Adverts on Facebook

According to this Guardian article the ads that Facebook shows you are heavily influenced by what you actually post on facebook.  I never see ads on there as I have them suppressed. I wonder what they'd try to sell me? Cryonics? Existential therapy? Battered haddock?

It's a bizarre situation we find ourselves in

It's bizarre enough that we find ourselves existing on the surface of a huge ball floating in the midst of an eternal nothingness. But, arguably, what's even more bizarre is that no-one questions it. Everyone thinks it's normal.

We need to take a step back and just consider how utterly strange is the situation in which we find ourselves. Are we all being deceived? Are our lives akin to some strange dream, and when we die we'll realise how preposterous it all is? I don't know.

Believers in a God hate telescopes?

Kinda like peering closely at the screen of computer game in the anticipation of seeing the programmer.

Woke Capitalism

I've just read the following article:

How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture

I'm in entire agreement with every word. A few quotes from the article:

In the second group, the blameless, lies Emmanuel Cafferty, a truck driver who appears to have been tricked into making an “okay” symbol by a driver he cut off at a traffic light. The inevitable viral video claimed that this was a deliberate use of the symbol as a white-power gesture, and he was promptly fired. Cafferty is a working-class man in his 40s from San Diego. The loss of his job hit him hard enough that he saw a counselor.

and

not being racist is not going to save you if the lightning strikes. Nor is the fact that your comments lie decades in the past, or that they have been misinterpreted by bad-faith actors, or that you didn’t make them. The ground—your life—is scorched just the same.

and

Here is another option for big companies: Put your money into paying all junior staff enough for them to live in the big city where the company is based, without needing help from their parents. That would increase the company’s diversity.

Indeed, but they're only interested in profits, hence they're only interested in how others perceive them, not the reality. So they just need to sack people for any imagined transgression against woke values. Not do the decent thing and bring about real positive change.

When people talk about the “excesses of the left”—a phenomenon that blights the electoral prospects of progressive parties by alienating swing voters—in many cases they’re talking about the jumpy overreactions of corporations that aren’t left-wing at all.

This nails it on the head! This article is brilliant.

Just finished reading "the soul fallacy".

Just this second finished "the soul fallacy". There was nothing in it that I haven't heard before, but I do read skeptic views on this issue extensively, so perhaps that's not surprising.

His rejection of the soul is parasitic on some form of reductive materialism being entirely unproblematic. If reductive materialism is possible, then it beats dualism in virtue of being the more simple and parsimonious hypothesis. But he never provides any arguments for materialism nor responds to the objections raised against it, he merely effectively says that materialism is what science tells us is true. But he omits to tell us how science tells us this.

He also sees it entirely unproblematic that the world and everything that happens within it is wholly a result of physical chains of causes and effects, including all our behaviour and, by implication, everything we think.

There are compelling arguments against such a modern reductive materialism that I regard as decisive. There are also compelling arguments that necessarily our consciousness per se must have at least some causal efficacy as I argue here.

Simply assuming that reductive materialism is possible and simply assuming that our behaviour is entirely due to material causal chains is entirely unproblematic makes the entire book one huge question begging exercise. Instead he contents himself with attacking interactive dualism. Many of these attacks in their turn though presuppose that the alternative of materialism is viable and hence are also question begging.

I'll write a review, perhaps in differing parts.

Us and Them

And then there's me who doesn't belong to either group and is cast out into no-man's land where I get fired at by both sides.

That reminds me, I think I'll listen to the 2nd side of Dark side of the Moon which, of course, includes Us and Them.

The Idolization of Celebrities

I find this constant idolization of celebrities to be wearisome. I find it especially irritating when people say I should have heard of X as s/he is one of the most famous people on the planet.

Why?? What profound thoughts do they have? Or what have they done to earn my interest? People become celebrities mainly through happenstance. There's no reason to admire them. And no, I won't read up about them.

Being Praised

Some guy called David McRaney said:

Have you ever noticed the peculiar tendency you have to let praise pass through you, but to feel crushed by criticism? A thousand positive remarks can slip by unnoticed, but one “you suck” can linger in your head for days.

Eh?? Peoples' experiences must be very different from my own.  No, it's pretty much the diametric opposite for me. Depending on the nature of the praise it often makes me feel great! I imagine because the negative remarks directed towards me vastly outnumber the positive remarks. Especially on the net. Am I unique here? Does everyone else get more positive remarks than negative remarks?

Looking on the net he's written a few books eg:

Yet another negative remark!

Response to an article on the meaning of life

I've just read most of the following article by a certain Frank Martela, PhD:

How Can Life Be Valuable in a Cold and Mechanistic Universe?

I made 3 responses underneath the article. Hopefully they won't be deleted since I disagree profoundly with the author and I'm more strident than I tend to be in my blog posts. I'll reproduce my replies below (perhaps slightly expanded to include links to relevant blog posts of mine).

Frank Martela says:

As Thomas Huxley observed already in 1874, although we might feel our actions as volitional and emanating from our own will, such “volitions do not enter into the chain of causation,“ as doing that would break the laws of physics.

Why do all these silly people think there are "laws of physics"? Such "laws" are merely a description of what occurs (see this post by me). And part of what occurs are our actions as produced by the voluntary movements of our bodies. If your description ("law") doesn't accommodate such voluntary behaviour, then dream up a more encompassing description (I argue that our consciousness is necessarily causally efficacious here).

Frank Martela says:

For example, there is not really a thing called "temperature" in the world — it is just our way of experiencing the average amount of kinetic energy of the molecules around us. Similarly, the color "red" doesn’t exist for real. It is just our way of experiencing and describing light of a certain wavelength. Temperature and redness don’t exist in the world.

I do not subscribe to any of this. Where are the arguments, where is any evidence that red is not out there in the world? And Carroll simply presupposes our scientific theories depict literal states of affairs (see this post by me). Temperature is how hot it is, not anything else. To reiterate, physics merely describes the world, it doesn't tell us what it is in and of itself, that's what metaphysics deals with.

It's interesting how utterly crazy our modern conception of the world is. Most educated people are brainwashed into believing that colours, sounds, smells have no reality outside our minds, but mysterious stuff such as "kinetic energy" does. Testimony to the power of "education" to mould and shape peoples' beliefs to readily embrace preposterous notions.


Frank Martela says:

What then is the meaning of life? Depends on what you mean by that question. Are you asking about an overarching purpose to all human lives, some externally imposed commandment and justification for how we all ought to live our lives and find value in them? Then I am afraid that we must conclude that based on this naturalistic understanding of human values, there is no meaning of life.

Naturalism hasn't been argued for. Nor could it be since the problems inherent to it are insurmountable (see this post by me).

Naturalism cannot explain the ability of human beings to have goals, exhibit intentionality, have a causally efficacious consciousness. Indeed, it cannot even accommodate the very existence of consciousness. Since naturalism cannot accommodate the facts, then it is incorrect.


Frank Martela says:

The emergence of life was an accidental by-product of natural laws. The emergence of human beings as a form of life was an accidental by-product of the mechanisms of natural selection. The emergence of values was a by-product of human intentionality and reflectivity. There is no justification for life, no external purpose to it. Life just is. An accident — but from our own point of view, a very lucky accident indeed.

All unsubstantiated assertions. How do you know that "natural laws" aren't innately teleological?

Let's assume you're right and there's no afterlife and we are mere biological machines. If so, I agree life has meaning. I find it absurd for people to suggest that if there is no "God" etc we might as well just kill ourselves now.

But, nevertheless, it remains the case that the Universe and our lives are ultimately to no avail. Whatever goals are achieved, whatever satisfactions are attained, whatever pleasures we experience, ultimately it is all pointless in the grand scheme of things. Eventually, the last human being will die, the last sentient being on Earth will die and eventually the earth will be swallowed up by the Sun when it ends its life as a red giant.

With the death of the Earth we might legitimately conclude that the whole history of the human race -- every thought, every action, every emotion experienced -- might as well never have occurred.

If we gravitate towards materialism (or more loosely that the brain produces consciousness) perhaps it is best to put aside such thoughts and lose ourselves in our day to day lives; care about the concrete things in life such as making a living, forming relationships, and just marvel at our fortune to be privileged to have this brief spark of sentience before the veil of forever nothingness descends upon us.

However, we are not in a position to conclude there is no transcendental meaning. The author presupposes that we are mere biological machines and we will cease to exist when we die. If this is untrue, then a possibility of some ultimate transcendental meaning is opened up.