This is bad at least a dozen reasons. The most fundamental one is an unwillingness to accept a material reality. The second one is an unfamiliarity with the best arguments against material reality.
Light projects from a light source -> Some of that light bounces off of my fern -> Some of the reflected light reaches my optical nerves -> This triggers a bio-electrical signal in my nervous system -> The patterns of bio-electrical signals are recognized by my brain as my fern.
There is a physical reality of photons and carbon atoms and the medium of space/time in which all of this occurs. Some people get so caught up in what's happening in the nervous system that they discount the very large amount of empirical data we have that demonstrates the existence of a physical reality. Even if we are in a simulation, the simulation seems to be operating this layer we call physical reality.
> To get there, you often need to slow down your brain's electrical activity, moving from active Beta waves into Alpha or Theta waves through meditation or deep focus. This blurs the boundary between the inner "self" and the outer world.
Quantum Mysticism, a.k.a what if we write about spirituality as if we would report pop-science.
It's been a while since I came across one as flagrant as this article.
> Your coffee mug isn't naturally brown and warm: it is a cloud of atoms made of 99.9999% empty space, with no color, no texture, and no intrinsic smell.
A tiger too is "just a cloud of atoms" but nevertheless I wouldn't like to share a room with it. The article sounds a bit like a variant of Solipsism.
htf did this get to the front page? It seems like a dorm room fever dream. Of course, we all had fun discussing this stuff in detail, but then we all got up the next day and said "naw, that was mad. But good fun".
> This has always been a problem of human psychology, but it seems to be getting worse.
It’s been getting worse since the invention of the TV. Each subsequent advance has pushed us further from base reality into a mediated simulacrum. With the dawn of LLMs, people finally seem to be losing their grip on what it means for something to be “real”.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen people deny evidence for something, even evidence that’s right in front of them, just because an AI “said so”.
I can’t totally blame AI, though. People were already losing their grip before Covid. I can’t tell you how many adults I knew who suddenly decided they were witches, or otherkin, or superhero vigilantes.
Almost every assertion made in the first paragraph is erroneous, the presentation is childish, and frankly as post-cannabis speculations go this is low-tier.
And that's an attempt to be as generous as possible to the author and their work.
Marx ultimately had the same aim, the same MO - encourage people to believe whatever vacuous bullshit you can gin up that helps you gain power. Once you’re in charge, it doesn’t matter if it was all a lie, and you can just get rid of anyone who dissents.
This is bad at least a dozen reasons. The most fundamental one is an unwillingness to accept a material reality. The second one is an unfamiliarity with the best arguments against material reality.
Light projects from a light source -> Some of that light bounces off of my fern -> Some of the reflected light reaches my optical nerves -> This triggers a bio-electrical signal in my nervous system -> The patterns of bio-electrical signals are recognized by my brain as my fern.
There is a physical reality of photons and carbon atoms and the medium of space/time in which all of this occurs. Some people get so caught up in what's happening in the nervous system that they discount the very large amount of empirical data we have that demonstrates the existence of a physical reality. Even if we are in a simulation, the simulation seems to be operating this layer we call physical reality.
> To get there, you often need to slow down your brain's electrical activity, moving from active Beta waves into Alpha or Theta waves through meditation or deep focus. This blurs the boundary between the inner "self" and the outer world.
Quantum Mysticism, a.k.a what if we write about spirituality as if we would report pop-science.
It's been a while since I came across one as flagrant as this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!%3F
> Your coffee mug isn't naturally brown and warm: it is a cloud of atoms made of 99.9999% empty space, with no color, no texture, and no intrinsic smell.
A tiger too is "just a cloud of atoms" but nevertheless I wouldn't like to share a room with it. The article sounds a bit like a variant of Solipsism.
> Your Brain Doesn't Perceive the World, It Translates It
Well I'm out.
[dead]
htf did this get to the front page? It seems like a dorm room fever dream. Of course, we all had fun discussing this stuff in detail, but then we all got up the next day and said "naw, that was mad. But good fun".
Someone’s got an AI psychosis.
I think this article doesn't use a very good definition of "physical reality".
Like most writing along these lines, it conflates physical reality, with the human conscious perception of physical reality.
This has always been a problem of human psychology, but it seems to be getting worse.
Typographical note: Grey text on a black background is really bad for reading.
> This has always been a problem of human psychology, but it seems to be getting worse.
It’s been getting worse since the invention of the TV. Each subsequent advance has pushed us further from base reality into a mediated simulacrum. With the dawn of LLMs, people finally seem to be losing their grip on what it means for something to be “real”.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen people deny evidence for something, even evidence that’s right in front of them, just because an AI “said so”.
I can’t totally blame AI, though. People were already losing their grip before Covid. I can’t tell you how many adults I knew who suddenly decided they were witches, or otherkin, or superhero vigilantes.
Almost every assertion made in the first paragraph is erroneous, the presentation is childish, and frankly as post-cannabis speculations go this is low-tier.
And that's an attempt to be as generous as possible to the author and their work.
I'm not into pseudoscience stuffs
The billionaires and their bloggers have finally discovered dialectic materialism. Marx had the same view of consciousness:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938...
They'll co-opt anything if it raises the IPO price.
Marx ultimately had the same aim, the same MO - encourage people to believe whatever vacuous bullshit you can gin up that helps you gain power. Once you’re in charge, it doesn’t matter if it was all a lie, and you can just get rid of anyone who dissents.