Viewing profile — dmreedy

I'm writing a science fiction book that takes place mostly around Jupiter, and would love to hear more about this; if you found anything particularly interesting or unexpected or s…

Consider for a moment a world in which not every mind is as self-possessed and self-assured as yours. Consider further a world in which there are many minds for whom sensitivity to…

There is in fact a whole, and very famous, book about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle It is as much a real object of specific concern as it is shorthand for "oppressive…

While I agree with your conclusion, for what it's worth I'm not sure journalism "decided" anything. The economic system it is embedded in did. I say that because it's not like the …

I'm not sure if this is what you're thinking of, but there's a story like that behind Dogfish Head's "Midas Touch" http://www.biomolecular-archaeology.com/?page_id=143 https://www.…

In addition to bbor's comment, the idea you're scraping up against is the much-discussed P-Zombie[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

I like to think of it as an encouragement to meditate a bit more on, for example, why this "solution" (let the free market handle it) isn't currently already solving everything. No…

> Marketability (large mammal vs tiny insect excites the populace more, leading to funding)? Conservationists often leverage the concept of "Charismatic Megafauna"[0] to serve as s…

I'm not saying I want it, I'm saying it is an ingredient to the function and survival of a society, especially as the number of members of a society grows and diversifies.

> If one person / group wishes to force it's view on the other then we have a problem I would put it even more simply: My view is that this valuable resource is mine. Your view is …

That's all good and peaceful until two peoples' intuitions collide. What is the process for reconciliation? These "nonsense questions" are usually derived from an effort to find a …

I would assert that it should serve as a memento mori against too much confidence in your priors. And a reminder of the value of Russellian "Hypothetical Sympathy", an encouragemen…

Yeah, I'm not sure whether they passed it or just never got to it. To be fair I guess, it's not exactly what I would call a productive philosophy, if your goal is "productivity" (b…

If you find this subject interesting, the different ways the sort of post-enlightenment intellectual diaspora has begun to try and chase fundamental "meaning" again (after realizin…

"Man – despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments – owes his existence to a 6-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." I'd hesitate…

I am reminded of the Mitchell and Webb "Evil Vicars" sketch. "So, you've thought about eternity for an afternoon, and think you've come to some interesting conclusions?"

Because it reads as relatively naive and a pretty old horse in the debate of sentience I'm all for villainizing the figureheads of the current generation of this movement. The poli…

I don't think anyone reasonable believes LLMs are right now skynet, nor that they will be tomorrow. What I feel has changed, and what drives a lot of the fear and anxiety you see, …

You're right, of course, but that also makes your out-of-hand dismissals based on your own philosophical premises equally invalid. Until a model of human sentience and awareness is…

I am glad to see a continuation in the literature of this fascinating and important domain: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/papers/sigbovik2011tom7whatword...

Look I see where you're coming from of course, living in the same culture you do. But it's always important to remember that people believe their religions . And not just the clerg…

This feels like a pretty modern view of the role of religion in society. For the majority of history I think it would barely be fair to consider a religion's de jure or ab initio "…

Agreed! I'm testing a hypothesis here through the dialectic, not asserting one! There are definitely visionaries and prophets and doom-seers in each society; when I talk about soci…

Yeah I agree completely. I have been thinking lately about that as a defining feature of science fiction, or I guess speculative fiction more broadly; thought experiments into othe…