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Count Timothy von Icarus

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I didn't mean to imply that Kastrup's ontology is at risk for solipsism, just that it is completely compatible with computation as causation, even if ...
March 22, 2023 at 13:47
In: Emergence  — view comment
This has always been my opinion too. It makes for bad sci-fi though because such post-humans, e.g. fusion powered, skyscraper sized brains that are at...
March 22, 2023 at 11:59
You're right about that. The tsunami of liabilities and costs related to pensioners is going to increasingly define politics in developed countries fo...
March 22, 2023 at 02:29
Here is a thought experiment which I think might illustrate why I think the principal of indifference applies here. Imagine an alien species in anothe...
March 22, 2023 at 01:03
A good point that is often missed. You can have multiple true explanations of the same phenomena. E.g., a mechanic, an engineer, and a physicist can a...
March 21, 2023 at 20:54
There was more vetting at each level when the cost to share information were higher. Publishing companies don't tend to publish Holocaust denial liter...
March 21, 2023 at 18:46
I'll have to return to this thread for a more detailed response later, but the early universe has this very confusing property of being in thermodynam...
March 21, 2023 at 18:27
One Damn Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor, very light time travel sci-fi I'm listening to with my wife. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, ...
March 21, 2023 at 00:54
I didn't fully discover my love of philosophy until my late 20s. A big part of this was the overwhelming diversity of the field. The field seemed almo...
March 21, 2023 at 00:32
I realize those are mostly revenue raising ideas for austerity, but there are plenty of moves to make on the expense side. Increasing the retirement a...
March 20, 2023 at 13:12
I would have said "sell securities, raise rates," three weeks ago, but now it looks like that will risk sending the banking system into a crisis. I wo...
March 20, 2023 at 11:49
Frequentism seems fine in some contexts, or at the very least, it is at times much easier to explain things in that frame when it doesn't make a mater...
March 18, 2023 at 17:29
Update: Trump himself has released a statement about his immanent arrest from a warrant to be issued in three days and called for protests and support...
March 18, 2023 at 16:32
Well now it appears law enforcement is prepping for an indictment announcement next week. This is a New York indictment, but a Georgia one also seems ...
March 18, 2023 at 11:33
Yes. Since there are more ways to be high entropy than low entropy we should have more worlds with high entropy than low. So why are we in a low entro...
March 18, 2023 at 11:20
Of course, he needs to stay out of prison until November 2024 to do that, which could prove difficult.
March 17, 2023 at 19:28
Four terms? Imagine, he'd be a spry 98 years old at the end of it, our own Mugabe. More seriously, I don't even think he should run for one more term....
March 17, 2023 at 18:11
Ahem, unfortunately, the Compatibilist Delegation has moved for a reading of their edits as well... However, the delegation seems split in: "Some choo...
March 17, 2023 at 12:48
We, of the Voluntarist Delegation, are willing to agree to 90+% of this statement, with some minor edits (see above). All in favor of moving the quest...
March 17, 2023 at 12:38
I'm not sure I follow. Religion and nationalism clearly exist in the world, so why would they be necessarily supernatural in any respect? "Ukraine," "...
March 17, 2023 at 12:24
I see it now. Yes, I am aware of that solution, and while clever, it doesn't seem satisfactory. The whole Sleeping Beauty problem class seems to be mi...
March 17, 2023 at 11:19
I only skimmed this thread, but has the Born Rule problem really not come up? To bring up the example before, it is like someone's spouse is either in...
March 17, 2023 at 02:01
Just to chime in, I think organized religions' insistence on supernatural explanations and supernatural language is part of the reason for their decli...
March 16, 2023 at 17:49
EZPZ, just claim time is illusory and that the universe is an eternal object, then one up Hume and claim cause isn't just reducible to something simpl...
March 16, 2023 at 17:42
He addresses this at some point. The main point, if I recall, is that he is arguing for not-P. One does not need to prove P to prove not-P, he only ne...
March 16, 2023 at 17:35
Yes, freedom as a concept presupposes its own negation. In making any choice, the choice itself is a constraint. You can move up and down; have your c...
March 16, 2023 at 17:23
If time is flowing, that is moving relative to different states of the universe, then it must be doing so over some sort of second time dimension. Som...
March 16, 2023 at 16:25
I found someone making the same argument. https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/9789814295482_0004 I did not realize that Collier was the adviso...
March 16, 2023 at 13:53
I don't make that mistake though. Without life, there is no color, no texture as such, perhaps no space-time as we understand it. My objection is to t...
March 10, 2023 at 16:48
I will have to give this one some more thought.
March 09, 2023 at 19:13
Yes, but not a conscious observer. For example, an indivisible "particle" alone in its own universe would transmit no information, and since it has no...
March 09, 2023 at 18:56
I would argue that information exists "in the wild," as discernible differences. If information only existed when observed we would have to posit that...
March 09, 2023 at 16:17
Interpretation doesn't need a conscious observer though. Plenty of industrial systems are set up in such a way that the same signal is meant to repres...
March 09, 2023 at 14:54
Yes, that was sort of Gibbs' original point in the case of ideal gasses. You need a non-extensive entropy to deal with that the problem. Jayne's big p...
March 09, 2023 at 14:46
Not just that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_paradox#The_mixing_paradox I don't agree with the use of the term "arbitrary" in the Wiki article...
March 09, 2023 at 13:41
Yes, the English "eternal life" is used frequently for translating the Greek ???? ???????, a pairing of the verb aionios and noun zoe, which I believe...
March 09, 2023 at 12:48
Maybe Gnostic Christianity, but that sounds more like Neoplatonism. Christ promises everlasting life in the Gospels, not eternal life. Revelations por...
March 09, 2023 at 04:55
Actually, after all that, I think I might agree with the basic idea that in a way, information, at least in terms of say, what we get from looking at ...
March 08, 2023 at 22:10
First, isn't it the case that digital computers obey all the physical laws we know about? Hence why knowledge of physical laws has been essential to c...
March 08, 2023 at 21:54
Definitionally, the eternal doesn't change. E.g., the number two doesn't change into another value or take on new relationships in terms of things lik...
March 08, 2023 at 21:08
That's just the definition of the word eternal in English. "Lasting or existing forever, without beginning or end, valid for all time, essentially unc...
March 08, 2023 at 19:59
Would it be fair to classify what you've put forth as a sort of austere nominalism? I.e., pain is just "a name for certain types of experience." I thi...
March 08, 2023 at 19:56
I would highly recommend Nagel's take on the Absurd. I think some of his conclusions are wrong, but he makes many excellent points. Would your life be...
March 08, 2023 at 19:38
Upon reflection, I think this definition might be simply too loose. If you assume people are generally rational, then it collapses into historicism, i...
March 08, 2023 at 19:27
Isn't this guilty of the same division? Humans are part of nature. Human minds presumably have natural causes and thoughts/subjective meaning are part...
March 08, 2023 at 17:55
And is this the case for all universals? I can't say I find that to be an attractive position. For one, look at the Chinese Room thought experiment. T...
March 08, 2023 at 17:44
So something changes in the computer when it is observed or is computation just in the mind of the observer? If the latter, why is it not the same for...
March 08, 2023 at 15:57
You might be interested in information theoretic, holographic principal-based workarounds for this problem if you're not already aware of them. Since ...
March 08, 2023 at 14:19
A world line in an objects' 3D path rendered with a time dimension, nothing more. A world line can also be used to describe the history of a path for ...
March 08, 2023 at 12:59
I am genuinely curious about this widespread world of physics where cause is not referenced. I read a lot of physics and causes are mentioned constant...
March 08, 2023 at 12:41