It’s daylight now @6am.
@ Home. Climb out of car.
Shut the gate and Nightshift behind me.
In the Weed Garden a Crimson Rose is in Full Bloom.
I must divert.
Nose deep in the Petals.
Blisful Contemplation.
Amen.
Time to Chill.
Sleep.
The fool hath said in his heart “There is no God”!
Pompous and self-deluded Atheists…of various degree.
John Cleese, Penn Jillette, Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, (above) Frederick Nietzsche, (below) George Carlin,, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Adam Savage, Michio Kaku
(I exclude Carl Sagan…. as though he was an evolutionist he was an honest Agnostic not an atheist)
Without wasting too much precious time, I wish to hack off another limb from the Mythical Atheist Beast.
It is connected to that absurd delusion that reason and science are the preserve of Atheism…
Many Atheists rationalize that the theistic mind is given wholly over to Superstition and Mysticism, and as such opposes Naturalistic explanations and scientific progress. They love to quote the common interpretation of Galileo’s conflict with the Roman Catholic church re The Heliocentric model of the Solar system as being typical of The Religious mentality, and other such gems as ‘American Farmers superstitious attitude towards Jefferson’s scientifically designed Steel plow replacing the wooden Old world style plow ‘proposing the steel ‘would poison the soil’.
It is via such arguments that Atheists sit smugly in their assumed intellectual and rational superiority, and further argue that with the advance of Naturalistic science God himself will be increasingly squeezed out of existence… there being nothing left for him and his hocus pocus to do.
Now I of course understand that superstition and myth has always been a problem for mankind and that it does thrive in ignorance, yet I would argue that Atheists are not immune to either.
I suggest that atheism is itself a form of Anti-scientific superstitious Ignorance!
Yet let me show you that contrary to the Atheist assertion that Theists are quick to accept Superstitious explanations for phenomena , that Judeo-Christian theism has always maintained strong opposition to superstition, and condemned it, and that The Judeo-Christian cosmology embraces the idea that the Natural realm obeys Natural Laws.
First of all The Book of Genesis states that after the six days in which God had restored the Universe to order and created Man, that on the seventh day he rested from his work.
…and yet the Universe continued to function!
This shows that not only is God distinct from the universe, but also that it does not require any ‘work’ from God to function. Ie He has set it up so that it maintains itself and operates independently.
Thus while Egyptian and Maori myths may say that The Sun rises and sets according to the ‘work’ of deities and spirit beings, the bible does not say this.
The Bible says The Universe operates according to the Order of God’s design.
It was in appreciation of this Divine order that Einstein said that the Natural Laws inspire Awe and reveal super intelligent design.
“God is a Geometer”. “God forever arithematises” saith other Mathematicians.
Now let’s see how the Bible disproves the Atheists idea that Biblical theism corrodes the mind and renders a believer susceptible to superstition and mysticism by looking at biblical accounts and personalities.
Let’s consider the Birth of Isaac, which was a Divine intervention into the Natural order.
Now The Book of Genesis lays out the strict Natural Laws of Kinds… Humans give birth to Humans, fish to fish, Sheep to sheep, etc.
Furthermore in 2000 BC, it was understood by Experience that a woman’s natural ability to bear children was limited to her youth.
This was Natural.
And so when Abraham told his aged wife Sarah that God was going to ‘open her womb’ and that she was going to bear him a son… she did not automatically… superstitiously believe Abraham.
Instead she laughed! (Isaac means Laughter)
This is because she knew that ‘Naturally speaking’ she was too old to have children, and that though she believed in God, still she did not expect ‘Divine intervention’ to step in and alter the natural order of things.
Yet She did fall pregnant, and History was forever altered.
This shows that Sarah’s Naturalistic rationale, though understandable was wrong!
That God can and does intervene in the natural order when it suits his purposes to do so.
This is what miracles are.
Rare and exceptional interventions.
What is important to appreciate in this historic account is that Sarah displayed what we today might call ‘a healthy skepticism’ towards miraculous interventions of the Natural Order.
This attitude explodes the atheist notion that Theists are Brain dead morons given to swallow suppositious and mystical ideas and fables.
We find this same attitude… a resistance to accept supernatural explanations… in the events that surround the incarnation. When Righteous Joseph discovers his espoused Woman Mary is Pregnant with Christ, Knowing how woman get Pregnant he naturally assumes she has had sex with someone else and was thinking about ditching her.
It was only when he is visited by an angel whom explains Mary’s miraculous condition that he accepts Mary has been faithful and that the Child she is carrying is very special.
Again this account shows that the Jewish Theistic mind does not leap to supernatural …’Superstitious’ conclusions.
When Miracles do occur Theists can be very stubborn and slow to accept them.
When The woman returned from Christ’s tomb declaring he had Risen from the dead the response of the Disciples is a natural incredulity, not belief.
They check the tomb themselves, and discuss it as a mystery. Thomas Refuses to believe it point blank…unless he puts his fingers in Christ’s nail holes!
Christ Obliged him.
The Miracle of the resurrection changed World history. The Disciples of Christ, and the Apostle Paul were willing to die for the testimony that Christ really did rise from the Dead.
This was not something they herd.
This was not an ideological ‘faith’.
It was something they witnessed as really happening!
A real time event… an Extra-ordinary Empirical Fact!
The reality is Miracles only have the power to amaze if the person recognizes them as deviations from the normal nature.
The miracles of Christ we see this truth.
Ie whenever Christ performs a miracle it creates a sensation!
People are well aware something unusual has occurred.
That is why Miracles are considered ‘Signs and wonders’ because they violate what is known to be the understood Natural Order of Things!
The Narrow Atheist mindset is a throwback from the ignorant past when Materialists assumed the Universe was Eternal. Though this cosmology has been overthrown, Atheists have clung to their superstitions, and would still have you think that The Natural order is absolute, and thus to believe in a supernatural realm is to be utterly deceived, yet the reality is That The natural order is a temporal, and finite, and dependent orderly system, which exists within a greater Super-natural/ primary reality… ie It is within the bounds of modern science to say that there was ‘a time’ when this universe did not exist, and neither did the Laws of physics as we know them.
True Science has caught up with the Bible!
The Universe is a created thing, and there is no good reason to say that super-natural events can not or have not ever taken place within the universe.
Statements such as ‘Miracles never happen’ are articles of blind faith… an unsubstantiated dogma which contradicts some of the Greatest milestones of recorded History.
To maintain this they enter into far fetched and convoluted attempts to explain away these recorded miraculous events of history like the celebration of the Passover, or the disciples belief in the Resurrection of Christ… in Naturalistic terms… eg they conjecture that Christ faked his death… or that his body was stolen… and one of their chestnuts they like to employ is thir delusion that ‘primitive theistic minds’ were ignorant of nature, and thus quick to accredit mystical causes for things they experienced.
Yet as my post has shown. Jews living 2 millennia ago were not ignorant of the natural order, nor were they quick to claim miracles or other supernatural explanations for things.
Thus the Atheist notions that theism necessarily corrupts the mind is proven false… It is their arse which is hanging out in the breeze!
Isaac Newton.
Their delusion is also exposed by the reality that most of the greatest scientific Minds have been also men of Religious faith.
Science owes a great debt to Theists.
Thus it is the atheist whom is found to be self-deluded and irrational with their false dichotomies between Religion and science, between Faith and Reason.
I have encountered several times the Delusion of atheists that men of faith like myself are incapable of understanding how the Natural world functions and so have expressed that they would not trust in my capacity as an engineer!
Again Reality shows up just how Pompous these atheist delusions are.
My religious faith makes me a better Engineer than many of my contemporaries, not because I am more intelligent, but because it imposes ethical standards of behavior.
God is not the Author of confusion.
I aspire to emulate his Reason, and Purpose, and Art.
In environments of Laxity and poor work culture, my Christian Ethics drive me to resist the flow of apathy and maintain High Order discipline and Methodology even when I am Tired, or angry, or see that nobody else gives a damn.
This results in a consistently superior quality of workmanship …Better Engineering.
Christian Ethics inspire me to do an Honest Job, to go the extra mile to provide Good value to those whom employ my service, and not to cut corners to maximize my personal profit.
Consistent adherence to these ethics helped Me out perform hundreds of others to win ‘Contractor of the year 2012’ at Fonterra Te Rapa.
As a scientist, Christian values ought to keep your integrity to objective truth, as a higher priority than serving corrupt political agendas… like Global warming, etc… resisting the urge to provide Pseudo scientific endorsements of Ideas which may Bring personal wealth and Status via, government funding and pandering to popular delusions.
“… whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men…”. (Col 3vs23)
Thus it is that not only does Theism *not render me stupid and irrational*, It actually inspires Betters Engineering, Higher standards of scientific Rigor, etc… the very opposite of what Atheists assert.
Thus it is the Atheist whom today suffers superstition. They have deluded themselves as to the Efficacy of Theistic faith in stimulating, integrity to objective truth, and superior prowess via self-discipline in the Secular arts and in reason.
We live in a secular society which has actually Banned the teaching of Creation science and Christian values in our schools, thus is their any surprise that Today Science is in Disorder?
That Scientism and Atheism dominate our centers of learning and permeate the values and ideals of our society?
Secular Science has not saved us.
Science has been corrupted by Politics, Profit, and Atheism, and Atheist Pseudo science has in turn corrpted our politics and ethics.
Materialism has ‘successfully’ exorcised Man of his God given inalienable rights and unchained the Totalitarian secular state.
Materialism has destroyed Moral absolutes and rendered all ethics to be merely culturally relitive or Evolutionarily ‘expedient’.
Every type of phobia and crackpot idea is served up to us on a scientific dish.
The result is chaos and confusion… mass supperstition and delusion!
This is what the result of Materialism has been.
Divorcing Science from Theistic ethics.
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian, Libertarian, Dispensationalist, King James Bible believer.
This post is the second in a series of classic philosophy papers. The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist is Chapter Two of C. S. Lewis’s Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947)
First up was Nick Bostrom’s Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?. This post is also a follow-up to my follow-up to Bostrom’s paper, where I said
There are two fundamental worldviews that have currency today.
One I call Naturalism or the “bottom up” worldview. According to Naturalism, the world somehow got here by itself. It pulled itself up by its own bootstraps. …
The other I call Supernaturalism or the “top down” worldview. According to Supernaturalism, the world is an artefact. Someone or something made it. It didn’t get here by itself. …
C. S. Lewis makes the same distinction, but says it so much better. 🙂
The Naturalist and the Supernaturalist‘Gracious!’ exclaimed Mrs Snip, ‘and is there a place where people venture to live above ground?’ ‘I never heard of people living under ground,’ replied Tim, ‘before I came to Giant-Land’. ‘Came to Giant-Land!’ cried Mrs Snip, ‘why, isn’t everywhere Giant-Land?’
Roland Quizz, Giant-Land, chap xxxii.
I use the word Miracle to mean an interference with Nature by supernatural power.[1] Unless there exists, in addition to Nature, something else which we may call the supernatural, there can be no miracles. Some people believe that nothing exists except Nature; I call these people Naturalists. Others think that, besides Nature, there exists something else: I call them Supernaturalists. Our first question, therefore, is whether the Naturalists or the Supernaturalists are right. And here comes our first difficulty.
Before the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist can begin to discuss their difference of opinion, they must surely have an agreed definition both of Nature and of Supernature. But unfortunately it is almost impossible to get such a definition. Just because the Naturalist thinks that nothing but Nature exists, the word Nature means to him merely ‘everything’ or ‘the whole show’ or ‘whatever there is’. And if that is what we mean by Nature, then of course nothing else exists. The real question between him and the Supernaturalist has evaded us. Some philosophers have defined Nature as ‘What we perceive with our five senses’. But this also is unsatisfactory; for we do not perceive our own emotions in that way, and yet they are presumably ‘natural’ events. In order to avoid this deadlock and to discover what the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist are really differing about, we must approach our problem in a more roundabout way.
I begin by considering the following sentences (1) Are those his natural teeth or a set? (2) The dog in his natural state is covered with fleas. (3) I love to get away from tilled lands and metalled roads and be alone with Nature. (4) Do be natural. Why are you so affected? (5) It may have been wrong to kiss her but it was very natural.
A common thread of meaning in all these usages can easily be discovered. The natural teeth are those which grow in the mouth; we do not have to design them, make them, or fit them. The dog’s natural state is the one he will be in if no one takes soap and water and prevents it. The countryside where Nature reigns supreme is the one where soil, weather and vegetation produce their results unhelped and unimpeded by man. Natural behaviour is the behaviour which people would exhibit if they were not at pains to alter it. The natural kiss is the kiss which will be given if moral or prudential considerations do not intervene. In all the examples Nature means what happens ‘of itself’ or ‘of its own accord’: what you do not need to labour for; what you will get if you take no measures to stop it. The Greek word for Nature (Physis) is connected with the Greek verb for ‘to grow’; Latin Natura, with the verb ‘to be born’. The Natural is what springs up, or comes forth, or arrives, or goes on, of its own accord: the given, what is there already: the spontaneous, the unintended, the unsolicited.
What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can’t go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord. Inside that total system every particular event (such as your sitting reading this book) happens because some other event has happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is happening. Each particular thing (such as this page) is what it is because other things are what they are; and so, eventually, because the whole system is what it is. All the things and events are so completely interlocked that no one of them can claim the slightest independence from ‘the whole show’. None of them exists ‘on its own’ or ‘goes on of its own accord’ except in the sense that it exhibits, at some particular place and time, that general ‘existence on its own’ or ‘behaviour of its own accord’ which belongs to ‘Nature’ (the great total interlocked event) as a whole. Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will would mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the total series of events. And any such separate power of originating events is what the Naturalist denies. Spontaneity, originality, action ‘on its own’, is a privilege reserved for ‘the whole show’, which he calls Nature.
The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical to try to explain because this Fact is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. But he does not identify this Fact with ‘the whole show’. He thinks that things fall into two classes. In the first class we find either things or (more probably) One Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In the second we find things which are merely derivative from that One Thing. The one basic Thing has caused all the other things to be. It exists on its own; they exist because it exists. They will cease to exist if it ever ceases to maintain them in existence; they will be altered if it ever alters them.
The difference between the two views might be expressed by saying that Naturalism gives us a democratic, Supernaturalism a monarchical, picture of reality. The Naturalist thinks that the privilege of ‘being on its own’ resides in the total mass of things, just as in a democracy sovereignty resides in the whole mass of the people. The Supernaturalist thinks that this privilege belongs to some things or (more probably) One Thing and not to others–just as, in a real monarchy, the king has sovereignty and the people have not. And just as, in a democracy, all citizens are equal, so for the Naturalist one thing or event is as good as another, in the sense that they are all equally dependent on the total system of things. Indeed each of them is only the way in which the character of that total system exhibits itself at a particular point in space and time. The Supernaturalist, on the other hand, believes that the one original or self-existent thing is on a different level from, and more important than, all other things.
At this point a suspicion may occur that Supernaturalism first arose from reading into the universe the structure of monarchical societies. But then of course it may with equal reason be suspected that Naturalism has arisen from reading into it the structure of modern democracies. The two suspicions thus cancel out and give us no help in deciding which theory is more likely to be true. They do indeed remind us that Supernaturalism is the characteristic philosophy of a monarchical age and Naturalism of a democratic, in the sense that Supernaturalism, even if false, would have been believed by the great mass of unthinking people four hundred years ago, just as Naturalism, even if false, will be believed by the great mass of unthinking people today.
Everyone will have seen that the One Self-existent Thing–or the small class of self-existent things–in which Supernaturalists believe, is what we call God or the gods. I propose for the rest of this book to treat only that form of Supernaturalism which believes in one God; partly because polytheism is not likely to be a live issue for most of my readers, and partly because those who believed in many gods very seldom, in fact, regarded their gods as creators of the universe and as self-existent. The gods of Greece were not really supernatural in the strict sense which I am giving to the word. They were products of the total system of things and included within it. This introduces an important distinction.
The difference between Naturalism and Supernaturalism is not exactly the same as the difference between belief in a God and disbelief. Naturalism, without ceasing to be itself, could admit a certain kind of God. The great interlocking event called Nature might be such as to produce at some stage a great cosmic consciousness, an indwelling ‘God’ arising from the whole process as human mind arises (according to the Naturalists) from human organisms. A Naturalist would not object to that sort of God. The reason is this. Such a God would not stand outside Nature or the total system, would not be existing ‘on his own’. It would still be ‘the whole show’ which was the basic Fact, and such a God would merely be one of the things (even if he were the most interesting) which the basic Fact contained. What Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and made it.
We are now in a position to state the difference between the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist despite the fact that they do not mean the same by the word Nature. The Naturalist believes that a great process, of ‘becoming’, exists ‘on its own’ in space and time, and that nothing else exists–what we call particular things and events being only the parts into which we analyse the great process or the shapes which that process takes at given moments and given points in space. This single, total reality he calls Nature. The Supernaturalist believes that one Thing exists on its own and has produced the framework of space and time and the procession of systematically connected events which fill them. This framework, and this filling, he calls Nature. It may, or may not, be the only reality which the one Primary Thing has produced. There might be other systems in addition to the one we call Nature.
In that sense there might be several ‘Natures’. This conception must be kept quite distinct from what is commonly called ‘plurality of worlds’–i.e. different solar systems or different galaxies, ‘island universes’ existing in widely separated parts of a single space and time. These, however remote, would be parts of the same Nature as our own sun: it and they would be interlocked by being in relations to one another, spatial and temporal relations and casual relations as well. And it is just this reciprocal interlocking within a system which makes it what we call a Nature. Other Natures might not be spatio-temporal at all: or, if any of them were, their space and time would have no spatial or temporal relation to ours. It is just this discontinuity, this failure of interlocking, which would justify us in calling them different Natures. This does not mean that there would be absolutely no relation between them; they would be related by their common derivation from a single Supernatural source. They would, in this respect, be like different novels by a single author; the events in one story have no relation to the events in another except that they are invented by the same author. To find the relation between them you must go right back to the author’s mind: there is no cutting across from anything Mr Pickwick says in Pickwick Papers to anything Mrs Gamp hears in Martin Chuzzlewit. Similarly there would be no normal cutting across from an event in one Nature to an event in any other. By a ‘normal’ relation I mean one which occurs in virtue of the character of the two systems. We have to put in the qualification ‘normal’ because we do not know in advance that God might not bring two Natures into partial contact at some particular point: that is, He might allow selected events in the one to produce results in the other. There would thus be, at certain points, a partial interlocking; but this would not turn the two Natures into one, for the total reciprocity which makes a Nature would still be lacking, and the anomalous interlockings would arise not from what either system was in itself but from the Divine act which was bringing them together. If this occurred each of the two Natures would be ‘supernatural’ in relation to the other: but the fact of their contact would be supernatural in a more absolute sense–not as being beyond this or that Nature but beyond any and every Nature. It would be one kind of miracle. The other kind would be Divine ‘interference’ not by the bringing together of two Natures, but simply.
All this is, at present purely speculative. It by no means follows from Supernaturalism that Miracles of any sort do in fact occur. God (the primary thing) may never in fact interfere with the natural system He has created. If He has created more natural systems than one, He may never cause them to impinge on one another.
But that is a question for further consideration. If we decide that Nature is not the only thing there is, then we cannot say in advance whether she is safe from miracles or not. There are things outside her: we do not yet know whether they can get in. The gates may be barred, or they may not. But if Naturalism is true, then we do know in advance that miracles are impossible: nothing can come into Nature from the outside because there is nothing outside to come in, Nature being everything. No doubt, events which we in our ignorance should mistake for miracles might occur: but they would in reality be (just like the commonest events) an inevitable result of the character of the whole system.
Our first choice, therefore, must be between Naturalism and Supernaturalism.
[1] This definition is not that which would be given by many theologians. I am adopting it not because I think it an improvement upon theirs but precisely because, being crude and ‘popular’, it enables me most easily to treat those questions which ‘the common reader’ probably has in mind when he takes up a book on Miracles.
There are two fundamental worldviews that have currency today.
One I call Naturalism or the “bottom up” worldview. According to Naturalism, the world somehow got here by itself. It pulled itself up by its own bootstraps. From simple beginnings, complexity upon complexity emerged by processes of natural selection. 13.75 billion years later, here we are.
The other I call Supernaturalism or the “top down” worldview. According to Supernaturalism, the world is an artefact. Someone or something made it. It didn’t get here by itself. We may not know who or what created the world, or why, or, even, when. But we can look for clues.
The Christian worldview is a top down worldview. Today’s atheists have trouble giving any credence at all to such a worldview. “I just can’t bring myself to believe it,” is a common refrain.
Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? The significance of Nick Bostrom’s paper is this. It explains how it is possible, even overwhelmingly plausible, that the world is an artefact. And it does this by arguing from the secular humanist atheistic materialistic premises that today’s atheists all buy into.
Computer simulation? Divine creation? Call it what you will, but do please take seriously the possibility that the world you live in—and all it contains, including you—is an artefact.
Starting today, I’m going to be posting a series of classic philosophy papers. First up is Nick Bostrom’s Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? You can read it (and sections III, IV and V which I omitted) and several other related papers at Bostrom’s website, The Simulation Argument.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE ASSUMPTION OF SUBSTRATE-INDEPENDENCE
III. THE TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS OF COMPUTATION
IV. THE CORE OF THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT
V. A BLAND INDIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE
VI. INTERPRETATION
VII. CONCLUSION
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?ABSTRACT
This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed.
Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of an original race. It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones. Therefore, if we don’t think that we are currently living in a computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears. That is the basic idea. The rest of this paper will spell it out more carefully.
Apart form the interest this thesis may hold for those who are engaged in futuristic speculation, there are also more purely theoretical rewards. The argument provides a stimulus for formulating some methodological and metaphysical questions, and it suggests naturalistic analogies to certain traditional religious conceptions, which some may find amusing or thought-provoking.
The structure of the paper is as follows. First, we formulate an assumption that we need to import from the philosophy of mind in order to get the argument started. Second, we consider some empirical reasons for thinking that running vastly many simulations of human minds would be within the capability of a future civilization that has developed many of those technologies that can already be shown to be compatible with known physical laws and engineering constraints. This part is not philosophically necessary but it provides an incentive for paying attention to the rest. Then follows the core of the argument, which makes use of some simple probability theory, and a section providing support for a weak indifference principle that the argument employs. Lastly, we discuss some interpretations of the disjunction, mentioned in the abstract, that forms the conclusion of the simulation argument.
II. THE ASSUMPTION OF SUBSTRATE-INDEPENDENCEA common assumption in the philosophy of mind is that of substrate-independence. The idea is that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates. Provided a system implements the right sort of computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences. It is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium: silicon-based processors inside a computer could in principle do the trick as well.
Arguments for this thesis have been given in the literature, and although it is not entirely uncontroversial, we shall here take it as a given.
The argument we shall present does not, however, depend on any very strong version of functionalism or computationalism. For example, we need not assume that the thesis of substrate-independence is necessarily true (either analytically or metaphysically) – just that, in fact, a computer running a suitable program would be conscious. Moreover, we need not assume that in order to create a mind on a computer it would be sufficient to program it in such a way that it behaves like a human in all situations, including passing the Turing test etc. We need only the weaker assumption that it would suffice for the generation of subjective experiences that the computational processes of a human brain are structurally replicated in suitably fine-grained detail, such as on the level of individual synapses. This attenuated version of substrate-independence is quite widely accepted.
Neurotransmitters, nerve growth factors, and other chemicals that are smaller than a synapse clearly play a role in human cognition and learning. The substrate-independence thesis is not that the effects of these chemicals are small or irrelevant, but rather that they affect subjective experience only via their direct or indirect influence on computational activities. For example, if there can be no difference in subjective experience without there also being a difference in synaptic discharges, then the requisite detail of simulation is at the synaptic level (or higher).
III. THE TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITS OF COMPUTATION[Read here.]
IV. THE CORE OF THE SIMULATION ARGUMENT[Read here.]
V. A BLAND INDIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE[Read here.]
The possibility represented by proposition (1) is fairly straightforward. If (1) is true, then humankind will almost certainly fail to reach a posthuman level; for virtually no species at our level of development become posthuman, and it is hard to see any justification for thinking that our own species will be especially privileged or protected from future disasters. Conditional on (1), therefore, we must give a high credence to DOOM, the hypothesis that humankind will go extinct before reaching a posthuman level:
One can imagine hypothetical situations where we have such evidence as would trump knowledge of
For example, if we discovered that we were about to be hit by a giant meteor, this might suggest that we had been exceptionally unlucky. We could then assign a credence to DOOM larger than our expectation of the fraction of human-level civilizations that fail to reach posthumanity. In the actual case, however, we seem to lack evidence for thinking that we are special in this regard, for better or worse.
Proposition (1) doesn’t by itself imply that we are likely to go extinct soon, only that we are unlikely to reach a posthuman stage. This possibility is compatible with us remaining at, or somewhat above, our current level of technological development for a long time before going extinct. Another way for (1) to be true is if it is likely that technological civilization will collapse. Primitive human societies might then remain on Earth indefinitely.
There are many ways in which humanity could become extinct before reaching posthumanity. Perhaps the most natural interpretation of (1) is that we are likely to go extinct as a result of the development of some powerful but dangerous technology.[13] One candidate is molecular nanotechnology, which in its mature stage would enable the construction of self-replicating nanobots capable of feeding on dirt and organic matter – a kind of mechanical bacteria. Such nanobots, designed for malicious ends, could cause the extinction of all life on our planet.[14]
The second alternative in the simulation argument’s conclusion is that the fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulation is negligibly small. In order for (2) to be true, there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations. If the number of ancestor-simulations created by the interested civilizations is extremely large, the rarity of such civilizations must be correspondingly extreme. Virtually no posthuman civilizations decide to use their resources to run large numbers of ancestor-simulations. Furthermore, virtually all posthuman civilizations lack individuals who have sufficient resources and interest to run ancestor-simulations; or else they have reliably enforced laws that prevent such individuals from acting on their desires.
What force could bring about such convergence? One can speculate that advanced civilizations all develop along a trajectory that leads to the recognition of an ethical prohibition against running ancestor-simulations because of the suffering that is inflicted on the inhabitants of the simulation. However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral. On the contrary, we tend to view the existence of our race as constituting a great ethical value. Moreover, convergence on an ethical view of the immorality of running ancestor-simulations is not enough: it must be combined with convergence on a civilization-wide social structure that enables activities considered immoral to be effectively banned.
Another possible convergence point is that almost all individual posthumans in virtually all posthuman civilizations develop in a direction where they lose their desires to run ancestor-simulations. This would require significant changes to the motivations driving their human predecessors, for there are certainly many humans who would like to run ancestor-simulations if they could afford to do so. But perhaps many of our human desires will be regarded as silly by anyone who becomes a posthuman. Maybe the scientific value of ancestor-simulations to a posthuman civilization is negligible (which is not too implausible given its unfathomable intellectual superiority), and maybe posthumans regard recreational activities as merely a very inefficient way of getting pleasure – which can be obtained much more cheaply by direct stimulation of the brain’s reward centers. One conclusion that follows from (2) is that posthuman societies will be very different from human societies: they will not contain relatively wealthy independent agents who have the full gamut of human-like desires and are free to act on them.
The possibility expressed by alternative (3) is the conceptually most intriguing one. If we are living in a simulation, then the cosmos that we are observing is just a tiny piece of the totality of physical existence. The physics in the universe where the computer is situated that is running the simulation may or may not resemble the physics of the world that we observe. While the world we see is in some sense “real”, it is not located at the fundamental level of reality.
It may be possible for simulated civilizations to become posthuman. They may then run their own ancestor-simulations on powerful computers they build in their simulated universe. Such computers would be “virtual machines”, a familiar concept in computer science. (Java script web-applets, for instance, run on a virtual machine – a simulated computer – inside your desktop.) Virtual machines can be stacked: it’s possible to simulate a machine simulating another machine, and so on, in arbitrarily many steps of iteration. If we do go on to create our own ancestor-simulations, this would be strong evidence against (1) and (2), and we would therefore have to conclude that we live in a simulation. Moreover, we would have to suspect that the posthumans running our simulation are themselves simulated beings; and their creators, in turn, may also be simulated beings.
Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure – there may be room for a large number of levels of reality, and the number could be increasing over time. (One consideration that counts against the multi-level hypothesis is that the computational cost for the basement-level simulators would be very great. Simulating even a single posthuman civilization might be prohibitively expensive. If so, then we should expect our simulation to be terminated when we are about to become posthuman.)
Although all the elements of such a system can be naturalistic, even physical, it is possible to draw some loose analogies with religious conceptions of the world. In some ways, the posthumans running a simulation are like gods in relation to the people inhabiting the simulation: the posthumans created the world we see; they are of superior intelligence; they are “omnipotent” in the sense that they can interfere in the workings of our world even in ways that violate its physical laws; and they are “omniscient” in the sense that they can monitor everything that happens. However, all the demigods except those at the fundamental level of reality are subject to sanctions by the more powerful gods living at lower levels.
Further rumination on these themes could climax in a naturalistic theogony that would study the structure of this hierarchy, and the constraints imposed on its inhabitants by the possibility that their actions on their own level may affect the treatment they receive from dwellers of deeper levels. For example, if nobody can be sure that they are at the basement-level, then everybody would have to consider the possibility that their actions will be rewarded or punished, based perhaps on moral criteria, by their simulators. An afterlife would be a real possibility. Because of this fundamental uncertainty, even the basement civilization may have a reason to behave ethically. The fact that it has such a reason for moral behavior would of course add to everybody else’s reason for behaving morally, and so on, in truly virtuous circle. One might get a kind of universal ethical imperative, which it would be in everybody’s self-interest to obey, as it were “from nowhere”.
In addition to ancestor-simulations, one may also consider the possibility of more selective simulations that include only a small group of humans or a single individual. The rest of humanity would then be zombies or “shadow-people” – humans simulated only at a level sufficient for the fully simulated people not to notice anything suspicious. It is not clear how much cheaper shadow-people would be to simulate than real people. It is not even obvious that it is possible for an entity to behave indistinguishably from a real human and yet lack conscious experience. Even if there are such selective simulations, you should not think that you are in one of them unless you think they are much more numerous than complete simulations. There would have to be about 100 billion times as many “me-simulations” (simulations of the life of only a single mind) as there are ancestor-simulations in order for most simulated persons to be in me-simulations.
There is also the possibility of simulators abridging certain parts of the mental lives of simulated beings and giving them false memories of the sort of experiences that they would typically have had during the omitted interval. If so, one can consider the following (farfetched) solution to the problem of evil: that there is no suffering in the world and all memories of suffering are illusions. Of course, this hypothesis can be seriously entertained only at those times when you are not currently suffering.
Supposing we live in a simulation, what are the implications for us humans? The foregoing remarks notwithstanding, the implications are not all that radical. Our best guide to how our posthuman creators have chosen to set up our world is the standard empirical study of the universe we see. The revisions to most parts of our belief networks would be rather slight and subtle – in proportion to our lack of confidence in our ability to understand the ways of posthumans. Properly understood, therefore, the truth of (3) should have no tendency to make us “go crazy” or to prevent us from going about our business and making plans and predictions for tomorrow. The chief empirical importance of (3) at the current time seems to lie in its role in the tripartite conclusion established above.[15] We may hope that (3) is true since that would decrease the probability of (1), although if computational constraints make it likely that simulators would terminate a simulation before it reaches a posthuman level, then our best hope would be that (2) is true.
If we learn more about posthuman motivations and resource constraints, maybe as a result of developing towards becoming posthumans ourselves, then the hypothesis that we are simulated will come to have a much richer set of empirical implications.
A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation.
Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to many people for comments, and especially to Amara Angelica, Robert Bradbury, Milan Cirkovic, Robin Hanson, Hal Finney, Robert A. Freitas Jr., John Leslie, Mitch Porter, Keith DeRose, Mike Treder, Mark Walker, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and several anonymous referees.
[13] See my paper “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, vol. 9 (2001) for a survey and analysis of the present and anticipated future threats to human survival.
[14] See e.g. Drexler (1985) op cit., and R. A. Freitas Jr., “Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations.” Zyvex preprint April (2000), http://www.foresight.org/NanoRev/Ecophagy.html.
[15] For some reflections by another author on the consequences of (3), which were sparked by a privately circulated earlier version of this paper, see R. Hanson, “How to Live in a Simulation.” Journal of Evolution and Technology, vol. 7 (2001).
Are you Lost in Scientism?
Lies destroy our grip on reality.
The Bible tells us of a Necromancer whom raised the prophet Samuel’s Ghost.
Do you doubt this really happened? Do you assume science proves this is impossible? If so you have been decieved!
Science has proven no such thing!
You have been decieved into believing Science proves Materialism/ monism/ Naturalism!
You have been Mentally Hobbled!
If you have been conditioned to believe Reality is strictly limited to only what Empirical Science can substantiate, then you are trapped in the Straight jacket of Scientism.
If you Believe absolutely in Naturalism, No God, no Ghosts, No miracles… You are a prisoner of Scientism.
If you Believe that Material reality is the only reality… You have been Smoked by Atheist Scientism.
Scientism is form of intellectual Coffin Torture!… a closeted mentality… a short sighted blindness… a vanity.
Scientism is a Religion…and not a very intelligent one at that!
Scientism is Irrational.
The day anyone realizes the trap that is Materialist Naturalist Scientism, and boldly embraces the possibility of Super-naturalism…is a day of personal Liberation!
It is an awakening…to a greater reality… Greater possiblities… more plausible probabilities!
It is mind expanding… Freewill is not an Illusion!
It puts Emperical Science (and our sences) into their proper context.
It apprehends their limitations.
It allows the enlightened person to shrug off the absurdities, the Gross implausibility, the wild superstition, The Deadness, The Amorality, The Meaningless, The Purposeless, The enslavement and surrender to Determinism…that Materialist Naturalism demands of it’s devotees.
Hour Of Power. The Great Dr Robert Schuller (Senior).
“Faith is the Optimistic vison of a Possiblity thinker, whereas Atheism is the Pessimistic lack of vison of an impossiblity thinker…” (Quote from memory)
Then One can look back at the past 500 years and appreciate the how the Ideologies of Materialism, Naturalism, and Scientism came about, and why they have successfully blinded the minds of millions of Men whom vainly consider themselves ‘Superior’… ‘Modern’… ‘Men of Reason’…. ‘Liberated from ‘Faith’ and Superstitious Error’, Etc yet ultimately have proven to be Blind, leaders of the Blind.
Thus saith THE LORD…
There is No conflict between True Religion/ The Bible, and True Science!
The Bible gives us access to a reality which is otherwise beyond our reach.
The Bible is Super Natural…Divine Revelation.
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Francis Bacon…The Father of Modern Science.
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1Cor2vs114)
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:…” (1Tim6vs20)
St Paul
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian. Libertarian. 1611 King James Bible Believer. Dispensationalist. Possibility Thinker.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…
Scientism is a term used, usually pejoratively, to refer to belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.
The term frequently implies a critique of the more extreme expressions of logical positivism and has been used by social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek, philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, and philosophers such as Hilary Putnam to describe the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measurable.
Scientism may refer to science applied “in excess”. The term scientism can apply in either of two equally pejorative senses:
To indicate the improper usage of science or scientific claims.
This usage applies equally in contexts where science might not apply, such as when the topic is perceived to be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry, and in contexts where there is insufficient empirical evidence to justify a scientific conclusion. It includes an excessive deference to claims made by scientists or an uncritical eagerness to accept any result described as scientific. In this case, the term is a counterargument to appeals to scientific authority.
To refer to “the belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry,” or that “science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective” with a concomitant “elimination of the psychological dimensions of experience.”
The term is also used to highlight the possible dangers of lapses towards excessive reductionism in all fields of human knowledge.
For sociologists in the tradition of Max Weber, such as Jürgen Habermas, the concept of scientism relates significantly to the philosophy of positivism, but also to the cultural rationalization of the modern West.
Contents
1 Overview
2 Relevance to science/religion debates
3 Philosophy of science
4 Religion and philosophy
5 Rationalization and modernity
6 Dictionary meanings
7 Media references
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
OverviewReviewing the references to scientism in the works of contemporary scholars, Gregory R. Petersondetects two main broad themes:
It is used to criticize a totalizing view of science as if it were capable of describing all reality and knowledge, or as if it were the only true way to acquire knowledge about reality and the nature of things;
It is used to denote a border-crossing violation in which the theories and methods of one (scientific) discipline are inappropriately applied to another (scientific or non-scientific) discipline and its domain. An example of this second usage is to label as scientism any attempt to claim science as the only or primary source of human values (a traditional domain of ethics) or as the source of meaning and purpose (a traditional domain of religion and related worldviews).
Mikael Stenmark proposes the expression scientific expansionism as a synonym of scientism.In the Encyclopedia of science and religion, he writes that, while the doctrines that are described as scientism have many possible forms and varying degrees of ambition, they share the idea that the boundaries of science (that is, typically the natural sciences) could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science (usually with science becoming the sole or the main arbiter regarding this area or dimension).
According to Stenmark, the strongest form of scientism states that science has no boundaries and that all human problems and all aspects of human endeavor, with due time, will be dealt with and solved by science alone. This idea has also been called the Myth of Progress.
E. F. Schumacher in his A Guide for the Perplexed criticized scientism as an impoverished world view confined solely to what can be counted, measured and weighed. “The architects of the modern worldview, notably Galileo and Descartes, assumed that those things that could be weighed, measured, and counted were more true than those that could not be quantified. If it couldn’t be counted, in other words, it didn’t count.”
Relevance to science/religion debatesThe term is often used by speakers such as John Haught against vocal critics of religion-as-such.[25] Philosopher Daniel Dennett responded to criticism of his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by saying that “when someone puts forward a scientific theory that [religious critics] really don’t like, they just try to discredit it as ‘scientism'”.
Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, draws a parallel between scientism and traditional religious movements, pointing to the cult of personality that develops around some scientists in the public eye. He defines scientism as a worldview that encompasses natural explanations, eschews supernatural and paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason.
The Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr has stated that in the West, many will accept the ideology of modern science, not as “simple ordinary science”, but as a replacement for religion.
Gregory R. Peterson writes that “for many theologians and philosophers, scientism is among the greatest of intellectual sins”.
Susan Haack argues that the charge of “scientism” caricatures actual scientific endeavor. No single form of inference or procedure of inquiry used by scientists explains the success of science. Instead we find:
the inferences and procedures used by all serious empirical inquirers
a vast array of tools of inquiry, from observational instruments to mathematical techniques, as well as social mechanisms that encourage honesty. These tools are diverse and evolving, and many are domain-specific.
Philosophy of science
In his essay, Against Method, Paul Feyerabend characterizes science as “an essentially anarchic enterprise” and argues emphatically that science merits no exclusive monopoly over “dealing in knowledge” and that scientists have never operated within a distinct and narrowly self-defined tradition. He depicts the process of contemporary scientific education as a mild form of indoctrination, aimed at “making the history of science duller, simpler, more uniform, more ‘objective’ and more easily accessible to treatment by strict and unchanging rules.”
[S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and … non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so … Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science… In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.
— Feyerabend, Against Method, p.viii
Religion and philosophyPhilosopher of religion Keith Ward has said scientism is philosophically inconsistent or even self-refuting, as the truth of the statements “no statements are true unless they can be proven scientifically (or logically)” or “no statements are true unless they can be shown empirically to be true” cannot themselves be proven scientifically, logically, or empirically.[32]
Rationalization and modernity: Rationalization (sociology)
In the introduction to his collected oeuvre on the sociology of religion, Max Weber asks why “the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development [elsewhere]… did not enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident?” According to the distinguished German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas, “For Weber, the intrinsic (that is, not merely contingent) relationship between modernity and what he called ‘Occidental rationalism’ was still self-evident.” Weber described a process of rationalisation, disenchantment and the “disintegration of religious world views” that resulted in modern secular societies and capitalism.[33]
“Modernization” was introduced as a technical term only in the 1950s. It is the mark of a theoretical approach that takes up Weber’s problem but elaborates it with the tools of social-scientific functionalism… The theory of modernization performs two abstractions on Weber’s concept of “modernity”. It dissociates “modernity” from its modern European origins and stylizes it into a spatio-temporally neutral model for processes of social development in general. Furthermore, it breaks the internal connections between modernity and the historical context of Western rationalism, so that processes of modernization… [are] no longer burdened with the idea of a completion of modernity, that is to say, of a goal state after which “postmodern” developments would have to set in… Indeed it is precisely modernization research that has contributed to the currency of the expression “postmodern” even among social scientists.
— Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
Habermas is critical of pure instrumental rationality, arguing that the “Social Life–World” is better suited to literary expression, the former being “intersubjectively accessible experiences” that can be generalized in a formal language, while the latter “must generate an intersubjectivity of mutual understanding in each concrete case”:[34][35]
The world in which human beings are born and live and finally die; the world in which they love and hate, in which they experience triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and enjoyments, of madness and common sense, of silliness, cunning and wisdom; the world of social pressures and individual impulses, of reason against passion, of instincts and conventions, of shared language and unsharable feelings and sensations…
— Aldous Huxley, Literature and Science
Dictionary meanings
Standard dictionary definitions include the following applications of the term “scientism”:
The use of the style, assumptions, techniques, and other attributes typically displayed by scientists.
Methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist.
An exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation, as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities.
The use of scientific or pseudoscientific language.
The contention that the social sciences, such as economics and sociology, are only properly sciences when they abide by the somewhat stricter interpretation of scientific method used by the natural sciences, and that otherwise they are not truly sciences.
“A term applied (freq. in a derogatory manner) to a belief in the omnipotence of scientific knowledge and techniques; also to the view that the methods of study appropriate to physical science can replace those used in other fields such as philosophy and, esp., human behaviour and the social sciences.”
“1. The collection of attitudes and practices considered typical of scientists. 2. The belief that the investigative methods of the physical sciences are applicable or justifiable in all fields of inquiry.”
I got this in my email today.
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The proposition that South Korea could begin so called ‘scientific’ whaling is an international outrage, ACT Leader John Banks said today. “Like Japan, it remains ludicrous that they believe you need to kill whales to save them,” Mr Banks said. “This thinking is as lamentable as it is obscene. “It should be condemned and stopped before it even begins,” Mr Banks said. ENDS |
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Animals have rights. Yes, even feral conservatives like John Banks.
This PR may seem like one out of left field to some, but John Banks has a long history of campaigning for animal rights and supporting animal welfare legislation. It may seem that he and (former) Green MP Sue Kedgley make strange bedfellows, but a SAFE media release in (pre-election) October last year had this to say.
Greens Lead the Way against Colony Cages
If the nation’s three million caged hens could vote, the Greens and Act’s John Banks would be ruling the roost come this year’s election, says leading animal advocacy organisation SAFE.
Outgoing animal welfare spokesperson and Green MP Sue Kedgley, announced yesterday that her party will pledge against cruel colony cage systems and Act Party candidate, John Banks, also says he will pledge his personal support to help caged hens.
…
I say (and I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular), good on them both. Many libertarians are conflicted about animal welfare legislation. They think such legislation is unprincipled, while at the same time they abhor animal cruelty. I find their arguments, that the way to prevent animal cruelty is through social rather than legal sanctions, feeble at best and unconscionable at worst.
My defence of my seemingly unlibertarian views on the matter of animal welfare legislation is this. Animal welfare legislation is not a moral issue. It is a metaphysical issue.
(Almost) all libertarians I know subscribe to the view(s) that
human beings are individually possessed of certain inalienable rights, which are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of … happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers – and only such powers – from the consent of the governed; that all laws legislated by governments must be for the purpose of securing these rights; that no laws legislated by government may violate these rights …
If you believe, as I do, that non-human animals also possess some (limited) rights, then it is within the proper scope of government to secure those rights. Animal welfare legislation is not necessarily unlibertarian. Whether it is or not depends on whether or not non-human animals possess rights. And that is a metaphysical question, not a moral one.
Every time I’ve written ten mainstream papers, I allow myself to indulge in writing one wacky one, like my Scientific American article about parallel universes. This is because I have a burning curiosity about the ultimate nature of reality; indeed, this is why I went into physics in the first place. So far, I’ve learned one thing in this quest that I’m really sure of: whatever the ultimate nature of reality may turn out to be, it’s completely different from how it seems. So I feel a bit like the protagonist in the Truman Show, the Matrix or the 13th Floor trying to figure out what’s really going on.
Max Tegmark, The Universes of Max Tegmark
