Haunted by the ghosts of materialism
20 hours ago
- Philosophy is accessible and eye-opening, but techies often focus on a narrow 'edgelord utilitarianism'.
- Free will conflicts with scientific materialism and determinism, leading to the unsettling conclusion that nothing matters.
- Determinism is self-defeating because it undermines the perceptual experience that grounds knowledge of physics.
- Quantum mechanics offers a probabilistic alternative but may not truly resolve the free will issue.
- Solipsism and brain-in-vat thought experiments challenge whether our perception matches reality.
- The simulation hypothesis and Boltzmann brain arguments are modern variations on the solipsism theme.
- Meta-linguistic tricks can dismiss such paradoxes but remain unsatisfactory, especially in a 1:1 correspondence scenario.
- Ultimately, the simulation hypothesis may be a technological reinterpretation of theology.