargo. Like Kurzweil, I think it's possible that the processes of consciousness currently being performed by water and biomaterials can be replicated with electricity and synthetics, although most informed observers figure that Kurzweil's timeline for the advent of general AI (GAI) is way too optimistic.

Functioning, (seemingly) aware, GAI would revolutionise space travel, exponentially reducing costs and logistics. Missions would also be able to operate on timelines far beyond human lifespans.