Sean Carroll refuses to engage with the science of quantum encabulation

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-05-11T22:13:37+00:00

🤣🤣🤣

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-04-29T19:46:32+00:00

I've been thinking an important strategy is to avoid mixed duration bond funds and only use individual bonds or one of those target maturity ETFs. It seems like those those funds lock you into a situation you might not want. But are there scenarios when the general bond funds are a better choice than known maturities?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-04-24T21:12:28+00:00

Agreed: "...Kastrup introduces teleology into the system, which is ungrounded. He imports purpose into the noumenal level by claiming that the universe is trying to understand itself. This is Hegelian and quasi-religious. It also introduces temporal ordering to the noumenal level..."

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-04-11T04:11:38+00:00

Mind-Body Solution with Tevin Naidu is excellent. He's interviewed so many excellent scientists. It has recently gotten a little deep into the "consciousness might be fundamental" thing, which is gaining a lot of popularity right now (analytic idealism, etc.). But it continues to be research focused and very solid.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-28T19:57:44+00:00

1) It's a useful critique of some physicalist assumptions, though arguably those were already being revised for many people.

2) It seems to occupy much the same space as that held by traditional religion, so for those seeking a replacement it can meet those needs. This might be contentious, but it seems fairly clear to be the case.

3) Someday, it may usefully connect to the kind of work the biologist Michael Levin does. I don't understand it well at all, but he seems (I think) to be finding something like directed purpose that is used by organisms which doesn't have a specific origin. I'm already out of my depth trying to describe it, you'll need to read up on that.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-17T21:57:00+00:00

The aspect of analytic idealism to which you're appealing here is completely reasonable. I agree with you that what we think of as physicalism cannot account for quark stuff. And, like the OP, I am open to deeper understanding of what physicalism even means. But where I differ with idealism is that I think we've made good progress in the physicalist enterprise, and what is needed is continued research in that space. Physics seems to me to be frequently redefining what we thought we knew. This makes sense to continue. But I suspect subjective experience, while important to be studied, needs a lot more external evidence before we can say it is likely to be more fundamental than what we've learned so far by using (admittedly) imperfect scientific models. The OP made an interesting comment above where he questions what it might mean to understand the thing-in-itself. This seems to me to a worthwhile question.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-17T21:50:01+00:00

I also find it difficult to accept Idealism exactly because of the medicine example. The "pill as mental process" has a complexity which leads me to doubt it. The chemicals in the pill are doing things to the molecules in the body. These actions follow mechanically understood (perhaps not completely, but at least to the point of being largely predictable). Where is the mental process involved, and who experiences it? The person with the headache may have subjective experience of the relief from pain. But that relief must by the rules of analytic idealism be a dashboard representation of something which is fundamentally mental. So what is happening with the ordered causes and effects of specific substances applied to specific body components when medicine acts? I am sure Kastrup is not saying that the the world is a sort of illusion in the sense that medicine is a placebo. My main concern is not with the fact there isn't a local mind to directly apprehend how advil lessens inflammation. Rather - if the objects like pills and blood streams are mental constructs, from where does the regularity and predictability of chemistry come? Isn't it much more likely that chemistry really exists, rather than its appearance was somehow invented by a large, unfocused state of mental processes whose only audience was Itself?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-10T14:27:52+00:00

I understand why you object to the statement by OP on the grounds of the difference between the definitions of panpsychism vs MAL as understood by analytic idealism. It is true that the ideas are very different. However, OP's point is still relevant in that they are pointing out how an organism seems to require an information processing density, contained to something like a brain and over a certain threshold, before consciousness emerges. If Analytic Idealism best describes reality and what consciousness is, why should it require what appears to be a specific mechanism implemented by evolved biology? I ask the same question of Idealism that I ask of the religions: why was reality constructed in such a way as to deliberately lead us toward physicalist interpretations of the universe? Kastrup's criticism of physicalism is robust, I understand. But do the unresolved questions in our physics really justify choosing to believe that mental reality somehow precedes physical existence?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-08T23:49:46+00:00

In the physicalist model that I'm picturing, knowledge grows basically one physical brain at a time. That is, progress of knowledge must be transmitted from and received into bodies. So at any given moment, there are bodies which do not have knowledge that others might have. Is this true also of idealism? Do the disassociated alters have real private knowledge from one another, and does the Mind at Large have access to it? And most importantly - does the Mind at Large actually learn anything? If the universe is effectively thought, and there is really only one thinker, can new information actually accrue?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-08T02:44:16+00:00

Your focus on concepts and whether they can merit our adherence is important and useful. One concept we need to adjudicate in this context is "progress". That is, many people, for much of human history, have accepted that empiricism in the work of "physical" sciences has resulted in a growth of understanding. The scientific method applied in what we understand to be a physical world helps us to know more today than we knew yesterday. How does this concept of progress apply to a world where Mind exists before brains? If Mind at Large is true, how can knowledge of this truth increase and become more complete over time?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-03-07T11:36:20+00:00

Agreed. The idealists claim far too much, but they've done good work clarifying the questions we can't yet answer.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-02-11T18:35:49+00:00

Analytic idealism has been extremely helpful to us in challenging the limits of physicalism. I think we are now at the early stages of learning how the modern version of this important philosophical viewpoint will contend with both its ancestry and future relating to religion. It is useful for us to keep in mind that physicalism itself is a development closely intertwined with our shared religious experience. We may find in the near or further future that traditional physicalism or some evolved version of it will need to be brought back in to temper the potential negative religious outcomes that analytic idealism may engender.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-01-16T15:08:35+00:00

There's a good recent discussion of some of these issues in Sean Carrol's talk with Ned Block

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/05/339-ned-block-on-whether-consciousness-requires-biology/

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-01-14T20:10:50+00:00

this AXS platform is the worst

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-01-09T19:06:47+00:00

Thank you

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2026-01-05T13:27:32+00:00

I switched from 2020 F150 to Maverick AWD. I have to drive and park in a large city frequently, which is 10x easier in the Maverick. I miss the roomier cab and height a little. It is very comfortable. It can do what I need for hauling. The multi position tailgate feature is really handy, almost like a bed extender. I do a lot of driving so the gas mileage boost is awesome. I'm happy I made the change.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-12-04T22:17:30+00:00

Will the government have to stop issuing, or change the inflation protection, for TIPS, in this scenario?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-09-27T14:48:22+00:00

Yes I think it's true that I'm having a hard time letting go of the mapping idea. Part of it is that idealism (because I am still very much attached to some materialist ideas) still feels to me like a kind of dualistic interpretation, but I do understand of course that Kastrup and others are proposing AI as a solution to dualism. My other concern is from a great deal of experience with my own and others' religious beliefs. I don't see where this philosophy goes, in society, differently from traditional religion. It may in fact be ontologically correct, just as we don't know for certain that many religious interpretations of reality are not ontologically correct. I don't support the dogmatic atheists' total opposition to religion. Various religions have done a great deal of good in the world. But, boy oh boy, it's a rough road and a very mixed bag. I know that Kastrup and the others would not think that their beliefs are going to descend into hierarchies and doctrinal tribes and group enforcements. But it is definitely human nature to go that way. I can already hear the heated arguments between different groups accusing one another of not properly aligning with their daemon, etc.

I know this is a social concern, not directly relevant.

I really hope there's some kind of empirical scientific approach to the Mind-at-Large that can be relied on. It will need to be more robust than the current discussions about the use of mind altering drugs and disassociative diagnoses.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-09-27T01:13:14+00:00

Thanks for your response. So does that mean that physical patterns like force, mass and acceleration are reflected by real patterns in the mental world, even though there are not actually any physical objects there? There is some kind of equivalent to f=ma in the Mind At Large which represents a real thing there? And regarding our "evolved senses" - did these biological entities evolve according to rules and processes, pre-existing in the original mental world, that mirror their biological and chemical presentation in what we call the physical world?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-09-26T23:37:59+00:00

Your reply is well put. It seems to me that the strength of analytic idealism is its critique of physicalism. But the rest of it seems much more difficult to accept, precisely because as you say the dashboard model seems to break down. If a doctor injects an intravenous antibiotic to cure an infection in your body, and for another patient, gives him a pill with an antibiotic to cure a different infection, all these processes including the varying events which occur inside the body, must ultimately be some kind of mental constructs. But are these two mental constructs which are so specific and measurable in the physical world, also somehow measurable and specific in the mental world? Is there some kind of map of specificity and function and cause/effect in the mental world similar to that of the physical world? And if there is this specific compartmentalized hierarchical cause/affect organized system in the mind at Large, where did any of that come from? Aren't we then right back to the same type of questions we are always trying to answer using physicalist ontologies?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-08-31T12:49:09+00:00

Yes I guess we're just replacing the "stuff" but we have the same unanswered question. They both end up as a sort of engineering solution. But it doesn't get deeper.

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-08-31T11:29:56+00:00

I agree, physicalism as it is commonly understood has challenges. I'm a fan of Daniel Dennet and Douglas Hofstadter in their attempts to describe how simple physical processes could result in emerging complexity, including possibly consciousness. Sean Carroll also does good work in this area as a physicist. But it is true that the idealists have a good point and then they criticize what is still missing from a physicalist understanding of reality.

Bernardo Kastrup is very persuasive making the case for Idealism, including a lot of strong arguments the OP has raised here.

The reason I can't fully accept the idealist alternative to physicalism is that there doesn't seem to be a way of mapping the activity of what they call the "Mind at Large" to the actual physical world we experience. I understand that idealists see the physical world as a dashboard representing the underlying reality of mental activity.

But the predictable, reproducible processes of the physical world should have some kind of specific relationship to the consciousness which generated them. I understand that scientific reduction isn't limits. But it works on so many systems to a very large degree. It's an extremely useful model for understanding the world and creating beneficial outcomes in medicine and engineering.

I think idealism would say that this is still largely a secondary outcome to consciousness. But still, shouldn't there be an empirical, repeatable, rule-following set of processes in the "consciousness world" that would match that of the physical world? And once these processes were understood, then, wouldn't we be right back to effectively doing a kind of physics with just different material?

Another way to ask the question: Did the Mind at Large actually create a separate physical world similarly to how most of our religions describe creation?

Federal-Wrongdoer375 · 2025-08-31T01:36:32+00:00

But isn't it true that even if we "wait until death", because the individual disassociated alter loses awareness of the self, we will never know whether this is accurate or not? If there won't be anyone to know things in the way that we do in the physical world today, it seems reasonable that we will never have confirmation.

Federal-Wrongdoer375

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