What if we weren't allowed to "ask the internet"?

[Jack D Ripper]

Before the last of your post, I was ready to state:

I apologize for saying that you were optimistic.

But:

...

I have stated that you are being optimistic about the technology, but maybe that is backwards. Maybe it is more a depressing thought to suppose that humans will infect the universe with its autonomous technology in the future.

Nooooooo, you have this all backwards! Do you think humans are in any way separate from the Earth?

No, that is not what I think. I am not sure where you have gotten that idea; I hope it is not from anything I stated, but if so, then I am sorry for giving a false impression.

That we act in ways that are beyond its bounds? No, humanity is less like parasite or a cancer than an agent of change. Consider how blue-green algae "poisoned" the Earth with oxygen, killing 90% of species in the Permian extinction event. By your definition, the Earth was infected by blue-green algae, yet their oxygenation of the Earth made multicellularity possible.

We are simply agents of change of the Earth's surface, like the blue-green algae. The uppermost layers of the planet are metamorphosing again and humans are operating almost exactly as imaginal discs do in metamorphosing insects.

Whatever analogy one wishes to use, I don't think that humans are causing a good change. But maybe I should still apologize for calling you optimistic. This certainly does not seem optimistic to me.

Also, I am not sure that something that made it possible for human life was a good thing at all. So your argument against my "infection" analogy does not work for me. Damn that blu-green algae!

[Sy Borg]

Before the last of your post, I was ready to state:

I apologize for saying that you were optimistic.

But:

...

Nooooooo, you have this all backwards! Do you think humans are in any way separate from the Earth?

No, that is not what I think. I am not sure where you have gotten that idea; I hope it is not from anything I stated, but if so, then I am sorry for iving a false impression.

So you see humans as a dysfunction of nature?

That we act in ways that are beyond its bounds? No, humanity is less like parasite or a cancer than an agent of change. Consider how blue-green algae "poisoned" the Earth with oxygen, killing 90% of species in the Permian extinction event. By your definition, the Earth was infected by blue-green algae, yet their oxygenation of the Earth made multicellularity possible.

We are simply agents of change of the Earth's surface, like the blue-green algae. The uppermost layers of the planet are metamorphosing again and humans are operating almost exactly as imaginal discs do in metamorphosing insects.

Whatever analogy one wishes to use, I don't think that humans are causing a good change. But maybe I should still apologize for calling you optimistic. This certainly does not seem optimistic to me.

Also, I am not sure that something that made it possible for human life was a good thing at all. So your argument against my "infection" analogy does not work for me. Damn that blue-green algae!

So algae, like humans, were catalysts for dysfunction? We can't be an infection, since the world cannot infect itself ... unless it was ancient Martians or cloud-based Venusians.

Thing is, cyanobacteria made multicellular life possible, not just humans. Surely you can't think a microbial world is preferable to a multicellular one?

I understand the jaundice you feel towards humanity. A part of me still feels that way thanks to the corruption and the refusal to avoid a hard landing with climate change. However, nothing stays the same forever, and biology - which has been dominant on the Earth's surface for some time - is now diminishing - and is being replaced by intelligent technology.

Thing is, when the Sun expands and wipes out all marine and terrestrial life on Earth, without humans, that's i. End of the story. If life can be promoted on other planets, or if self-improving machines undergo their own branch of evolution, then something like life persists, including records of life on Earth. Life has evolved to be desperate to exist, and that includes a drive (common, though far from ubiquitous) to keep life (or post-life) going beyond the Earth's lifespan.

So I don't see any evolution as good or bad. One thing is for sure: humans and other animals will become extinct, like all the others that came before. We will be replaced. Many like you guess that our replacements will be cockroaches, but evolution never truly resets after an extinction event. Greater complexity always emerges after the dust settles.

I find it incredibly interesting, as biology and geology are again melding after four billion years of partial separation. There are huge movements occurring on Earth and I see humans as more driven than drivers. Humans have never actually done what they wanted but, like every other species, has been lead by the nose by their environment and limitations.

So we don't tend to see human societies caring at all about the happiness of the people, aside from keeping them content enough not to riot. So most humans cram into polluted, crowded cities where they sometimes can't even find a decent place to sleep. Why? Because societies where people crammed most uncomfortably into large cities took over all of the sparse and laid-back societies.

So humans en masse have never lived as they would have wished, that pleasure being reserved for some VIPs, the fluky and those in denial about the nature of life. We are as much victims of our planet, star and circumstance as any other species, just that we like to think that we are in control.

[Jack D Ripper]

Before the last of your post, I was ready to state:

I apologize for saying that you were optimistic.

But:


No, that is not what I think. I am not sure where you have gotten that idea; I hope it is not from anything I stated, but if so, then I am sorry for iving a false impression.

So you see humans as a dysfunction of nature?

I see humans as a problem both for themselves and for other animals. I don't think what humans are doing to the world is going to be pretty for humans or for a whole lot of other animals.

Whatever analogy one wishes to use, I don't think that humans are causing a good change. But maybe I should still apologize for calling you optimistic. This certainly does not seem optimistic to me.

Also, I am not sure that something that made it possible for human life was a good thing at all. So your argument against my "infection" analogy does not work for me. Damn that blue-green algae!

So algae, like humans, were catalysts for dysfunction? We can't be an infection, since the world cannot infect itself ... unless it was ancient Martians or cloud-based Venusians.

The world cannot infect itself, but things in the world can infect things in the world. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as infections on earth.

Thing is, cyanobacteria made multicellular life possible, not just humans. Surely you can't think a microbial world is preferable to a multicellular one?

Why not? Tell me, which world is a world more full of suffering: One with multicellular animals, or one without such animals?

I understand the jaundice you feel towards humanity.

Yes. Think of all of the bad things people have done throughout history. Think of the utter callousness that most people have and have had toward other beings that can feel pain. And if that is not enough, think about all of the people who have enjoyed inflicting pain on others.

A part of me still feels that way thanks to the corruption and the refusal to avoid a hard landing with climate change. However, nothing stays the same forever, and biology - which has been dominant on the Earth's surface for some time - is now diminishing - and is being replaced by intelligent technology.

That I do not agree with. I do not think we have intelligent technology. However, as I have already stated to you, it may be that we have different ideas about what "intelligent" means. Or it may be that you have been listening to people like Elon Musk too much.

Thing is, when the Sun expands and wipes out all marine and terrestrial life on Earth, without humans, that's i. End of the story.

Right. There is nothing wrong with that.

If life can be promoted on other planets, or if self-improving machines undergo their own branch of evolution, then something like life persists, including records of life on Earth. Life has evolved to be desperate to exist, and that includes a drive (common, though far from ubiquitous) to keep life (or post-life) going beyond the Earth's lifespan.

People dream of such things, but they have been dreaming of eternal life for a long time. Wishing for something does not make it so. But many people are ready to believe things on shoddy evidence (or no evidence) when it is something they want to believe. Wishful thinking is an extremely common issue with people.

So I don't see any evolution as good or bad. One thing is for sure: humans and other animals will become extinct, like all the others that came before.

Yes.

We will be replaced. Many like you guess that our replacements will be cockroaches, but evolution never truly resets after an extinction event. Greater complexity always emerges after the dust settles.

...

No. When the sun burns out (really, before it burns out), all life on earth will be extinguished. So it is false to say that there will always be more complex life from the forces of evolution. Eventually, the earth will simply be unsuitable for life at all.

[Sy Borg]

So algae, like humans, were catalysts for dysfunction? We can't be an infection, since the world cannot infect itself ... unless it was ancient Martians or cloud-based Venusians.

The world cannot infect itself, but things in the world can infect things in the world. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as infections on earth.

The term "infection" is actually solipsist. Human "infectious agents" aren't infecting other organisms. As far as they are concerned, they are consuming them or their resources like any other organism. The whole of nature consumes other parts. Sometimes the Earth's surface undergoes and major changes, rather than gradual ones. That's humans, at this stage.

Thing is, cyanobacteria made multicellular life possible, not just humans. Surely you can't think a microbial world is preferable to a multicellular one?

Why not? Tell me, which world is a world more full of suffering: One with multicellular animals, or one without such animals?

I have heard of antinatalism but never before come across anti-multicellularism ... or would that be anti-cerebrism (though the latter sounds more like mainstream US).

Whatever, I don't believe you. You are just angry because half your country has fallen under the spell of a cult leader, and you find the vacuousness, selfishness and phoney self-righteousness nauseating and wish it to be gone. Life (or post-life) might not always need to hurt. Pain may be just a phase.

A part of me still feels that way thanks to the corruption and the refusal to avoid a hard landing with climate change. However, nothing stays the same forever, and biology - which has been dominant on the Earth's surface for some time - is now diminishing - and is being replaced by intelligent technology.

That I do not agree with. I do not think we have intelligent technology. However, as I have already stated to you, it may be that we have different ideas about what "intelligent" means. Or it may be that you have been listening to people like Elon Musk too much.

If you don't believe that intelligent technologies exist, you had better tell that to the multitude of intelligent technology companies to wind up operation because their work does not exist :)

Forget Elon, I am more interested in evolution than standard anthropocentric narratives, such as:

1. Nothing munh will ever change and humans will work out all our issues and move into a bright, if challenging, future. Naive and blinkered.

2. The Apocalypse kills all sinners and ushers in the dominion of God, populated only by believers. Superstitious.

3. Humans lose their civilisation due to their bad behaviour, either dying or living savagely in the wild. An emotive morality tale. More mad Max than reality.

None of those narratives pays attention to actual reality. And that's what we usually get when we "ask the internet" - cookie cutter stories that are simply too meta to matter, so to speak.

What I see is a relatively homogeneous field (nature, including humans) that has been "particulating" into highly ordered and concentrated zones of energy and information, surrounded by disordered relative space. This dynamic is common in nature (eg. planets, organisms, cities).

Zones of great concentration will continue to emerge via multinationals and billionaires. Many are currently prepping for the environmental disasters that they have largely created. They will have compounds that approximate small towns, with high walls, underground protection of vital resources, no "dead weight, ie. unhelpful humans, state-of-the-art tech everywhere, and powerful automated defences. These compounds and the machines that ever more comprise them look to be the most likely candidates for the next major evolutionary emergences.

We will be replaced. Many like you guess that our replacements will be cockroaches, but evolution never truly resets after an extinction event. Greater complexity always emerges after the dust settles. ...

No. When the sun burns out (really, before it burns out), all life on earth will be extinguished. So it is false to say that there will always be more complex life from the forces of evolution. Eventually, the earth will simply be unsuitable for life at all.
[/quote]
Quite a lot will happen in the next five billion years. That's when the Sun is projected to become a red giant. The oceans are predicted to boil away in a billion years, and that too is irrelevantly distant. Besides, the ocean only needs to increase by a few degrees to change dramatically; it doesn't need to boil. So the Sun is barely a player at this stage.

Our challenges come from climate change, overcrowding, resource depletion, ecosystem loss, desertification. The fittest, though - as Darwin noted - will most likely persist and carry on. In today's world, "fittest" and "wealthiest" are synonyms. It may irk to think that the "bad guys" are winning the evolutionary race, but nature at this stage have never shown itself to be especially kind or just.

[Jack D Ripper]

...

Whatever, I don't believe you. ...

I am not sure how to respond to that, or whether it is worthwhile to respond. If whatever I say is not to be believed, what is the point in saying anything?

My view of nonexistence is similar to that of Epicurus. It is not a problem at all for those who do not exist. How this comes up in Epicurus is in discussing death. The dead no longer exist, and consequently they have no problems anymore. Just like 100 years before they were born, they had no problems then, too, because they did not exist.

Certainly, if I had never existed, I would not complain about it. And neither would anyone else.

[Sy Borg]

...

Whatever, I don't believe you. ...

I am not sure how to respond to that, or whether it is worthwhile to respond. If whatever I say is not to be believed, what is the point in saying anything?

My view of nonexistence is similar to that of Epicurus. It is not a problem at all for those who do not exist. How this comes up in Epicurus is in discussing death. The dead no longer exist, and consequently they have no problems anymore. Just like 100 years before they were born, they had no problems then, too, because they did not exist.

Certainly, if I had never existed, I would not complain about it. And neither would anyone else.

When people who are clearly living and ostensibly enjoying life tell me that not existing is better than life, I see that as an emotional expression of disappointment, not a belief. It's like theists. If they truly believed in eternal life, they would not work hard to avoid risks and stay alive. If people truly believed that non-existence would be better, they would have done something about it by now.

If one simply disappears into the ether at death, how much did the pain really matter?

I don't think it's the individual lives and deaths that "matter" (other than to ourselves and kin) but that we are part of a chain that I - yes, optimistically - think will at least attempt to conquer suffering, and have greater means to achieve that than we do now.

[Jack D Ripper]

I am not sure how to respond to that, or whether it is worthwhile to respond. If whatever I say is not to be believed, what is the point in saying anything?

My view of nonexistence is similar to that of Epicurus. It is not a problem at all for those who do not exist. How this comes up in Epicurus is in discussing death. The dead no longer exist, and consequently they have no problems anymore. Just like 100 years before they were born, they had no problems then, too, because they did not exist.

Certainly, if I had never existed, I would not complain about it. And neither would anyone else.

When people who are clearly living and ostensibly enjoying life tell me that not existing is better than life, I see that as an emotional expression of disappointment, not a belief.

First of all, I am not sure how you have come to the conclusion that my life is good. The instinct for survival is difficult to overcome, so someone continuing to live does not constitute a proof that the person believes that their life is worth living. And it is not as if one can simply decide to die; one must take some action (or slowly die of thirst or hunger, which may be prevented by others, with them taking one to a mental ward and force feeding the person, very likely making their life even worse). Killing oneself is not as easy as some imagine it to be.

Some words from Hume on this subject, from his essay "Of Suicide":

It is observed of such as have been reduced by the calamities of life to the necessity of employing this fatal remedy, that, if the unseasonable care of their friends deprive them of [580] that species of death, which they proposed to themselves, they seldom venture upon any other, or can summon up so much resolution, a second time, as to execute their purpose. So great is our horror of death, that when it presents itself under any form, besides that to which a man has endeavoured to reconcile his imagination, it acquires new terrors, and overcomes his feeble courage. But when the menaces of superstition are joined to this natural timidity, no wonder it quite deprives men of all power over their lives; since even many pleasures and enjoyments, to which we are carried by a strong propensity, are torn from us by this inhuman tyrant. Let us here endeavour to restore men to their native liberty, by examining all the common arguments against Suicide, and shewing, that That action may be free from every imputation of guilt or blame; according to the sentiments of all the antient philosophers.

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/704#Hume_0059_1245


However, in this instance, you are correct, that my life is pretty good. Not only am I in good health, I have a wife who loves me and who I love, and I have enough money that all of my needs are met, as well as reasonable desires. I also have enough leisure time that I can waste a lot of time posting at this site. And I have no reason to believe that any of that will change in the near future, though obviously it could at any moment, and, eventually, that will certainly change.

But all of this is irrelevant to what I stated. It was a judgement about all multicellular life, not merely my own. I have a better life than most people in the history of the world have had (and better than most nonhuman animals have had). The totality of suffering in the world, both in the past and present, and probably in the future as well, more than overbalances anything that has happened in my life, or could possibly happen in my life. Though I do not consider myself a utilitarian, weighing the total pain and suffering in the world against the pleasure, I do not think that life overall has been worthwhile. If I were to kill myself, that would not change the equation significantly, and, given that my life, at present, is good, it would make the overall balance worse (in my judgement). But it would not significantly change the balance of pain and pleasure in the world.

It's like theists. If they truly believed in eternal life, they would not work hard to avoid risks and stay alive. If people truly believed that non-existence would be better, they would have done something about it by now.

If one simply disappears into the ether at death, how much did the pain really matter?

To me, that is a bizarre question. To think that way, why don't you ask, since everything in the universe, that people or other living things do, will come to an end, then what can anything matter?

To me, it matters that people in the past suffered and died. Maybe you don't care about the millions who were killed in WWII, for example, but some of us do. The suffering was a very bad thing. Sure, the dead are no longer suffering, which means that they are all okay now, but that has nothing to do with the overall assessment.

I am reminded of a film I saw many years ago regarding medical ethics, where someone who was burned over most of his body, was being kept alive, even though the person was in agony, because they could not give him enough pain killers to stop the pain as a sufficient dose of the pain killers for that would kill him (they no longer do things that way, I am told; now, they used medically induced comas for such patients, as they do not wish to torture people if they can keep them alive without torture). He was constantly begging them to kill him, to put him out of his torment. Eventually, he healed and left the hospital. He later on met a woman and got married, and was happy with his life at that point. However, when he was asked if that meant that his previous suffering was worth it, he said, no, they should have killed me. That nothing could possibly make up for what he endured. Of course, at that point in time, he had no reason to kill himself, as his life at that point was good. But the totality of his life wasn't.

My view of the world is like that. The suffering that has preceded me, and that occurs presently, is such that it just isn't worth it.

I don't think it's the individual lives and deaths that "matter" (other than to ourselves and kin) but that we are part of a chain that I - yes, optimistically - think will at least attempt to conquer suffering, and have greater means to achieve that than we do now.

I think that is not how things are going. Sure, some people work for that goal of reducing suffering, but others work against it. I don't think people working to reduce suffering are "winning." Nor do I think that they could possibly have enough success, even if there were not those working against such things. I am reminded of the words of David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion:

Admitting your position, replied PHILO, which yet is extremely doubtful, you must at the same time allow, that if pain be less frequent than pleasure, it is infinitely more violent and durable. One hour of it is often able to outweigh a day, a week, a month of our common insipid enjoyments; and how many days, weeks, and months, are passed by several in the most acute torments? Pleasure, scarcely in one instance, is ever able to reach ecstasy and rapture; and in no one instance can it continue for any time at its highest pitch and altitude. The spirits evaporate, the nerves relax, the fabric is disordered, and the enjoyment quickly degenerates into fatigue and uneasiness. But pain often, good God, how often! rises to torture and agony; and the longer it continues, it becomes still more genuine agony and torture. Patience is exhausted, courage languishes, melancholy seizes us, and nothing terminates our misery but the removal of its cause, or another event, which is the sole cure of all evil, but which, from our natural folly, we regard with still greater horror and consternation.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm


The capacity for pain seems much greater than the capacity for pleasure. That is to say, it is much easier to torment someone than to give them great pleasure. And in some instances, like the burned man in the story above, while they were torturing him to keep him alive, real pleasure for him was completely out of the question. Pain can make one incapable of experiencing pleasure, as long as the pain endures. Pleasure, though, never has that quality; peeling the skin off of someone's arm is almost always sufficient to end the pleasure that a person is experiencing.

So, the idea that suffering will be conquered is extreme and unfounded optimism, excepting only the solution of death.

[Sy Borg]

When people who are clearly living and ostensibly enjoying life tell me that not existing is better than life, I see that as an emotional expression of disappointment, not a belief.

First of all, I am not sure how you have come to the conclusion that my life is good. The instinct for survival is difficult to overcome, so someone continuing to live does not constitute a proof that the person believes that their life is worth living. And it is not as if one can simply decide to die; one must take some action (or slowly die of thirst or hunger, which may be prevented by others, with them taking one to a mental ward and force feeding the person, very likely making their life even worse). Killing oneself is not as easy as some imagine it to be.

Some words from Hume on this subject, from his essay "Of Suicide":

It is observed of such as have been reduced by the calamities of life to the necessity of employing this fatal remedy, that, if the unseasonable care of their friends deprive them of [580] that species of death, which they proposed to themselves, they seldom venture upon any other, or can summon up so much resolution, a second time, as to execute their purpose. So great is our horror of death, that when it presents itself under any form, besides that to which a man has endeavoured to reconcile his imagination, it acquires new terrors, and overcomes his feeble courage. But when the menaces of superstition are joined to this natural timidity, no wonder it quite deprives men of all power over their lives; since even many pleasures and enjoyments, to which we are carried by a strong propensity, are torn from us by this inhuman tyrant. Let us here endeavour to restore men to their native liberty, by examining all the common arguments against Suicide, and shewing, that That action may be free from every imputation of guilt or blame; according to the sentiments of all the ancient philosophers.

https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/704#Hume_0059_1245

Fair enough. I like the Hume quote. I find the drive to live fascinating because it does not necessarily work in an organism's favour. Yet those organisms with the drive to survive generally clearly out-competed those with a low drive. By the same token, those with an insanely intense survival drive out-competed those with only moderately intense survival instincts. This seems to have resulted in mass neurosis, given that, as you noted, many people's lives are torturous - yet they desperately cling to life all the same.

The totality of suffering in the world, both in the past and present, and probably in the future as well, more than overbalances anything that has happened in my life, or could possibly happen in my life. Though I do not consider myself a utilitarian, weighing the total pain and suffering in the world against the pleasure, I do not think that life overall has been worthwhile. If I were to kill myself, that would not change the equation significantly, and, given that my life, at present, is good, it would make the overall balance worse (in my judgement). But it would not significantly change the balance of pain and pleasure in the world.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It will most likely continue to be somewhat friendly to life for another trillion years and, with a sample size of one, I think it is too early to judge whether the pain is worth it.

It's like theists. If they truly believed in eternal life, they would not work hard to avoid risks and stay alive. If people truly believed that non-existence would be better, they would have done something about it by now.

If one simply disappears into the ether at death, how much did the pain really matter?

To me, that is a bizarre question. To think that way, why don't you ask, since everything in the universe, that people or other living things do, will come to an end, then what can anything matter?

To me, it matters that people in the past suffered and died. Maybe you don't care about the millions who were killed in WWII, for example, but some of us do.

Actually, we lost family members in WWII, and it is also why I am Australian and not Austrian, so, yeah, I do care.

People who say they care about something but do nothing but talk about it tend to be engaging in display behaviour designed to establish identity, bond with the like-minded, and promote good reputation and trust as a "caring person". An alternative to overt sentiment is caring about not repeating the same mistakes. That's my kind of caring.

The reason we care about pain is fear of damage. Otherwise most pain is unimportant. For example, if you suddenly felt the kind of pain one feels after straining a muscle in a workout, but while at rest, the reaction to that pain will tend to be vastly different. After workouts, moderate pain from exertions is simply accepted. If that pain appears unbidden - out of our control - then it always seems so much worse.

Thing is, if suffering is too great, blackouts and death tend to come to the rescue anyway.

I don't think it's the individual lives and deaths that "matter" (other than to ourselves and kin) but that we are part of a chain that I - yes, optimistically - think will at least attempt to conquer suffering, and have greater means to achieve that than we do now.

I think that is not how things are going. Sure, some people work for that goal of reducing suffering, but others work against it. I don't think people working to reduce suffering are "winning."

I would be looking at this issue in terms of centuries and millennia, not current affairs. It would be unrealistic to expect perfect, uninterrupted moral and philosophical progress without a few backward steps along the way.

Admitting your position, replied PHILO, which yet is extremely doubtful, you must at the same time allow, that if pain be less frequent than pleasure, it is infinitely more violent and durable. One hour of it is often able to outweigh a day, a week, a month of our common insipid enjoyments; and how many days, weeks, and months, are passed by several in the most acute torments? Pleasure, scarcely in one instance, is ever able to reach ecstasy and rapture; and in no one instance can it continue for any time at its highest pitch and altitude. The spirits evaporate, the nerves relax, the fabric is disordered, and the enjoyment quickly degenerates into fatigue and uneasiness. But pain often, good God, how often! rises to torture and agony; and the longer it continues, it becomes still more genuine agony and torture. Patience is exhausted, courage languishes, melancholy seizes us, and nothing terminates our misery but the removal of its cause, or another event, which is the sole cure of all evil, but which, from our natural folly, we regard with still greater horror and consternation.

The capacity for pain seems much greater than the capacity for pleasure. That is to say, it is much easier to torment someone than to give them great pleasure. And in some instances, like the burned man in the story above, while they were torturing him to keep him alive, real pleasure for him was completely out of the question. Pain can make one incapable of experiencing pleasure, as long as the pain endures. Pleasure, though, never has that quality; peeling the skin off of someone's arm is almost always sufficient to end the pleasure that a person is experiencing.

So, the idea that suffering will be conquered is extreme and unfounded optimism, excepting only the solution of death.

Due to negativity bias, negative aspects of life have a stronger impact on us than the positive because negative stakes are higher than positive ones, eg. there is nothing equivalently good that can happen to you as dying in sustained agony. So it's more important to be on guard than to wallow in one's blessings, even if the latter are far more prevalent in one's life.

I could speak about all the ways that evolution will continue and new emergences will take place, but you are sold on bad-humans-destroying-everything narrative so you won't listen. To you, it seems, the only possible outcome is human self destruction, happening too soon for any significant advancements in AI to happen.

Here you can join thinkers from antiquity until today, who have all predicted the end by whatever the main hazards of the time were. It's no surprise, due to the above-mentioned negativity bias. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/arti ... ative-bias

[Jack D Ripper]

First of all, I am not sure how you have come to the conclusion that my life is good. The instinct for survival is difficult to overcome, so someone continuing to live does not constitute a proof that the person believes that their life is worth living. And it is not as if one can simply decide to die; one must take some action (or slowly die of thirst or hunger, which may be prevented by others, with them taking one to a mental ward and force feeding the person, very likely making their life even worse). Killing oneself is not as easy as some imagine it to be.

Some words from Hume on this subject, from his essay "Of Suicide":



https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/704#Hume_0059_1245

Fair enough. I like the Hume quote. I find the drive to live fascinating because it does not necessarily work in an organism's favour. Yet those organisms with the drive to survive generally clearly out-competed those with a low drive. By the same token, those with an insanely intense survival drive out-competed those with only moderately intense survival instincts. This seems to have resulted in mass neurosis, given that, as you noted, many people's lives are torturous - yet they desperately cling to life all the same.

I recommend that you read the entire essay. And some more Hume, like his two Enquiries, and his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and his Natural History of Religion. If you want more after that, his Treatise.

The totality of suffering in the world, both in the past and present, and probably in the future as well, more than overbalances anything that has happened in my life, or could possibly happen in my life. Though I do not consider myself a utilitarian, weighing the total pain and suffering in the world against the pleasure, I do not think that life overall has been worthwhile. If I were to kill myself, that would not change the equation significantly, and, given that my life, at present, is good, it would make the overall balance worse (in my judgement). But it would not significantly change the balance of pain and pleasure in the world.

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It will most likely continue to be somewhat friendly to life for another trillion years and, with a sample size of one, I think it is too early to judge whether the pain is worth it.

Obviously, it is impossible to know about the entire universe. But from the information that we have, it seems highly likely that the pain outweighs the pleasure, and is therefore a bad value. Plus, when one considers the evolutionary value of pain and pleasure, it seems highly likely that this is a general truth, not just a localized one, and therefore the conclusion is doubly supported, even if one does not have a mathematical proof.

To me, that is a bizarre question. To think that way, why don't you ask, since everything in the universe, that people or other living things do, will come to an end, then what can anything matter?

To me, it matters that people in the past suffered and died. Maybe you don't care about the millions who were killed in WWII, for example, but some of us do.

Actually, we lost family members in WWII, and it is also why I am Australian and not Austrian, so, yeah, I do care.

I meant that to have emotive force, rather than a reflection of what I thought about your beliefs. In other words, it was for the purpose of forcefully and clearly making my point, rather than a reflection of what I thought your opinion was.

People who say they care about something but do nothing but talk about it tend to be engaging in display behaviour designed to establish identity, bond with the like-minded, and promote good reputation and trust as a "caring person". An alternative to overt sentiment is caring about not repeating the same mistakes. That's my kind of caring.

At the risk of seeming like the optimist, sometimes people care and want to do something, but they do not know what to do.

The reason we care about pain is fear of damage. Otherwise most pain is unimportant. For example, if you suddenly felt the kind of pain one feels after straining a muscle in a workout, but while at rest, the reaction to that pain will tend to be vastly different. After workouts, moderate pain from exertions is simply accepted. If that pain appears unbidden - out of our control - then it always seems so much worse.

Thing is, if suffering is too great, blackouts and death tend to come to the rescue anyway.

Not soon enough.

I think that is not how things are going. Sure, some people work for that goal of reducing suffering, but others work against it. I don't think people working to reduce suffering are "winning."

I would be looking at this issue in terms of centuries and millennia, not current affairs. It would be unrealistic to expect perfect, uninterrupted moral and philosophical progress without a few backward steps along the way.

Yes, but I do not see the advancement of time as indicating any other kind of advancement. When I read ancient Greek philosophy, and I think about current Trump voters....

The capacity for pain seems much greater than the capacity for pleasure. That is to say, it is much easier to torment someone than to give them great pleasure. And in some instances, like the burned man in the story above, while they were torturing him to keep him alive, real pleasure for him was completely out of the question. Pain can make one incapable of experiencing pleasure, as long as the pain endures. Pleasure, though, never has that quality; peeling the skin off of someone's arm is almost always sufficient to end the pleasure that a person is experiencing.

So, the idea that suffering will be conquered is extreme and unfounded optimism, excepting only the solution of death.

Due to negativity bias, negative aspects of life have a stronger impact on us than the positive because negative stakes are higher than positive ones, eg. there is nothing equivalently good that can happen to you as dying in sustained agony.

Yes, there is nothing equivalently good that can happen.

So it's more important to be on guard than to wallow in one's blessings, even if the latter are far more prevalent in one's life.

I could speak about all the ways that evolution will continue and new emergences will take place, but you are sold on bad-humans-destroying-everything narrative so you won't listen. To you, it seems, the only possible outcome is human self destruction, happening too soon for any significant advancements in AI to happen.

Here you can join thinkers from antiquity until today, who have all predicted the end by whatever the main hazards of the time were. It's no surprise, due to the above-mentioned negativity bias. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/arti ... ative-bias

Well, I think you are looking at it in the wrong way. It is optimistic of me to suppose that humans will not come up with AI that lingers in the universe. Supposing that humans have, or will have, that ability is pessimistic, spreading the vices of humanity into the future beyond when humans will be alive.

By the way, your link supports the idea that pain is more prevalent among humans than pleasure. One might say that our brains are built more for pain than pleasure, to write in an imprecise way that nevertheless expresses the truth.

As far as the parts about marriage are concerned, I think it is right that for a marriage to be happy, the good must greatly outweigh the bad. If marriage is not obviously a net benefit, then it was probably a mistake to get married.

[Sy Borg]

Funny how one's idea of what is possible in the future colours the way we perceive the world today.

I see biology as the phase of matter that involves pain, and it will be outgrown, just as we outgrow our teens. We are each links in the chain of universal organisation, so I see us as having value, even if humanity ends in a cul-de-sac, which you seem to consider likely. I think it possible too for the world to reach a state where all civilisation appears to have broken down, but behind the scenes the major power players are rapidly progressing.

Even if it doesn't work out for planet Earth, surely at some stage a planet will produce entities that pass "The Great Filter" somewhere in the universe in the next 500 billion years. I think that once a species has transcended biology, then they will be able to conquer interplanetary travel and persist for an extremely long time.

The future of qualia is an interesting question. We will not remain in this state of idiocracy forever.

[Jack D Ripper]

Funny how one's idea of what is possible in the future colours the way we perceive the world today.

I see biology as the phase of matter that involves pain, and it will be outgrown, just as we outgrow our teens.

I do not accept that analogy. A species is not a single entity that matures. The new members of it must learn anew what is of value from the previous generation. Or that information is lost.

We are each links in the chain of universal organisation, so I see us as having value, even if humanity ends in a cul-de-sac, which you seem to consider likely. I think it possible too for the world to reach a state where all civilisation appears to have broken down, but behind the scenes the major power players are rapidly progressing.

Even if it doesn't work out for planet Earth, surely at some stage a planet will produce entities that pass "The Great Filter" somewhere in the universe in the next 500 billion years. I think that once a species has transcended biology, then they will be able to conquer interplanetary travel and persist for an extremely long time.

The future of qualia is an interesting question. We will not remain in this state of idiocracy forever.

I do not think you can know that "we will not remain in this state of idiocy forever." Besides, the best available evidence suggests that the universe will effectively come to an end. If it keeps expanding and never stops expanding, entropy will prevail over all. If the expansion reverses and everything comes back and crashes all over again (another "big bang"), that, too, will wipe everything out (other than the raw materials, of course). So, even if your optimism is correct (which I do not think it is), it will end all the same anyway.

[Sy Borg]

Funny how one's idea of what is possible in the future colours the way we perceive the world today.

I see biology as the phase of matter that involves pain, and it will be outgrown, just as we outgrow our teens.

I do not accept that analogy. A species is not a single entity that matures. The new members of it must learn anew what is of value from the previous generation. Or that information is lost.

Who said anything about a species maturing? I've stated my case. If you don't understand my angles, there's no point.

So you can keep your belief that we're all soon doomed. That we deserve this fate because we are such a wicked species. That life is worse than non-life.

By contrast, I will continue to believe that evolution is neither restricted to biology nor one single planet, but is a feature of all of a universe that is in its infancy, and what is currently evolving out of human societies is the next step.

[Pattern-chaser]

So you can keep your belief that we're all soon doomed. That we deserve this fate because we are such a wicked species. That life is worse than non-life.

I don't think we're a wicked species, but, from the empirical evidence, I suggest we are a plague species.

[Sy Borg]

So you can keep your belief that we're all soon doomed. That we deserve this fate because we are such a wicked species. That life is worse than non-life.

I don't think we're a wicked species, but, from the empirical evidence, I suggest we are a plague species.

So was blue-green algae:

Researchers accredit this mass extinction to what is called the Great Oxygenation Event. According to research, Earth was of course much different. There were no animals or shrubs or insects, in fact, there was very little life on land at all. However, life in the oceans was thriving.

The organisms that could be found there were of the anaerobic kind, meaning they metabolized their food without the use of oxygen.

Seeing as oxygen was the same as poison, life was good for the anaerobic organisms; Earth's atmosphere had very little oxygen, as did the seas. That is until the cyanobacteria showed up, or blue-green algae, and literally poisoned the planet.

Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic, which means they convert sunlight into energy and expel oxygen. As the new inhabitants of Earth flourished, the previously dominant organisms were forced to places with little to no oxygen, the survivors were on the run, exiled if you will, to places like the bottom of the sea.

Through a chemical reaction of methane, oxygen, and CO2, cyanobacteria directly caused the Earth to cool and essentially sent the planet into its first Ice Age, and seemingly triggered what we know as life today.

https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/2 ... oxygen.htm

[Man With Beard]

Sometimes I think that the Internet makes things a lot worse by allowing us to confirm our biases so much faster.

Lets say I do not like Judith Butler, and I come across the claim that she eats kittens. Since I do not like her, I want this claim to be true.

So, I type in "Is it true that Judith Butler eats kittens?" and follow the first link that appeals to me the most: "CIA Operative reveals that Judith Butler eats kittens. TRUE STORY!" And I go from there.

In the old days, if I really wanted something to back up the rumor, I would have to the library in my area with the largest number of newspapers and periodicals, and sift through them. I would not be able to immediately go to something that confirms my bias - I would have to wade through all sorts of information first - including information that goes contrary to this claim - information that I can now quickly bypass.

(For the record, I do not believe that Dr. Butler eats kittens. I used that as an obviously absurd example - and example that everyone (I hope) will agree is absurd - in order to illustrate my point.)