I thought Dr. Sleep was a good book, but his attempts to make Abra feel like a ‘modern kid’ by having her name drop Game of Thrones characters definitely made me cringe.

The perception of the self as a free rational agent which makes decisions independent of fate. It’s essentially the product of Christian free will and enlightenment era rationalism.

My case is unusual, but within a culture where there’s a strong belief in fate, people would agree that their sense of free will is an illusion. they might perceive themselves to have volition, but on a deeper level they’d believe this volition is a kind of mirage - basically the point of the Oedipus myth.

The way I see it there’s 2 kinds of free will: 1st is the more traditional metaphysical version, essentially the question of whether it is possible for any mind to make truly free decisions in what appears to be a deterministic reality. The 2nd kind is specifically human free will, which depends on our own psychology, and the degree of conscious involvement we share in our actions.

I don’t believe in either kind of free will - but even if the 1st type of free will existed, if our decisions truly were self caused … we could still lack the 2nd type of free will, which is our subjective sense of conscious involvement in our decisions. It’s the 2nd type of free will I see as being absent from my personal experience, as I can never directly observe the 1st type.

If you pay attention in your day to day life, you’ll notice that most of the things you say and do don’t require any conscious reflection. Words and ideas pop into our heads from the subconscious, and we immediately act them out. This is why it’s possible to zone out while driving a familiar route, or having a routine conversation with your barrista. Most of what we do is following a routine - when our routine is disrupted in a significant way, it leads to confusion, and our response under such circumstances might surprise us.

For example, if I was walking down the street on my way to work, following my little routine, and a man leapt out of an alley to attack me, I can’t say with any confidence whether I would fight, flight, or freeze up. It would come down to whatever instinct was strongest in my subconscious at that moment. I simply wouldn’t have time to make a reasoned decision.

Even when I’m reflecting deeply on a difficult decision, it’s hard to explain exactly how I come to an outcome: usually I just ‘go with my gut’, that is, I follow whatever impulse is strongest within me. When we’re making a difficult decision, it’s like we’re being pulled in different directions by two different forces, and while it might feel like there’s a great struggle between them, in the end the victor is predetermined by whichever emotional force is strongest.

And if you make decisions based on reason instead of emotion - well reason is universal, so the more heavily you rely on rationality, the less ‘personal’ your decisions become. If someone asks me what’s 2+2, I can’t help but think 4 - I am compelled to by reason.

The intuitive perception of the self which most Westerners have is illusory, as is free will. Ultimately, it’s part of our culture, in its modern incarnation, to view ourselves as free, rational agents. In other cultures, like the Ancient Greeks, it’s a given that our lives are ruled by fate.

Free will is an illusion, buts it’s not an illusion which is inherent to the mind. It’s an illusion which is maintained via culture. It’s entirely possible to subjectively perceive yourself to not have free will. Personally I don’t feel a strong sense of volition in the vast majority of things I do and say. 99% of the time I’m operating on instinct.

Scientific models are revised and updated often. We know, for example, that our knowledge of physics is very incomplete. It’s quite likely that new discoveries will be made in our lifetime that fundamentally challenge what we ‘know’ about the nature of reality - and then eventually those models may be revised and updated as well.

If you understand science as what it is, a system of mathematical models which make increasingly accurate predictions and are updated on a generational basis, then it makes perfect sense to treat it with skepticism insofar as it is not a complete or final description of reality. It doesn’t mean you have to become a flat earther. If anything it helps with understanding new discoveries - one of the barriers to laymen grasping quantum mechanics is that it contradicts ‘the truth’ which they thought they already learned it school.

The article attempts to reckon with pessimism, but ultimately just bends it back towards optimism, as usually happens. The unstated, unanswered question which this essay begs is: “is human existence so worthwhile that we must will ourselves to assume an optimistic viewpoint against all rationality, because it will encourage us to ensure the continued existence of our species?”. I say no.

I think this is a good explanation of the different elements that make a happy life - day to day pleasure and meaningful responsibilities, with changing phases of life bringing fresh challenges.

Wtf I love climate change now.

My people have a proud history. For millennia we honed our skills as engineers, builders of roads, tunnels, and yes, bridges … we have always been nomads, and for aeons these pathways were trod by troll feet alone.

Then men appeared. For a time we were content to let them pass upon our roads, though we kept out of sight when one walked by. Most were harmless, but we’d heard tales of their run-ins with other wild folk, terrible acts of cruelty and destruction. They could be only rumors, we said, but better to take precautions. In time, the men learned to build roads and bridges in imitation of our own, and even believed they had invented them. We were willing to encourage this illusion.

But as the humans became more numerous, our bridges were clogged with their carts and wagons, made filthy by the droppings of their yoke animals. Beggars took up residence there, and though the robbers who waited along our roads were hoping for wealthy merchants, they were content to use our folk for target practice.

And as the kingdoms of men grew, several found occasion for war. Then our roads were filled with men on the march, thousands in tight ranks, pulling their siege engines behind. Our bridges became points of contention as the battle lines wavered across rivers and canyons. Soon they began to burn our bridges and collapse our tunnels, to deny their use to the enemy. By the time the war was won, centuries of our finest work was laid to ruin.

It was then that troll folk realized we could not continue as we had for so many years. We were no longer content to live our secret lives, to share our creations with the humans and trust in their beneficence. A huge labor was ahead of us, the task of rebuilding all that was lost - and now timber was less plentiful, as the human townships spread, and the best quarries had been claimed by their hands.

It became clear that certain crucial materials could only be got through the use of human money. Always we had disdained this practice, seen the cruelty and avarice gold inspired in men - but we had no choice. It was decided that an envoy of the troll folk would be positioned at each newly completed bridge, to collect a toll from all who wished to pass, and inform the humans of the debt they owed our people.

More than money, this was about the esteem of our folk - finally we would be recognized for the great engineers and hardy builders that we are. In time, our bridges, and the trolls who guard them, will become heroes of the human race. I am sure of it. Some of my fellows call me naive, say that men will never hold true respect for those who are not like them - but I say they are wrong.

Everyone’s offended on behalf of the doctor, trust me they’re used to being covered in bodily fluids lol. Cum is probably the least repugnant thing she dealt with that day.

The counter argument would be that the human brain is also an amalgam of relatively simple sub-processors, and consciousness is the result of these many sub-processors interacting. It’s supported by the fact that the parts of the brain that are associated with consciousness and sentience develop relatively late in the evolutionary timeline of most intelligent species. However until we can say conclusively how consciousness works in the human brain, we can’t say whether it is possible in an artificial system, and we are not at all close to solving that problem.

Ah I see. Basically you’re referring to the Chinese black box problem. I’d argue that’s more a problem with our perception than with consciousness itself. It is impossible for us to determine from the outside whether any system is conscious or not. This is true even of other human beings as the p-zombie problem illustrates. But it would certainly be possible for an artificial system to be conscious in fact. We just wouldn’t know about it.

Computers in the future could become sufficiently advanced that the processors in an average home computer would be capable of running an AI program that is conscious. The only barrier is what hardware is widely available.

Code itself may not be capable of feeling, but code in combination with a network of physical processors that mimic organic brain structures could conceivably feel.

Good thing I have strong feet, otherwise my inevitable mortality and social alienation might bother me.

“But remember: never get high on your own supply.”