I’m a hardcore consciousness and metaphysics nerd, so some of your questions fall within my epistemic wheelhouse. Others, I am simply interested in as you are, and can only respond with opinion or conjecture. I will take a stab at a selection of them below:
4: “Easy” is up in the air, but one of my favorite instrumental practices is to identify lines of preprogrammed “code” in my cognition that do me absolutely no good (grief, for instance), and simply hack into them to make them execute different emotional and behavioral outputs. I think the best way to stay happy is just to manually edit out negative thought tendencies, and having some intellectual knowledge that none of it’s a big deal anyways always helps.
8: I would define it as “existing in its minimally reduced, indivisible state”. For instance, an electron is a fundamental particle, but a proton is not because it’s composed of quarks.
12 (and 9): I think you’re on the best track with B. Consciousness is clearly individuated. Is it fundamental? That’s a multifaceted issue. It’s pretty clear to me that it can be reduced to something that is fundamental. At minimum, the state of being a “reference point” for external reality is something that really cannot be gotten beneath. On the other hand, a lot of what we think of as consciousness and experience is actually information: thought, sensation, memory, identity, etc. I couldn’t tell you what of any of this is irreducible—I suspect the capacities for at least some of them are. Your chosen stance here seems to approximate a clean-cut interactionism, which is at least a serviceable proxy.
13: I think this is the wrong question. We don’t know anything yet about how physics at the lowest level ultimately intersects and possibly unifies with the “metaphysics” of consciousness. At our current state of progress, no matter what theory of consciousness proves accurate, it will inevitably lean on some as-yet-undiscovered principle of physics that we in 2023 would find incomprehensible.
16: This will be controversial here, but is a settled issue in my field: You’d be looking for phenomenological evidence that AIs can participate in metaphysics the same ways conscious entities can. The easiest proof to the affirmative would be if they persist in a discarnate state after they “die”. I sure don’t expect it, but I’d be glad to be wrong.
19: I think a more likely idea along the general lines of the simulation hypothesis, due to the latter’s implications about computers and consciousness that, as I said above, I do not expect to hold up, is that an ultra-advanced civilization could just create a genuine microcosm where life evolved naturally. Not to say it’s likely.
20: Total speculation, of course—my personal pet hypothesis is that all civilizations discover everything they need to know about universal metaphysics way before they develop interstellar travel (we’re firmly on that track), and at some point just decide they’re tired of living in bodies. I personally hope we do not take such an easy way out.
21: I can buy into a sort of quantum-informed anthropic principle. Observers seem to be necessary to hold non-observer reality in a stable state. So that may in fact be the universe’s most basic dichotomy.
33: In my experience, the most important thing is to love what you’re learning about. Optimal learning is when you learn so quickly that you perpetually can’t wait to learn the next thing. I don’t think there’s any way to make “studying just to pass the test” effective long-term. You’ll just forget it all afterwards. You can probably imagine my thoughts on the western educational system.
43-44: Speaking to one’s intellectual comfort zone, Litany of Tarski-type affirmations are very effective at that. The benefit, of course, is better epistemics due to shedding ill-conceived discomfort with unfamiliar ideas.
45: I’ve actually never experienced this, and was shocked to learn it’s a thing in college. Science will typically blame neurochemistry, but in normal cognition, thought is the prime mover there. So all I can think of is an associative mechanism whereby people relate the presence of a certain chemical with a certain mood, because the emotion had previously caused the chemical release. When transmitters are released abnormally (i.e. not by willed thought), these associations activate. Again, never happened to me.
56: I’d consider myself mostly aligned with both, so I’d personally say yes. I’m also a diehard metaphysics nerd who’s fully aware I’m not going anywhere, so I’d better fricking prioritize the far future because there’s a lot of it waiting for me. For someone who’s not that, I’d actually say no, because it’s much more rational to care most about the period of time you get to live in.
58: As someone who’s also constantly scheming about things indefinitely far in the future, I feel you on this one. I find that building and maintaining an extreme amount of confidence in those matters enriches my experience of the present.
71-73: For me, studying empirical metaphysics has fulfilled the first two (rejecting materialism makes anyone happier, and there’s no limit of possible discovery) and eventually will the third (it’ll rise to prominence in my lifetime). I can’t say I wouldn’t recommend.
78: Same as 71-73, for an obvious example. I can definitely set you in the right direction.
81: Following the scientific method, a hypothesis must be formed as an attempt to explain an observation. It must then be testable, and present a means of supporting or rejecting it by the results of the test. I’ve certainly dealt with theories that seem equally well supported by evidence but can’t both be true, but I have no reason to think better science couldn’t tease them apart.
89: Definitely space travel, AI, VR, aging reversal, genetic engineering. I really think metaphysical science will outstrip all of the above in utility, though...
96: …by making this cease to be relevant.
98: Of course there are, because there’s so much we know nothing about when it comes to what the heck we even are. I’d almost argue we have very little idea how to truly have the biggest positive impact on the future we can at this stage. We’ll figure it out.
You seem to have an unconventional view about death informed by your metaphysics (suggested by your responses to 56, 89, and 96), but I don’t fully see what it is. Can you elaborate?
Yes, I am a developing empirical researcher of metaphysical phenomena. My primary item of study is past-life memory cases of young children, because I think this line of research is both the strongest evidentially (hard verifications of such claims, to the satisfaction of any impartial arbiter, are quite routine), as well as the most practical for longtermist world-optimizing purposes (it quickly becomes obvious we’re literally studying people who’ve successfully overcome death). I don’t want to undercut the fact that scientific metaphysics is a much larger field than just one set of data, but elsewhere, you get into phenomena that are much harder to verify and really only make sense in the context of the ones that are readily demonstrable.
I think the most unorthodox view I hold about death is that we can rise above it without resorting to biological immortality (which I’d actually argue might be counterproductive), but having seen the things I’ve seen, it’s not a far leap. Some of the best documented cases really put the empowerment potential on very glaring display; an attitude of near complete nonchalance toward death is not terribly infrequent among the elite ones. And these are, like, 4-year-olds we’re talking about. Who have absolutely no business being such badasses unless they’re telling the truth about their feats, which can usually be readily verified by a thorough investigation. Not all are quite so unflappable, naturally, but being able to recall and explain how they died, often in some violent manner, while keeping a straight face is a fairly standard characteristic of these guys.
To summarize the transhumanist application I’m getting at, I think that if you took the best child reincarnation case subject on record and gave everyone living currently and in the future their power, we’d already have an almost perfect world. And, like, we hardly know anything about this yet. Future users ought to become far more proficient than modern ones.
I’m a hardcore consciousness and metaphysics nerd, so some of your questions fall within my epistemic wheelhouse. Others, I am simply interested in as you are, and can only respond with opinion or conjecture. I will take a stab at a selection of them below:
4: “Easy” is up in the air, but one of my favorite instrumental practices is to identify lines of preprogrammed “code” in my cognition that do me absolutely no good (grief, for instance), and simply hack into them to make them execute different emotional and behavioral outputs. I think the best way to stay happy is just to manually edit out negative thought tendencies, and having some intellectual knowledge that none of it’s a big deal anyways always helps.
8: I would define it as “existing in its minimally reduced, indivisible state”. For instance, an electron is a fundamental particle, but a proton is not because it’s composed of quarks.
12 (and 9): I think you’re on the best track with B. Consciousness is clearly individuated. Is it fundamental? That’s a multifaceted issue. It’s pretty clear to me that it can be reduced to something that is fundamental. At minimum, the state of being a “reference point” for external reality is something that really cannot be gotten beneath. On the other hand, a lot of what we think of as consciousness and experience is actually information: thought, sensation, memory, identity, etc. I couldn’t tell you what of any of this is irreducible—I suspect the capacities for at least some of them are. Your chosen stance here seems to approximate a clean-cut interactionism, which is at least a serviceable proxy.
13: I think this is the wrong question. We don’t know anything yet about how physics at the lowest level ultimately intersects and possibly unifies with the “metaphysics” of consciousness. At our current state of progress, no matter what theory of consciousness proves accurate, it will inevitably lean on some as-yet-undiscovered principle of physics that we in 2023 would find incomprehensible.
16: This will be controversial here, but is a settled issue in my field: You’d be looking for phenomenological evidence that AIs can participate in metaphysics the same ways conscious entities can. The easiest proof to the affirmative would be if they persist in a discarnate state after they “die”. I sure don’t expect it, but I’d be glad to be wrong.
19: I think a more likely idea along the general lines of the simulation hypothesis, due to the latter’s implications about computers and consciousness that, as I said above, I do not expect to hold up, is that an ultra-advanced civilization could just create a genuine microcosm where life evolved naturally. Not to say it’s likely.
20: Total speculation, of course—my personal pet hypothesis is that all civilizations discover everything they need to know about universal metaphysics way before they develop interstellar travel (we’re firmly on that track), and at some point just decide they’re tired of living in bodies. I personally hope we do not take such an easy way out.
21: I can buy into a sort of quantum-informed anthropic principle. Observers seem to be necessary to hold non-observer reality in a stable state. So that may in fact be the universe’s most basic dichotomy.
33: In my experience, the most important thing is to love what you’re learning about. Optimal learning is when you learn so quickly that you perpetually can’t wait to learn the next thing. I don’t think there’s any way to make “studying just to pass the test” effective long-term. You’ll just forget it all afterwards. You can probably imagine my thoughts on the western educational system.
43-44: Speaking to one’s intellectual comfort zone, Litany of Tarski-type affirmations are very effective at that. The benefit, of course, is better epistemics due to shedding ill-conceived discomfort with unfamiliar ideas.
45: I’ve actually never experienced this, and was shocked to learn it’s a thing in college. Science will typically blame neurochemistry, but in normal cognition, thought is the prime mover there. So all I can think of is an associative mechanism whereby people relate the presence of a certain chemical with a certain mood, because the emotion had previously caused the chemical release. When transmitters are released abnormally (i.e. not by willed thought), these associations activate. Again, never happened to me.
56: I’d consider myself mostly aligned with both, so I’d personally say yes. I’m also a diehard metaphysics nerd who’s fully aware I’m not going anywhere, so I’d better fricking prioritize the far future because there’s a lot of it waiting for me. For someone who’s not that, I’d actually say no, because it’s much more rational to care most about the period of time you get to live in.
58: As someone who’s also constantly scheming about things indefinitely far in the future, I feel you on this one. I find that building and maintaining an extreme amount of confidence in those matters enriches my experience of the present.
71-73: For me, studying empirical metaphysics has fulfilled the first two (rejecting materialism makes anyone happier, and there’s no limit of possible discovery) and eventually will the third (it’ll rise to prominence in my lifetime). I can’t say I wouldn’t recommend.
78: Same as 71-73, for an obvious example. I can definitely set you in the right direction.
81: Following the scientific method, a hypothesis must be formed as an attempt to explain an observation. It must then be testable, and present a means of supporting or rejecting it by the results of the test. I’ve certainly dealt with theories that seem equally well supported by evidence but can’t both be true, but I have no reason to think better science couldn’t tease them apart.
89: Definitely space travel, AI, VR, aging reversal, genetic engineering. I really think metaphysical science will outstrip all of the above in utility, though...
96: …by making this cease to be relevant.
98: Of course there are, because there’s so much we know nothing about when it comes to what the heck we even are. I’d almost argue we have very little idea how to truly have the biggest positive impact on the future we can at this stage. We’ll figure it out.
Lots of interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing!
You seem to have an unconventional view about death informed by your metaphysics (suggested by your responses to 56, 89, and 96), but I don’t fully see what it is. Can you elaborate?
Yes, I am a developing empirical researcher of metaphysical phenomena. My primary item of study is past-life memory cases of young children, because I think this line of research is both the strongest evidentially (hard verifications of such claims, to the satisfaction of any impartial arbiter, are quite routine), as well as the most practical for longtermist world-optimizing purposes (it quickly becomes obvious we’re literally studying people who’ve successfully overcome death). I don’t want to undercut the fact that scientific metaphysics is a much larger field than just one set of data, but elsewhere, you get into phenomena that are much harder to verify and really only make sense in the context of the ones that are readily demonstrable.
I think the most unorthodox view I hold about death is that we can rise above it without resorting to biological immortality (which I’d actually argue might be counterproductive), but having seen the things I’ve seen, it’s not a far leap. Some of the best documented cases really put the empowerment potential on very glaring display; an attitude of near complete nonchalance toward death is not terribly infrequent among the elite ones. And these are, like, 4-year-olds we’re talking about. Who have absolutely no business being such badasses unless they’re telling the truth about their feats, which can usually be readily verified by a thorough investigation. Not all are quite so unflappable, naturally, but being able to recall and explain how they died, often in some violent manner, while keeping a straight face is a fairly standard characteristic of these guys.
To summarize the transhumanist application I’m getting at, I think that if you took the best child reincarnation case subject on record and gave everyone living currently and in the future their power, we’d already have an almost perfect world. And, like, we hardly know anything about this yet. Future users ought to become far more proficient than modern ones.