Excrubulent
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Anon is a survivor 1 week ago:
Sorry for the short novel but this topic is fascinating to me.
Okay, so it looks like “existence ex-nihilo” is a phrase I cooked up from “creation ex-nihilo”, and the accepted term is more like “first cause”, but it explains the problem I have with a purely material universe. Either our entire universe with all its complexity and scale spontaneously exists from nothing - “ex-nihilo”, or no first cause - or it has infinite regress, an infinite age, which doesn’t fit with what we know of thermodynamics. We would need an infinite source of useful energy to maintain a universe for infinite time.
The pure materialists have all sorts of rebuttals. I’ve heard of quantum spontaneity as a first cause, but like… for quantum spontaneity to exist, there has to be a substrate of physical laws that cause quantum effects to happen in the first place. That can’t be the baseline of existence.
And if they say that cause & effect breaks down at the boundaries of the universe, well, that’s just another way of saying that it gives way to a supernatural reality. Because ultimately science is about cause & effect, it is about the laws of nature, so anything that goes outside of that schema is, by definition, supernatural. That’s all supernatural means, beyond the natural. You can also talk abut physical laws vs the metaphysical, it’s just different words for the same thing.
And science is fundamentally only capable of interrogating the natural, the physical. The analogy I’ve used to explain this to materialistic atheists is of a simulation. Imagine we exist entirely within a simulation. Well, if we wanted to use the science that exists within this simulation to interrogate the world outside the the computer we’re in, we couldn’t. You could not design an experiment that would give repeatable results because whatever existed in the physical world beyond the simulation would be entirely unaffected by it. The creators could walk away or change the external environment at any moment, they could turn off the simulation, unplug it, move it to another continent, wait 20 years and plug it back in and we would have no way of even knowing it had happened. They would be outside of our space and time entirely. They could edit out our attempts to understand. The simulation idea is just spirituality with a veneer of sciencey-sounding language. It’s functionally no different.
So any evidence of anything beyond the physical is going to necessarily be anecdotal. You can do surveys and such things, but you can’t get a systematic data set. It could easily be that non-physical phenomena are shy of direct inspection, who knows.
My partner back when we were both gradually leaving the faith took an online philosophy course from some university, and I sort of took it in over their shoulder. The 101 course started with a discussion about the existence of god, which is the classical way of discussing spirituality. It probably helps that “god” is one syllable whereas “metaphysical reality” is seven. The basic takeaway was, we’ve been discussing this for thousands of years and nobody has yet come up with a slam-dunk answer either way. This is entry-level stuff in philosophy.
The reddit atheist bros are doing philosophy, but they don’t realise it, so they just keep tripping over their own balls. They want to use a “null hypothesis” and shift the “burden of proof” but there is nothing more or less natural or “null” about assuming no first cause as there is about assuming a cause that exists beyond the boundaries of cause and effect. They refuse to learn any philosophy, instead assuming that the tools of science can answer everything, but that in itself is a purely materialist assumption, so it’s downstream from philosophy. They are literally begging the question. They’re right that science cannot disprove spirituality, but it can’t prove it either, regardless of what is real. In my experience it’s very hard to get them to see this point.
Their arguments in my experience are always geared towards attacking evangelical christianity, which is actually an easy target. Evangelicals are fucking ridiculous when you strip away their respectability and institutional support. But then when they’re done with that target they turn the same weapons on the whole notion of spirituality and it just blows up in their faces. This is why these kinds of atheists are also called “christian atheists”. They just don’t want to admit that’s what they are; it’s purely reactionary. Their thought leaders seem to be mainly intellectually lazy grifters who have long since drifted back into an alliance with christianity and started attacking islam instead. Almost like they were always just attacking easy targets and the audience for anti-christian stuff turned out to be smaller than the one for anti-muslim stuff, at least after 9/11.
As for what I personally believe, I’m actually fine with the existence of an afterlife, and with its nonexistence. I found The Good Place ending amazing in this regard. They handled the notion of death so well, and they hit on something fascinating, which is that even if you’ve seen a thousand afterlives and been alive for billions of Jeremy Bearimy’s and seen and done all that you’re curious about in the universe you still have no idea what awaits beyond death. Oblivion is not a thing that you can grasp.
So yeah, I’ve realised that it doesn’t matter either way.
- Comment on Anon is a survivor 1 week ago:
Not by itself no, but it was a vector to be indoctrinated into a strong belief in a christian afterlife at a very young age.
I no longer hold any of those beliefs. I now think that existence ex-nihilo and creation by something outside of the natural universe are two equally absurd possibilities, and science is fundamentally incapable of resolving that question.
I have certainly had odd, even otherworldly experiences, but I couldn’t say what any of them meant or if they mean anything at all. I am deeply suspicious of anyone that claims to have the answers.
- Comment on Some reasons, not all reasons. 1 week ago:
Yeah, this seems like a case of “it’s not my job to interperet my boss’s incomprehensible behaviour on their behalf”.
- Comment on Anon is a survivor 1 week ago:
Oh I do know about that, I’ve had a near death experience myself, your body/brain has an uncanny sense that says “you are dangling over the precipice right now.”
I just mean that until it actually happens, there is no true confirmation, and after, you can’t report back, that’s why it’s called a mystery.
In fact from the way that person is talking it sounds like they may have had such an experience, and maybe now they’re doubting that it’s real.
- Comment on Anon is a survivor 1 week ago:
Every single person who ever lived could use this logic and they’d never see it disproven.
- Comment on Srsly 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, that scans for me. It breaks up “getting ready…for a night out”, but I think it works.
I think honestly it’s just a reality that, if brevity is the soul of wit, then a punchy sentence needs to be compact and that means you need to get a bit funky with the grammar, so maybe the audience has to do a little work.
Maybe also “at which” is fine too, and I was just overthinking it.
One thing I won’t bend on is that “to be starting to get ready” is objectively worse in every respect and is the main thing that throws people about the sentence.
- Comment on Srsly 3 weeks ago:
This is a slightly wacky sentence. It’s not wrong - it does make sense and communicates the idea, it just forces you to do a bit of work to straighten it out in your head.
I think the biggest issue is the way they unnecessarily used present continuous tense with “be starting to get”.
It’s convoluted and adds syllables. You could eliminate the “be” and “to” entirely and change it to “start getting”. That starts with an active verb which feels stronger and more natural.
So then it would be:
“This can’t possibly be the same 9pm I used to start getting ready for a night out at”
That preserves the flow & punch of the delivery but shortens & simplifies it a lot without losing anything imo.
Also ending a sentence with a preposition can be awkward. You read “at” and you need to refer it back to 9pm near the start of the sentence. Plus it comes after another preposition, which itself is not acting as a preposition but as part of the nouned phrase “night out”, so you end up with “out at”. Again, not wrong, but it can be awkward. I think using “at which” can move it closer to the noun but it’s not necessarily better that way.
Make that change and it’s “This can’t possibly be the same 9pm at which I used to start getting ready for a night out”
It’s a little easier to parse, but honestly I think it loses something, because it doesn’t have a casual delivery. “At which” is evidence that the sentence was very deliberately constructed. It adds a syllable and loses some punch. I’d stick with just the first change personally.
- Comment on It's a tragedeigh 3 weeks ago:
Maxwell immediately adopting an unexplained and unflappable admiration for Wealwell is such a Murph thing to do and I love it.
- Comment on It's a tragedeigh 3 weeks ago:
“Samwell, Blanewell, Roywell, Hatwell, Wealwell, Johnwell”
- Comment on Finally paid off my Costco hotdog 🙏 3 weeks ago:
Also my mum brought me some costco hotdogs the other day. It’s hard to get good American food in grocery stores here in Australia but those smokey delicious franks have me considering a membership. So good.
- Comment on Finally paid off my Costco hotdog 🙏 3 weeks ago:
This has a similar energy to, “Lend me a dollar, but give me fifty cents. Then I’ll owe you fifty cents, and you’ll owe me fifty cents, and we’ll be even.”
- Comment on Historically love sugar 3 weeks ago:
Do you have a sauce for that claim?
- Comment on Hytale, once touted as the Minecraft killer, is ceasing development 3 weeks ago:
“We are legion.”
- Comment on So um, america just started another war in the middle east. We're going to need a shit ton more memes to distract americans from the nightmare they are enduring. Thanks in advance... 4 weeks ago:
Iran getting nuclear weapons would be an immense boon to peace and stability in the Middle East.
I think you just put your finger on exactly why the US doesn’t want that to ever happen.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
That was me, actually, and I didn’t run out, it is still valid. You are denying that we should criticise the dems for their genocide, and you haven’t gone back on that. That is a kind of genocide denial.
Your entire point in calling me a pedophile was that you literally could not substantiate it. You were talking out of your ass. You were done with any sort of argument.
It’s amazing that you don’t see what that says about you, just like you don’t seem to see what an absolute repudiation of the democrats it is to say that it is useless to accuse them of genocide because the choices in your “democracy” cannot exclude genocide.
And you wonder why so many people stayed home.
It was already turbo genocide, and the idea that what’s happening now is somehow worse is just your fantasy.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
I just want to point out that you’ve given up trying to make an argument and are now simply calling the other person a pedophile. That’s about the biggest admission you can make that you have nothing to say.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
At least you didn’t spend that comment on genocide denial, so let’s call it an improvement.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
That’s weak, doesn’t explain anything, and I think I’m done giving oxygen to a genocide denier.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
I think you think the electorate likes genocide, or at least you said so, so I don’t understand why you think accusing Joe of genocide would have lost an election.
This isn’t hard to figure out, but I guess my brain isn’t broken by genocide apologia so I maybe I can’t understand.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
But every time we said the dems were doing a genocide we were supposed to say that Trump would somehow be worse, but when complain about us talking about the dems’ complicity in genocide, somehow you don’t have to mention that it’s a genocide? Because you didn’t do that.
And despite the fact that you acknowledge the dems are complicit in genocide, you have no criticism of that becuase… something about democracy?
Also if the elctorate wants genocide that badly, then why is it bad if we put the genocide at their feet? Aren’t we helping them in that case? What are you upset about then?
If the American people really didn’t want genocide they would elect candidates in primaries that were anti genocide (they didn’t) or they would vote for the candidate who wanted to just maintain the genocide as it is instead of accelerating it (they didn’t).
You should say, “Yes, that’s my favourite genocider! A vote for Joe is a vote for genocide!” Waves tiny US flag.
Your genocide apologia is breaking your brain.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
So are you mad at the dems for making the genocide even worse by doing a genocide which helped them lose an election thus making the genocide worse?
Why is it leftsts’ fault for telling the truth and not dems’ fault for making it true?
Why do we have to be fair to the dems to agree that Trump’s genocide would be worse when the dems worked so hard to make “worse” virtually unimaginable?
Why do we have to be fair to you by always saying Trump is worse but you don’t have to be fair to us by acknowledging that there is an actual genocide?
Just because you have some mental gymnastics to explain why the dems’ genocide is somehow something we shouldn’t talk about doesn’t mean you’re not denying it.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
If mentioning a genocide helped elect Trump, then doing the genocide helped Trump far more, so I don’t know why you’re not attacking the dems for that.
The genocide charge wouldn’t carry any weight if it wasn’t true.
You’re a genocide denier. You’re not denying it’s happening, you’re just denying it’s worth talking about, which is maybe worse.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
Also apparently leftists have to temper our criticism of a genocide by mentioning that Trump is always somehow worse despite there being no evidence that it is materially any worse under him - that’s literally a counterfactual - but somehow this person gets to criticise us for mentioning a genocide without acknowledging that it is actually a genocide.
It’s genocide denial, but they’re not denying it’s happening, they’re just denying that it’s worth talking about, which is maybe worse?
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
You’re angrier at leftists for correctly calling out the dems’ genocide than you are at the dems for their genocide.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
Calling a genocide a genocide is not a partisan issue, and if you think we need to temper our discussion of genocide so that your preferred genocider can win a fucking election then you are a genocide denier.
The way for the dems to dfferentiate themselves was to stop doing a genocide. They couldn’t do that, and so they enabled the worse option because they were just too horny for killing brown kids.
- Comment on A game you "didn't know it was bad 'til people told you so"? 5 weeks ago:
Honestly less frantic gameplay sounds good to me, I got sick of the “oh god they’re after me now I fell oh well try again” parts of the gameplay. I might take a look. Thanks!
- Comment on A game you "didn't know it was bad 'til people told you so"? 5 weeks ago:
I played the first game and thought it was okay but not great. What were the changes? Maybe they’ll suit me since I’m not so attached to the original.
- Comment on Time sure flies. I remember pausing my N64 to watch the news coverage. 1 month ago:
GodFUCKINGdamnit please don’t remind me how easily I trust random commenters to report information.
At this point even if I click on it there’s no guarantee one of you fuckers hasn’t vandalised the page.
- Comment on Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit 1 month ago:
Some real “steel is heavier than feathers” energy coming off this teacher.
- Comment on Kid gave a reasonable answer without all the math bullshit 1 month ago:
Not only that, the two statements in the premise are simply given. How is the child to know one of them is false? At that point, why not say Marty ate more than Luis and therefore the fractions must be different? Maybe the fractions are wrong and Marty ate more.
Just an absolutely terrible question if that’s supposed to be the answer. I’d guess the teacher didn’t write the question and didn’t understand the answer.