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These are all things you were already going to do exactly that way based on the billions of years that came before YOU. What makes you make those choices? Your mind, which is a result of genetics and the impact of the material world on that genetically distinct mind. You've never had a moment of free will, nor have I, and we never will. If you believe in chemical reactions or electricity or gravity...free will can't exist.
P.S. is your religiosity argument really based on simulation theory?
Okay. Please demonstrate that this is true by making a testable, falsifiable prediction about the behavior of another human, with enough specificity to clearly distinguish between the two models.
Alternatively, I can believe in chemical reactions, electricity, and gravity, and note that our understandings of these a) do not appear to be complete, b) do not seem likely to be made complete in the future, and c) do not have anything useful to say about human behavior. If human brains actually worked like clockwork and could be manipulated like clockwork, I would agree that they seem to be clockwork. But they don't, so I don't. Instead, when the theory and the actionable observations of reality appear to contradict each other, I go with the actionable observations. Why should I do otherwise? What does "assume that determinism is true, despite it appearing in every testable way that it's false" add to my thinking? Does it help me make better circuit boards or chip designs?
Not particularly. Both Christianity and Simulation theory posit that observable reality is not baseline reality. I think the apparent existence of entropy and the apparent existence of free will are two solid indications that observable reality is not, in fact, baseline reality, and that the nature of baseline reality is probably not accessible to us under present conditions.
Yes it does. If natural laws don't work and time isn't real and consequences don't follow actions... then yeah...you can't make computer chips.
If they aren't real at all, that would follow.
If they aren't universal constants in areas having nothing to do with computer chips, it doesn't follow.
Materialism's core claim is that all matter works according to the same principles, and so you can't claim exceptions in one area. Yudkowski's Universal Fire is as good a formulation of this claim as any.
This is the basic argument you are making, yes?
I feeeeellll....like it is a trick if I say yes, but yeah pretty much.
It's not a trick, it's just the straightforward truth about how reasoning works.
Here's the intro and the ending of that essay:
Rather than make the back-and-forth additionally tedious, I'm going to assume you'd likewise endorse the bolded part of the conclusion above. The problem is that the bolded part, the actual conclusion, is straightforwardly, obviously false as he's written it.
You will probably disagree with that statement, so let me try to reformulate it into a perfectly-equivalent statement that will highlight the problem:
"Impossible things can't happen, so if an impossible thing happens, you can be sure another impossible thing won't happen."
This is a logically-incoherent statement.
Yudkowski appears to be correct that reality is laced together a lot more tightly than many humans might like to believe. What he's missing is that this fact cuts both ways. If you observe something "impossible", then there is an error somewhere; either your observation is wrong, or your understanding of what is possible is wrong; it could be either, and you don't know which. What it can't be, is that something impossible actually happened but the rules of possibility as you understand them are still valid.
You cannot, in fact, step through a portal to another world where matches don't work. If you could step through such a portal, there is no valid reason to believe that the matches not working means you don't work. The whole point of the chain of logic about phosphorus chemistry is that the physical laws are supposed to be perfectly seamless from phosphorus down to subatomic physics and up through your internal chemical makeup. Portals to another world have already proved that the chain isn't seamless, and in fact there's a gap the size of the grand canyon. Once you have one confirmed breakdown, there is no valid reason to suppose that the rest of your model is reliable enough to make confident predictions about the region of the break.
The correct statement is, "If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, who the fuck knows? Maybe you instantly die because phosphorus chemistry doesn't work there. Maybe it's magic. Maybe you're in a simulation and match-striking has been hard-locked by a recent patch. Maybe someone is playing an elaborate prank on you, and swapped your matches for fakes."
Do you disagree?
To add some levity, https://youtube.com/watch?v=OCCYvPlsp7o
Amusing I'm sure, but do you have a more substantive answer?
You can believe what you want! But if we can't at least agree on a framework of reality, or if reality is actually reality, then none of it matters anyway.
It is air I'm breathing now, and we know exactly what it is.
I'm also a huge typical minder, I simply can't fathom smart capable people truly believing in some religion/afterlife or another. I don't think they really actually do. Barring true jihadists their actions certainly never show it. Don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. People don't act like eternal life is just around the corner in death, that is for damn sure for 99.9% of the population.
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