A quark, or a configuration of quarks, or definable in terms of configurations of quarks. Presumably occlude really meant (or perhaps would have meant, given more knowledge of physics) “elementary particles”, since not all elementary particles are quarks; or something more complicated involving quantum fields. With such fixes in place, it doesn’t seem to me like a fully-general argument against (for instance) computers or people or minds or symphonies, but it still has some force against moral realism.
That particular turn of phrase (configuration of quarks) was borrowed from Eliezer’s description of reductionism in Luke’s “Pale Blue Dot” podcast #88. It left an impression.
That’s a fully-general argument against the existence of anything that isn’t a quark.
A quark, or a configuration of quarks, or definable in terms of configurations of quarks. Presumably occlude really meant (or perhaps would have meant, given more knowledge of physics) “elementary particles”, since not all elementary particles are quarks; or something more complicated involving quantum fields. With such fixes in place, it doesn’t seem to me like a fully-general argument against (for instance) computers or people or minds or symphonies, but it still has some force against moral realism.
That particular turn of phrase (configuration of quarks) was borrowed from Eliezer’s description of reductionism in Luke’s “Pale Blue Dot” podcast #88. It left an impression.