Reddit comments from December 2025

Can you link where we can purchase this?

...in Arabic it's the same word they are translating as singular and plural. Al-Injīl.

Fascinating

One of the key points the Quran makes about the Shaytan is that he has this ability to "whisper" to people across time & space without being physically present. This is mentioned in Surah al-Nas. The swearing to Adam is mentioned as whispering.

Surah al-Nas is a prayer seeking refuge from Shaytan who is described as being able to whisper into the hearts of men "al-waswas al-khannas." This is presumably across time & space because there is no indication Shaytan is literally going from person to person and whispering to them in their ear one at a time. Some have drawn the conclusion that this includes some kind of reading minds or knowing the contents of people's hearts because otherwise Shaytan would not know what to tempt them with.

The verse is saying that the Khannas can whisper into the hearts of Jinn & men, not that jinn & men can whisper.

Shaytan is described as an invisible spiritual being that cannot be detected by the senses or science so I'm not sure why we would stipulate that he has to come into close physical contact to whisper to anyone.

That's not an intuitive understanding and I don't think that's even a literal facial reading of the Quran.

The idea is that he is this pervasive malicious force that can tempt people, he is the "bad voice" in our heads that entices us to sin. A lot of the time the bad voice is not a voice at all it's just an urge.

I don't see why that couldn't be a part of it when we are dealing with an invisible supernatural being who can already plant urges in people across time & space. What's the rule against him also emphasizing & swearing or outright implanting a voice?

Abolishment of slavery and child slavery are considered to be two of the greatest moral achievements in the history of Western civilization. So, there is no way to escape discussing child marriage & slavery in secular academia except through the lens of an objective antiquated evil. That's why there are so many polemics about it.

That being said, within the lens of critical secular method, the Quran does allow both child marriage & slavery.

What child marriage means, what slavery means, why does the Quran allow them if it does, in what way, and whether this delegitimizes the Quran as an ethical text has nothing to do with history.

Jonathan Brown has probably the most extensive treatment of both of these issues in Misquoting Muhammad and "Slavery and Islam."

By child marriage I am referring to post-pubescent but before the age of 18. That's the obvious reading of several verses. (4:6, 24:59, 65:4)

As for any kind of pre-pubescent arrangement I don't think you can derive that from the text alone.

There are many sophisticated Salafis & Wahhabism itself is an intellectual tradition. The figurehead of Salafism is ibn Taymiyyah who attempted to singlehandedly rewrite philosophy from the Aristotlean syllogism & language down to prefiguring Wittgenstein, all while being one of the most prolific, respected, and ingenuitive scholars Islamic history ever knew across most of the religious disciplines.

While I don't consider myself a Salafi or Wahhabi, I challenge you to read the works of Sultan al-Umayri and tell me you aren't before a towering intellect.

It's possible to vehemently disagree with a group or perspective while acknowledging their intellectual heft.

Unfortunately majorly sidetracked with a dozen other projects & full time work but if you'd like to see what I have in its unfinished state please DM.

In terms of who probably has the most historically accurate understanding of Islam comprehensively: Malik b. Anas.

Current favorite overall: al-Tahir ibn Ashur

Genius theologian, philosopher, & mystics: ibn Taymiyyah and Ghazali.

Most original & fascinating theology: ibn Arabi

Creative & entertaining fiqh discussions: al-Tahawi & ibn Hazm

Most underrated: Shah WaliAllah al-Dihlawi

Most controversial: Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wah'hab

Best poet: Farid al-Din al-Attar

Malik really had incredible foresight to attempt to document Islam as comprehensively and authentically as he could in his time as a hard drive snapshot for us later on.

I was going to comment but I couldn't do a better job than this. Bravo

Even traditional Muslim scholars will concede that there are different valid views as to A'isha's age upon marriage, whatever people's various motivations are for postulating one age over another.

Ridiculous

The Quran simultaneously mentions the conception of Jesus as being an instance of God's unilateral creation like His creation of Adam. Yet the Qur'an also describes a multi-stage development within a mother's womb. So, for humans, it seems that the Quran does not take the idea of spontaneous generation through Divine command.

As for other creatures, I'm not sure how you would read or disprove that in the Quran. "Be, and it is" does not seem enough to justify either position alone.

I think you're conflating the criticism of Abu Hanifa's juristic approach (even within the Hijazi fuqaha there was vehement disagreement and reproach) with the theological criticisms of Abu Hanifa. There were other fuqaha and schools of…

I don't think this is accurate. His contemporary Malik seems to have admired Abu Hanifa. It seems that the subsequent two generations of Hijazi scholars associated Abu Hanifa with murji'ism and Mu'tazilism due to both groups being mostly Hanafi. However, by three generations later Abu Hanifa became more widely respected as a jurist than Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Ultimately, Hanafi fiqh was adopted as state law by the Abbassids (Mutazilah and then Sunni) then the majority of Islamic caliphates/sultanates afterwards. Hanafi law, along with Shafi'i, very much became orthodox Sunni fiqh.

Maliki law became the third major school while Hanbalism became more and more obscure until the Wah'habi movement repopularized it. Really Hanbalism did not experience an international resurgance until the mid-20th century.

As for the theology of Abu Hanifa and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, perhaps neither was ever very popular and both were ultimately subsumed into Avicennan Asharism.

Not sure if you're referring to Harb al-Kirmani's Kitab al-Sunnah but that book has attribution issues in addition to a lot of the riwayat in it being questionable to say the least. It's the prime example of that 2nd generation of Hanbalites after Abu Hanifa.

I'm aware of the narrations in various books against him. It's undeniable, however, how many people thought positively of him and how huge his influence became within one generation of his death. Certainly not maligned like how OP perceived and defined not for his fiqh views.

If you're taking a historical-critical approach, then there wouldn't be anywhere near enough data to armchair diagnose him naturalistically almost 1500 years later. The amount of information historical critical scholarship considers to be reliable about his life is a small fraction of what traditional scholarship does.

There is a huge problem internationally with languages dying off due to globalization & climate change.

The Silent Death Of The World’s Languages, Another Consequence Of Climate Change - ACCIONA - The Language Conservancy https://share.google/IAJyU8TrQwhIEQzs0

I think the crux of the problem is that they assume the Quran is a book primarily about facilitating violence & sex with spiritual & ethical components being tacked on, as opposed to it being a primarily spiritual & ethical text that engages with violence & sex for those ends.

Even if you are a non-Muslim or a historical critical scholar, if you take the lens that the Quran is primarily discussing spiritual, theological, and ethical concepts with issues of warfare & gender relationships second; you get a totally different view than if you assume the war & sex is the point of it and everything else is written to justify those aims.

Spencer will take anything in the Quran & turn it into "Muslims want to kill people and make their women into sex slaves" instead of reading the Quran for what it is and waiting for the passages that talk about what he dislikes.

It really tells you moreso about his agenda and what he finds important in life than the text.

Ali Shukri Amin

Pretty anachronistic to call the Rashidun fundamentalists when they are themselves the creators of Sunni orthodoxy. Fundamentalism would be a return to the sources of that orthodoxy, not the orthodoxy themselves. We wouldn't call Jesus a "fundamentalist."

~ Ali Shukri Amin

Math & science are not the greatest forms of human intelligence. In this thread you will find the greatest minds in STEM and not in other more important domains.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

The overarching theme of Jimmy's story is defiance. Jimmy is incapable of submission, even when submission is the right thing to do or when it's beneficial to him. Jimmy has a need to defy and resist, to demonstrate that no one person or…

I wonder if LLMs can help us find metastructure within certain languages through random patterns like this

One thing that is pretty important to note here is that in Islamicate Africa, as is the case of the rest of the Islamicate world, fiction & plays were never given much importance. Even what we would consider epic poetry or literature was subsumed into religious texts (primarily the Qur'an). As such, until colonialism, there are very few novels or plays to come out of Mauritania, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, etc.

However, these societies produced other kinds of literature. Namely religious, philosophical, scientific, and poetic. To this day, Mauritania is famous across the Arab world for an incredibly well-read and poetic laity. It is not uncommon in Mauritania to meet people with thousands of lines of Arabic poetry committed to memory.

In Islamic West Africa (Maghrib) in particular, by the middle ages nearly every instructional text was versified and committed to memory. This includes jurisprudential texts sometimes numbering in the hundreds of pages.

To this day, Mauritania is known as the land of a million poets: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/ewUIKnqWnBU

I know much less about these areas before Islam and very little about the literature of areas untouched by Islam, but thought I'd input this bit of perspective here.

Yes the maqamat are the most prominent example of fiction in Islamicate civilization. I don't know if Africa produced any maqamat. They began to be produced from the Abbassid period onwards and al-Hariri's maqamat were the most popular. The…

Not neccesarily a classic but Murakami's Kafka by the Shore.

US. Graduated in 2015. Heavily STEM courses, public school on East Coast, AP Eng/Hist.

Beowulf

Canterbury Tales

Romeo & Juliet

The Giver

1984

Fahrenheit 451

Brave New World

To Kill a Mockingbird

Ethan Frome

The Scarlet Letter

The Great Gatsby

The Torah

The New Testament

The Quran

Nichomachen Ethics by Aristotle

Ibn Rushd's commentary on Plato's Republic

The Essential Rumi

Concordance of the Birds by al-Attar

Niche of the Lights by al-Ghazali

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1984 by George Orwell

I just found out there are actual graphs from this post. I do wish it were more intuitive and like GoodReads. But GoodReads doesn't have an app 🤷‍♂️

It's a hard game. Phantasmalism & summoning spells make it much easier in lieu of companions. At the higher levels you need essentially the equivalent of a tank to take an initial onslaught as you pick enemies off.

Those frost mages can be extremely annoying and difficult without a phantasm but the worst fight is definitely the end of the Golden Sickle questline.

Ali Shukri Amin

It's a kind of performative sympathy & pacification. Maybe if we see these valid cultural & socioeconomic criticisms in art, we won't feel repressed or made a fool, so that very act of being acknowledged diffuses willingness to do anything else.

Might really be over if u/karmakrazi doesn't materialize soon...

www.litigai.org/law

I have yet to see:

Voice of Hind Rajab

Chainsaw Man

Marty Supreme

Hamnet

Sentimental Value


Haven't seen Come & See yet. My options are Full Metal Jacket & Grave of the Fireflies.

Anyone can accept Islam. Your past does not affect your ability to be accepted by Allah.

With respect to your circumstances, you need to go to SEVERAL licensed muftis and scholars in terms of how to practice in the wider community.

The issue of what space trans people can occupy is one of debate among modern Islamic legal scholars so they will need to understand your situation. And you will need to get multiple perspectives. There is no clear right or wrong.

In Islam there are only men and women, and typically "changing" gender does not exist. However, with modern techniques, scholars have had to revisit the fiqh (law) and compare it with the past fiqh for intersex people.

In some cases, the transitioning process produces results that are more drastic than being born intersex. This is something fuqaha who specialize in medicine discuss in detail and it's not a discussion for laymen in fiqh and medicine.

Definitely one of the most disconcerting Quranic mysteries and this is quite the promising development

Thanks taking a look

AI has no place in this field, speaking as someone who works with AI on a daily basis. I have to concur we'll need some rules on it.

Natural language processing and large language models use very sophisticated statistical algebra & next token prediction to imitate and guess what the next likeliest word in a sequence or series of words in a paragraph should be.

'Ilm is a light from Allah that He casts into the heart of people.

You are proposing we take our 'Ilm from a vesicle that is incapable of storing nur & can only imitate what it thinks nur is supposed to sound like.

This is hogwash.

AI has no metacognition. It cannot understand anything. It regularly hallucinates. It encourages a lack of critical thinking.

We still have ulama teaching students on stone tablets in Mauritania.

AI has the limited potential to benefit SOME people if used in a highly moderated way within systems designed to robustly evaluate outputs. For example, for people that cannot afford legal aid.

AI cannot provide instruction on issues of Iman & Ihsan.

A non-Muslim is far more qualified to do that than AI because a non-Muslim is a human being with a soul whereas AI is a predictive model incapable of any insight.

Congratulations on your career accomplishments.

Unfortunately a key lapse in understanding underpins all of your arguments. There is a huge difference between mathematics, evidence based medicine, and Islamic knowledge.

Islamic knowledge is noumenal NOT phenomenal.

LLMs only display linguistic intelligence with some mathematical reasoning. They emulate everything else but don't actually have genuine intelligence in any other category. Essentially, all humans have some degree of every other kind of intelligence in some degree.

You are falling into the unIslamic conceptualization of intelligence that modern materialistic society presumes which is that phenomenal and human intelligence are the only kinds of intelligence. Under that framework, the highest kinds of intelligence (noumenal) are not considered to be a kind of intelligence at all.

You have demonstrated no evidence from Dunya or Shari'ah for us to think that anything without a Ruh is capable of this kind of Ilm. In fact, that goes directly against all of the Quranic & Sunnic nusus.
*


The absence of a soul means that the tool is fundamentally incapable of hosting spiritual intelligence & is therefore invalidated as a source of it.

Paper & ink are vehicles for Nur only because the original author was a source of it. The difference with AI is that it isn't quoting sources, it is creating what it believes to be the best sequence of words. When a human who is endowed with a Ruh does this it is based on the Nur Allah has cast into their heart. This is fundamentally impossible for a chatbot to do.

You're right on ibn Kullab. We don't have any extant record of his exact teachings unfortunately, but a kind of proto-Ashari seems right.

I don't think you could call ibn Arabi a Dhahiri in any sense. He is the exact opposite of a Dhahiri and disagrees with just about every conclusion they have. Ibn Arabi is the most hardline Islamic esotericist that still has any relationship with scripture, barring possibly the Hurufis.

I'm pretty sure you're just having chatgpt respond to me and editing it but for posterity:

AI is not a neutral tool. It is generative. It is not recording information that already exists and returning it for people to access at a later date, such as an internet webpage.

Since AI is generating strings according to best token prediction, what it is doing is more like imitating a human's speech generation process than acting as a repository of information. It isn't a vehicle of 'Ilm which comes from the Sama', it's imitating what it thinks those vehicles are like.

Allah says,

"Read in the Name of your Lord Who created, created man from a congealed clot. Read in the Name of your Lord, the most Generous. The One Who taught man by the pen. Taught him that which he knew not."

The sacred sciences are taught by Allah by the pen.

Malik said,

"Knowledge is not having many books or narrations memorized. Rather it is a light that Allah casts into the heart."

Shafi'i said,

"I complained to Wakī' about my poor memory,
So he advised me to leave off of sin,
For knowledge is light,
And the light of Allah is not given to a sinner."

The same way that rizq from the earth nourishes the body, only ilm that comes from the Heavens can nourish the soul.

You are fundamentally misrepresenting AI as being a vehicle for such ilm when all it is is a very impressive regurgitation system. When I say regurgitate, there's a key distinction between that and replication.

Wa iyyakum

In Muqaddima sahih Muslim imam ibn Sirin is quoted as saying,

"Investigate who you take this 'ilm from as indeed it constitutes Din."

Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi also narrates a sanad attributing this statement to Ali bin Abi Talib.

If you ask any AI model any question of Din, my simple question to you is:

Who is responsible for this ilm? Who is the source we are quoting? Who do we refer back to evaluate his qualifications & righteousness?

If AI is indeed a tool or a representation system like Usul al-Fiqh or ink or paper or grammar, then to whom do attribute the result that AI is representing?

That's wasn't my question.

If I sit down and ask muftiAI for a fatwa and then I implement it in my life, who is the mufti I am relying upon?

Or I ask usuliAI an Aqidah question and then I believe it, whose words am I believing?

What you're saying is objectively Islamically incorrect. Typically, when a person relies on a talib al ilm or alim, Abu Huraira reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Whoever is given an opinion not based…

So if AI cannot produce ilm yet we are certain most users who utilize AI will take the outputs as ilm and actually everything AI says has to be verified by someone qualified enough to do research, then how is AI not just a haram middleman for the purpose of Islamic studies?

Using it to help organize your thoughts or bullet point research you have already done is one thing, i.e. not using it to retrieve information, make conclusions, or inform you. I have no issue with someone using it as an editor like Grammarly. (I do the research traditionally, I organize it, I give a segment to AI to format, I check and ensure its valid, I sign off as it coming from me)

I am talking about your previous proposed use case (I use it to do initial research or final research).

To summarize the views of modernists, including some views of Javed Ghamidi:

Jummu'ah - not required

Hadith/Sunnah - not reliable

Salah - men in front of women is misogynistic. We need female imams! It's Arabo-centric to require salah in Arabic as well.

Hajj - not required because Saudi is a corrupt profiteering backwards country

Hijab - not required

Beard - not required

Islamic exclusivism - not required. Allah can forgive good people of all faiths. Jews & Christians are "believers" as well

Zakah - not required. You pay government taxes, that's not enough.

Belief in the Unseen - these are metaphors for scientific concepts.

Hellfire - not eternal

My question is this: why call oneself a Muslim at all at this point? Why bind oneself to a label which denotes everything one opposes? This has gone beyond an identity crisis.

Islam doesn't fit into the "liberal-conservative" dichotomy. However, many modern Muslims do.

Islam is mostly socially conservative but, within marriage, is very sexually liberal. It also gives women many more rights than are typically associated with social conservatism.

It is mostly economically "liberal" in terms of public welfare & wealth redistribution. However, banning riba changes the discourse entirely.

It is also extremely libertarian with respect to government power, surveillance, etc.

That being said, many young Muslimahs, even religious ones, are socially liberal & economically conservative with respect to modern standards. Young Muslim men are the opposite.

Comment by Ali Shukri Amin

I did not confuse them, I am well aware of the distinction, and Islam is not entirely against all of the values that philosophical Liberalism (capital L) proposes. What Islam is against is ontological/epistemological materialism, secular metaphysics & consequentialism as a sole basis for ethics. However, if you refer to ibn Ashur's Maqasid you will see that SOME of the values concluded upon by Liberals are compatible with Islam, although we arrive at them from a vastly different approach (Quran & Sunnah).

Within the scope of philosophical Liberalism, Peronism is the economic model probably most similar to Islamic economics & libertarianism most similar to the Islamic stance on government reach. That being said, Peronism & libertarianism are just approaches to materialist government/economics.

I think we agree so I'm not sure why you are phrasing it as a disagreement. Liberal ethics is based on consequentialism. Islamic ethics is based on the Shari'ah. The Shari'ah is a deontological system that does teleologically consider consequences, but ultimately refers to Allah's Rulings.

Liberalism struggles what to define what is good outside of the pleasure principle so capitalism defines it as wealth maximization, hence even if female education leads to more societal suffering, liberals will advocate for freedom & capitalists will advocate for a larger workforce. In Islamic ethics, once a particular freedom causes more net harm than good, the state has the authority to limit it.

Interested in this

Boltzmann brain I think is much worse than the above conundrum because there's a well reasoned probabalistic argument behind it. In a purely naturalistic outlook, Boltzmann brain is actually by far the more likelier outcome. I find it to be one of the biggest problems within a naturalist framework & haven't seen a coherent response from them to date.

~ Ali Shukri Amin

You straw-manned the Boltzmann brain problem. Let's steel-man it:

Is it more likely for one self-replicating molecule to become a protoce then a prokaryote and then a multicellular organism until we have one organism sufficiently complex enough to hallucinate the current world or to have the current world with all of its complexities?

If you think the Boltzmann brain problem is solved by making the conditions a literal brain floating in space and subsisting on nothing then I fear you've misunderstood the argument. The argument is, "is it more likely that the complexity in our world, including billions of subjective qualia, is objectively real or is it more likely that some or all of this complexity is imagined?"

We can just keep increasing the plausibility of the Boltzmann brain scenario until it is sufficiently plausible to be far more likely than our current perception of the world.

Probabalistically speaking, it is likelier that there are less conscious beings imagining than so many conscious beings. If you continue this line of thinking, Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is one sufficiently complex sustainable organism imagining everything that we think of as the "world."

But you can modify this in any number of ways to make it more plausible and certainly more plausible than the naturalistic explanation you are presenting for billions of real minds.

The way I look at it is:

1. Empiricism, naturalism, & materialism make certain presuppositions
2. The natural consequence of those presuppositions can lead to the Boltzmann brain conundrum
3. Either the presuppositions of naturalism are not objectively true
4. If they are objectively true, then we have no valid solution to solipsism, which means we also cannot guarantee the truth of those presuppositions
5. Naturalist presuppositions cannot be proven true

Boltzmann brain suggests it's more likely a single mind has appeared from randomness that is hallucinating the details of a universe than an actual universe appearing from randomness with full details.

The Boltzmann brain is an argument reductio ad absurdum. It does not require a brain literally. If you had read any of the literature on this, you'd know they are often called Boltzmann "observers", i.e. the minimum viable entity required…

The entire universe would not be contained within the mind. The mind is hallucinating and only containing its experiences which are unreliable.

You are just re-explaining evolution to me. How does evolution explain the probabalistic argument that deals with the stochastic fluctuations we observe in low entropy systems? It doesn't because evolution is itself an extremely highly ordered, low entropy, fluctuation. The fact that you didn't grasp that means the entire argument whoosh'd over your head.

You are saying,

"Here are the mechanics of this observed highly ordered low entropy phenomenon! See. This explains your skepticism as to randomness producing many low entropy fluctuations over a long period of time in the same place towards the same end. I will just reiterate how this one works, and surely this will solve the problems of it being much more probable that there are less low entropy events in such a high entropy random system!"

You need to go back and re-read my comments, fully grasp the argument, then reformulate your thoughts.

The irony of your calling it soloplsism

There could be any combination of elements but we are not going to just wildly speculate. We will start with our observed reality and work backwards.

1. Our universe is observably low entropy
2. Even in near equilibrium, there would be stochastic fluctuations of entropy in such a universe
3. Commonly, these would be small, consisting of low amounts of organization
4. High levels of organization would be rare, probabalistically speaking
5. Large fluctuations (extremely high organization) would be exponentially rare but would occur eventually if the universe existed infinitely
6. Consciousness is a state requiring such extremely high organization
7. Therefore, the probability of this happening once in any minimum viable fashion is much higher than it happening trillions of times in a minimum viable fashion
8. We observe consciousness happening trillions of times just in human experience
9. It is infinitely more likely that randomness produced a single Boltzmann observer hallucinating all of the rest of these instances of consciousness than randomness producing all of these instances
10. It is in fact infinitely more likely that randomness produced some ratio of an infinitely smaller number of hallucinating observers than the current observable amount of non-hallucinating consciousnesses

Entropy is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. Systems go from lower entropy to higher entropy over time. Everything I said was consistent with that. The arguments I'm making are really not that hard to follow. You're not engaging with them at all.

Entropy is the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. Systems go from lower entropy to higher entropy over time. At the current state of the universe, we are lower entropy than the heat death.

Can you elaborate on what this has to do with my arguments here? Quantum mechanics isn't a field I understand with any depth.

Yup I misspoke as a result of writing that comment late at night. I edited it and fixed it.

1. We experience the world
2. Either our experience is reliable or we are in a solipsistic Boltzmann brain
3. Is the observed complex system more likely to have been produced from randomness at our current point since the Big Bang or a minimum viable observer hallucinating only their experience/details of such a system?

"Entropy is still described, particularly in older textbooks, as a measure of disorder. In a narrow technical sense this is correct, since the spreading and sharing of thermal energy does have the effect of randomizing the disposition of thermal energy within a system. But to simply equate entropy with “disorder” without further qualification is extremely misleading because it is far too easy to forget that entropy (and thermodynamics in general) applies only to molecular-level systems capable of exchanging thermal energy with the surroundings. " - Stephen Lower

“This quest automatically led me to study the interrelation of entropy and probability; in other words, to pursue the line of thought inaugurated by Boltzmann. Since the entropy S is an additive magnitude but the probability W is a multiplicative one, I simply postulated that S = k log W, where k is a universal constant." - Max Planck

Entropy = k logarithm of permutations W

None of this solves the issue or explains away the Boltzmann brain problem.

We are assuming, for the purpose of the Boltzmann brain, that we exist in a real natural world with laws that are similar to what we currently observe. I agree that, without presuming naturalism, we would not conclude the Boltzmann observer scenario.

A Boltzmann brain is less likely to form than celestial bodies but infinitely more likely to form than trillion of brains in human bodies with independent consciousnesses.

I'm pretty sure you just rephrased what I said above as a disagreement when we're aligned.

Even if you lower the entropy in the system and the timescale, that doesn't make trillions of normal brains more probable than a single Boltzmann brain.

Even in a low-entropy universe, the threshold for a Boltzmann-brain fluctuation is STILL enormously lower than the threshold for “a galaxy + stars + planets + chemistry + trillions of evolved human brains.”

I am talking about required energy & microstate rarity, NOT the mode of generation.

A Boltzmann brain is a much smaller entropy decrease than:

1. A whole biosphere
2. Billions of years of evolution
3. Trillions of individually conscious brains

Even in a low entropy cosmology, the raw fluctuation-probability ordering remains:

single brain fluctuation > full universe fluctuation > full biological-history fluctuation

You're mixing up two different questions about entropy.

Q1. the entropy drop required for X to exist at all, and
Q2. the entropy trajectory after X exists.

Evolution only increases entropy after an enormously improbable low-entropy structure (life, replicators, metabolism, cells, etc.) has already formed.

I am discussing the entropy threshhold for either scenario to ever materialize in the first place. The entropy threshold for a Boltzmann brain fluctuation is still vastly lower than the entropy threshold required for the entire chain of:
planets to chemistry to prokaryotes to nervous systems to conscious brains to trillions of them.

Whether entropy later increases is irrelevant to the initial probability cost.

That’s why, in any universe where fluctuations occur at all, the microstate rarity ordering stays:
single-brain fluctuation > full biological evolutionary history.

The current observed universe is not a justification that the observed universe is more probably than a single Boltzmann brain because we are discussing whether the observed world IS or IS NOT currently a Boltzman observer projection.

The less scientific accurate definition of entropy did not lead to an incorrect conclusion and increasing the accuracy of the definition did not change any of my arguments. The interlocutor here suggested that using a more accurate definition would somehow demonstrate the error of my argument. He failed to realize that Boltzmann, of the eponymous Boltzmann brain, was the one who initially articulated the Boltzmann entropy formula (that Planck rendered more simply).

I am awaiting some kind of actual response to anything I'm saying in these comments.

Boltzmann observers require far lower fluctuations in entropy than the entire evolutionary process. This is the entire argument. IF we take a mechanistic naturalistic system for granted and IF we assume the natural laws in that system mirror the ones we observe THEN it is more probable for a minimum viable observer to appear stochastically than the entire evolutionary process.

Theoretically, the conditions for a minimum viable observer are present anywhere from very early on after the Big Bang until late into the lifecycle of the cosmos. Whereas the evolutionary cycle has a much shorter time window.

The entire Boltzmann argument is that minimum viable observers require a far smaller stochastic fluctuation than all of the people we see, therefore we would assume that Boltzmann observers would appear first, and more often, than trillions of independent minds.

You are saying within the scope of evolution, evolutionary processes are more likely to result in multiple consciousnesses than just one. I agree.

That's not the Boltzmann brain problem. The Boltzmann problem is that it is more likely for conditions to stochastically produce one minimally viable observer than for evolution to ever reach the point where it could even theoretically produce any consciousness(es) in the first place.

Life coming into existence is ITSELF a lower entropy fluctuation because all life is highly ordered. However, one Boltzmann brain is a smaller low entropy fluctuation than an entrie species. I really cannot understand how you don't grasp this.

Life is a low entropy fluctuation. You really cannot seem to grasp the statistical component of this argument. Yes, in a closed system, life ultimately increases the total entropy of a system. However, the appearance of life is an extremely low entropy fluctuation in a system that will ultimately reach equilibrium via heat death. Whether or not all lives ultimately increase entropy is irrelevant.

1 molecule =/= 4 billion years of evolution.

If you really think it's more probable that billions of years of evolution precipitated through randomness than the same randomness engine producing a single organism I honestly cannot help you.

You’re still confusing two different probability questions. 1. The entropy trajectory after life exists Evolution increases entropy over billions of years. That’s true and completely irrelevant to my point. 2. The entropy barrier required…

The whole point of the Boltzmann brain scenario is that the brain is not a product of the entire evolutionary process. It is postulating that a minimally viable observer appearing by a less arduous stochastic process than evolution is more likely than 3 billion years of evolution. No one was arguing that it's more likely evolution produced one brain than many organisms. You have totally misunderstood what the Boltzmann brain is even proposing then arguing against a strawman.

There is no point in spending hours building the specifics of a scenario where a brain spontaneously appears from the right combinations. You should be able to intelligently infer how this could possibly occur, but my feeling is you're too dug into the exact scientific mechanics of hypotheticals to do that kind of creative abstract thinking.

The fact that you are nitpicking terminology in a discussion which is not primarily physics based and in which such terminological nitpicking does not further the conversation indicates bad faith. I already addressed the point as to how "conscious minds come into existence." Obviously the minimally viable Boltzmann observer is mechanically different in its inception than 3.5 billion years of evolution. That's the whole point of the problem being proposed.

It's really unfortunate that your scientific background is creating this focus on mechanical aspects when the entire thesis of the Boltzmann brain is not reliant on the details of these naturalistic mechanics. A failure of philosophical thinking.

1. According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease over time. 2. Boltzmann described entropy, insofar as statistical mechanics are concerned, as a thermodynamic property that predicts that certain…

1. According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease over time. 2. Boltzmann described entropy, insofar as statistical mechanics are concerned, as a thermodynamic property that predicts that certain…

From a naturalistic materialist perspective that's just not the case. 1. According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease over time. 2. Boltzmann described entropy, insofar as statistical mechanics…

Your observation of the complexity neither makes it real nor more likely to happen & the boltzmann brain problem was first proposed by the guy who literally first articulated the statistical explanation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

You don't seem to be aware that there is a statistical mechanics understanding of entropy that does consider phenomenon like life to represent low entropy fluctuations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28statistical_thermodynamics%29?wprov=sfla1

"Inflationary starting points are very rare in time. That in itself is not a problem. Most of the rest of time during which nothing interesting is happening can, from an anthropic point of view, be thrown away. We can also throw away large fluctuations which lead to un–livable conditions. The danger is that there are too many possibilities which are anthropically acceptable, but not like our universe."

Dyson, Lisa; Kleban, Matthew; Susskind, Leonard (2002). "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2002 (10): 011. arXiv:hep-th/0208013. Bibcode:2002JHEP...10..011D. doi:10.1088/1126-6708/2002/10/011. S2CID 2344440.

Here, the conditions that foster life as we know it are described as a large microstate fluctuation in thermal energy (low entropy).

1. Is it conceivably possible for any kind of life to form by any theoretically simpler process than the one we observe that lead to humanity?
2. Is it conceivably possible for such a process to produce a bare minimum viable community of conscious beings that can sustain themselves for at least one generation?

I'm not even advocating for the Boltzmann brain scenario I was just trying to get you to answer some questions so you could follow the reasoning but it's clear to me that you have an almost blind faith in observed reality as the definitive almost predestined and optimal truth. This is a common trope that naturalists tend to fall into, the deification of experienced nature. The moment that I try to suggest other more optimal but less anthropocentric scenarios, they seem incredulous to you.

I don't know how to advance the discussion when you are incapable of conceiving of reality being structured any way than how science currently describes it.

Your analogy is wrong.

I am saying,

We currently observe 99,999 dice rolled in a row all resulting in a chain of 6s.

Perhaps it would be possible to get a chain of 6s by another mechanism that is more probable than the one we have observed.

You are denying that there is any way to achieve chains of 6s categorically than by rolling dice in succession. Such as, perhaps, opening a pack of dice that are all already - randomly - all facing the six upwards.

I am also saying that it is MORE likely to find 10,000 6s in a row due to ANY random process than it is to find 100,000 sixes by the random process we already DO observe.

From a naturalistic perspective, evolution is a random unguided process. It is a result of stochastic processes. Therefore, there are any number of other CONCEIVABLE but observed processes that could also result in some form of life.

I return back to this question:

Is it conceivably possible for any kind of life to form by any theoretically simpler process than the one we observe that lead to humanity?

I am going to elaborate even further. Given that we already observe something insanely special (the equivalent of your 100,000 sixes in a row) which kind of process is more likely to have produced that observation, within a purely…

I think you just didn't know that entropy is conceived of differently in statistical mechanics than in thermodynamics. You just shifted the goalpost. You asked me to demonstrate where "life" and the conditions for life are described as a low entropy fluctuation (i.e. a microstate deviation in a higher entropy macrostate). I presented that to you (anthropocene refers to humans btw) and you just can't accept it.

Humans and life in general represent a fluctuation in entropy within the overall macrostate of the cosmos. There is a significant thermal/energy anomaly associated with life when compared with other parts of the universe that are more evenly distributed. Eventually, the universe may reach a state of perfect equillibrium, and compared to that (from a statistical mechanical perspective) life is a major low entropy fluctuation.

You are a human attributing meaning to a process that you call "natural selection" as a guiding force for evolutionary processes. Not only are the evolutionary changes underlying gene expression mostly random (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC406406/) but there is no overarching mechanism by which natural selection "happens" besides candidates that are better suited to survive & reproduce doing so.

That means it's a random mechanical process as opposed to an intentional designed process. It is a product of unpredictable forces of nature and certainly not intentionally optimized to produce some goal.

Unless you are attributing Intelligent Design to the evolutionary process itself.

You jump to ad hominem because you don't understand probability & statistics at a middle school level and have so deep throatedly accepted the dogma of new age scientism that you don't even understand it's fundamental principles. You speak about highly contested issues in niche fields as if they are tenets that are unchangeable even in the phraseology that you have adopted for them. You literally seem to deify nature into some benevolent creative force that has optimised the universe for life through intentional processes.

You're really not much different than the average peasant reciting catechisms in Latin assuming the phrases have come down from On High. Total inability to question the principles upon which your beliefs are based

1. Most people intuitively believe in a Creator God & Afterlife, across cultures, time, location, etc. This is even in societies without religions that articulate this conceptualization of God, such as in Shinto Japan. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm)

2. There is no evidence and can never exist any evidence that would indicate God does not exist.

3. Therefore we should assume God exists.

What evidence is there for the nonexistence of a Creator God?

It doesn't matter for the purposes of this convo so long as it meets the criteria you proposed for epistemological assumptions. Generally speaking, children intuit that there is a single, immaterial, All-Knowing, & All-Powerful Creator according to the sociological research we have. This forms before the age of 7 and in some studies as early as 3.

The specifics don't matter for the criteria of epistemological assumption OP commentor formulated. Yes, mutually exclusive definitions can and do exist but regardless the general concept would be a required epistemological assumption by their criteria.

The sociological research indicates children intuit that God is:

1. One
2. Immaterial
3. All Knowing
4. All Powerful
5. The Creator

I agree, philosophically speaking, it's hard to demand anything beyond that as an a priori epistemological assumption.

However, if we agree with OP commentator, we would take this minimal definition as a starting point.

It is very important for philosophy, in terms of metaphysics, ontology, & epistemology - even if the God was disinterested in us.

* [https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004\_Kelemen\_IntuitiveTheist.pdf](https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004_Kelemen_IntuitiveTheist.pdf) *…

Contradictory beliefs exist about time, should we stop believing in the existence of time?

Or does everyone agree that there is such a thing as time but disagree as to the particulars?

* [https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004\_Kelemen\_IntuitiveTheist.pdf](https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004_Kelemen_IntuitiveTheist.pdf) *…

* [https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004\_Kelemen\_IntuitiveTheist.pdf](https://www.bu.edu/cdl/files/2013/08/2004_Kelemen_IntuitiveTheist.pdf) *…

Premise 1:

Clause A: "If a thing *seems true*"
Clause B: "there is no good reason to doubt that seeming"

Conclusion: "then it's reasonable to believe it's true"

Application:

1. Most people intuitively believe in a Creator God & Afterlife, across cultures, time, location, etc. This is even in societies without religions that articulate this conceptualization of God, such as in Shinto Japan. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714103828.htm)

2. There is no evidence and can never exist any evidence that would indicate God does not exist.

3. Therefore we should assume God exists.

Infinite Hitlers seems true to no one. Contradictory religious texts have no bearing on this conversation

"Science just works" simps when scientific & technological advances cause climate change, fertility crisis, nuclear self-assured destruction, collapse of social fabric, and widespread unhappiness.

Science sure works good all right.

Modern science & tech could not be developed or exist without these things. Techno utopians just hold out blind faith that science will invent new solutions to the problems it causes or we will go to Mars.

Is it possible to develop modern technology & science without modern economic systems? You need to read Jacques Ellul.

I think what you mean to say is it isn't the fault of the natural world because science is the pursuit of technical mechanical knowledge of the natural world. That increasing knowledge can only be accumulated by higher standards of living and diffusion of scientific knowledge which is what modern economic systems are.

Ellul,

"In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity."

If you believe having more knowledge about natural mechanics is itself goodness and should be pursued regardless of consequences, essentially you agree that we should let Technique run rampant. Technique is the self replicating nature of technology & science.

If we just pursue scientific knowledge for the sake of scientific knowledge, tech/science essentially begins to farm human beings as the biological cattle.

You eventually get to a crossroads where you can improve science or technology but doing so will harm humanity. So the choice is whether to stop improving science & tech or to improve it at a human cost.

We are far beyond that decision. Technique is rampant. Science & tech will continue to improve at any cost, even of the entire natural world & its creators.

This is the consequence of "science just works."

Please refer to the concept of technique from Ellul to understand the relationship between capitalism & STEM. There is an inextricable relationship. That relationship is called technique.

If you refuse to learn I don't know how I can help you 🤷‍♂️

The scientific method was pioneered in Islamicate civilization. But there are many key differences in the role of science within that framework versus a secular framework. Socialist & capitalist frameworks produce technique.

Islam is not from the medieval period.

Muslims actually had a sustainable model for human prospering that modern society does not.

Turns out knowledge & advancement in STEM is not an absolute good.

Unfortunately you still have not articulated what evidence there is that unbridled scientific or technological advancement is good in any way.

Science is a human endeavor. The natural world is not equivalent to the human pursuit of knowledge & power over the natural world.

I think what you mean to say is it isn't the fault of the natural world because science is the pursuit of technical mechanical knowledge of the natural world. That increasing knowledge can only be accumulated by higher standards of living and diffusion of scientific knowledge which is what modern economic systems are.

Ellul,

"In our technological society, technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity."

If you believe having more knowledge about natural mechanics is itself goodness and should be pursued regardless of consequences, essentially you agree that we should let Technique run rampant. Technique is the self replicating nature of technology & science.

If we just pursue scientific knowledge for the sake of scientific knowledge, tech/science essentially begins to farm human beings as the biological cattle.

You eventually get to a crossroads where you can improve science or technology but doing so will harm humanity. So the choice is whether to stop improving science & tech or to improve it at a human cost.

We are far beyond that decision. Technique is rampant. Science & tech will continue to improve at any cost, even of the entire natural world & its creators.

This is the consequence of "science just works."

Is high child mortality an essential characteristic of pre-modern civilization or an accidental characteristic?

Is the advance of modern medicine worth the extinction of our species?

Are you suggesting it's worth 3-5 generations having modern medicine for humanity to destroy the planet and possibly stop existing?

Imagine someone having different opinions to you that are actually rigorous and that you cannot mount valid arguments against 😱

The OP's argument is: science is true because it works, i.e. science leads to truth because it uncovers mechanisms about nature that lead to reproducible results & application in engineering, technology, & medicine.

OP is suggesting he is not convinced by the problem of induction, problem of underdetermination of evidence, and other hitherto unresolved philosophical problems with naturalism.

My retort: science actually only works on a SHORT scale and does not work on a long scale, therefore it does not simply "work" because if the final state of scientific advancement is the end of the human race - not even the most naieve naturalist would call that "working." The efficacy of science is disproven by the fact that scientific inquiry & its application is leading to the destruction of the only species that does science.

To be clear this is a consequentialist argument against another consequentialist argument. I think the more robust arguments against science leading to truth are epistemological, ontological, & metaphysical.

Please in your own words summarize what Technique is and explain why you think it is an inaccurate description of scientific advancement.

You also totally evaded my question about high mortality being morally superior to species extinction.

So you prefer ignorance on a philosophy sub. The whole point of philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. Please go back to whatever other sub you came from.

The OP's argument is: science is true because it works, i.e. science leads to truth because it uncovers mechanisms about nature that lead to reproducible results & application in engineering, technology, & medicine.

OP is suggesting he is not convinced by the problem of induction, problem of underdetermination of evidence, and other hitherto unresolved philosophical problems with naturalism.

My retort: science actually only works on a SHORT scale and does not work on a long scale, therefore it does not simply "work" because if the final state of scientific advancement is the end of the human race - not even the most naieve naturalist would call that "working." The efficacy of science is disproven by the fact that scientific inquiry & its application is leading to the destruction of the only species that does science.

To be clear this is a consequentialist argument against another consequentialist argument. I think the more robust arguments against science leading to truth are epistemological, ontological, & metaphysical.

Ad hominems are not useful but your NPC advocacy for modern STEM is literally destroying the planet & humanity. You're a part of the bad guys.

Not only do you not understand what I am saying you have no idea what OP is saying.

The idea that science is true because it works is about the reproducibility & efficacy of scientific conclusions, i.e. human ability to apply the conclusions of scientific findings to desired ends. The "working" that science is doing is not abstract, it is in technology, medicine, and other fields.

Here is Dawkins expounding on it: https://share.google/gYOesyoFSaAARKV9H

It is a fallacious argument for truth from efficacy. The OP knows it's a fallacious argument but is accepting it anyways because "it works."

The problem is that this "it works" argument is incredibly short sighted as I've delineated

You refused to learn what technique is which is my rebuttal to what you're naievely claiming. You have blind faith that STEM is objectively good, something you cannot prove deontologically, in terms of virtues, or consequentially. I have demonstrated the real world consequences of STEM to which your rebuttal is "it doesn't have to be this way" which is the entire point of OPs post & which is further rebutted by technique.

Until you understand what Technique is in the lexicon of Ellul there's no point in continuing this conversation. I thoroughly repudiated all of your points you just genuinely cannot allow yourself to grasp something outside the scope of your religious views on scientism & modernism. You think it's heresy to read a critique of technofeudalism.

Stop blindly following your masters

You have blind faith in a system that's destroying humanity. Science & tech, fueled by capitalism/socialism, is essentially a misanthropic death cult. The planet is in free fall before your eyes but you still choose to believe in fairy tales of techno-utopianism.

There has never been a more dangerous & harmful religion than secular modernism.

I'm not sure if you've ever read a book of philosophy but here are some recommendations:

1. Formations of the Secular by Talal Asad
2. The Protestant Ethic of Capitalism by Max Weber
3. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by Friedman
4. Scientism edited by Richard Williams

Secularism is a "religion" in the common conception of a system that includes faith based propositions on metaphysics & eschatology. I prefer Asad's paradigm of "worldviews."

Found the Whitehead-ean

This is like if a 12 year old watched a youtube video essay on the history of philosophy

-atheist -determinist -Liberal -liberal

I am going to assume "own philosophy" refers to a common folk practice in post-religion Western countries where people assemble a pastiche of ethical, religious, metaphysical, & epistemological views based not on a rigorous study of past texts or deep reflection but moreso cultural programming and knee jerk intuitions.

Another commentor described it as, "just be nice to people dude" versus "I got mine so f*** 'em" being the two major schools of "own philosophy."

You're literally the subject of the meme that this sub has been making fun of. Astounding lack of self-awareness. You don't learn philosophy from subreddits.

Experience of love is not the same as knowledge of what love is. I'm sure you can experience love without reading but you were being sarcastic anyways 👀

What you think I'm doing & believing is based entirely on your own ignorance & has almost nothing to do with what I actually think or believe. Turns out reading books is a good thing.

The fact that you seem to be conflating the philosophy of science with science & then thinking it's a direct opposite of primitivism is really funny 😂

Edit: the guy edited his comment & somehow made it much worse. Doesn't even justify a response.

Well Aurelius was not much of a philosopher himself and The Meditations is more of a collection of Stoic feel-goodisms so I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make here.

Shallow thinking across a wide range of topics is poorly done and non-rigorous philosophy, yes. Regardless of who does it or what works they quote.

What exactly defines a "good man," where the ethics of goodness are derived from, what is goodness, can it be known, does it even exist, who determines what that is - that's philosophy.

"Just be nice to people" and "be a good man" doesn't mean anything. It is compatible with practically every philosophy, ideology, religion, & worldview. It's not instructive.

I was defining a term that's in use, not opining as to whether a person needs to formally study philosophy to have a valuable worldview.

Cool story bro

Please take your complaint up with the memes on the sub

The internet flashed back to life for a brief moment

Statement of Ali Shukri Amin

The only way for two people to disagree intelligently about a specialized topic like this is for them to be voraciously interested in it. How often do you find someone who is THAT interested in your exact hobby?

This is only true if you're a relativist

You used the word "legitimate." Which means,

"conforming to the law or to rules"

I never disagreed that people can and do have their own philosophies. However are their personal philosophies in conformance with the best practices or rules of systematic thinking? No. Which makes their personal hodgepodge philosophies, definitionally, less legitimate.

Materialism =/= acknowledgement of the material world. Materialism is the idea that the material world is objectively real in and of itself without need to recourse to a noumenon. Therefore, even if qualia (subjective experience) is ONLY of material things; that does not mean anyone who acknowledges subjective human experience believes that material reality is the be-all end-all. The argument is that subjective human experience cannot be adequately explained purely through material means.

I would also say that most religious people describe qualia of the immaterial.

The problem isn't that the senses are imperfect it's that there is a fundamental division between perception and actuality which materialists ignore by assuming that perception in any way accurately represents reality. Instead of trying to deal with this problem, it's totally ignored.

I'm pointing out the lack of evidence that materialists have for an assertion, onus of proof is on you

Prove it

What I said went over your head entirely

Please first prove that physical reality exists

I'm asking you for any evidence from within materialism for the existence of material reality as we perceive it. Instead you bring up "possibility" as if this is a statistical conversation. We can't just ignore Decartes and the entirety of skepticism. There's a reason why "idealism" exists, and it's because materialism cannot, on its own, answer these questions. Solipsism is a much more sound worldview.

Boltzmann brain is an extremely problematic issue for materialists. It isn't even a skeptical approach. It's just the application of statistical mechanics to entropy taken to its logical conclusion. It can easily be argued that the only evidence as to the truth of materialism is AGAINST it due to the Boltzmann brain problem.

This is like if Decartes got drunk at the Christmas party

This is the problem they just ignore yes

Proof is an idea not a physical concept. It is conceivable to have proof in a noumenal realm of a phenomenal concept. What you are realizing is that you cannot prove materialism from within materialism and therefore need a recourse to some noumenal concept. Which is what literally all serious philosophers before the continental & analytic divide agreed upon. Even the early Continentals & Analytics were awareness of their reliance on Hegelian dialectic but modern materialists just don't do actual philosophy.

The definition of materialism is the belief that physical material is self-evident. This agnostic approach towards material & noumenal realms is not materialism.

Whoosh

You can be a radical skeptic if you'd like

When you ignore the entire history of philosophy and assume that Continental/Analytic philosophy isn't based on Hegelian dialectic at its core from a metaphysical and epistemological basis, you basically are a hard metaphysical materialist. Which is what most modern Redditbros are (atheist, hard materialist, secularist, leftist, philosophical Liberal, scientists).

I think people are starting to retract from this school after seeing the natural culmination (right Hegelians like Thiel & Jarvis or the general malaise of nominal socialist technofeudalism).

Its literally the definition of materialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

Thanks for conceding you have no idea what you're talking about and are just trapped in the religion of scientism

No. Science can be very valuable & that there is an objectively real physical reality. There is a big difference between that and religious beliefs about the self evidence of the material world.

The idea that physical reality is evident is not the basis of reason. It's YOUR basis of reason because you have, without evidence (i.e. blind faith), assumed that:

1. Material is real without needing any external evidence
2. Your perception of it is reliable
3. It is a sound basis upon which to found all subsequent inquiry

This is the same as blindly assuming:

1. Krishna is real without needing any external evidence
2. Krishna is benign and ensures my senses are reliable
3. I can base all subsequent inquiry upon my faith in Krishna

No. That's just a definition of the natural world. No popular modern philosophy argues that the natural world is not composed of matter. That outlook is compatible with all modern religions & philosophies. The questions are whether the natural world truly exists in a self evident fashion, has no evidence, or requires a guarantee from the noumenal realm (dialectic, forms, God, or some other proof).

Please see Decartes

I don't believe material is self evident. There is no proof for material existing without recourse to something immaterial.

That's not evidence. You described the thing regarding which I asked you for evidence of. You ARE doing philosophy, you just happen to be born in a secular scientific country so you assume those blind faith beliefs are real - the same way someone born in 1500s Shinto Japan would have assumed the same. Your blind faith beliefs are about material.

That's the point

Self evident means neccesarily exists in reality without needing further proof.

Souls & God are definitionally immaterial and therefore not a part of physical nature. You can be a materialist and still believe in God. Qualia is accepted by everyone including materialists. Qualia are just descriptions of individual experiences. Materialists just claim qualia are the result of a complex chemical soup creating an illusion of consciousness.

What is the evidence of material things?

Found the phenomenologist.

If perception & reality are essentially the same, how do we evince the reliability & existence of perception itself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism

Boltzmann brain is evidence against materialism from within a materialist paradigm using statistical mechanics applied to entropy.

Most philosophies are not materialist and not solipsist

The evil demon problem and Boltzmann brain problematize that. Gassendi's "I" problem also critiques who the thinking is attributed to. The thinking itself & the thinker cannot be proven from cogito ergo sum, which is why Decartes & others chose to base their epistemology on a benign God (philosophical God) whereas Hegel went the phenomenological route (which leads to undereducated materialists).

Whoosh

I believe material reality exists. That was never the question. The question is whether you as a materialist, claiming it is self evident, can prove that it exists within your own framework and is the idea of materialism justified.

If you cannot prove that the material world exists within materialism then materialism is a blind-faith religion that requires leaps in logic which have no evidentiary basis.

Repeatability of experiments does not prove material reality exists. Not only does repeatability of experiments not even yield true knowledge WITHIN a materialistic or scientific paradigm (due to the underdetermination of science & problem of induction), it has almost nothing to do with proving materialism. You clearly don't even understand the parameters of this debate.

Thank you for doing the hard intellectual work to understand this problem although you are a scientist. It's beyond frustrating when STEM oriented people just want to handwave these issues because it's inconvenient.

You're just describing relativism now. We're talking about what's objectively real not belief systems

😂

1. Most philosophies acknowledge the existence of material but ground that existence noumenally not phenomenonally. Logic and thought are actually not materials by the way. If you posit logic is objectively true and not a human construct which is arbitrary then you're arguing for almost Aristotlean forms.

Again self evidence =/= acceptance of material reality.

2. The whole point is, without recourse to the noumenon, you cannot objectively prove material reality exists. This is the entire point with why hard materialism is a useless "philosophy."

How can you be certain perceptual patterns are repeating and they aren't the product of an evil demon or Boltzmann scenario where the repetitions are hallucinated? Furthermore what makes the repetitions impart true knowledge and what guarantees their continuation into the future? Couldn't any or all of these patterns run their course and cease to provide the same experience?

Ultimately reliability is predicated on perception, I have to cede that, but if we ground it in a perceptual core instead of the noumenon at least theoretically we have no way to evaluate the reliability of that perception outside of itself (even if this third person is an abstraction for our purposes here)

In philosophy, a noumenon (/ˈnuːmənɒn/, /ˈnaʊ-/; from Ancient Greek: νοούμενoν; pl.: noumena) is knowledge[1] posited as an object that exists independently of human sense.[2] The term noumenon is generally used in contrast with, or in relation to, the term phenomenon, which refers to any object of the senses. Immanuel Kant first developed the notion of the noumenon as part of his transcendental idealism, suggesting that while we know the noumenal world to exist because human sensibility is merely receptive, it is not itself sensible and must therefore remain otherwise unknowable to us.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon

Your experience of you touching on a screen is not itself evidence. It is an experience. You must then prove to yourself that it is actually happening and then find a way to prove to me that it is happening and that all of the experiences every individual is happening are all also reliable. Just because it's intuitive or seems to make sense to you doesn't make it true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism

Material reality is not all we have to go off of. The main sources people claim to get knowledge are: logic, intuition, skepticism, sensory, and Revelation. Of these five main sources, only sensory is predicated on material reality. Logic is abstract, intuition doesn't require senses, skepticism is anti-knowledge, and Revelation is claimed to come out of the material world.

I really think most of the people in this sub have never taken a 101 philosophy class or read an intro to philosophy book and are actually disinterested in philosophy. They're just interested in circlejerking the predominant secular scientist worldview that they blindly ascribe to.

You're assuming the other person is real and has their own internal mind similar to yours

Imagine assuming non-materialists don't have other ontological systems to explain reality or deny that material is real

You are assuming it within a materialist paradigm without justifying it. How other philosophies conclude that other minds exist is irrelevant if you're a materialist. As a materialist, how do you justify that they exist?

This... wouldn't prove anything

It's the likelier reality than assuming 3.8 billion years of evolution. If we follow Occam's razor & apply that to a statistical mechanical view of entropy, believing that we are all a Boltzmann brain illusion is far more probable.

That wasn't your assumption

Please prove your axiom.

I can very ardently argue that the existence of God is one of the most basic axioms all humans have to operate within but you'd disagree and go on to ask me to prove it.

Please prove yours.

I'm well aware what an axiom is. If you have taken a basic philosophy course, you'd know much of philosophy is justifying first principles AKA axioms.

Walking outside and being able to touch grass does not prove that your consciousness is real or that mine is real, just that something has some experience.

I believe you're a real person with an internal world, but I don't believe materialism can ever prove that.

You're getting frustrated. My question is very simple. How can you, as a materialist, prove that anything outside of the experiences you witness exist? How can you prove, using only material and naturalistic explanations, that:

1. Your senses are reliable
2. You are truly experiencing an external world
3. Other people have inner worlds similar to yours
4. Their perception is similar to yours
5. You are interacting with these people

If you cannot do that, your philosophy (materialism) is less valid than solipsism - which we both agree is not thr case.

Hello

None of this deals with any of the actual philosophical problems that materialism has. Materialism cannot explain away solipsism for example. Just because a mechanical process is discovered and even if we could directly quantify consciousness, it wouldn't deal with any of the problems. You need to mount an actual philosophical answer for why materialism is more epistemologically justifiable than solipsism.

Every other philosophical system besides materialism and skepticism has a tradition of proving the above points. I'm not going to spend the time recapping that, it's available on google. This is called epistemology.

What I am saying to you is materialism does not account for philosophical epistemology and is therefore more akin to a blind faith religion not a serious system of inquiry.

This would require someone to think outside of their scientist dogma sir. As we know, that's impossible.

Started off as a chem major through a program that allowed me to begin my undergrad in junior year of high school. Now hold a master's in IT & work in software.

That being said, most STEM people see abstract reasoning & philosophy as an inferior kind of knowledge that requires lesser intelligence. This is a common problem with everyone that has specific aptitudes.

People who have high degrees of physical intelligence/capability, socio-emotional intelligence, see STEM people as weak nerds. They can win at life and enjoy it much more than them without staring at a book.

People with high degrees of ethical & abstract intelligence see STEM as being subordinate to armchair philosophizing.

There is a fundamental human problem with arrogance & delegitimizing areas of expertise that one is not naturally adept at.

STEM people are typically at a disadvantage in philosophical discussions in the same way philosophers are at a disadvantage in STEM. Attempts to bridge the divide, like the almost mathematical analytical approach, have not proven successful.

What

Those people will only be able to effectively communicate to others that are also willing to look at multiple areas with humility. At a certain point it becomes a waste of time trying to convince people outside of their own chosen scope of understanding

What

The ability to contort one's body to achieve particular aims, a sense of space, grace, & natural physical ability.

The way a math whiz cab perform complex calculations instantaneously, Michael Jordan was born with a natural knack for getting his body to manipulate physical space instantaneously. His brain can perform hundreds of complex calculations almost instantly to determine the exact power, force, direction, etc. needed to get a basketball or a baseball exactly what he wants it.

Aptitude is the raw talent. Most people are biased towards their aptitude. But there are also orientations.

I can think painting and literature are the most sophisticated forms of human expression while myself having zero talent in either.

However, typically, people are biased towards the areas they are naturally apt in. This doesn't have to be the case.

I can admire socialites & people with insight into human behavior or I can assume they're superficial and interested in petty affairs. People that are naturally good with analyzing people will TEND to think this is a superior form of intelligence to one they are not born talented in, let's say engineering, but do not NECCESARILY have to.

Hence engineering uber alles types or science uber alles types.

Myself, STEM is not my natural strong suit. It's where I'm most formally educated, but ethical/abstract reasoning is much naturally stronger. I was always weakest in human intelligence (social, emotional, spatial, self preservation, etc.). Over time I came to appreciate it's a category of intelligence I lack and need to develop.

What

Utilitarianism is the ends justifies the means. The claim among the oligarchs & aristocrats is that their self enrichment motivates them to push the gears of capitalism further and eventually modern technology will create a post-scarcity economy and essentially a utopia. If they have to enrich themselves in the meantime and the disparities get wider in the short term, that's fine so long as technology & science create this post-scarcity paradise. See what the aristocrats across the isle say about this. Whether they really believe that or not is entirely another question.

Another interesting dilemma

Thank you

Utilitarianism doesn't mean maximization in the moment, it's about maximizing in the end. The ends justify the means.

You're probably right. That being said, "what if everyone wanted to make me happy" isn't that far off from utilitarianism. And even if Gilligan isn't intentionally imbibing this meaning into it, that doesn't mean it doesn't touch on & discuss these issues. If the actors see a meaning and suggest it to Vince, I think that means there's a collective creative process going on. This is just my takeaway.

Guilty as charged. I'm from Africa too just like Chidi 🤣

Capitalism is a utlitarianist philosophy you just have misconflated the communist approach of directly implementing that utilitarianism with capitalism assuming an invisible hand guiding the free market producing that utilitarianism.

Ostensibly "they" are not aliens or another race but rather human collective consciousness forcibly bound together.

os·ten·si·bly
/əˈsten(t)səblē/
adverb
apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.

That's literally what the show says.

The cinematography and closeup shot of Carol in the lodge were some of the best I have seen in a very long time.

There was so much Manusos hate prior to this episode

Hedonism is a kind of consequentialist philosophy in that it seeks to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Depending on the variant, hedonism is essentially synonymous with utilitarianism. Hence the hive's compatibility with Diabete.

Just because you think the system is currently failing or being abused or never worked in the first place doesn't mean capitalism is not a utilitarian philosophy. Maybe there's never been any form of governance that truly pursued utilitarian aims because it's a fantasy. That doesn't change the justifications of capitalists for the last 300 years.

The problem isn't one administration or another.

This may be true for some people, that other things distract or keep them away from sex. But there are a lot of people that want to have sex but cannot find someone that is willing to do so. That is a separate and growing problem.

Enderal is free

Enderal is Skyrim but with an amazing plot.

It's a total conversion mod. So they took Skyrim assets and made an entire new game. I would say it's about as good as New Vegas. Enderal is to Skyrim what New Vegas is to Fallout 3.

What an incredibly superficial reading to call Dune a "mockery of religion."

Ali Shukri Amin

I guess imam Ahmad bin Hanbal was weak because his father* died early 🤷‍♂️

1. Metal Gear Solid franchise (except for 2)
2. Enderal: Forgotten Stories
2. Fallout: New Vegas
2. Final Fantasy 7 & Crisis Core
3. Assassin's Creed
3. Bioshock Infinite
4. The World Ends With You
5. Final Fantasy 9
6. TES IV: The Shivering Isles

Rare Spec Ops The Line win