aaa
3d ago
I'm not even sure there is any difference between those explanations but still:
Was it actually possible to know the future? Not simply to guess at it; was it possible to know what was going to happen, with absolute certainty and in specific detail? Gary once told me that the fundamental laws of physics were time-symmetric, that there was no physical difference between past and future. Given that, some might say, “yes, theoretically.” But speaking more concretely, most would answer “no,” because of free will.
I liked to imagine the objection as a Borgesian fabulation: consider a person standing before the Book of Ages, the chronicle that records every event, past and future (...) The Book of Ages cannot be wrong; this scenario is based on the premise that a person is given knowledge of the actual future, not of some possible future. (...) The result is a contradiction: the Book of Ages must be right, by definition; yet no matter what the Book says she’ll do, she can choose to do otherwise. How can these two facts be reconciled?
They can’t be, was the common answer. (...) The existence of free will meant that we couldn’t know the future. And we knew free will existed because we had direct experience of it. Volition was an intrinsic part of consciousness.
Or was it? What if the experience of knowing the future changed a person? What if it evoked a sense of urgency, a sense of obligation to act precisely as she knew she would?
(...)
Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don’t talk about it. Those who’ve read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
Even though I’m proficient with Heptapod B, I know I don’t experience reality the way a heptapod does. My mind was cast in the mold of human, sequential languages, and no amount of immersion in an alien language can completely reshape it. My worldview is an amalgam of human and heptapod.
Before I learned how to think in Heptapod B, my memories grew like a column of cigarette ash, laid down by the infinitesimal sliver of combustion that was my consciousness, marking the sequential present. After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks, each one measuring years in duration, and though they didn’t arrive in order or land contiguously, they soon composed a period of five decades. It is the period during which I know Heptapod B well enough to think in it, starting during my interviews with Flapper and Raspberry and ending with my death.
aaa
4d ago
Arrival at this point is a movie that I like more because it introduced me to the source material than for the movie in itself. Yes, the direction is good, but they way they butchered the original concept is inexcusable (thank you screenwriter Eric Heisserer).
In the original work the idea is that only your perception of time changes, your consciousness can't time travel and everything you do still has to make sense in a linear, causal view of time. Learning the language lets you remember the future just as you remember the past but it also dispels you of the illusion of free will. The aliens came to earth not because "they know that some day we will help them or something" but simply as explorers. There is no big action scene where the protagonist averts a catastrophe by using her knowledge of the future.
The part about her daughter (it's a daughter in the book) underscores this. She dies not of an incurable illness but of an easily preventable rock climbing incident. Except that she can't easily prevent it because that's just how it happens, just like you can't change the past.
The movie muddles all this, probably to make the big action climax. I imagine somebody at some point figured out it would be callous for the protagonist not to warn her daughter that she's going to slip and die. Maybe they didn't even get the concept of the original story, in between the lines of coke they were doing. But it doesn't solve anything, if she can consciousness timetravel why not have a child the month before, or the one after. Why specifically pick the one born with an incurable illness? Yes they would be timetravel aborting him but no more so than all the other dozens of children they are timetravel aborting instead.
aaa
9d ago
The testimonium flavianum is a forgery: because a jew wouldn't have written that, because the paragraphs before and after flow better together without it in the middle, because Origen didn't know about it when, if it did exist at the time, he would have and because all surviving copies of the antiquities with it go through Eusebius who is coincidentally also the first one to use it.
I know there are recent attempts to rescue it but they are bullshit.
aaa
9d ago
This is a very fantastic interpretation of both canon law and of that statistic. Just to be clear, not even pro-abortion politicians are excommunicated.
I also looked more to that article, and it's sources and I'm starting to have doubts.
Almost a full third of all donations come from a single person, Wayne Paglieri, about whom they have this to say:
Paglieri – the senior development director of Covenant House New Jersey and member of the Covenant House NJ Finance Committee – has made $390,000 in reportable campaign contributions from 2019-2023. What’s strange, however, is that Covenant House New Jersey itself does not identify Paglieri as an employee, nor is he listed on its tax form 990.
aaa
9d ago
In the US, which means far more in Europe, 83% of employees of such charities are either atheists, members other religions, or cultural Catholics excommunicated latae sententiae.
"far more in Europe"? Is there a missing word there? I don't understand. Also your link doesn't look to me like it's supporting your assertion. It says "The study of campaign contributions from 2018 through February of this year showed that 83% went to Democratic candidates or political-action committees" the 83% is donating to a party, it doesn't say anything about their religious affiliation. I also followed the link at the top and searched for "atheist" and found no hits.
aaa
9d ago
I'm not talking about intent I'm talking about what was practically possible. The intent, who knows for sure, but probably you are right.
Very nice set of anecdotes.
Stop trying to justify "I think these pregnancies should be aborted for eugenic reasons"
The eugenic solution would be to not have any other child after the first downer. Downers rarely reproduce so there is little risk there but there could be a genetic component (although it seems that it is rare) and that would be a reason to avoid healthy carriers.
aaa
10d ago
(Incidentally, I've been wondering, is there a literalist Biblical case in Christianity for the personhood of fetuses, or is this something that has been coloured in retroactively by modern analysis/apologetics "through a Christian lens"?)
There isn't but there is a long history all the way back to the 2nd? 3rd? century of christians opposing abortion. Some people speculate that it was because they were accused of eating children or something like that.
aaa
10d ago
I was hoping someone had already posted about this so I can ride on it. Let's say they did have the downer, what would happen?
- within a few years the downer starts consuming large amounts of attention and money as the downer's parents try to give him a simulacron of contemporary white-collar life
- the resource consumption never ends
- they probably never have another normal child because they don't have the resources
- their life continues to be ruined until they die
- afterwards the downer becomes a burden on the wider society
- eventually the downer dies
Let's now talk for a second about suicidal empathy. I think suicidal empathy is just christianity + technology. For example, Jesus says "love your neighbor", this works fine in his time because "your neighbor" is literally your neighbor and it's probably societally adaptive. Better to help someone when they are down on their luck, it's probably temporary, it probably helps the whole village not to let them die for a temporary thing. The upside is probably worth the downside of helping irredemable people some of the time.
Your neighbor now is everyone who lives in a 10000ft radius of the earth surface. You can easily know how they are doing no matter where they are, you can go there within a day or two at a (relatively) irrisory price and you can also make them come to you at the same low price. The somalian sitting of the coast of lybia in a repurposed fishing boat? Your neighbor. The same somalian living in your country definitely your neighbor. His family? Your family's neighbor. Kicking them out as illegals? Definitely not helping them.
And that's how the Catholic Church pushed for regularizing half a million immigrants to spain this year.
This and the downer's story are actually the same category of error. Had the downer been born in the Christian Dark Ages the downer would have died of some retarded accident within 10 years and if not he would have been given the, relatively cheap, life of the beast of burden, not the simulacron of life of an intellectual that we try to give them now.
Euthanasia is also in the same category. Not killing the sick is a good idea because sometimes they get better and otherwise it's like, an extra two weeks. Not so much when we can keep them alive for 60 more years without much effort. Christianity + technology = suicidal empathy.
What's the solution to suicidal empathy? More cruelty, we need to start liking cruelty. The problem is that nobody is willing to do it, you have to trick people by saying "you're not helping them IT'S AN INVASION!!!!1!!!!!!1!!!11!!11!!!!". But it only goes so far. The downer would basically be happy we have to give as much as we can to the downer.
aaa
14d ago
Couldn't one make the same argument about any kind of child labour?
I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it. Those laws were created at a different time.
aaa
14d ago
I think Adum is a bit confused about the genre of this movie, they wanted to write a myth not a historical inquest. And it's hard to make the latter into a movie that's interesting, you have to be especially dry, so a lot of biographies end up falling into one of two categories: the mythology and the character assassination.
Leaving neverland was the other side of the equation, possibly even more dishonest since it's (IMO) more likely than not that the accusations are fabricated and it was done to someone that can no longer defend himself, on account of having been dead for over 10 years.
Imagine trying to portray the accusations of pedophilia in a way that doesn't make them come off as either indisputably true or slander, but rather something that's likely not true but maybe? How do you do it? Who is the point of view character? You have to put some third party character into the movie that sees the event as we, the general public, saw it. It's a different genre.
As for the child actors, is there even a problem? We all know of the cases where things go bad because they are reported on by journalists (Jake Lloyd podracing in real life amiright?) but when the child actor goes on to become an electrician who's going to inform you?
aaa
20d ago
Talking about minimums is irrelevant. First because people don't want to have a child with a minimum viable life. Secondly because to make sense of it you have to compare it to conditions in high fertility societies. For example: having a child means you have to plan your vacations around the school year for 10+ years, this does not matter if you don't have vacations and you will never be able to afford them anyway.
Also, downthread you say:
Most of the points are reasonable and essentially boil down to "ensure your children grow up healthy and with a basic education".
this is how low fertility happens, it's almost all a consequence of good things that we like that ends up making children suck as a side effect. Take the vacations example above (I'm not saying that's the main thing by the way), why does it happen:
- we have more disposable income: GOOD
- we want children to receive schooling: GOOD
- we are going to provide free schooling to children: GOOD
- we don't want to have children go for long periods unsupervised: GOOD
Or take child seats laws, which make children suck as a side effect: do you want children to die in car accidents? Do you want to kill children? Are you a child killer? You must hate children if you want to abolish child seats laws.
aaa
21d ago
People don't want children because children here suck ass (or, they are too expensive, same thing). "But climate change" is the left wing cope, the right wing cope is "make motherhood high status". There is no viable solution.
aaa
21d ago
Doesn't fit. Birth rates did not collapse until after the baby boom (by definition)
No, the baby boom is called that specifically because birth rates were already falling before and it was a reversal of the trend, producing a significantly large generation.
aaa
27d ago
the most we asked from any drafted Vietnam soldier was what, a 13 month tour?
If you die it's forever. You can use this to do a qualia calculation by pulling coefficients out of your ass as it's customary for this type of exercise.
aaa
27d ago
A lot of people are not merely invested in humanity continuing to exist but in society as it exists now, or something close to it or better, to also continue forth. If you make it so only welfare-dependent religious nuts and low impulse control criminals get to reproduce you will get a society of low impulse control criminals after they have done away with all the meek welfare-dependent religious nuts.
You do have to be invested in a better future, though, or at least a not-so-bad future. If you don't have children yourself and you don't care that it will all go to shit after you're not around anymore then, yes, who cares.
aaa
1mo ago
Yes, the Dark Ages were real. They were not "and this lasted up to the 14th/16th century until 18th century Enlightenment/19th century Rationalism/20th century mass Atheism came along to liberate us!"
Eh, on some metrics it did last until the 14/15 hundreds. Some of the graphs do look shockingly similar to the "hole" meme, tbh. The "enlightenment came to liberate us" part however is much more complicated.
It does matter who invents the name and the concept, or do you indeed agree with this stunning example of fact-based representation?
That meme has a lot of problems but who invented it is not one of them.
The original, invented by christians, do not steal, holiday of easter?
Yes, original invented by Christians Easter. It is based around the Jewish festival of Passover
Well, there you go. Original much like sonichu.
aaa
1mo ago
Oh, you wanna get into "When were the Dark Ages, what were the Dark Ages, and why did the Independent Free-Thinking Ain't Nobody Gonna Tell Me What To Believe set wholeheartedly and uncritically accept Protestant polemic propaganda?" Because let's fight about history while we're at it!
https://inquisitivebird.xyz/p/the-dark-ages https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/2024584895847121066 https://x.com/GuthmannR/status/1741216526760374312 https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/15/were-there-dark-ages/
The dark ages are real, the name is merited and who came up with it first doesn't matter.
Throw in Easter
The original, invented by christians, do not steal, holiday of easter?
aaa
1mo ago
Those things exist as rhetorical devices. See these people were shown miracles and still doubted, how foolish of them, what retards. The people around you who don't believe? Retarded like them. Don't pay attention to the trick and it works.
aaa
1mo ago
The fine-tuning argument is one of the best counter-apologetical arguments against God’s existence because a God has no need of anything of the things you’ve described.
You are presupposing an omnipotent god because you are thinking about this as if it was an argument for the christian god. But if you think more in general, it works a lot better as an argument for a more limited kind of god that is specifically interested in creating matter.
But even absent that, no math presently exists for this kind of speculation on the matter.
This is a better argument against it. The fine tuning argument talks about probabilities but really is more about aesthetics.
It seems obvious to me that the story is dualist. It doesn't matter that it isn't scientifically serious (imo no theory of consciousness is scientifically serious, btw)
There are no decisions to be made, decisions don't exist in that way.
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