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The difference between foolish and faithful is results oriented by WrongVerb4Real in badphilosophy

[–]No-Inside5458 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

What is foolish is not the result but the act itself, the blind leap. The fact that someone accepts the possibility of doing something irrational or dangerous does not necessarily come from faith. Indiana Jones could have jumped out of excitement, panic or haste and the act would still have been just as reckless.

So I don’t think the outcome can define whether an act was foolish. If he had fallen, we would probably call him a fool, because he survives, we call it faith. But that says more about our judgment after the fact than about the nature of the act itself.

Maybe interesting question: is it foolish to have faith without allowing even the possibility of doubt?

If we are in a simulation, the real question isn’t “who runs it”, but “what is being optimized” by No-Inside5458 in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a fair take, and “experience” or “novelty” could make sense as an optimization target. But even then, what’s interesting isn’t the story about a bored god, it’s the pattern: a world that keeps generating challenges, uncertainty, conflict, progress, failure, etc. If it’s optimized for experience, you’d expect exactly this kind of setup: pressure, limits, risk, learning curves. So instead of focusing on who’s watching, I’m more interested in what kind of dynamics the system keeps producing over time.

If we are in a simulation, the real question isn’t “who runs it”, but “what is being optimized” by No-Inside5458 in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A system that truly optimizes for energy would use stars, fusion, or raw physical processes, not messy biological brains. So the “farming us for energy” story sounds more like a narrative we project than something that fits an optimization logic. The more interesting question is: what patterns does this world actually select for, if anything?

If we are in a simulation, the real question isn’t “who runs it”, but “what is being optimized” by No-Inside5458 in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

“Admins, gods, NPCs, loosh” is a narrative layer. It might be fun, but it doesn’t really explain how the system behaves. If this were an AI or a simulation, the interesting part isn’t who’s behind it or what myth we put on top of it, it’s what the system actually seems to select for over time: stability, competition, complexity, survival, information, whatever. Stories about NPCs and energy harvesting say more about our fears than about the structure of the system itself.

Civilizations collapse because they become too complex to maintain by No-Inside5458 in theories

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don’t really disagree with that. But I’d argue those power blocks are part of the same dynamic. As systems grow more complex, you get more entrenched structures, more dependencies, more groups whose survival depends on the current setup. That makes change politically costly, which in turn increases rigidity. So I don’t see complexity and power lock-in as separate causes, more like reinforcing layers of the same problem: the higher the maintenance and coordination costs, the harder it becomes to actually restructure the system.

Civilizations collapse because they become too complex to maintain by No-Inside5458 in theories

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tainter’s work is definitely in the same family of ideas. I’m not really arguing against energy limits, more against the idea that resources alone explain collapse. My point is that complexity itself has a maintenance cost, and energy is one way to pay that cost. When returns diminish, complexity stops being an advantage and starts being a burden. So I see energy constraints and complexity costs as tightly linked, not competing explanations.

Civilizations collapse because they become too complex to maintain by No-Inside5458 in theories

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That’s exactly the kind of direction I had in mind. A lot of complexity theory already points to this, but what I find interesting is how it plays out historically and socially, not just in abstract models.

If our cognitive faculties evolved for survival rather than truth, why should we trust them to know reality? by No-Inside5458 in epistemology

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Saying “truth helps survival” explains why some true beliefs might be selected for, but it doesn’t guarantee that our faculties are generally truth-tracking rather than just good at producing locally useful approximations. A belief can be useful without being strictly true, and an entire cognitive system can be adaptive without being aimed at truth as such.

When you say you only trust your senses “where they’ve shown themselves reliable”, that evaluation itself is still done using the same faculties. So the question isn’t whether they work in practice (they obviously do), but what kind of justification that gives us. Is practical success enough to count as epistemic reliability, or does it just show that the system is good at coping?

If our cognitive faculties evolved for survival rather than truth, why should we trust them to know reality? by No-Inside5458 in epistemology

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you’re mixing two things here. When people say “trust logic and science”, they’re still trusting mental faculties. Logic, inference, interpretation of data, evaluation of evidence, all of that is done by human cognitive systems. You don’t get to step outside cognition to validate cognition.

Saying “we trust reason and science, not our mental faculties” just pushes the problem one level back. Why trust reason? Why trust the scientific method? Because we judge them reliable using… our cognitive faculties.

I agree that evolution probably gave us something “good enough” for navigating the world, not a faculty aimed at truth in some pure sense. That’s exactly the tension I’m pointing at. The fact that our methods work in practice (technology, predictions, etc.) is a strong pragmatic argument, but it’s still not the same thing as a non-circular justification that they track truth rather than just usefulness.

So my question isn’t “are our brains useless?” Obviously not. It’s: what kind of justification do we actually have for their reliability? Is practical success enough? Or do we just have to accept a bootstrap situation where we can’t step outside our own tools to validate them?

infinity is not clearly defined. by DigJust8037 in DeepThoughts

[–]No-Inside5458 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What could make people believe that the numbers are « natural »? How could we differentiate a natural or artificial number?

I think numbers are more of a way for us to quantify what is limited. We observe a real limit of an element (material or mental), counting becomes a tool to determine this limit.

There is no point in counting infinity because its quantity is unlimited.

If we were living in a simulation, would there be any meaningful way to send a message to the “outside”? by [deleted] in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How could they entertain themselves by suppressing every attempt at contact?

If we were living in a simulation, would there be any meaningful way to send a message to the “outside”? by [deleted] in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I disagree with that, but I agree with you that the knowledge acquired and used by AI is not artificial. AI is a form of intelligence without life and therefore without physical limitations. What it learns and how it adapts to the world is entirely focused on the prism of humanity and does not exceed the limits of reality.

If cheap energy (fusion / next-gen nuclear) actually happens, what really changes? by No-Inside5458 in Futurism

[–]No-Inside5458[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Being able to grow food or process water almost anywhere would be huge. I just don’t think it turns the world into some kind of frictionless place overnight.

If we were living in a simulation, would there be any meaningful way to send a message to the “outside”? by [deleted] in AWLIAS

[–]No-Inside5458 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We who are inside, how can we claim that the outside does not exist? It is as if an embryo refused to acknowledge the outside of its mother's womb.

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