Let hear them conjects
My BS, unprovable hypothesis: The Golden Age of Piracy was actually a successful Socialist movement, with Nassau being a disruptively successful enclave of Socialism in action. The pirates deeply threatened the budding power structures in the US (not conjecture) and the entrenched powers in Europe. While some powers, most notably royalty, were willing to use pirates as mercenaries (privateers), there was an excess of democracy and human concern (somewhat my conjecture) among the Nassau pirates. The Nassau pirates had pensions, a form of worker’s comp, disability, democratic command structures at sea, and healthcare (such as it was given the era). According to the historical texts on the Nassau pirates, there were almost no written records, which strikes me as especially odd since they had so many long-running financial and governing processes.
The reason my memory seems to be fuzzy at times, even for some things that happened recently, comes down to the fact that I was put under for surgery back in 2011 and was under for longer than they expected due to finding something they didn’t expect.
"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.
That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies.
You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
- Hub, Secondhand Lions (2003)
That P != NP.
Also, that all non-trivial Riemann zeros in the critical band are at 1/2.
The Pizzagate conspiracy was created to cover up any media coverage of the police reports from the early 90s when Trump was hanging with Epstein and dumping ‘used’ underage girls at a pizza parlor the next morning.
The Piazzagate conspiracy theory was created by bored 4channers to see how ridiculous a story they can invent and how many people will just believe it. I don’t think anyone realised it would get as big as it did and then they did it again with Q.
Was it really a bunch of bored nerds, or did a PR agent make an anonymous post to start the rumor mill?
When we die, we’re recycled. There’s no Heaven, Hell, Rainbow Bridge, Valhalla .etc Because those are man-made constructs to give people a sense of belonging based on what you did in life. Someone talked to me about the Egg Theory and while I have a bit of skepticism towards it, I do understand a plausibility about it.
And if anything from the Egg Theory is true, then cool, I’d love nothing more than to be recycled and born into a life from the past to live it out again.
Most of my moral convictions aren’t provable because the most basic ideas are simply axioms. “You should be a good person” cannot be justified in a way that’s non-circular, and defining “good” is also similarly arbitrary. The only true “evidence” is that people tend to agree on vague definitions in theory. Which is certainly a good thing, imo, but it’s not actually provable that what we consider “good” is actually the correct way to act.
I have started creating a moral framework, though. I’ve been identifying and classifying particular behaviors and organizing them in a hierarchy. So far it’s going pretty well. At least my arbitrariness can be well-defined!
You should watch The Good Place and/or read the book How to be Perfect by Michael Schur. He made the show too.
He starts from the same standpoint as you and then explores moral philosophy to find answers.
I think it is easy enough to argue without making it circular. As for “good”, I don’t think an objective absolute and universal definition is necessary.
The argument would be to consider it an optimization problem, and the interesting part, what the fitness function is. If we want to maximise happiness and freedom, any pair of people is transient. If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them. Kinda like the “do unto others”, except less prone to a masochist going around hurting people.
If we want to maximise happiness and freedom
But that’s what I’m saying, that choice is axiomatic. I think most people would agree, but it’s a belief, not an unquestionable truth. You’re choosing something to optimize and defining that to be good.
If it matters that they be kind to you, it is the exact same reasoning for why you should be to kind to them
Only if you believe that everyone fundamentally deserves the same treatment. It’s easy to overlook an axiom like that because it seems so obvious, but it is something that we have chosen to believe.
But that’s what I’m saying, that choice is axiomatic. I think most people would agree, but it’s a belief, not an unquestionable truth. You’re choosing something to optimize and defining that to be good.
I’m not really arguing against this tho (perhaps the choosing part, but I’ll get to it). I’m saying that a goal post of “axiomaric universal good” isn’t all that interesting, because, as you say, there is likely no such thing. The goal shouldn’t therefore be to find the global maximum, but to have a heuristic that is “universal enough”. That’s what I tried to make a point of, in that the golden rule would, at face value, suggests that a masochistic should go around and inflict pain onto others.
It shouldn’t be any particular person’s understanding, but a collectively agreed understanding. Which is in a way how it works, as this understanding is a part of culture, and differs from one to the other. Some things considered polite in the US is rude in Scandinavia, and vice versa. But, regardless, there will be some fundamentals that are universal enough, and we can consider that the criteria for what to maximise.
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We likely live in a simulation.
Assuming it’s possible to create a simulation, the odds of us being in a simulation is 50%
But if you can create one simulation, maybe you can create 1 million. Or maybe you can create nested simulations.
So even if the chance of creating a simulation is 1%, but the creation of one simulation means millions are created, the odds of us living in a simulation are above 99.99%.
Another theory is the Boltzmann Brain. Basically the idea that a brain can spontaneously appear in space:
By one calculation, a Boltzmann brain would appear as a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum after a time interval of 101050 years.
Which means if the universe lasts forever, but has already reached a point where worlds can’t form, there’s infinite time for something as complex as a brain to suddenly spawn. Which also means it’s more likely that you don’t exist and are just a brain that will last for a nanosecond before disappearing, and none of this is real. In fact, in a universe that lasts forever, the fact you are a brain that will disappear in a nanosecond is more likely than you being a human with a real past.
It’s been a looooong nanosecond.
That’s what you think!
Either greed or religion has killed the most people before their time. One of them has to go.
Can we get rid of both?
How about god complexes? Should those be on our radar?
That might be provable
That I’d be a fool to strongly hold a belief without equally strong evidence.
Did this man just call himself a fool?
Everyones a fool and knows nothing :)
I’d argue we have lots of evidence that people who believe things strongly without evidence are dumb.
That consciousness is real and not an illusion
But reality is just experienced through consciousness so what would that reality be?
Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.
That humans are apex predators, and we have been so for upwards of 2.5 million years. Following from this, I believe that most chronic illnesses that we have today (e.g. obesity, diabetes, mental illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, PCOS, etc.) are caused by us straying from eating diets with lots of fatty meat.
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I believe in the afterlife.
I also believe that humans have the unconscious ability to influence their relative perception of time. Think of all the times that seemed to “fly by,” or moments that “last forever.” I think you do this unknowingly, and it’s usually connected to a heightened emotional state, which means you have an increased level of some neurochemical. I don’t think there’s a specific one responsible for altering our perception of time, just that they correlate.
That we have the ability to alter our perception of time is what allows us to have an “afterlife.”
What I believe, without evidence, is that when you die, your brain does a massive dump of all of it’s dopamine and serotonin, as well everything else, that let’s your final moment be one of peace and acceptance. Additionally, you will stretch your final moments till it seems a lifetime, all while hallucinating massively because of this huge dump of neurochemicals into your neocortex.
So during your final moments, whether you believe you’re going to a heaven or a hell, you’re right. Because that’s exactly where you’ll imagine yourself. If you think you’ll bounce around a field of billowy clouds while visiting loved ones with all your pets by your side, then you will. If you think you deserve to drown in a river of hellfire while the world laughs, then you will.
As an athiest, it kinda gives me something to look forward to. One final hurrah before nothingness.
