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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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There are several parts of your comment to which I could respond, but we're fundamentally coming at this in different reference frames and it would take an entire overhaul to communicate the things I want to. All I can say is that I used to see it your way, and now I don't, and basically feel about your perspective the way you feel about mine. Also that we've had different experiences, and mine have me as entirely convinced as I can be, I think.

It would be rude to throw out a bunch of examples knowing full well that I don't intend to try to discuss them since, as I just said, that'd be pretty fruitless. So I won't.

But I do want to ask again, and let me rephrase here. Gonna ramble a bit.

Let's talk about concepts. Patterns. From a strictly reductionist standpoint, all that exists is the quantum waveform, and no part of it can be severed from the whole. It's normal to regard concepts like 'justice' or 'joy' as abstract, somehow qualitatively different from concepts like 'elk' or 'door'. But again, strictly speaking from a reductionist standpoint, none of these things actually exist. Or if you don't care for the quantum thing, let's say that all that exists is fundamental particles and energy. You can take what we call a door (or an elk) apart particle by particle -- at what point does it stop being that thing? Was it ever that thing, or are concepts like 'door' and 'elk' entirely artifacts of conscious minds? Does our categorization of a thing make it into what it is? If there were no conscious life in our universe, would there be planets? Or only the configurations of matter that we call planets? If there were humans (but without consciousness), would they still be humans?

At its root, theism is the perspective that these concepts, these 'gods', exist independently of our perception of them. An easy example which people often go to for other reasons is, do numbers exist independently of us, or is their existence intrinsic to (perhaps emergent from) the universe?

I'm throwing all of this out there to hopefully help you see what I'm asking when I ask you: Which gods do you serve? Are there any patterns, gods, that you think should exist; which deserve to be prioritized over others? What do you value? And why?

All I have from you is that you think it's good (personally preferable?) for cultural continuity and memory to be cultivated, presumably until it's all wiped away in some kind of cosmic apocalypse beyond our ability to control. And no, I'm not planning on going anywhere with this. There's no 'gotcha' waiting for you around the corner. I'm just having a hard time seeing why you're saying what you're saying.