/sci/ - Science & Math

https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

Info on Brian Tomasik's tinnitus:
https://briantomasik.com/my-very-mild-tinnitus/

Brian Tomasik's experience dealing with tinnitus and methods of treating it:
https://briantomasik.com/my-very-mild-tinnitus/

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>>16136556
Brian Tomasik is another NPC that thinks that consciousness doesn't exist.

https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether

>The mantra of the more radical version of eliminativism is that we're not conscious but only think we are. How is that possible? "I just know I'm conscious!" But any thoughts you have about your being conscious are fallible. I believe there are bugs in the vast network of computation that produces thoughts like "I'm conscious in a way that generates a hard problem of consciousness." No thought you have is guaranteed to be free from bugs, and it seems more likely -- given the basically useless additional complexity of postulating a metaphysically privileged thing called consciousness -- to suppose that our attribution of metaphysically privileged consciousness to ourselves is a bug in our cognitive architectures. This is a relatively simple way to escape the whole consciousness conundrum. If it feels weird, that's because the bug in your neural wiring is causing you to reject the idea. Your thoughts exist within the system and can't get outside of it.

>Your brain is like a cult leader, and you are its follower. If your brain tells you it's conscious, you believe it. If your brain says there's a special "what-it's-like-ness" to experience beyond mechanical processes, you believe it. You take your cult leader's claims at face value because you can't get outside the cult and see things from any other perspective. Any judgments you make are always subject to revision by the cult leader before being broadcast. (Similar analogies help explain the feeling of time's flow, the feeling of free will, etc.)

>>16095227
Here's how Brian Tomasik dealt with his tinnitus:
https://briantomasik.com/my-very-mild-tinnitus/

Brian Tomasik's ideas on why physics exists:
https://reducing-suffering.org/why-does-physics-exist/

Brian Tomasik's views on the ethical implications of eternalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZEvp-H52Ig
https://reducing-suffering.org/eternalism-and-its-ethical-implications/

>Suppose someone took a highly detailed film recording of a person at a rate of quadrillions of frames per second and then stacked these frames one by one next to each other. Would the resulting collection contain a conscious playing-out of the person? (Thanks to Mihnea Maftei for originally coming up with this thought experiment.)

>Note that a temporal reductionist is not committed to saying "yes", because (A) compiling spatially contiguous frames within a small subset of a temporal slice of physics is not ontologically the same thing as (B) compiling full snapshots of the universe as a whole across time slices. Note that in case (B), the snapshots don't "exist within" anything because there can't be anything outside the universe. That would be like having a positive real number outside the range [0, infinity).

>That said, I do wonder whether I would consider a highly elaborate flip book to have a nonzero degree of moral importance. After all, the successive snapshots that it contains would be best described by the same kinds of physical update rules as the successive moments of real physics are, which suggests that the same sort of causal relationships exist between the snapshots as exist between real physical moments.

https://briantomasik.com/my-very-mild-tinnitus/

Space colonization should be banned. All it will do is spread pointless suffering to other planets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7nsv4n_Bgk

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https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

Brian Tomasik's experience with tinnitus and how he treated it:
https://briantomasik.com/my-very-mild-tinnitus/

>>15721641
Arguments for and against the existence of infinity:
https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

>Is infinity real or just a fiction of our minds? I briefly review a few arguments for and against the existence of infinity from physics and philosophy, and I conclude that neither side is obviously right. A further question is whether we should prudentially believe in infinity because if it does exist, everything we do matters vastly more. Within a given ontological framework this argument is sound, but different ontological frameworks (e.g., ultrafinitism vs. transfinitism) are not directly comparable. I personally hope infinity does not exist so that the universe contains only finitely much suffering, but unfortunately I think it's reasonably likely that the universe is literally infinite. There remain numerous puzzles in how we approach the ontology and ethics of infinity, many of which may be best left to the future to sort out.

>>15212739
https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

>Is infinity real or just a fiction of our minds? I briefly review a few arguments for and against the existence of infinity from physics and philosophy, and I conclude that neither side is obviously right. A further question is whether we should prudentially believe in infinity because if it does exist, everything we do matters vastly more. Within a given ontological framework this argument is sound, but different ontological frameworks (e.g., ultrafinitism vs. transfinitism) are not directly comparable. I personally hope infinity does not exist so that the universe contains only finitely much suffering, but unfortunately I think it's reasonably likely that the universe is literally infinite. There remain numerous puzzles in how we approach the ontology and ethics of infinity, many of which may be best left to the future to sort out.

https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

>Is infinity real or just a fiction of our minds? I briefly review a few arguments for and against the existence of infinity from physics and philosophy, and I conclude that neither side is obviously right. A further question is whether we should prudentially believe in infinity because if it does exist, everything we do matters vastly more. Within a given ontological framework this argument is sound, but different ontological frameworks (e.g., ultrafinitism vs. transfinitism) are not directly comparable. I personally hope infinity does not exist so that the universe contains only finitely much suffering, but unfortunately I think it's reasonably likely that the universe is literally infinite. There remain numerous puzzles in how we approach the ontology and ethics of infinity, many of which may be best left to the future to sort out.

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>Isaac Arthur
There are a lot of people like this who are examples of this sort of thing. Brian Tomasik might be another person who isn't conscious.

https://longtermrisk.org/the-eliminativist-approach-to-consciousness/#Denying_consciousness_altogether

>>15071509
An article I found on arguments for and against the existence of infinity:
https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

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And Tomasik's Essays on Reducing Suffering

https://reducing-suffering.org/

https://reducing-suffering.org/believe-infinity/

>Is infinity real or just a fiction of our minds? I briefly review a few arguments for and against the existence of infinity from physics and philosophy, and I conclude that neither side is obviously right. A further question is whether we should prudentially believe in infinity because if it does exist, everything we do matters vastly more. Within a given ontological framework this argument is sound, but different ontological frameworks (e.g., ultrafinitism vs. transfinitism) are not directly comparable. I personally hope infinity does not exist so that the universe contains only finitely much suffering, but unfortunately I think it's reasonably likely that the universe is literally infinite. There remain numerous puzzles in how we approach the ontology and ethics of infinity, many of which may be best left to the future to sort out.

>Reducing suffering requires knowing what suffering exists, where, and in what quantities. Ontological investigation of physics and mathematics bears on what answers we give to those questions. In particular, it seems very relevant to know whether there's such a thing as infinity. Can there be infinitely many organisms? Can the universe exist for an infinite duration? How do we make ethical valuations when infinities are in play? This piece reviews a few broad ideas about the nature of infinity, but it's only an introduction to a much bigger subject.

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Lawns also cause a huge amount of insect suffering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlQhV4f8KiI
https://reducing-suffering.org/convert-grass-lawns-to-gravel-to-reduce-insect-suffering/

>Most insects die soon after birth, and their lives probably contain more suffering than happiness. If you have a lawn that you actively maintain, you should consider converting your grass to hard landscape materials like gravel, or to artificial turf, to reduce plant biomass and therefore insect suffering. This could save you labor in the long run, reduces your probability of tick bites, and may be good for the environment. It may prevent at least hundreds of insects from suffering per dollar and might even save you money. However, if you don't actively manage your lawn, the calculation becomes less clear because eliminating a grass lawn might slightly contribute to climate change.

>Note: I assume that in many places, neighborhood rules or building codes might prevent you from replacing a lawn with gravel. Would artificial turf be acceptable? Also, maybe it would be allowed to at least put a strip of rocks around the perimeter of your home, or something like that? Doing so might also slightly reduce the number of insects that come indoors. Finally, when picking out a house, you can consider gravel-friendliness as one factor. Other things being equal, it seems better to choose a house in a more rural area where you can buy a larger amount of more secluded land.

>If you can't use gravel, you could consider adding a porch or other structure that would cover some grass, although the amount of land covered per unit cost might be small.

https://reducing-suffering.org/the-cost-of-kids/

>The present-value cost of having a child may be at least $300K (measured in US dollars as of roughly 2012) when both direct expenditures and opportunity costs are considered. This shows the value of using the most effective birth-control methods, like the implant and vasectomy. That said, some people may find having children very important to their wellbeing, and in such cases, having children may be worth the cost.

>What is the financial cost of having a child? To many people, it's the amount of money spent on food, clothing, housing, transportation, tuition, and so on. One calculator suggests that these costs might total ~$500K for a kid in the US who goes to private college, although I believe that figure does not account for the time value of money, and the estimated costs of living may be more than what frugal altruists would require. A better estimate might be something like ~$150K (assuming ~$12K of expenditures per year over 18 years at a 5% real rate of return) plus ~$60K (based on ~$160K for college ~20 years in the future using a 5% real rate of return).