Heidegger's (imo ofc) is poetic, but not going back to nature. It tries to integrate the opposites (nature vs tech) rather than pick one.

... you understand every sentence has to be interpreted, right?

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The Correct Theory of Epistemology

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To have correct beliefs about the universe it is necessary to know how humans can acquire knowledge. Any being that can get knowledge must have a mind. A mind can know when something has changed or effected it. Anything that can effect the mind is something that the mind can be aware of. Different senses indicate that there are different sense organs, and effects in the world such as light and sound. One thing a mind is sure of is what senses it has. What is real and existent is what can effect the mind.

Humans can know about causality, and knowing how they can know this is needed in epistemology. A mind cannot exist without time also existing because all thoughts are a process with duration. Humans could expect or believe that causality would be violated which means how they are right about causality always being obeyed in the real world must be explained. There are examples that show that the human brain could accept violations of causality in Time Travel which is a concept invented by humans in fiction. The belief that causes are before effects is based on noticing certain changes in the world always are preceded by different similar changes where there is an increase of entropy. There are always usually some effects currently observable, so time always seems to pass for all humans. If a human were the only object in a universe it would seem that time were nonexistent. The ability for a mind to think causality is likely is no different from its ability to notice any other pattern. You could notice letters are always in alphabetical order as an example of another pattern. In both the example of causality and an order in letters a single direction is used and a single mental model. The direction is toward the future for causality and whatever direction the list of letters is read in. The single model is a "list" that must be read in a certain direction(otherwise the letters are not connected and random) and a single timeline or calendar for causality. Belief in causality is based on probability.

Everything in the knowable world has the common property that it can effect everything else in the world. Motion is something universal to everything in the world and space and time are connected to everything. Models can be universal because of how spacetime connects everything. The principle of uniformity of nature can be adopted when attempting to understand the universe. A model can be tested by seeing if there are any contradictions in it, and by testing its predictions. If you say x is true,and whenever x is true y must be true and y is found to be false than x cannot be true. A good example would be testing the model that says heaver things fall faster. A light thing should fall slowly, and the model also says a heavy thing should fall quickly. However if both are attached to each other the model predicts that it should fall faster and slower at the same time which is a contradiction. Another example would be the model that everyone has died. If everyone had died, then cars must not be driven since people drive them. You can observe cars being driven, and know that everyone has not died even if you do not see the people in the cars. The model of gravitation can be tested with the same method, and will always be confirmed. It predicts an asteroid not moving sideways and falling around the Earth like the Moon will instead hit the Earth with a different path. These paths observed in real life are very similar to the model. Gravity is confirmed.

One of the biggest problems in epistemology is beliefs/models that are false but seem true. Most religions are examples of these. Religions are believable because they say significant things about morals, and events in the past which cannot be tested with experiments. It is difficult to know all predictions that result from beliefs and to know all evidence/observations that would count as a test of them. Religions contain many beliefs, and it would be impossible to think about a whole religion rather than small parts of it which makes them harder to test and more believable. Many people simultaneously believe that God can account for everything, and that religions say something significant about how they should live. These two beliefs contradict each other, and the problem of not understanding a whole model prevents most from seeing this. God could not account for actual morals if the morals of a religion were wrong, and this could be used as a test. However most people think no matter what happens God could have explained it meaning a religion is non-falsifiable and does not say anything significant morals. Models or beliefs that explain many things like religions should be separated into easily understood claims that can be tested. People often believe what they wish were true rather than what is true, and this makes them happier. Beliefs you wish were true should be doubted and seen as potentially wishful thinking. For most people it is equally impossible to test quantum mechanics as it is to test religion because most people are not intelligent enough to imagine a Hilbert Space or to remember every single experiment that tested Quantum Mechanics.

Ethical beliefs are seen as knowledge by many people. Ethical beliefs come from peoples emotions being seen as something universally important. Is pain bad in outer space, a place with no humanity? Pain does not exist there, and ethical beliefs do not apply there. Not everyone's happiness has a large effect on everyone else's which could make it seems that ethics are not real and ethical nihilism is true but considering all of humanity as moral agents and summing up the happiness of all humanity is possible. In the future ethical beliefs which are incorrect should be replaced with an awareness of everyone's natural empathy, it effect on their happiness, and the most economical way to create the society that everyone would prefer to live in with the greatest aggregate/sum utility. The idea that values are universal and not particular to human beings is not true. Ethical systems are similar to religions, pure mathematical systems, and philosophy which are sort of hallucinations. Morals seem to be a different type of thing that needs different explanation for how humans can acquire knowledge of them, but they are actually false beliefs based on applying ones own emotions to the whole world incorrectly. Once it is understood how humans often fail to accurately get knowledge about the world it shows how they actually get knowledge.

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I'm not proposing we do such a thing. We're going to have to figure it out, and part of that is getting better in touch with nature. We can't afford the kind of blunders that will lead to ecosystem collapse (I can just spray pesticides for years without any consequences!), so we'd better get keen at noticing and understanding what's happens in ecosystems -- and some "romanticism" would be damn helpful in that pursuit!

I quoted the text to which I replied, that you claim does not exist. I don't mind if you pretend as if I did not, it's even more fun that way!

> This post has absolutely no positive purpose.

No offense, but how would you even know such a thing? I bet I know....

> It is simply FUD that will deceive a lot of naive people, and irritate everybody else with half a memory on the argument.

Not everyone shares your beliefs. Fundamentalists of all kinds think their ideology of choice is The Best, history is filled with this sort of delusion....it is in our nature.

> It blows my mind it's still up and upvoted.

It's a philosophy forum - jump in and give it a try, you may even have fun!

> The text I quoted suggests otherwise.

He replied to a dude suggesting that with a high enough bar for asserting knowledge, then everything becomes dogma.

> Are we in the same thread?

Yes. And nobody was claiming any absolute (whatever the word may even mean in the context). Except the example where somehow "having different experiences" is supposed to be a good reason not to trust others (and not in the simple sense that you are "unsure" about what to believe, but specifically that you decide to dismiss them because they aren't you and fuck them).

I'm not suggesting you to use gloves, but to aim to begin with.

This post has absolutely no positive purpose. It's not a potshot, taking a dent on the pride of pricks or something. It is simply FUD that will deceive a lot of naive people, and irritate everybody else with half a memory on the argument.

It blows my mind it's still up and upvoted.

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> I don't disagree entirely while wishing to highlight the part where there is a continuous, perpetual construction of truth that is justified by its pragmatic value.

If you'd rather walk out from a room (or worse), than be able to settle your difference with some other presumably educated people, than this "pragmatic" value sounds like very arguable.

> Like an art gallery where there is an open basis for analysis.

People aren't killing themselves over the different interpretations of quantum mechanics. Or the best music, or the best tastes of ice cream.

But over us vs them straw men dressed up as "values" by wicked individuals.

> An Aryan ideal of blondness, a football team's name become offensive.

Criminalizing "being" (let alone somehow having to discard objective reality in name of any moral consideration) sounds a lot like dogma you know.

Just like whatever use of the W-word.

> "Nothing defined" is significant, non-trivial, politically relevant.

They aren't talking about the concept of "not knowing". Like, I don't have an opinion on rocket science, so whatever NASA should do in the next decade is undefined from my pov. And I thus shut up.

They are talking about handwaving. You build your argument through a crescendo of negative rhetoric.. and then you just move on when instead you should explain the way it actually would not be possible for the original idea to make sense.

> This was not what they were talking about, why can't you seem to stay on topic?

The text I quoted suggests otherwise.

> > > > The issue was people being unable to coexist together for their dear life.

"I am not claiming that all knowledge must have absolute empirical evidence prior to acceptance. That premise would be so inefficient for anyone involved that they would be frozen in a recursive cycle of defining definitions before they can make a single decision."

Are we in the same thread?

> > > > It's fine to even guess the earth is flat. Just don't make that belief part of your identity or something, so much so that you are going to reject thousands of years of evidence with a loud fart.

This seems like sound advice.

This was not what they were talking about, why can't you seem to stay on topic?

The issue was people being unable to coexist together for their dear life.

It's fine to even guess the earth is flat. Just don't make that belief part of your identity or something, so much so that you are going to reject thousands of years of evidence with a loud fart.

The original proponents literally did that, and they decided the original core belief was misplaced.

Hence such label is not used anymore because they found a wholly superior position.

What if the actual problem lies where no one is looking: the Normies? 😮

Besides, if the science gang can't take a potshot now and then, maybe they don't have what it takes to hold the throne they somehow ended up sitting in.

I get where you are coming from, but then you should be attacking self-righteousness, smug and indeed ironically kinda some touch of dogmatism (or if not any, they are there to boast not to actually dicuss).

Counterbalancing jerks by tangentially making another wrong in the opposite direction seems just to call for more vitriol.

Fair, but as you note, if that's the case, the original writing doesn't contain enough to indicate or support it.

Please read my poem? If the totality of consciousness is God, and time is a circle more than a line, then he is infinite in life-span and in greatness, and we are the fingers of his hand. God pronouns are complicated.. Should probably be they. Elohim, God, him, her, and they.

What do you prefer? To be forever a killer? Or forever a giver of life?
It is objectively true that I prefer the latter.

I have a theory that space-time cannot be a hyper-cube of infinite volume, like in usual 4-axis representation where each axis is linear. Instead each axis must be circular, in a way. Like in computers, a limited data type is subject to overflow. Like in my noise algorithm, Ihave a 2D representation of "space" that wraps, there are also 3D and 4D ones. Space-time is 4D, supposedly, but it cannot be a hypercube of infinite volume. Like in my noise algorithm, where each edge of the square of "space" coincides with the opposite edge, In 4D, each cube of the hypercube would be on top on the opposite one. To represent coordinates logically, or operate on them in limited time, the data types must have limits. The main point is this:a linear spacetime of infinite volume does not have a possible logical representation (i think), so it can not be the truth. The implications of this are massive. And, it seems to be possible at the very least. Don't you think? Of course, this is just a way of speaking, time is not a line or a circle. But I think a circle is a more appropriate metaphor.

Okay. I guess I’m just confused as to the point of the comment. Since I didn’t discuss destruction or using nature as an excuse.

>Also what makes life so important? Maybe with a different fine-tuning, there would be different beings with even better characteristics than "alive" and "conscious", characteristics that we can not even conceive.

Exactly. God could have created humans so we can live in empty space, he could have created other creatures that do.

>Ok, we have a universe where there is a tiny bit of life and consciousness, but was it really the aim, or is it possible that had the values been different, some other being would be saying "wow, it seems that the universe is fine-tuned for "shlubagazorp", something that we cannot understand?

Universe seems to be fine tuned for empty space and black holes to me. It seems to favor nothingness.

>Also, isn't it possible that there is more than one universe and that we just happen to be in one where life is possible, since we could only happen in one of those? Wouldn't seem very fine-tuned in that case, would it?

This is the cosmological multiverse theory.

1. I’m not really making a case for or against ea, just saying that you seem to misunderstand their cause prioritization.

2. Some effective altruists are very concerned for the potentially trillions of people who will exist in the future. You see this in their extensive work on nuclear non proliferation, ai safety, biohazard safety, climate change, and more in the long term as well as political action in the medium term. X risk stands for existential risk, people who care about x risk work to ensure the survival of humanity over the next thousand plus years.

Givewell tends to focus on short term welfare because it’s easier to convince people to donate to lower risk causes, but the community spends a huge amount of time working to ensure future welfare too.

I’m not sure I understand your post. Could you clarify a few questions for me?

1. Are you making a case for or against EA?
2. Is there information I’m missing that shows EA supporting a population that doesn’t exist? As an American that phrasing immediately makes me think about abortion but I suspect you might mean something else that I’m misinterpreting.
3. I don’t understand what you mean by x-risk analysis in this context, particularly because I’m not sure if “biggest cause area” is a typo or not. I apologize if that was rude but it would help me if you offered an example of how risk analysis ties in, per your understanding. In my mind the equation is set up one way, but I am uncertain whether or not your understanding conflicts with mine.