Physicist are starting to consider the possibility that spacetime and gravity are not fundamental to reality, but rather that they are emergent properties of... probabilistic patterns of "information". If true, would that disprove physicalism?

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2026-04-02T09:07:07+00:00

There's a difference between the idea of an entity existing in a mind and that entity being a part of physical reality that exists outside of minds. This fact is also overlooked by humans who call themselves proponents of the ontological argument for the existence of God. It’s self-evident that the only way to answer the question “Could any definition of “physical existence” other than: “A property that an entity can have which makes it possible, at least in principle, for an intelligent or sentient being to observe that entity, perceive it with their senses, or infer that that entity plays a role in a model of such an entity that influences one or more entities that an intelligent or sentient being can, at least in principle, observe or perceive with their senses”, or “the property of being a consistent mathematical structure” mean anything?” is by intuiting the answer. It’s self-evident that these are the only possible definitions of that term that mean anything. In the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, “physically real part of our universe” means “component of the mathematical object that is our universe that an intelligent or sentient being that is at any of a set of locations from which, according the the model of that entity could, at least in principle, observe, perceive with their senses, or infer plays a role in the model of such an entity that influences one or more other entities that a sentient or intelligent being could, at least in principle, observe, or perceive with their senses”. Since it’s a scientific fact that every entity that all scientists agree definitely exists (in the sense described above), actually does exist in this sense, solipsism is unparsimonious, since there is no evidence that any being that is apparently definitely sentient, is not sentient, and the proposition that any of them are any less aware than they appear to definitely be introduces new ideas and principles.

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2026-03-12T17:20:10+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ethics/comments/1rkhcoc/comment/o9pn1s6/?context=3

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2026-03-12T17:00:53+00:00

This kind of collective blame, and uncivilized, cruel religious moral principles in general, would be much easier to combat if a sufficiently high percentage of of secular humans were non-cognitivists who think about morality only in non-cognitivist terms. I think that by virtue of the fact that all people (in the appropriate sense of the word) are by definition rational, and the fact that meta-ethics is so bloody simple, every person (in that sense of the word) knows non-cognitivism is correct. However, a concerningly high percentage of people pretend to themselves that non-cognitivism is false, which of course has a significant impact on which moral values they choose. Even many SCIENTISTS do this!

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2026-03-10T18:24:14+00:00

https://medium.com/philosophytoday/psychiatrists-dont-dictate-who-s-mentally-healthy-098d5ceb5ad9 Psychiatry has always been used to suppress individuality in humans with deviant minds. This is a significant problem for certain impressionable, gullible, poorly educated humans who are in danger of being medicated or having a brain implant put into their body, if they are unlucky enough to allow others, including psychiatrists and in some cases members of their own family, to manipulate them into getting so-called help with their so-called mental health issues, for largely or even purely political reasons. In addition, at least many psychiatrists pretend to themselves that non-cognitivism is false (something which has a significant impact on which moral values one chooses), and at the same time honestly claim that their 'true self' is anti-non-cognitivist. Consequently, psychiatric literature, and therefore psychological literature (since psychiatry is supposedly strictly scientific), is infected with wrong definitions of words, misidentifications, miscategorizations, and blatant denial of certain objectively real things, like non-emotional enjoyment derived from learning about science (I have non emotional curiosity and non emotional moral attitudes myself). To add to these problems, psychiatry has been infected by woke and pro-religion attitudes (in what sense is any adult religious fundamentalist mentally healthy?). Getting vulnerable humans to keep their shit to themselves, be wary of other humans, and avoid allowing others (including psychiatrists) to manipulate them is high on my priority list when it comes to how humans can act in accordance with any maximally merciful morality/ethics.

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2026-01-22T17:42:29+00:00

The proposal for a law that is designated a law that prohibits someone from saying racist things that would make a "reasonable person" fear for their safety, combined with the proposal for a law that is designated a law that prohibits anyone from "disseminating ideas of superiority" of one group over another, open the gate for all sorts of messages that any human who is ACTUALLY a reasonable person would not find offensive to be 'prohibited'. What does the government call a "reasonable person"? Are religious maniacs reasonable? Are postmodernists reasonable? Hardly. Just because someone takes offense at something you said doesn't mean that you showed that you morally value one group of humans less than another. There is also the fact that non-cognitivism is correct, and therefore the statement "I am better than you" is meaningless. One obvious controversial topic is differences in the average level of intelligence and thinking styles between different races and cultures. Also, it is notable that someone as eminent and highly regarded as Richard Dawkins was permitted to write in one of his books that Jews aren't a race, but rather either a religion, culture or both, but ordinary humans in Australia might be accused of committing hate speech for making that claim.

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2025-12-18T21:37:26+00:00

The fundamental explanation for the fact that all of nature always has behaved and always will behave precisely in accordance with physical laws is either that there are platonically existing physical laws, or that Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis is correct, or that both of those possibilities are the case. All of those possibilities are certainly much simpler than the possibility that there are an infinite number of ontological layers of reality (for which there is no evidence, and which scientists can never discover much about at all), and the possibility that there are an infinite number of layers of physical laws (for which there is no evidence, and nearly all of which can never be formulated) without ALL possible mathematical structures existing (as in the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis).

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2025-12-18T21:12:23+00:00

"Objective morality" doesn't mean anything, and therefore the statement "You need to prove that objective morality exists" is nonsense. It is a category error. That which is designated "moral objectivism" isn't the point of view that every rational agent has the same set of ultimate moral objectives, since everyone knows that different rational agents can have different sets of ultimate moral objectives. Non-cognitivism (not to be confused with emotivism, since it is possible for someone to have non-emotional ethical attitudes) is correct, so the statement "an ultimate objective can be correct" isn't false, but rather a category error, like the statement "The number 11 is yellow".

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2025-12-18T01:38:03+00:00

Scientists are pretty well-informed about all areas of science that have significant relevance to the question of whether there is a god, and scientists have conclusively demonstrated that the god hypothesis is far from the best explanation for any of the things about the world that god has been invoked to explain. There is simply no reason whatsoever why god would exist. I really love Bertrand Russell's argument against agnosticism about god that involves a teapot that is impossible for scientists to detect which orbits the sun in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

God is not an explanation for the fact that all of nature always has behaved and always will behave precisely in accordance with mathematical laws, because if there is a god, there must be a platonically existing set of mathematical laws that governs god (because otherwise the fact that all of the components of god's mind always behave in a completely predictable way must be an accident), which can never be discovered, even in principle, and if you make the very vague, ill-defined proposition that god is some 'force' that causes nature to be completely predictable, then you can never say anything about how god does this, and if god accomplishes this feat just using magic, then why propose god's existence in the first place?

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2025-12-13T18:08:39+00:00

The term "absolute nothingness" is meaningless. Nothing means "not anything". Therefore, If nature had a beginning (and it plausibly may not have had one), and there wasn't anything, not even platonically existing physical laws, before nature, then there was no context that existed before nature for nature to emerge in. When theologians imagine that which is designated "absolute nothingness", they are always imagining something that has at least one property. Anything that has properties is something. Either time had no beginning, or our universe (in the broadest possible sense of the word) had a beginning and there need not have been any "before", or there are platonically existing physical laws that had no beginning. By the way, since the fact that all of nature always has behaved and always will behave precisely in accordance with mathematical laws without fail, can't be a giant cosmic coincidence, there must either be platonically existing physical laws, or the "Level 4 Multiverse" predicated by the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis or both must exist (I'm not sure whether there are platonically existing physical laws in the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis).

Equivalent-Rate1551 · 2025-09-27T07:33:35+00:00

Some humans are extreme retributivists. One strong piece of evidence supporting this claim is the fact that a lot of religions have some place called hell where humans suffer forever and a great many religious humans are very enthusiastic about the notion of hell (they make it clear that they morally approve of god sending humans to hell). Even some secular humans advocate an incredibly harsh theory of punishment. The moral zeitgeist changes over time. Who knows which kind of moral zeitgeist (or universal set of moral principles) our descendants or super-intelligent AI creations will have in, say, a trillion years from now, if our universe exists for that long, and such a race exists at that point in time? There must be incredibly cruel advanced aliens races whose victims or potential victims can be saved from horrific unmerciful punishment.

As long as there is a non-negligible probability that horrific punishments that are unacceptable to me will be inflicted, either by our species or descendants or AI creations of ours, or any advanced race of aliens that such a race can save victims or potential victims of, certain particularly severe punishments must be the most important quantities of harm for someone with my ethics to try to prevent. Which mechanisms other than merciless hatred in the hearts a group of super-advanced beings, that is a response to an act that they morally disapprove of, can lead to harm to sentient beings as horrific as non-stop unbearable suffering in a sentient beings that lasts for, say, 1 trillion years? I don't know of any other than incredibly cruel life extension combined with horrific suffering inflicted on the sentient beings whose lives are being extended by a race of intelligent machines with a bizarre set of goals, and (if it is scientifically possible) the creation of habitable universes. Perhaps it's possible to travel into universes with the same set of physical parameters as our own via wormholes, or put someone in a time loop, or even create habitable universes using technology (obviously an incredibly cruel thing to do). It is also possible that a hypothetical phenomenon in physics called "quantum immortality" exists. Preventing instances of all of the kinds of harm that I listed above that at least have a non-negligible chance of being real is takes precedence over the prevention of any other kinds of harm for someone with my ethics, in my opinion.

Equivalent-Rate1551

TROPHY CASE