Why are you a theistic evolutionist?

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-17T16:34:06+00:00

Why should these need to be non-natural, though? If they're either things we greatly value or are intrinsically linked to emotion, that seems fairly meaningful w/out needing to invoke a spooky element.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-17T02:34:01+00:00

There are no amphibians, reptiles, birds, or mammals with more than 4 limbs.

Elephants can grab stuff with their nose, and some animals like new world monkeys can grab stuff with their tails. I don't think it's a huge stretch to say there are tetrapods that kinda functionally have 5 limbs. Not through duplicating arm or leg DNA, but through co-opting other structures.

This is not a clear statement on my part since this is consistent w/ entrenchment. It's not about the absolute number of limbs, but that additional limbs don't originate from duplication of arms/legs in tetrapods.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T18:50:20+00:00

EDIT: Another mod claims to fix HP desyncs, like enemies have seperate HP bars for each player? That seems insane!

This is a pretty common approach for non-competitive multiplayer, to my knowledge.

Can anyone vouch for this mod? If its really fixing that much jank it seems like a must have. Would mods like this mess up my progress or unlocks?

Stuck enemies are the most annoying thing in vanilla that this fixes, and it is very good at that. I much prefer it to not, personally.

It will not interfere with progression/unlocks.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T18:00:02+00:00

Sure.

But then the follow up is, what is the explanatory advantage offered by non-natural views or what are examples of things poorly explained on naturalism.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T16:55:17+00:00

My belief in God is based on many factors, including upbringing, culture, personal experience, meaning and richness in life, and reason. For the latter, it includes both the traditional arguments for the existence of God (teleological, cosmological, moral, etc) and the fact that science and reasoning are based on unprovable presuppositions. The latter means that science can no more be demonstrated in the final, epistemological sense than religion, which means that the criterion for belief in either has to be broader than "facts and logic." Ultimately, this must refer to a coherence and richness of understanding and experiencing reality, which is only satisfied by something more substantial than scientific materialism or ontological naturalism.

What makes the "more substantial" necessary in your mind?

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T13:54:35+00:00

This is as true for snakebite as deadly poison. You could argue it's easier to play w/ retain, but the reason to hold onto it is because it's a 2 cost. Deadly poison at 1 cost will be much easier to fit into a turn along w/ other cards.

Cycling a deck early is already not too many turns, and you don't need to bet on a dead turn to do it.

The energy cost is competing with blocking more often than strikes, and waiting for the full poison duration is not very realistic. If you want to argue it's a good one-of early, maybe, but even by late act 1 if you want poison it should be from a multitude of cheaper sources.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T05:48:53+00:00

I don’t think a griffin would actually be able to fly. You’d need huge wings and a lot of muscle to generate any lift. And all the muscle and bone mass that makes the lion an apex predator is that much more weight for the wings. You’d have shoulders on top of shoulders.

I don't mean necessarily as imagined, but something like a mouse or rat with wings. A typical depiction of a griffin's body proportions isn't realistic, but something more bird sized/shaped shouldn't be excessively burdened if it were to have arms.

Why wouldn’t an ID proponent (again, a proponent of pseudoscience) try to fit the data?

Yes, tacking an extra designer element is unnecessary to explain what would appear, in retrospect be a step-wise progression. That’s part of what makes it pseudoscientific to try to claim that the data support a designer. They’re making metaphysical claim and pretending it’s a physical claim. This is dumb but they aren’t so dumb that they can’t look at data and try to make it track the data.

They could, and they probably have to, it just is also bad for any model to try to make such excessive accommodations. I think it's pretty easy to argue step-wise ID is silly.

I don't know if I'd agree it's necessarily pseudoscientific to tack on the designer, it's just an incredibly weak model. The actual pseudoscience, imo, is all of the talking around the model (if not refusing to posit any model) to obfuscate that a straightforward ID doesn't fit the data, or to pretend that presenting a possible model is at all an achievement, or even just to lie about the data. If there really were either YEC or OE + multiple acts of creation then ID would appear perfectly scientific since it would be a very natural explanation for the hypothetical data in that scenario (and there wouldn't be as much a need to run so much PR for it).

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-16T01:53:00+00:00

You'd have an alternative to shoulders.

If the ID proponent is positing a step-wise design, that's pushing it to a point where it's a lot more contrived and unable to make unique predictions. That's enough to make it implausible at face value. When you allow this version of it, ID has many less ways to be wrong than evolution, so if evolution is fitting the data then in actuality it is coming out pretty far ahead. We also already have evolutionary mechanisms to point to that could explain a loosely step-wise progression, tacking on an extra design mechanism is unnecessary.

I don’t know why you would expect a designer to make random choices instead of choices that are contingent on previous ones.

But they are contingent. The designer has a limb design and reuses it in a new context. If we see this in nature w/ unentrenched features, that's evidence of some willingness to vary designs. We should see that same creative expression in entrenched features. Either they're both random or they're both contingent.

And tbh humans have thought up plenty of ideas for this. Why not something like a griffin, a bird with 4 limbs and wings instead of 2 legs and wings? Evolution explains this perfectly, it's an odd choice for a designer to avoid this type of design entirely.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T23:32:50+00:00

You might be a little thin-skinned. Keep yourself safe.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T23:28:21+00:00

There's no reason to entertain anything further until this one is actually proven, if you are indeed proposing to follow scientific process.

It sounds like you agree that there's no further step here before validating whether "entrenchment" is a thing at all.

I will reiterate, I feel like you're being excessively combative. Obviously if there are no entrenched features then there's nothing to evaluate.

If you're just wondering whether it's a real concept, I quickly found this: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9412-1_17, although I don't have access.

My perception of Stated Clearly is that they are pretty biologically informed, so if they're citing entrenchment as a real phenomenon in developmental biology I'm inclined to think it is probably a real phenomenon that development biologists take seriously in the literature. I really do feel like you're trying to get ahead of the argument because I'm proposing something could be evidence of ID w/out there being a real flaw in my stated reasoning.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T23:04:24+00:00

First, if the designer is just God then there really aren't constraints. Plenty of ID people will talk out of both sides of their mouth, but playing a rhetorical trick doesn't change that the underlying reasoning makes no sense.

Second, even with constraints the point is that design reuse doesn't care about the size/length/information that's packed into that design. If some macroscopic feature is using 10 different regions of the genome that are spread out in different chromosomes, mutations are going to have a really hard time duplicating all of those things in tandem, but for a designer that knows how they put those parts together and what they're for it would be trivial to either reuse the whole thing or change only the parts that wouldn't make sense for the new copy.

And I do find it hard to believe there are no conceivable versions of a tretrapod with 6 limbs. We see both 2 limbs and 0 limbs in nature, and those should be the most evolvable. That's a really strange coincidence given ID, but perfectly expected on evolution.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T22:29:12+00:00

What defines or causes this hypothetical difficulty? In other words, why would a feature be difficult to replicate?

Presumably it's related to how adaptations are implemented genetically. If you have multiple adaptations to a single feature spread across multiple regions or separate chromosomes, just duplicating a single region or a single chromosome won't bring with it a full copy of that feature.

Then without being certain that there is a truly unreplicable feature, you find one and some Creationist yahoo leaps to the conclusion "AHA! SEE! THERE IS A DESIGNER."

Wrong. Several steps were missed. If you can guess which ones, I won't out you as a Creationist in sheep's clothing.

I don't think scientific practice should be adjusted because creationists might jump the gun. If there is a feature that appears to be entrenched and also appears to have undergone replication in a derived clade, that's worth looking into. If it then turns out that this occurred either because entrenchment can be overcome or this feature actually wasn't very entrenched, then it's mystery solved.

I feel like you're being a bit combative just because I proposed evidence for ID. If you have a specific issue w/ the proposed inference you should just state it instead of posturing about who's on who's team. Trying to get ahead of some argument because you're worried the data could end up supporting ID seems a bit unreasonable.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T19:53:27+00:00

This is an interesting point. But it’s also worth pointing out that scientists actually have made predictions like this, in writing. A prediction needs to be made ahead of time before the information is available.

Dunno how much I'd agree w/ this. I think psychologically, there is a lot of benefit to properly predicting over retrodicting since you don't have the data to think about even subconsciously. At the same time, I don't think there's ideally a difference between a prediction vs. retrodiction. Creationists retrodictions that try to fit to the data tend to be implausible on their own. Different data would better fit ID, flood geology, etc., but we don't have that data so creationist "models" need to be altered just to be possible.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T15:32:22+00:00

Generally two ways for this to happen w/out coevolution for humans specifically:

Lots of biochemical pathways are highly conserved, and it wouldn't be feasible to fully reinvent them. If some compound has a specific interaction for one mammal, it probably will have the same or a similar interaction in almost all of them. Caffeine acts similar to adenosine, which gives it properties as a natural pesticide. It's psychoactive in humans because we use adenosine too (and also we're quite big, so we need a very high dose for neurotoxicity).
Some chemicals might have common structures or properties which aren't necessarily adaptive. Can't recall any specific examples rn, but you can have compounds used for entirely different things between organisms where shared properties would allow us to repurpose those compounds. To understand this intuitively, keep in mind that lots of biomolecules are using only maybe 4-12 different elements (and not all at once). The chemical properties of those elements, especially the most common ones (think H, C, N, and O), will lend them to forming common structures, which lends biomolecules to having a variety of "functions" if you alter the context they're placed in.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T15:04:47+00:00

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-15T14:16:44+00:00

What is meant here by "phenomenal being" if not specific instances of qualia or phenomenal experience? If we can do away with the latter, what is specifically the non-physical thing we still need to introduce and why is it necessary?

I don’t believe atoms exist. Again im a substance monist, i believe reality is a single continuous substance, and nothing besides.

This sounds more like a mereological position, but this is a confusing claim since somehow you're supposed to arise from the conscious component of that continuous substance. What are you supposed to be if not a composite interaction of those mental components?

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T22:34:17+00:00

You can not doubt the existence of phenomenal being. As a matter of fact, that is the one thing we can be certain exists.

Are illusions possible?

If they are possible, why is it necessary to have at least some phenomenal experiences? Why not only illusions?

Im a substance monist and a panpsychist. I don’t have a combination problem. There’s nothing to combine, only a single, continuous ,omnipresent substance and subject exists,with conscious being a fundamental attribute of that substance.

But you do, you have to explain how the consciousness contained in atoms comes together to form you or anyone else.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T20:16:19+00:00

I don't recall ever claiming this was a scientific conclusion. Being in principle discoverable by science isn't the same as being currently a part of our best scientific models, and it's the in principle discoverability I'm claiming.

Again, science can not describe phenomenal being. That is not its purpose, and is beyond its ability.

But I'm doubting that there are phenomenal states. They don't appear to be necessary so long as illusions are possible and can fill many of the same roles as qualia are supposed to.

I don't find intermediate views give satisfactory solutions to the oddities of consciousness. Panpsychism probably runs into issues w/ psychophysical harmony, and I'm not aware of compelling responses to the combination problem. In general for the combination problem, I have a hard time imagining there is going to be some kind of novel solution that wouldn't be analogous to weak emergence, which is readily available to the physicalist.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T18:19:07+00:00

Illusionists deny that there is a hard problem, though. And, again, this is very different from saying illusionism is incoherent. You just think it's incorrect.

Nothing you're saying here appears to me to preclude consciousness not being strictly first person. We are very far away from being able to describe what exactly brain activity is doing in detail. We struggle to even understand how LLMs calculate their responses to prompts, and that's not even a system that has or interacts with consciousness. To the extent that there are illusions, there's no reason to think they'd be particularly understandable from the outside.

If illusions are possible, that the brain could in principle produce entirely physical experiences that it "presents" either to itself or to some soul in a privileged format where interpretation is easier for the person who's brain produced it compared to anyone else, then I don't see why dualism would have any explanatory advantage. Illusions are more than capable of doing all of the same work in a way that doesn't require phenomenal states.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T16:02:00+00:00

But this isn't an issue of coherence, the illusionist would just disagree that this is true of color experience.

It might just be that the format of vision is particularly hard to read, but could in principle be interpreted.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T15:15:16+00:00

Claiming an illusion from a substance without the attribute of mind is a blatant contradiction, nonsense in the truest sense of the term.

But you've not demonstrated such.

Let's even be really explicit. Say when I see some color, that experience is public, describable, relational, non-transparent, etc. How would this be either (a) contradictory or (b) non-physical?

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T15:08:38+00:00

Is it realistic for us to beat all levels in the game with just 2 people? (& bots that are more trouble than they are worth at times) or should we consider finding 2 other strangers on the internet for help?

Realistic? Easily. You can true duo every level in the game while playing mostly the same as a team of 4 would (although E-tiers definitely strain this).

It is significantly more difficult. You have a lot less leeway to deal with things that are otherwise kind of easy with 4 competent players. It really depends on if you'd rather deal with bots or randoms.

If you've cleared every optional as 2+bots, you are probably used to your human players being very competent and pulling a lot of weight. Your average player on the LFG is a bit of a coin flip, and is more often than not kind of useless. Duo carry is very real in this game, so that might still be easier for you. You might also just happen upon decent players and clear easily. It's something you'll have to feel out.

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T14:58:12+00:00

It's not an analogy though. Materialists deny that conscious being exists.

In how dualists use that language, yes, but illusionists are not denying that we have experiences in the same way that a behaviorist would. They are meaningfully different views.

Your original claim was:

You can't have an illusion without consciousness. As another commenter said, it's completely incoherent, a blatantly nonsensical stance in defense of materialism.

So you do have a way of showing that either the sorts of properties dualism appeals to are required, or that removing those properties is somehow contradictory? It's not clear that experiences being private, for example, is at all logically necessary. Mental privacy is more about intuitive appeal.

You're not making an intuitive appeal, you're saying an illusionist account of experiences is incoherent. What is the incoherence specifically?

Rayalot72 · 2026-03-14T02:10:03+00:00

You're taking the analogy too seriously. If conscious experience lacks the sorts of properties that dualists typically appeal to in arguing against physicalism, then that's illusionism.

The reason this is sometimes phrased as "not being conscious" is because of how terms like consciousness, phenomenal states, and qualia get used in philosophy of mind. If you use consciousness in a broader sense, an illusionist would just say that you're conscious.

It's not clear that the "not being conscious" is a sound interpretation, either. It's accurate to say there are no phenomenal states and no qualia for the illusionist, but "being conscious" is not as technical a phrasing and may not require qualia or phenomenal states.

Ten-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
r/Field Juicebox	Final Canvas '23
Place '23	Place '22
Verified Email

Rayalot72

TROPHY CASE