One of the nice things about realizing that you’re Douglas Adams’ puddle is that the nature of cosmic reality doesn’t have much to do with what you have for lunch. I think if you frame things more concretely, your questions will be more answerable.
Don’t you want things? What do you want?
Why you want those things has to do with your particular circumstance, but this is probably what you believed before. And if you start thinking about what you want, as opposed to what you should want, you may find that it’s not a simple and unsatisfying thing, but that there’s a lot of depth there. And I suspect you’ll find also that what you want is sort of warm and fuzzy and prosocial. These things seem to be in most of our firmware. Tautologically, I like that.
If self-reference isn’t satisfying, and you want grand cosmic majesty, I think that if you look up at the sky and keep asking why, you will find plenty of wonder. Tegmark thinks that all things which can be, are. Can we ask for more?
Also, I’m happy to chat anytime if you ever need someone to talk to.
Thank you for your comment and your offer for conversation; I’ll definitely keep that in mind. I also really appreciate the wondrous tone of your comment.
Your point about connecting with my desires is good, but at the moment it’s struggling to hit home. I would’ve previously given a sort of “religious utilitarian” answer, something like “I want to ensure that as many souls find eternal happiness as possible.” Reframing that as a more general sense of maximizing human joy is functional, but it feels like it lacks a solid foundation when joy is reducible to an arbitrary arrangement of atoms. My “wants” themselves are just the system trying to self-propagate.
I’ll still think on your points, though. Very helpful.
Noticing that a description of a system from the intentional stance is isomorphic to a description from the physical stance when you have perfect information can help with this feeling. Otherwise in one frame you feel like you have something magical (in a good way), and in the other stance you have “just” what’s actually there. It’s both. It’s one thing (you), described in 2 ways. It’s not that one is right and one is wrong—think of it as a unification of 2 frameworks, or a mapping between the 2 sides of the dualism you were used to previously. You’re still a cool guy who likes jazz or whatever in addition to being a transient pattern of excitation in some fields.
And yeah, if you thought that God said “do X” then maybe you might want to see if there’s any other reason to do X. But don’t take that as a license to be a sociopath, or selfish, or whatever. Number 1, that isn’t what most of us want when we notice that we like other people and account for secondary and tertiary effects of our actions. And number 2, the rest of us will be angry at you and try to stop you, because we explicitly don’t want that.
I think you’re mixing your metaphors when you say this:
”the system trying to self-propagate.”
You have an intentional / teleological word, “trying”, mixed in with your physicalism. That’s going to get confusing. In the physical stance, systems don’t try. You’re a pattern which has propagated so far. From the intentional stance, is self-propagation actually what you’re trying to do? I suspect not. I suspect you’re trying to do other stuff, like read this message, and figure out what’s for lunch. You’re the captain of the ship—why describe yourself in physical terms then try to guess at what you want, when you can just check directly?
One of the nice things about realizing that you’re Douglas Adams’ puddle is that the nature of cosmic reality doesn’t have much to do with what you have for lunch. I think if you frame things more concretely, your questions will be more answerable.
Don’t you want things? What do you want?
Why you want those things has to do with your particular circumstance, but this is probably what you believed before. And if you start thinking about what you want, as opposed to what you should want, you may find that it’s not a simple and unsatisfying thing, but that there’s a lot of depth there. And I suspect you’ll find also that what you want is sort of warm and fuzzy and prosocial. These things seem to be in most of our firmware. Tautologically, I like that.
If self-reference isn’t satisfying, and you want grand cosmic majesty, I think that if you look up at the sky and keep asking why, you will find plenty of wonder. Tegmark thinks that all things which can be, are. Can we ask for more?
Also, I’m happy to chat anytime if you ever need someone to talk to.
Thank you for your comment and your offer for conversation; I’ll definitely keep that in mind. I also really appreciate the wondrous tone of your comment.
Your point about connecting with my desires is good, but at the moment it’s struggling to hit home. I would’ve previously given a sort of “religious utilitarian” answer, something like “I want to ensure that as many souls find eternal happiness as possible.” Reframing that as a more general sense of maximizing human joy is functional, but it feels like it lacks a solid foundation when joy is reducible to an arbitrary arrangement of atoms. My “wants” themselves are just the system trying to self-propagate.
I’ll still think on your points, though. Very helpful.
Noticing that a description of a system from the intentional stance is isomorphic to a description from the physical stance when you have perfect information can help with this feeling. Otherwise in one frame you feel like you have something magical (in a good way), and in the other stance you have “just” what’s actually there. It’s both. It’s one thing (you), described in 2 ways. It’s not that one is right and one is wrong—think of it as a unification of 2 frameworks, or a mapping between the 2 sides of the dualism you were used to previously. You’re still a cool guy who likes jazz or whatever in addition to being a transient pattern of excitation in some fields.
And yeah, if you thought that God said “do X” then maybe you might want to see if there’s any other reason to do X. But don’t take that as a license to be a sociopath, or selfish, or whatever. Number 1, that isn’t what most of us want when we notice that we like other people and account for secondary and tertiary effects of our actions. And number 2, the rest of us will be angry at you and try to stop you, because we explicitly don’t want that.
I think you’re mixing your metaphors when you say this:
”the system trying to self-propagate.”
You have an intentional / teleological word, “trying”, mixed in with your physicalism. That’s going to get confusing. In the physical stance, systems don’t try. You’re a pattern which has propagated so far. From the intentional stance, is self-propagation actually what you’re trying to do? I suspect not. I suspect you’re trying to do other stuff, like read this message, and figure out what’s for lunch. You’re the captain of the ship—why describe yourself in physical terms then try to guess at what you want, when you can just check directly?