Philosophy Resources
Table of Contents
1 A Definition of Life
I define "A Living Thing" as "A system that grows and then splits into multiple independent parts". For example, a bacteria grows larger, then splits into two bacteria, and both can continue to reproduce even if they are separated by a great distance. Human beings become pregnant, grow in mass, give birth, and children eventually become independent agents that can continue to reproduce even when their parents and siblings are absent.
Incidentally, this suggests that virus particles are not alive (they do not grow, they only move (possibly towards a ribosome in other living cells)), but that infections are alive: they grow in number and mass of virus particles and occupy ever larger geographical areas, and two isolated areas can have infections that are equally able to spread and can survive independent of the other's existence.
2 Embracing Ignorance
In software engineering there is a concept of "suitability for a particular purpose".
Is (human) consciousness suited for a particular purpose?
Clearly humans are not well suited to independently understand ethics. However, human consciousness is well suited for preserving the existence of life, including non-human life since we depend on it so greatly (consider corn, gut bacteria, dogs, horses, trees, and so on).
Having accepted that I will likely constantly be faced with ethical challenges I am unable to solve independently, I have rejected the responsibility to personally produce an ethical system that explains everything, and I am faced with multiple options to choose from for an overarching life goal.
2.1 Help Life flourish
The goal I have been operating under for several years without incident is "to ensure that at least one Living Thing exists at as many points in time as possible". This may end up as merely a colony of bacteria living on a spaceship orbiting a black hole, but even that would give the survivors a chance to take advantage of any new energy sources that appear in the universe unexpectedly.
2.1.1 Long term accomplishments
An ideal way to accomplish this goal would be to find a way to reverse entropy in a given area of space. Then we could set up a system where we cause matter to gain momentum or manufacture new particles, where the increase in energy or mass is greater than the inputs we provide, then collect the particles that carry the "free" energy for use elsewhere. If this can be done at a massive scale, producing many billions of kilograms of matter or the equivalent in energy, faster than a star ejects energy and matter beyond our reach, it may be energy efficient to continuously construct black holes with the output of the area of reversed entropy, as dropping matter into black holes makes a large amount of energy available surprisingly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulCdoCfw-bY
In the short term, colonizing Mars or Mercury (https://www.einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html) or Venus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WO-z-QuWI), or at least a Moon or setting up a permanent colony at a Lagrange point, would be an excellent start.
2.2 Communal Ethics
It may be possible to engage in religious, civic, and state institutions such that the interactions between many conscious beings will produce more ethical results than one individual acting alone. Ensuring that at least one other person agrees with your actions may be a good start to this.
3 Free Will
3.1 Proof of non-incorrectness
The statement "I have free will" can never be incorrect: if anything is able to make that statement, it will either be a deterministic system (in which case it can't be blamed for being incorrect) or it will actually be correct! Therefore, I can assume I have free will, and you surely can too.
This may be a type of "pascal's wager" argument: if I do have free will, I probably don't lose anything by believing that I do, even if there is only a small chance of that being true, but if I am a deterministic system I could not have done anything but believe what I was destined to.
3.1.1 Implications on Atheism
Supposedly, Spinoza argued that the world was deterministic, because God would be free. Presumably, that means that God could cause all humans to act deterministically while still having a subjective belief that they have free will. Supposedly, Sartre accepted that only one thing in the universe can be free, but insisted that at least one human is free, so God cannot have complete power over that human. I can safely believe there is some action I can take that is truly free, so there is no omnipotent god!
See https://youtu.be/RFNLzJ3nUAY?si=WNoipTmPKMDI9NA8&t=1857 for more information.
4 Justifying institutions
I believe institutions are beneficial because they can provide services more reliably compared to a single human being, and a consistent environment is necessary for humans to survive. Some people are not comfortable with institutions because they might be unfairly influenced without the consent of everyone who depends upon them. Nevertheless, I believe that most institutions are valuable enough that they should not be abolished. However, it is still beneficial to have alternative ways to meet your needs (such as parallel institutions or individuals who can provide the same services as institutions).
This is not to say that we should neglect efforts to maintain institutions we depend on. See also https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/institutionalbetrayal/index.html
5 Videos
6 Books
These books are frequently available as audiobooks on YouTube & the authors may have channels, as well as physical or digital forms on Amazon or at your local library
| Title | Author | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| Think and Grow Rich | Napoleon Hill | 978-1585424337 |