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ndriscoll 4 hours ago [-]
> But if we have no agency, nothing matters. There can be no morality: a criminal was always destined to commit a crime. It was never right for us to punish them, but that’s okay: we couldn’t have acted differently, so we shoulder no blame.
Right, and determinism seems likely to me to be correct, but I don't see the issue. Whether we'd like things to matter has no impact on whether they really do, but the obvious conclusion along the same lines that "saves" us is that you should act as if you believe in free will (e.g. enacting punishments) even if you don't. Either there is free will, so you behaved correctly, or there isn't, so you didn't really decide how to act anyway.
confidantlake 1 hours ago [-]
Why does it matter how you "should" act if there is no free will. You are just going to act how your are going to act.
RhysU 3 hours ago [-]
> In classical physics, the universe is deterministic: every action is a necessary consequence of what happened before. In this view, our actions are predetermined too.
Sure, but the deterministic chaos [1] arising within classical physics says that any predetermined actions depend on upon effectively unknowable aspects of initial conditions. Nothing probabilistic required.
Easiest example is anything dependent on turbulent fluids, which are found everywhere in the atmosphere and the oceans. Another place with turbulence is the human heart [2]. There's deterministic chaos lurking behind the oxygenation of every cell in your body.
Predetermined actions from a chaotic system are indistinguishable from free will. Occam's Razor suggests free will, being simpler and just as predictive, is the better model for human behavior.
Just because it's fun: Why is the universe like this? The anthropic principle [3]! Without fluid turbulence the other available diffusion mechanisms are too slow to evolve creatures like us. Literally, either turbulence is a classical physics PITA or you don't exist [4].
[4] Things one observes when procrastinating on a turbulence-related dissertation.
plastic-enjoyer 5 hours ago [-]
> Alas, the only flavor of philosophy that’s popular with techies is what I’d call edgelord utilitarianism — a collection of materialist, pseudo-mathematical beliefs favored by the SF Bay Area rationalist community.
Which is sad, because philosophy of technology does exist and is a young discipline in philosophy.
speedster217 4 hours ago [-]
My degree required taking an Ethics in Computer Science course and I thought it was very interesting.
applicative 3 hours ago [-]
Philosophy of technology has existed since Plato and Aristotle. Every other word in their corpus is technē, which is why we call technology 'technology'. In every succeeding epoch the theory of the technological has been developed. It isn't clear there are 'disciplines in philosophy': there are only a few thousand researchers to begin with, on the scale of art history. I asked perhaps doubtful AI but it said that in AI there is an 'elite tier' of AI researchers of 5000 from maybe 100,000 total; the corresponding figure for philosophy was 500 out of 5000. The AI world could finance its own army of philosophers and it could be bigger than real philosophy, and no one would notice the dent on funds
lern_too_spel 3 hours ago [-]
Author tries and fails to rationally argue that rational thinking is incorrect by pointing out that some people trying to think rationally have failed.
Right, and determinism seems likely to me to be correct, but I don't see the issue. Whether we'd like things to matter has no impact on whether they really do, but the obvious conclusion along the same lines that "saves" us is that you should act as if you believe in free will (e.g. enacting punishments) even if you don't. Either there is free will, so you behaved correctly, or there isn't, so you didn't really decide how to act anyway.
Sure, but the deterministic chaos [1] arising within classical physics says that any predetermined actions depend on upon effectively unknowable aspects of initial conditions. Nothing probabilistic required.
Easiest example is anything dependent on turbulent fluids, which are found everywhere in the atmosphere and the oceans. Another place with turbulence is the human heart [2]. There's deterministic chaos lurking behind the oxygenation of every cell in your body.
Predetermined actions from a chaotic system are indistinguishable from free will. Occam's Razor suggests free will, being simpler and just as predictive, is the better model for human behavior.
Just because it's fun: Why is the universe like this? The anthropic principle [3]! Without fluid turbulence the other available diffusion mechanisms are too slow to evolve creatures like us. Literally, either turbulence is a classical physics PITA or you don't exist [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
[2] https://cvphysiology.com/hemodynamics/h007
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
[4] Things one observes when procrastinating on a turbulence-related dissertation.
Which is sad, because philosophy of technology does exist and is a young discipline in philosophy.