On 27 Jan 2013, at 23:35, freqflyer07281972 wrote:
Hey everyone,
I've been following this group a lot. I read it everyday and enjoy
all of the wonderful stuff that comes up, even if some of it tends
towards ad hominem, argument from authority, and petitio principi.
Hey, we're humans, right? That means we get to make these fallacies,
in good conscience or bad.
Anyway, I wondered about what anyone/everyone thought about the
notion of 'chosenness' as a way to understand where we are here in
the world. It seems to me that concepts like MWI, Bruno's comp/mech
hypothesis and the 'dreams of numbers' ideas of subjectivity, and
even Leibniz's 'best of all possible worlds' don't actually do
something like flee away from our everyday responsibility to accept
the basic fact that we have been CHOSEN -- and when I say this,
please don't immediately put a bunch of theological baggage on it.
I'm not saying God chose this reality as opposed to another,
although this might be a convenient shorthand. But what I am saying
is that, out of all the staggering possibilities that we know exist
with regards to our universe, our galaxy, our solar system, our
planet, our society, and even our individual selves, things could
have very easily turned out to be different than they were. The fact
that they have turned out in just this way and not another indicates
this kind of chosenness, and along with it, comes a certain degree
of responsibility, I guess?
It seems to me that all the various 'everything' hypotheses (MWI,
comp, Leibniz, and others) try to apply the Copernican principle to
its breaking point. True enough, there is from a purely 3p point of
view nothing special about our cosmic situation re: our planet and
our sun. BUT, from an existential 1p point of view there is a huge
privilege that we have, i.e. we are sentient observers, who love,
feel pain, feel desire, and long for transcendence.
Moreover, the 3p point of view is a pure abstraction, kind of like
eating the picture of a meal rather than the actual meal. How do we
know what any kind of 3p account of truth would be? What would it
even look like? A universe with no observers. A falling tree without
a hearer/listener. This, to me, is nonsense.
Aren't things like MWI of quantum physics and comp hypothesis of
universal dovetailer trying to, at a fundamental and existential
level, an attempt to try to run away from the concreteness and
absolute 'givenness' (gift) of the world as we find it?
Those things are not necessarily in opposition, once we find a way to
attribute first-person-ness to some entities.
We only try to figure out what is happening.
And isn't our role, in creation, as freely choosing beings (sorry,
John Clark, free will is more than just a noise) to choose what will
make other people with us now and in the future feel more love and
less pain? And isn't this why we were chosen?
I don't think we are chosen, at least no more than insects and plants.
We have the tools for explaining whay we feel unique, and chosen, but
that can be a sort of illusion, like with personal identity. But *we*
can make choice, indeed. This makes intuitive sense, and is
explainable in mechanical terms.
Bruno
I'll go back to lurking now, but I'd appreciate any thoughts you
might have on this reflection of mine.
Cheers,
Dan
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