We aren't special. Conciousness is a side effect of having so many neurons shaped by millions of years of social and environmental darwinism. We are actually barely concious to avoid confronting the fact that we are just walking meat.
If human head transplants were done, we would have proof that the soul is just a sophisticated algorithm held within our meat, but even then, our barely concious state will refuse to compute the actual implications.
Further our "singular conscious" is an illusion. People with various types of physical brain damage have had their awareness "split" and had something akin to two different consciouses in their brain. Even for "normal" people there are independent processes running in our brain. Our consciousness is in charge sort of the way the teacher is in charge of the nursey school. It might decide when recess is but it can't stop that one kid from just singing for no reason.
Also to your point I think that if we could transplant a head we'd find that our sentience involves more than the brain. I think we underestimate how connected all of our systems are.
I have a saying, if the people no longer respect the government rules, shall the state end up in anarchy.
"Free will", as almost anyone defines it, is completely indistinguishable from no free will.
Also: The universe exists as a manifestation of pure math. In the same sense that the answer to "What is 9827349328659327498327592432^98374239563298473298324253?" exists even if nobody bothers to actually calculate it, the answer to "What does a universe with [these] parameters look like at t = 13.7 billion years look like?" exists as well - and it looks like you. A lot of people agree that it might be in principle possible to simulate the universe - even if it requires something silly like a computer larger than the universe. I just take it a step further and say that if a simulation is possible, even only in principle, then actually carrying out the simulation isn't a necessary step.
I just take it a step further and say that if a simulation is possible, even only in principle, then actually carrying out the simulation isn't a necessary step.
My hunch (and this is just a hunch) is that in some cases this might be true but not in the general case. The universe contains turning machines. So one cannot arbitrarily determine a future state without also disproving the Halting Problem.
Panpsychism has merit.
I don't believe in free will meaning that what ever you did you could not have done otherwise. We live in a deterministic universe and all events are part of a causal chain
I've always thought that what makes me the most happy is trying not to care about material things. Just stuff I make myself is what I care about most. I made my own music player app and it's garbage compared to everything else available but I still love it. I feel like this is a pretty popular opinion to hold though.
There's no such thing as free will
My trial is ending soon, should I upgrade to the paid version?
Yeah I'd recommend it
The philosophical position I hold is that solipsism isn't true. Because to ask yourself if others exist requires language, which we all learn from other people. We can doubt our senses without language, but this is psychosis, not philosophy.
And I think most Western people haven't really solved the question of solipsism and still live in the Cartesian theater. And that this is a major reason why we're mindlessly killing the planet (and ourselves).
How do you even know which things are part of the self and which are 'external'? That feels arbitrary or a 'I know it when I see it' to me.
You could say the self is things you control but under any scrutiny in almost any domain that's not true for what we think of as 'self' either.
I agree solipsism isn't true, but I don't know that I agree you couldn't doubt the external world without language. I think language is just the mechanism we use to describe our inner thoughts. Math is 'real' and describes the world whether you use base 10 or 12 or don't know about math at all.
“Consciousness” is not a multitude instances of which you have one of, it’s something singular that has you.
We are all the same weird mirror rippling through space-time trying to figure out how to outfox entropy.
Apple and Android both need to exist. Apple isn't your friend and market privacy to take a market and when they have it they will shit on it. Google doesn't care about your privacy but are at least working on doing better and are trying to unite platforms.
Don't put your eggs in one basket.
Treat others how you would like to be treated. Adress others the way you want to be adressed.
Humanity is living in an (almost) endless painful cycle of civilisations rising, prospering and falling, like a phoenix rising from its ashes, only to burn again. No civilisation, nation, or idea can escape. Some might be able to avoid destruction for longer than others, but they will eventually meet their end.
Death is and should be inevitable, and it's a good thing. I have gotten over the fear of dying when I was eight, yet so many people, (way too many of them are adults) seem to treat death as a sensitive and even taboo topic.
I find the thought that I'll most likely be able to rest peacefully either in a state of non-existence or some sort of afterlife to be calming. I tend to think that the acknowledgment of our own mortality is the only thing that makes us truly enjoy life, as we know it won't last forever. This is the reason why people talking about technology that could make immortal people without thinking about the downsides enough really concerns me. Humans are supposed to be born, to live and to die.
If we want to define whether an action is immoral or moral, then as a rule of thumb, it is moral as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. (yes, this includes non-human animals) There are a lot of exceptions of course.
Humans are not superior to other animals. The reason I think that, in general, killing another human is worse than killing another animal is not that human lives matter more than lives of other animals, but instead that you shouldn't kill your own species.
About #3, do you view this as a hard rule? Not the animal part (vegan btw), the "hurting is always wrong" part. There are situation where I've caused harm to someone for the sake of others, their future, or a greater pleasure.
Also interested in the "not killing you own species" section of #4. I would also kill another animal rather than a human, but for other reasons. What do you think about hurting a member of your own species is uniquely bad?
It is not really a hard rule, I think there are a lot of situations where you have to hurt someone such as self-defense, having to eat other animals to survive and such. So it's like a soft rule of thumb, as there are a lot of situations where hurting someone is justified.
And concerning killing your own species versus other animals, I think we naturally tend to have more empathy for other people and especially the ones closer to us. Also killing a non-human animal outside of self-defense can be justified by needing food, but, well, eating another human seems to be worse than eating a cow.
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