I think we need to work on figuring out what sort universal languages may be created and may exist. For example exchanging knowledge graphs.

I don't think current memes prove anything, in the sense that with the introduction of new minds we'll have a whole other world of minds on our hands.

So tendences of current minds are not that relevant.

Just imagine entities whose behavior completely doesn't jive with what you're used to from humans. We're used to infer each other's states because we're so alike. That's how evolution optimized us. But there is no universal principle that this needs to be the case. At all. Hence a total collapse of intersubjectivity once we have a "free for all" mind designs.

I appreciate his perception that life does have meaning and that the beauty of creation calls out to us on a deep level- this is something we can all enjoy. However, there's no reason to think that's true on naturalism. Sitting on the beach enjoying your family would be at best an illusion of meaning, something not really there.

But it's precisely the gap between what naturalism commits us to (lack of objective meaning, lack of objective purpose, lack of objective moral duties or values, lack of a conscious immaterial mind, etc.) and the apparent reality of those things that seems so absurd! People often seem to think there are things beyond themselves like real meaning, purpose, duties, values, their own consciousness, etc.

Just speaking non-philosophically, my own senses tell me the conclusions of naturalism are unbelievable to me. Life just does not seem to match what naturalism says it should. So it's no wonder that I agree with angry-beach-man. I agree, life is in some way actually meaningful. I know firsthand what he means. But his worldview just doesn't allow for that in any objective sense.

I am not sure how well this approach works. I currently live in India and I notice that a lot of emotionally suffering and depressed folks are those that have a comfortable, financially well off setup (perhaps too well off). On the other hand, I also get to interact with labourers and poor people. Somehow most of those folks seem quite content and peaceful with their life (as long as they are able manage day to day survival). So I don't think physical or material suffering equate mental suffering although they may be a driver. Perhaps the poor don't live as complicated a life as the rich folks and perhaps they don't have the luxury or patience to go through existential crisis like the rich folks.

What’s your thoughts on us returning to a visual language through the embrace of AI and these new minds?

I could see as AI normalizes, AI generated visuals becoming their own form of language and communication due to its basic form of being an image translated from words and concepts.

We already see this slightly with memes and I’d argue it proves the opposite of any collapse, due to the collective sharing and understanding of what most memes essence is.

I think this is an overly generous interpretation to corporations. I think rather than saying that Shell is anti-racist it’s more accurate to say that Shell has calculated that it is more profitable for them to project the image of anti-racism. However, their drilling and disposal activities perpetuate what people call environmental racism. This is not to say that Shell as a corporation makes the conscious decision based on an ideology of racism to do what they do. It is to say that, as a corporation, Shell will always act in self-interest with an eye toward profit. Sometimes that will result in supporting anti-racist measures, such as sponsoring NHJ’s speech, and sometimes it won’t (see the linked article). I would agree that the dominant ideology is not one of racism, however it is one of pursuing profit regardless of its impact on others.

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Coincidentally, this post came up today. This guy is enjoying the scenery. I think he has a great perspective.

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/107azr7/sitting_here_and_something_occurred_to_me/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Sure, but you’re still engaged in science fiction as an escapism from the real world. The more important question you should be asking yourself is why your psychology is drawn to this? That’s all I have to say.

I am not basing the argument on what is ontologically the case. I am saying, "Why settle on a worldview where you believe there is no life jacket?" Naturalism entails this belief. Like you say, I am trying to get people to investigate the possibility of an afterlife and to be unhappy with naturalism- I'm glad you are enjoying the search!

"But if someone doesn't enjoy that search, I don't see why they should spend the finite boat ride that they know exists searching for a mythical life jacket in case of a shipwreck that may or may not happen when they could be enjoying the scenery instead."

Because to be a naturalist is to commit oneself to the idea they will die and lose everything that can be lost. I think there are very good reasons to be unhappy with this outlook and therefore to spur someone to search for the lifejacket the rest of their life. Surely, if I was on the sinking boat, I would think an attempt at survival was worth it. Definitely better than sitting down waiting for death. What can be gained in this life that won't be lost?

"Disregard dangers from technologies that do not yet exist" is a heuristic with a rather poor track record, when you consider the costs and benefits. In particular, anyone who followed it in 1930 would have told you that bombs strong enough to pose an existential risk to humanity are impossible. And indeed, at that time it wasn't obvious they aren't.

You can't be confident that the technologies of the following century won't redefine the meaning of being a person, and a century is not much by historical timescales. Even if there's only a 5% chance, it's something worth preparing for.

(The army of clones comes from Robin Hanson's Age of Em, by the way)

Morality is a phantasm, an illusory figment of the human imagination. For morality to be objective, there would need to be some universal independent standard to refer to, but no such thing exists.

Let's consider a car, which is travelling along a road. That car is going at a certain speed. As bystanders, we might guess at what speed the car is traveling, and we will have either a correct answer or an incorrect answer. The only reason that our answers can be correct or incorrect is because the car is traveling, and thus will be moving at a certain speed. It provides the standard by which our answers can be adjudicated. If there was no car, then to ask at what speed the car was traveling would not make sense.

In the case of morality, there is no car, which is to say, there is no standard. Taking your example here:

>Some say morality must be objective because we have biological needs like good health, which is universal, so anything that promotes good health in life should be objectively moral?

You haven't actually resolved the moral question. Why is it right to fulfill those biological needs? What makes that correct? By what standard, and by what authority is that standard applied to everyone? You can ask the same slate of questions of every purported moral system out there, and I, for one, have never seen convincing answers.

What dumb science fiction are you throwing around like reality? An army of clones? 😂dude you’ve watched way too many Disney movies. Our existential threat is the proliferation of weapons, specifically weapons of mass destruction, in the hands of immature and violent humans. There are very successful social systems in the world that eliminate human suffering and level out inequality; see Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists.

No solution, only more or less convincing arguments.

I do not think the question is as clear cut though as objective vs subjective. It is possible also to argue that morality is a social property. To see morality as a matter of the individual subject would then be wrong. However, neither would the morality be founded in a universal nature. The social laws and conventions are then imitated, adopted, reproduced through the individual human. In a sense that is an objective morality, not a choice or something individual, but neither is it universal.

If we accept this one can debate depth. For example, if our moral intuitions about who or what to blame for an unprovoked murder, or different moral status of children, can be traced back to some conventions from millennia ago, what does that imply for the present? Can we elect to switched the moral system that plays out within us or not? There is a bootstrap problem here, which I know some philosophers like Agnes Callard are thinking of. Questions about the truth in traditions are also found here, truths that are not simply matters of scientific scrutiny.

I find that many deeper debates about morality end up in questions about purpose or telos. Is everything arbitrary, or has the human creature been imbued with some purpose. Even the Sam Harris approach to look at biology and survival and reproduction ends up there, attributing meaning to suffering. It makes the God question also inevitable. Alasdair MacIntyre has looked into telos and why some given feature of the universe we live in is likely to have granted us with an objective purpose.

Lots more can be said, my point merely is that once we look deeper into the question you pose, another set of issues are encountered, which challenges the question and what morality is or can be.

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I believe you are correct.

This makes it quite difficult to make sense of, however.

How did we find our paths?

I put a lot of credit towards the positives I knew of, and how I also knew my norm was bad, but at the same time my sibling is just four years younger and our lives could not be more different post-childhood.

It also makes me wonder how much of human nature can be controlled. I'm not implying people should be controlled, but I wish it were possible to successfully help those on the wrong path at an early age.

I strongly favor living and learning. You cannot educate people on certain things without them experiencing it first-hand.

I believe this ties in with your idea of the rebellious stage - children who are guided through life, even if what is deemed "correct", will/may begin to question these thoughts. Questioning leads to testing which leads to the separation of what they knew second hand which then turns into their own experiences.

In a way, it may make sense to promote rebellion. A wrong path doesn't have to be wrong; it can be educational.

Thanks for the back and forth.

Yes, happens is that people more often than not speak past each other in referencing different topics/aspects of society in relation to racism/oppression. As much as we would like it to not be (as it would bring mental and ideological comfort) the reality that we collectively experience is heterogenous, striated, and uneven. Cops in rural Alabama aren't the same as cops in San Francisco aren't the same as cops in Washington DC. The Fortune 500 of today aren't like the corporations of 100 years. We truncate our own agency and understanding when we delegate our thoughts to an ideology.

You're conflating whether naturalism is the ontological reality with a belief in naturalism.

If there is no afterlife (I frame it that way because I can't be certain this is the case even on naturalism), then there is no life jacket regardless of your belief. You can be theist and it doesn't matter there is no life jacket.

On the other hand, if there is an afterlife, I think my present beliefs provide just as much chance of a good outcome (a life jacket) as anything else on offer.

If your only point is that you think people should investigate the possibility of an afterlife and whether or not they can improve their afterlife outcome, I'm not sure. I am doing that because I enjoy the process. But if someone doesn't enjoy that search, I don't see why they should spend the finite boat ride that they know exists searching for a mythical life jacket in case of a shipwreck that may or may not happen when they could be enjoying the scenery instead.

That's an interesting observation. Even if there is some insincerity with the corporations that be, calling them racist may be misleading. There are in some ways anti-racist.

Psychos are not sound of mind, I doubt we can use their behaviors as an argument.

Even psychos want a healthy life too, they just dont mind getting it at the expense of other people.

That's true, they are not incompatible. They are incompatible only when viewed through a certain ideological lense (yet one that many have due to erroneous education), one that casts corporations as upholding something akin to a new Jim Crow. That is the crux of this issue: the dominant ideology of the regime is one of anti-racism. That is why Shell supports NHJ, because they support anti-racism.

Conversations like these (not between you and I, but in general around this topic) usually have this song-and-dance. There is an assertion that The Powers That Be are racist, oppressive, etc, and when someone provides evidence contrary to this the retort is usually "well they're good then, what do you have against these corporate practices?". This rhetorical bait-and-switch is a sort of inverse celebration parallax.

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I think I'm uninformed here. Is there a reason why she wouldn't speak at something sponsored by Shell, or a reason why BLM is incompatible with Fortune 500 companies?

In this analogy, naturalism does not equate to a life jacket, since naturalism says there isn't any surviving death. On naturalism, the boat is going down and that's it. If you think death is a bad thing, and you also desire continued life, why not seek out a life jacket? Maybe you never find it, but (importantly) maybe you do.

But with a holographic overlay and a few additional senses.