How to deal (in terms of life)

[Flannel Jesus]

Can non-fundamental things be "real" in any sense?

When it comes to concrete objects such as cars, a resounding no. When a car is non-fundamental then it can't be "real".

So you believe cars are not real, right?

[Darkneos]

I wonder why it is that chat gpt thinks that reductionism doesn't imply what you think it implies...

https://chatgpt.com/c/682510cd-ca50-800 ... c789d608b6

ChatGPT isn't able to answer that question, or many questions to be honest.

Chat gpt is pretty good at answering about the meaning of words, especially common ones. Reductionism is a common topic in philosophy, I think Mr gpt has got the right end of the stick here. You should take a step back from your overconfidence for just a minute and wonder if maybe the reductionist you're talking to might possibly know more about reductionism than you do.

You've got one high profile reductionist literally telling you he thinks there's a difference between explaining and explaining away, which your overconfidence is telling you to just entirely ignore for some reason. You've got one talking to you now, here, telling you he also believes there's a difference between explaining and explaining away, and that reductionism doesn't mean you have to believe only fundamental things are real. You've got a large language model, whose speciality is one thing: language, telling you that the meaning of reductionism doesn't necessitate denying the existence of non fundamental things. None of that gives your overconfidence pause? Come on dude, be serious.

Even Wikipedia spells it out for you

Reductionism does not preclude the existence of what might be termed emergent phenomena

It's not good at answering the meaning of words and there is plenty of examples where it completely misses the mark on what things mean. If you're relying in it to make your case I'm wondering if you know what it means.

That said, your link wouldn't load, but given my experience using GPT I wasn't missing much.

You're not a reductionist because you still think people and things exist and reductionism doesn't. Like I explained already with the posts from Lesswrong and especially the one where you said he made the distinction between explaining and explaining away when the didn't, just randomly decided what it applied to and what didn't.

It's wanting your cake and eating it too.

[Flannel Jesus]

And here's Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy spelling it out for you:

Reductivists are generally realists about the reduced phenomena and their views are in that respect conservative. They are committed to the reality of the reducing base and thus to the reality of whatever reduces to that base. If thoughts reduce to brain states and if these brain states are real, then so too are thoughts.

If really none of this is giving you pause, then you obviously have a made up strawman version of reductionism you're arguing against and you're dedicated to staying on that course. You're not interested in correcting yourself, because you could never consider the possibility that you're mistaken. That kind of intellectual humility seems beyond you.

[Atla]

Can non-fundamental things be "real" in any sense?

When it comes to concrete objects such as cars, a resounding no. When a car is non-fundamental then it can't be "real".

So you believe cars are not real, right?

Why the hell would I believe that, how did you arrive at that?

[Atla]

Can non-fundamental things be "real" in any sense?

When it comes to concrete objects such as cars, a resounding no. When a car is non-fundamental then it can't be "real".

You lost me there...

Then everything is equally speculation, I don't see the point of that approach. Indirect realism is 100% consistent with available evidence and is Occam friendly, so it wins for me.

Who said anything about being "right" being a substitute for living life?

Well no one, I'm just musing about my life so far and what I've done and I've realized how much I was wasting it trying to be better than other people or always being right. At the end of the day I wasn't happy, or fulfilled, it was hollow (and often I wasn't right).

When it comes to Occam's Razor I don't generally regard that as a metric for truth, humans like it when things are simple but that doesn't mean they are.

I do accept indirect realism as that is what neuroscience and psychology seems to suggest.

But yeah, everything is equally speculation. All we have are models to navigate the world like you said, and like you said Eliezer is just arbitrarily choosing one to be "reality" and throwing the rest out.

Oh I see, you are in that horrific place where we start to question everything, but don't yet start to assign probabilities to all the possibilities (using Occam's razor for example), so everything is equally a speculation. Imo you have to get out of that place, either go back and forget about it all, or go forward and work out a system where you rank speculations according to some system.

[Flannel Jesus]

When it comes to concrete objects such as cars, a resounding no. When a car is non-fundamental then it can't be "real".

So you believe cars are not real, right?

Why the hell would I believe that, how did you arrive at that?

Well they clearly aren't fundamental. Right? Do you think they're fundamental?

I arrived at that because I genuinely didn't think it was remotely likely that someone like you would think cars are fundamental.

[Atla]

So you believe cars are not real, right?

Why the hell would I believe that, how did you arrive at that?

Well they clearly aren't fundamental.

I'm not a reductionist, why would I be? Obviously, reductionism is a neat little tool that helps us get things done, but as a philosophy it has nothing to do with the real world. In the real world a car has no parts and a car isn't a part of the universe, because the universe has no parts, it's continuous. All this talk about fundamental parts and non-fundamental parts is just handwaving of course.

[Flannel Jesus]

Why the hell would I believe that, how did you arrive at that?

Well they clearly aren't fundamental.

I'm not a reductionist, why would I be?

You don't have to be a reductionist in general to believe that cars aren't fundamental. Most people agree that SOME things can be understood in reductionistic ways. You don't have to be a reductionist to understand that.

Clocks and cars and computers are all clearly able to be understood in terms of their component pieces each playing their own roles and working together. No piece of a car knows it's part of a car, not the pistons, not the exhaust, not the clutch - each part just does it's own thing, and you stick them together and they produce the big thing we call a car.

What do you mean by fundamental?

[Atla]

Well they clearly aren't fundamental.

I'm not a reductionist, why would I be?

You don't have to be a reductionist in general to believe that cars aren't fundamental. Most people agree that SOME things can be understood in reductionistic ways. You don't have to be a reductionist to understand that.

Clocks and cars and computers are all clearly able to be understood in terms of their component pieces each playing their own roles and working together. No piece of a car knows it's part of a car, not the pistons, not the exhaust, not the clutch - each part just does it's own thing, and you stick them together and they produce the big thing we call a car.

What do you mean by fundamental?

How about not skipping the rest of the comment?

[Flannel Jesus]

In the real world a car has no parts and a car isn't a part of the universe, because the universe has no parts,

So when I asked you if cars don't exist, you should have said "right, they don't exist" instead of what you did say.

[Atla]

In the real world a car has no parts and a car isn't a part of the universe, because the universe has no parts,

So when I asked you if cars don't exist, you should have said "right, they don't exist" instead of what you did say.

That would mean that nothing exists. Why should I say that?

[Flannel Jesus]

In the real world a car has no parts and a car isn't a part of the universe, because the universe has no parts,

So when I asked you if cars don't exist, you should have said "right, they don't exist" instead of what you did say.

That would mean that nothing exists. Why would I say that?

You tell me, I don't know what you think. I don't know why you're talking in riddles.

First you said if cars aren't fundamental, they aren't real. Well to me it seems obvious that cars aren't fundamental, so I asked you if they are real.

In your meandering answer, you said cars aren't "part of the universe", which looks to me like another way of saying they aren't real.

I can't clarify your beliefs for you. I don't know what you would say. You keep saying things that look like they mean cars aren't real, only you know what you actually think.

Are cars real? Are cars fundamental? Can you give a straightforward answer?

[Atla]

So when I asked you if cars don't exist, you should have said "right, they don't exist" instead of what you did say.

That would mean that nothing exists. Why would I say that?

You tell me, I don't know what you think. I don't know why you're talking in riddles.

First you said if cars aren't fundamental, they aren't real. Well to me it seems obvious that cars aren't fundamental, so I asked you if they are real.

In your meandering answer, you said cars aren't "part of the universe", which looks to me like another way of saying they aren't real.

I can't clarify your beliefs for you. I don't know what you would say. You keep saying things that look like they mean cars aren't real, only you know what you actually think.

Are cars real? Are cars fundamental? Can you give a straightforward answer?

Again, read what I already wrote.

[Flannel Jesus]

You wrote that cars aren't part of the universe.

[Atla]

You wrote that cars aren't part of the universe.

No I didn't.