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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17748 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Can you give me a quick summary of your understanding of Materialism and Determinism in the scientific era, and also your understanding of when Materialism, Determinism and Atheism began being taken seriously as workable axioms?

I am aware of your gripes about overly optimistic and/or liar proponents of Materialism that were alive a few hundred years ago, and I do not believe they are much relevant to the discourse today. Coincidentally I have not studied them. This appears to me to be a deflection/smear akin to "John Money who coined the term 'gender' was an icky pedo" if taken uncharitably, and if taken charitably it seems that you are arguing with dead wrong Materialists whereas I expect you to be arguing with me.

Well, let's try again, then.

I recall a notorious manipulation of brain matter that had been popular just a century ago and demonstrably controlled behaviour. Destructively so, yes, but, again, not any more a debunkment than medieval amputations were of modern surgery.

In a very real and very important sense, standing on top of a large box does not help you get to the moon.

In this same sense, smashing a computer with a baseball bat does not demonstrate that you can code. It does not demonstrate that you can almost code, or that you are incrementing toward the ability to code. Medieval amputations had at least some appreciable chance of increased survival chances of the patient, and so are an example of very crude, very early surgery. Lobotomies are mind destruction, not mind control.

As for mind reading, developments appear to be underway on that front.

That is I/O, not read/write. It's pretty neat, and I'm all for it, but it is not actually what we are talking about here. I can type with my fingers, this would let me type with my brain, but the typing is the same. Some examples of actual read/write technology:

  • a working love potion.
  • a reliable lie detector.
  • granular memory editing or legible playback.

When I look at the pattern of history it appears exactly the opposite of what you said
Coincidentally I have not studied them.

...It is probably pretty hard to see a historical pattern in a part of history you have not and will not look at.

This appears to me to be a deflection/smear akin to "John Money who coined the term 'gender' was an icky pedo" if taken uncharitably, and if taken charitably it seems that you are arguing with dead wrong Materialists whereas I expect you to be arguing with me.

Okay, let's try a different way then.

As I understand it, you believe that science is advancing toward deterministic interaction with the human mind. Not the brain, the mind. Not Ted Chiang's microscopic gold-foil windmills, but the air currents winding between them:

Here too I observed a latticework of wires, but they did not bear leaves suspended in position; instead the leaves flipped back and forth almost too rapidly to see. Indeed, almost the entire engine appeared to be in motion, consisting more of lattice than of air capillaries, and I wondered how air could reach all the gold leaves in a coherent manner. For many hours I scrutinized the leaves, until I realized that they themselves were playing the role of capillaries; the leaves formed temporary conduits and valves that existed just long enough to redirect air at other leaves in turn, and then disappeared as a result. This was an engine undergoing continuous transformation, indeed modifying itself as part of its operation. The lattice was not so much a machine as it was a page on which the machine was written, and on which the machine itself ceaselessly wrote.

My consciousness could be said to be encoded in the position of these tiny leaves, but it would be more accurate to say that it was encoded in the ever-shifting pattern of air driving these leaves. Watching the oscillations of these flakes of gold, I saw that air does not, as we had always assumed, simply provide power to the engine that realizes our thoughts. Air is in fact the very medium of our thoughts. All that we are is a pattern of air flow. My memories were inscribed, not as grooves on foil or even the position of switches, but as persistent currents of argon.

The above is a strict improvement on the standard brain-as-a-computer/mind-as-a-program metaphor, in my view.

I am claiming that:

  • Deterministic technological interaction with the human mind is isomorphic to mind reading or mind control.
  • There is no evidence of working mind reading/control technology currently existing.
  • There is no evidence of meaningful progress toward working mind control tech in the near future. I note that you and others disagree on this point, but I think my claim is well-founded.
  • We do not know if such technology is possible even in principle. There are solid theoretical reasons to believe that it would be fundamentally or practically intractable, even under strict materialist assumptions..
  • If such technology were possible, we have zero information about how far we are from it, whether ten or a thousand or a million years.

And here's the part I've been trying to get across to you above:

  • There is more than a century's history of people claiming to be scientists, claiming further to have developed mind control technology, having their claims taken seriously by society at large, only to turn out to be complete frauds.
  • This history demonstrates that we, collectively, are really bad at identifying fraudulent claims of mind control technology. The apparent reasons for this are illuminating to a number of interesting questions, but it is enough here to note the evident tendency.
  • Inability to identify fraudulent claims of mind control technology has repeatedly led to woeful disasters.
  • The above problems are not limited to mind control tech, they manifest in many other areas of tech as well, often with dire results. This is a serious problem with our entire paradigm, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

Therefore:

  • I evaluate all claims of mind control technology based on strict empiricism. If you want me to believe mind control technology is possible, I want to see a rigorous demonstration of actual mind control. Until then, I think it is prudent to assume that all such claims are fraudulent.

Pointing to the march of actual technology does not answer my objection. I am pointing to the march of fake technology being treated as though it was real.

...And all of this is secondary to the point I've been trying to make through all these discussions, which is that axioms and empirical facts are different things, and that people commonly mistake or conflate the two. A lot of people believe Determinism, and think they believe it because it is empirically proven. In fact, there is zero empirical proof or even direct empirical support for Determinism. These people are believing it axiomatically, but do not recognize it as an axiom. All beliefs are chosen. Not all beliefs are chosen directly. Losing sight of how a belief was chosen is the easiest way to conclude that beliefs arrive in some other way than choice.

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