>I think we are considering the situation very differently: I am proposing that if a highly detailed descriptive model of things was available to people, perhaps with some speculative "math" in it, this may be adequate enough to produce substantial positive change.

I don't disagree with this, what I am proposing is that a descriptive model and/or mathematics or logic can only be applied to a moral problem or dilemma after one has presupposed or established a particular ethical framework, moral philosophy, and/or particular moral norms and judgments. Descriptive models, non-normative facts, and math/logic alone can never solve a moral problem or dilemma, in order to arrive at a moral judgment or conclusion one must presuppose an ethical framework or particular norms/value-judgments.

>To me, this is the main point of contention

It may well be the angle that interests you, but its not the point of contention between us because I'm not taking any position on that question.

I seem drawn to a stance of there possibly being a form of 'being' which could 'know' things without being particularly entrenched in normative conceptions of consciousness - this could possibly sway into territories of differenced 'perceptions' of what consciousness is based around the differences of their relation to the reality substrate at large - excavations of correlation and interrelatedness borne of any emergent dynamic of complexity in /any/ variable of 'existence' may foster a connective environment-organism placement of critical thought [or a parallel of equivalence]. Ie - when will algorithms begin showing signs of purposed action , when will ai build a standard of being which may differ completely from normative human experience , what forms of being composed of events or temporal flows of reality exist which operate of their own volition? -- and what does this entail for outside observations of what is currently known as consciousness?

Im partial to the thought that any form of evolution [especially ecospheres of related sensory convergence] is withheld in a reality decryption parameterization which binds them almost entirely to the environment and sensory clearing which has fostered them. Myriad mannerisms of spectrums of intake, groundings of self volition, relativities of temporal entrenchments of processing, and realms of plausible dynamic evolution entail a detachment from the norm in the definition of what life and consciousness is .

Perhaps everything is prone to the lensing of reality distortion of the individual 'life force' and all avenues of higher forms of being cannot recognize their kindred complexities of differenced agency - the reality decryption parameterization is too different to be cognized or even comprehended

I don’t think it would be difficult to follow but it wouldn’t exactly be a place to start. Emil Cioran was a philosophy academic who eventually rejected philosophy and became more of a poetical essayist. He's primarily known for his beautiful and dark literary writing style. Read him if you want, sure (though if you're depressed maybe skip it - taking care of yourself and manage your own resources and ability to cope with dark thoughts is important to living with such things) - but I don't think he provides a jumping-on point for other philosophy, nor do I think he would want to. He’s his own thing.

> But we're not necessarily talking about resolving moral disputes between different people, but also of individual people having difficulty determining the correct moral course of action (i.e. "resolving a moral dilemma"), and this meme has nothing to say about the latter case (and that's assuming it says anything substantive or useful RE the former case, which I'm not sure it does).

All decisions are made within an environment, and I reckon most of those decisions are affected at least to some degree by causality that exists (but cannot be seen accurately, to put it mildly) in that environment....so any claims about "can or cannot" are speculative imho.

> The point is, once again, that mathematics or logic only enter into the question after one has decided or settled which ethical framework, moral philosophy, or particular moral values/judgments are right and correct, irrespective of how common or popular those ethical frameworks or moral values/judgments may be, or the extent to which people disagree about them.

I think we are considering the situation very differently: I am proposing that if a highly detailed descriptive model of things was available to people, perhaps with some speculative "math" in it, this may be adequate enough to produce substantial positive change. So no doubt, my approach is other than the initial proposal here, I do not deny it (or in other words: you are correct in that regard).

> ...many if not most people will persist in sticking with ethical frameworks or particular moral values/judgments other than the right or correct one.

To me, this is the main point of contention: would/might my alternate proposal work?

> And it may well not "increase harmony", it could even lead to the opposite; sometimes the truth is bad, depressing, or even outright harmful, after all.

Agree....it may work, it may backfire (depending on how one does it). Also: I am not necessarily opposed to ~stretching the truth (after all, everyone does it).

> But these psychological and sociological questions are nevertheless separate questions from the meta-ethical question raised by the OP, i.e. whether and how maths or logic can help resolve moral problems or dilemmas.

Agree, mostly (I can use some math in my approach).

Okay, I struggle to see how you're engaging with the actual central point. Do you know of any way subjective experience could be inferred to exist, illusion/seeming or whatever label you want to slap on it?

Again, I would invoke Chalmers' argumentation here:

One can also make a debunking argument about beliefs about phenomenal consciousness in general, perhaps with some variety of non-reductionism operating as a background assumption. There are various ways to lay out such an argument, but perhaps the most straight forward is as follows: 1.There is a correct explanation of our beliefs about conscious-ness that is independent of consciousness 2. If there is a correct explanation of our beliefs about conscious- ness that is independent of consciousness, those beliefs are not justified 3. Our beliefs about consciousness are not justified.

Basically, I am claiming 1 and in my post list 2 as a partial knockdown argument. I personally find this a brain-breaking and fascinating idea wrt to the properties of our universe.

So we can bicker about knowing or belief, but in the end I don't see how the basic idea that whatever consciousness is bears a particular relation to us so that we can even bicker about it as an explicandum, is not compelling basis to ponder the search for other phenomena that might not be easily or at all detectable without a particular relation we'd have to bear to them.

>My theory is that humans disagree with each other less than it seems, but there is no adequately powerful mechanism in existence (or well enough known) to distribute this knowledge (assuming I'm not wrong).

But we're not necessarily talking about resolving moral disputes between different people, but also of individual people having difficulty determining the correct moral course of action (i.e. "resolving a moral dilemma"), and this meme has nothing to say about the latter case (and that's assuming it says anything substantive or useful RE the former case, which I'm not sure it does).

The point is, once again, that mathematics or logic only enter into the question after one has decided or settled which ethical framework, moral philosophy, or particular moral values/judgments are right and correct, irrespective of how common or popular those ethical frameworks or moral values/judgments may be, or the extent to which people disagree about them.

>I think we're in agreement, except for this part: "the correct/right ethical framework or moral philosophy" - I do not believe that is necessarily necessary for a substantial (say, 50%++) increase in harmony.

Neither do I; determining or even demonstrating what is the right or correct thing is quite a separate matter from convincing others that it is the right or correct thing. It very may well may be (and in fact almost certainly is) that even if we could establish what ethical framework or moral values/judgments are right or correct (something I don't believe to be possible), many if not most people will persist in sticking with ethical frameworks or particular moral values/judgments other than the right or correct one. And it may well not "increase harmony", it could even lead to the opposite; sometimes the truth is bad, depressing, or even outright harmful, after all.

But these psychological and sociological questions are nevertheless separate questions from the meta-ethical question raised by the OP, i.e. whether and how maths or logic can help resolve moral problems or dilemmas.

When I'm talking about labeled vs unlabeled, what I really mean is that we have some intuition for how the labeled dataset might behave. E.g. "an increase in money supply causes an increase in inflation" is a better causal hypothesis than "an increase the president's body temperature causes an increase in inflation". We can make that judgement having never seen data, based on our understanding of the system.

Having made that hypothesis, we can look back to see if the data support it. The combination of a reasonable causal mechanism, plus correlated data, is typically seen as evidence of causation.

If you don't have any intuition for how the system works, you don't have the same benefit. All you can see are the correlations.

E.g. in your x->x^2 example, if all you had were a list of Xs and Ys, you couldn't tell if the operation was y=x^2 or x=sqrt(y). Without any knowledge of what the Xs and Ys refer to, you're stuck.

Well obviously you’re alive and you can possibly dream while you’re asleep, but your conscious experience while you are asleep and not dreaming, is the same as being dead. Nothing.

Being under anesthesia is an even better example. Same as before you were born. Non existence from your personal perspective.

>The goal of a religion isn't to believe the beliefs of that religion? Well, alright.

That isn't what I said. I said:

>The goal of Christianity is not to live forever. Christians believe that everyone does live forever, albeit not in the same place.

And I think they do have a bearing on the post if one is trying to make metaphysical claims from observations. We can argue them, but I think any kind of proposition making a metaphysical statement can rightly be deflated when the justification is lacking.

> I'm having trouble discerning what exactly you mean by this, and how it relates to what I'm saying.

A bit like this is what I have in mind:

https://i.redd.it/5lkp13ljw34a1.png

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompassMemes/comments/zdbmoy/90_of_the_people_are_center_dont_let_the_radicals/

My theory is that humans disagree with each other less than it seems, but there is no adequately powerful mechanism in existence (or well enough known) to distribute this knowledge (assuming I'm not wrong).

> What does "flawless" mean here exactly- does it just mean that you've done the math correctly? But yes, I'm certainly assuming that one is doing the math correctly- even if ones math is correct, it still can only enter into the picture after we've settled the question of what moral philosophy, ethical framework, or specific values/judgments are right or correct.

What I'm trying to say that yes, you are correct when it comes to reconciling mathematical formulas themselves, whereas I am thinking that showing people some "math" on top of some ontology (of various ideologies, situations, etc) may persuade them to "lighten up" a bit. Here, the math doesn't have to be correct, it only has to be persuasive.

> Again with these vague phrases. I said that "the tricky question" was what moral philosophy, ethical system, or moral values/judgments one should adopt, not how math or logic can help resolve moral dilemmas... but, as you note, there are more than one "tricky question", which I'm happy to concede, and so what I really meant (and what I more properly should have said) was that the question of the correct/right ethical framework or moral philosophy is trickier than the question of how math/logic can help us solve moral problems.

I think we're in agreement, except for this part: "the correct/right ethical framework or moral philosophy" - I do not believe that absolute correctness necessarily necessary for a substantial (say, 50%++) increase in harmony (although, some things would have to be correct, presumably).

> And yes, for the record, I most definitely do care about which facts are correct...

Most everyone believes that, but I've had more than a few conversations that strongly suggest otherwise - I'd be surprised if you and I haven't had a disagreement or two before! As Dave Chappelle says: consciousness is a hell of a drug.

You can levy any argument against knowing without consciousness against knowing consciousness without consciousness.

Yes you can't experience the taste of food without the ability to taste food. Yes you can't experience consciousness without the ability to experience consciousness... but can you know it? Well it all comes down to how you define knowing... your argument is about knowing consciousness.

To define knowing in a way that you do to combat my more parsimonious statement requires you giving up ur argument. Example if you say: a non sentient thing processing can know things. Well than a non sentient thing processing can know consciousness and ur argument fails. You must argue knowing requires inner experience and awareness, for both your and my more parsimonious statement to stand.

As i said it would boil down to, all there is to debate is whether ur definition of knowing requires experience and/or awareness. If you say no, ur right my argument fails... but so does urs. We both must say yes, and in the end all were really saying is saying you can't experience things without the ability to experience that thing.

Which we both agree with, but just seems an obvious tautology to me.

If one is making an assertion about the truth value of a proposition based on criticism of the messenger, but I am making this claim broadly (applicable to all people).

Ad hominin attacks are fallacious too

I guess I really don’t find it that profound, just a pragmatic necessity as it is. Not to stop anyone from asking these questions, because we always will, but just accept it with a structural-functionalist interpretation. It exists for a biological function. Any further understanding of it is just bonus. I’m ok with our understanding being a little on the fuzzy side, content that a rock doesn’t have the structure because it has no need of metabolizing or replicating.

>I'm thinking along these lines: "Perhaps certain conditions can be set and then things will resolve on their own."

I'm having trouble discerning what exactly you mean by this, and how it relates to what I'm saying.

>You seem to be appealing to flawless mathematical evaluation, whereas I am referring to the behavior of the illogical walking biological neural networks we refer to as humans.

What does "flawless" mean here exactly- does it just mean that you've done the math correctly? But yes, I'm certainly assuming that one is doing the math correctly- even if ones math is correct, it still can only enter into the picture after we've settled the question of what moral philosophy, ethical framework, or specific values/judgments are right or correct.

>I believe it does to some degree because you are making statements of fact, but you may not be able to care if your facts are actually correct. In a sense, this is the very exploit that my theory depends upon.

Again with these vague phrases. I said that "the tricky question" was what moral philosophy, ethical system, or moral values/judgments one should adopt, not how math or logic can help resolve moral dilemmas... but, as you note, there are more than one "tricky question", which I'm happy to concede, and so what I really meant (and what I more properly should have said) was that the question of the correct/right ethical framework or moral philosophy is trickier than the question of how math/logic can help us solve moral problems.

But keeping that in mind, there was no contradiction between your reply and my original assertion. And yes, for the record, I most definitely do care about which facts are correct, I'm having trouble thinking of anything I care about more than this (at least when it comes to intellectual matters), and drawing a blank.

I don’t think we’ll ever get there but yeah that sort of makes sense however if people didn’t know about the spawn and evaporation it wouldn’t change anything.

Certaintity, knowing and belief are rabbit holes in themselves, but that doesn't quite have bearing on my post does it?

The central point being that without subjective experience, you can't from its description infer it even exists. That it can feel like something.

So here I mean knowing of consciosuness not fully or ideally, but simply having access to it so that we can even consider it in any shape or form.

You exist while you sleep, you dream etc, it’s not the same as not existing at all.

I believe that we would find out the hard way that consciousness exists as a unique instance, so even if I were to suddenly spawn a perfect copy of myself 5 meters away from me, while the original me completely evaporated, you would see someone acting just like me, but from my perspective I'd be dead and the clone would feel as if they had just popped into existence.

We can’t know of consciousness even while being conscious. We know a seeming of a phenomenon we’ve labeled.

We can however compare the empirical correlations of everything we know bodily and neuronally about it with each other and similar in other organisms.

We can assume we share a reality, and we can assume all organisms have to navigate their reality with some levels of awareness. Then we can also see the rather diverse wetware options that embody this phenomenon.

It’s no more special to ask what it’s like to be me than it is to ask what it’s like to be slime mold. The same epistemic, practical limitations exist.

We can look at physical correlates, or internally analyze, thinking about it with some mental inquiry like Heidegger.

Nothing seems to ever actually produce a ‘certainty of knowing’.

We have to find a solution to the issue anyway, already, was supposed to be the takeaway.

Whatever system that stops people from retaining power past a certain age obviously continues past that age.

I'm thinking around 55 or 65, maybe.

You gonna explain…?

So then explain how it works lol 😂