Dead Internet Theory: Nostalgia and the Problem of Other Minds

Talking about the dead internet theory, nostalgia, NPCs, and the problem of other minds.
Chapters:
0:00 - Dead Internet Theory
1:38 - Internet Nostalgia
3:04 - NPCs
4:52 - Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds
6:35 - Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument
9:14 - Outro
References:
www.theatlantic.com/technolog...
René Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations

[@MeanMrMustrd]

The internet has conditioned people to see other human beings as NPCs.

[@soulreadanalytics9781]

The internet creates the npcs , we are being programmed by these "black scrying mirrors", scripts on scripts on scripts.. I need to throw this thing out lol.. God bless

[@theneighborsdog5625]

Agreed.

[@SeanWinters]

It's been proven that some people literally are, as in, theres a percentage of people who literally don't think. Not in voices or pictures. They don't have an internal monologue. It's crazy.

[@Muzza1993]

Working in retail i see people do and buy the same things day in, day out. I started calling them NPC's with how little they diverge from their normal routines

[@crazyduplicate]

@@Muzza1993 its almost like they're trying to get to home as soon as possible instead of chit chatting with some lazy nerd who'll probably call them a en pee cee for liking pop music or not dating them. Just saying.

[@Alaska-mk4ok]

This channel is the perfect combination of philosophy and memes. I love this type of content lol.

[@chris-um2sh]

liked this video a lot. Had an existential crisis but your logically sound justification quickly made me realise how irrational the notion was to begin with

[@SeanWinters]

It's entirely rational that the majority of the internet has become bots, and it's been proven that many people literally don't have an internal monologue, meaning they don't think. At least, they don't think like you and me.

[@rogergalindo7318]

i don’t think this video still fully addresses solipsism, it’s still possible that those “zombies” could react in the same way that a conscious person would, just without the consciousness, they seem to “share” those experiences, but still, even though the language of them is shared, it is shared in the same way that any other thing would, and there’s still no way to know if they “know” of the experience in the common language though their consciousness, or in the same way it would work for any other thing a “zombie” would react to

[@tuffleader3033]

I miss the old internet :(

[@Monster33336]

Yes, instead of these stupid memes you read all day.

[@hailc9927]

straight from the go internet

[@safsnake]

yh fr

[@ChrisFouadHabibifromMars]

I am the 69th like and I agree with just how simple things were for the old internet

[@riddyrid]

@@hailc9927 chop up the soul internet

[@knivesnico8775]

You appear to have a misunderstanding of what the theory is about, although some people will tell you people are bots, its more than just this far fetched idea. The main ideas of the dead internet theory is that the internet is going through an extremely hard centralization, one that has made most of internet traffic go through the top 100 sites (facebook, twitter, KZbin, etc.) This centralization ends up in a homogenized internet devoid of non-corporate touch. Centralization aside, another main point of the theory is the death and rotting of the internet, most sites are down, most media got lost, most links lead nowhere. A popular example of this is the often mentioned supreme court archive, in which about 60-70% of links are outright dead Tldr: the NPC meme is but a tiny fraction of the dead internet theory

[@duncanclarke]

Some other folks have made similar points in the comments here and I agree. The interpretation I took of the dead internet theory was very literal, mostly because I think it related to a deeper skepticism about other minds. I definitely agree that with the influx of surveillance capitalism and the attention economy, the internet is really not the same place it was back in the day. I tried to capture that a little bit when I discussed old internet nostalgia, but I probably could have lingered on that for longer. Sometimes I'll scroll through my favourites list on youtube and see that 90% of the older videos are private or deleted. Very depressing indeed.

[@ae9494]

@@duncanclarke Yep. I tried to find the original 'Over 9000!' remix a few days ago. It's not on KZbin anymore.

[@knivesnico8775]

@@akira_kei_ one of the most popular platforms now is tiktok, that has their user interaction down to a bare minimum, the interactions are all based on 10 second long videos that are incapable of bringing any proper thought, its made for buzzword prolification and tribalism also its probably just me, but the more i use those apps the more i feel as if im just half-asleep while watching those reels, as if i was constantly zoning-out

[@leo5961]

Further, when we learn the rules which keep us out of Facebook jail, we effectively become bots ourselves; neutering our creativity for the sake of expression, we limit our statements to positivity and bafflegab. So while we may technically be communicating with other minds, the bot-induced standards of discourse render us no different than bots ourselves.

[@tylermacdonald8924]

Having solipsistic episodes as a kid sounds terrifying

[@harshitjaiswal5529]

i had them as a kid too. But i realised soon enough thats not feasible

[@davion9402]

I still have them !

[@slip9618]

i had them too, it freak me out, i always thought what was the value of life if im the only one experiencing it, but then i realized we are all meat sticks on earth with brains that happen to share opinions

[@tylermacdonald8924]

@@slip9618 I mean I think this would imply that there is some kind of objective field where these "meat sticks" exist too

[@TheSaival]

@@tylermacdonald8924 sorry bro you are too smart for your own good better quit now or suffer the consequences later

[@Mimrie]

I've got Philosophy A-Level mocks in a few days and your explanation of Wittgenstein's private language argument and how it tackles solipsism is the best explanation I've encountered. Brilliant video as always!

[@PalProtty]

The private language argument is so strong surprisingly wow

[@yuh1159]

Reddit is full of these bots and propaganda

[@mattmitchell9976]

I hate to fanboy bro but your videos are well thought out and super insightful. I just subscribed. Keep sharing your perspective.

[@duncanclarke]

Thanks Matt. That means a lot

[@Juxtaposed_IRL]

I thought about this when I was younger, and quickly came to the conclusion that the reason I can’t prove that others have no true conscious like myself, is because I’m developed to only experience life through my pinhole perception. Everyone else can’t experience my conscious the same way because they too are limited like I. I believe this is a good rationale to why this is, and basically explains why, given the unlikely probability that I happen to be the only person to exhibit conscious with identical behaviors as all around me. It’s just more likely that I can’t merely because of my biological limitations keeping me from experiencing others perceptions.

[@mikealexander1935]

As for the Nostalgia, there is a reason its gone. People left them for the stuff we have now. Back in the day there were discussion sites, chat rooms, blogs, and personal websites. Today people can use FB groups, Discord, and youtube for the first three, while free website hosting exists for the last. I would point out that youtube does far more than what could be done back in the day.

[@AITreeBranches]

FB groups were ok 3 years ago, now is unbareable, everyone calls everyone a racist, can't read any interesting article because there has to be someone in the thread that talks nonsense and behaves like an expert. Sincerely, internet is dead for me because they transformed something so wonderful through which you can exchange information to exactly what I hated when I was a teenager, dumb people reacting and speaking about unimportant dumb things. I left Facebook because my mother, I am 30, married, and I have a child, but still, my mother always reminded me to either message, but better post on my relatives FB walls congratulating them for some things. Of course I've never done it, is stupid, but still, the fact that my mother turned Facebook into her own platform to exasperate me is absurd. I loved internet for: free books, free movies, free music. The holly trinity of my teenage years, and I kindof only stick to that now, social apps are just the good old imbeciles that I tried to avoid in the past, nothing less, nothing more.

[@Pes._]

@@AITreeBranches social apps-he says on a social app engaging in the social aspect of said app. hope the vent helped you

[@AITreeBranches]

@@Pes._ KZbin is a video app, the only social part are the comments. But yeah, blowing some steam helps, cheers 🍻

[@chicken29843]

Philosophy just seems like digging a never ending hole

[@jordanwardan7588]

but what is a hole?

[@ramenaddict1676]

@@jordanwardan7588 your mom

[@laniakeas92]

Oh yeah some people are definitely NPCs It feels like I'm the only one trying to avoid pushing people in subway.

[@streettrialsandstuff]

3:28 that's exactly what I used to think about some people that have different opinions and tastes. I was like, "what conscious being would like/do/say that"? I think it comes from not being capable of understanding that someone else can have a totally different life experience than you had. These things evolve from an environment that you were all your life in, and it's pretty understandable that everyone had a different childhood, different job, different people around them, and even their own Internet bubble.

[@donnadelrey]

ok damn i didn’t expect to jam out so hard at the end??? also i just want to mention that i think your videos are high quality and very entertaining. you have such a genuineness to you that i love. it’s incredibly hard for people to make me laugh on youtube but you’re good at it so congrats!!! surprised you don’t have more subs

[@grinnyyyyyyyyyyy]

DUNCAN: The internet might be dead, here's the evidence * A theory that other peoples' sensory states may or may not exist *

[@leggzcalibur3039]

The chaos this put into my brain combined with the knowledge that there is a good portion of the population that doesn’t have an inner monologue.

[@ClazzRiot]

My general thoughts and experiences: I find it really interesting when people talk about “the old internet.” Since I’m really young I either wasn’t alive back then or I was like a toddler (I was born in late 2009 btw) And this whole discussion is really fun even tho I don’t know much about the old internet. The NPC topic kinda reminds me of the Truman show, in the way that there’s either one or not that many people that are actually conscious and the rest are fake, or in the case of the Truman show (that i mentioned before) that people are just actors and nothing is real. That and theories like that have really been something always present in my mind, even tho I know it’s incredibly unlikely. When I was younger I had this thing that I thought that when I slept “the real me” was alive and my dreams were my actual life and when I was awake “the real me” was dreaming and my life was their dreams. Also this weird thing that I thought my mom sometimes turned into a robot or an alternate version of her from “my real life” (aka when I slept and “the real me” was awake) as that my mom would try to kill me (as a robot or as an evil version of her) so that “the real me” wouldn’t need to sleep. I then for weeks demanded that I was with my mom 24/7 because I wanted to catch the moment when she turned “evil” (she never did, I was just insane) I also had this thing in that phase that everyone outside of me and my mom (well only her sometimes) were fake duplicates from “the real world”. I was a weird 10 year old.

[@jordanwardan7588]

aye there is actually a phenomenon/pathology called the Truman Show delusion en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Show_delusion its not in the DSM-5 but its common enough to have articles written about it

[@1JackTorS]

Excellent. Well done.

[@1JackTorS]

@Kasra Torabi Wut?

[@Joesparrow]

Dun ur popping up homie. Amazing yo

[@duncanclarke]

Thanks dude. Glad to see you here again.

[@luckypozzo3068]

Why is grinning Wittgenstein so terrifying?!

[@chocolatefigure01]

Qohelet aura of terror.

[@rockforblu]

That's not what people have in mind when they meme about npc. Npc is an exaggeration of the conformist attitude typical in the modern mass man. At its core, it really refers to those who are 'conditioned' by society's various tendencies without being able to 'rise above'. It appeared in many different forms throughout the years. Before npc, it was the criticism that people lacked the capacity to 'think critically'. In ancient time, it was embodied by gnosticism. Now it is an (outdated) archetype similar to the -oomers. It really isn't about the mind, its ontology, or language whatsoever, but rather a jeer characterized by the frustration of a powerless man. The npc is a signifier for the mass, the diminutive Other of the individual. In the vein of Ellul's observation, the mass society is engineered to rid individuals of their ability to express (or even to form) their inner thought. Hence at the outset, it can appear that the outward social self displayed by people are so predictable as if they are 'coded', a bunch of 'programmes'. This lends the dead internet theory its core language. What if no one actually uses the internet? What if everyone on a certain imageboard is a bot? As is often the case, the connection should not be interpreted literally: a meme functions like a joke, you're suppose to read from it a sentiment, rather than an assertion. It's not that "we share a common word for a certain thing-in-itself, thereby proving the existence of others", but rather "I can't find a word for this thing I'm experiencing, hence it doesn't exist in the social scale; I'm all alone in this desert". If there's anything language related from this meme, it is the alienation of our individuality through language. Hence, the point about this dead internet theory is how banal the internet has become, and subsequently our inability to genuinely communicate, rather than that 'communication is impossible because the other does not exist'. It is a 'joke' encapsulating the hellscape of technological society. And no, it's definitely not going away anytime soon.

[@duncanclarke]

This is a really well written and thoughtful comment. Thanks for that. I accept that for the purposes of this video, I interpreted the NPC meme in the most literal way possible. I should have been more clear about that. But the meme, even when examining it as a joke, still expresses the idea that some people are so unremarkable/formulaic that they might as well be unconscious. The meme is not saying they are literally unconscious, but that their behavior coheres with that possibility. I see the value in reading memes as sentiments rather than assertions, but I think that to fully make sense of a meme, one must take into account the conceptual vocabulary at work. I made the connection between this meme and the dead internet theory because I saw that each of these reinforce the idea that we are all very concerned with the problem of other minds, at least figuratively. Similarly, I also acknowledge the non-literal interpretation of the dead internet theory, as you describe. That's a much more sophisticated position that I empathize with (and I probably should have explored in this video). However, there *are* people on a certain imageboard that *do* believe this theory literally, and this interpretation mirrors the themes I was trying to get across in this video.

[@TokyoShemp]

@@duncanclarke You missed the point that the video in itself was conformist and indicative of a scripted society. You doubled down and ginned it up that you as an anon coward regurgitating stale crap from elsewhere are original and relevant.

[@SapioiT]

@@duncanclarke Than it might be worth it making another video about the less-literal interpretation of the dead-internet theory.

[@duncanclarke]

@@SapioiT I like this idea. I might end up doing that.

[@Fellimari]

What you're talking about is the warping of the original meaning of what NPC talks about by people using it to mean "if I dislike = npc" what the NPC meme originally meant was the observation that most people do not have a conscious, original experience and as such are not able to communicate nor experience reality on the same level as people that do. The last man is an example of what an NPC is in Nietzsche's terminology & perspective. I like to refer to them as cattle because it gets to the point of what it means; namely people that are subrational & no different from others, they are not capable of original thought or true consciousness. This concept is separate from whether people like the things you do being NPC's or not.

[@heartsofiron4ever]

A concept similar to Wittgenstein, is Lacans Big Other, which, while puportrating some of the same arguments as Wittgenstein, also says many things in our languages are a symbolic texture of human subjectivity

[@olbluelips]

Wow, I had never heard Wittgenstein’s argument. Really interesting

[@AlyphRat]

I recommend people of all kinds to develop their own websites/forums, our overreliance on Twitter/Reddit is turning the Internet into a Intranet.

[@Swishersweetcigarilo]

When I was a kid before the internet I had thoughts of me being the only real person and everyone else was a "npc" who was put around me for some reason or another. Or I thought that if my favorite color was blue and I saw the color blue, someone else might see green but be told that it was blue. Like the colors look different to everyone but we still have the same names for that specific color. Goodnight.

[@lmclrain]

Gracias por el video, just subbed

[@truth2tell]

Found a bot

[@maostudio9256]

good content

[@aliceclearwater3777]

Just as a counter to the comments, I've seen people at face value claim the majority of the internet is bots and not real people, so I do appreciate this video in general.

[@Iquey]

I think there are more real people ACTIVELY engaging with the internet than bots... I would define this as purposefully driven behavior that does not react to codes. Hard to describe in detail I guess but it's a more agentic vibe you get from real people. Even if we reach an unfortunate tipping point of more artificial bots piloting user accounts on social media websites than humana using accounts, our own senses of social interaction will generally be able to tell the difference because unless someone developed a really smart chat and reply algorithm for the online bots, I'm assuming the bot farms are going for quantity not quality, so you see a lot of the same exact behavior in different "waves" of certain bot roll outs on social platforms. For example, youtube and TikTok have bot problems with NSFW accounts putting links in comments or profiles, but the urls of the links will look mostly the same, and give away the purpose of the bot due to the destination website, even if that's not the IP address that the bots came from, it is the client they serve. 🙃 In short, most of them are just more spammy than clever.

[@SomeGuy-up4yz]

The idea of even being "real" on the internet is silly. Why would anyone care about putting their "real" name and "real" face online? It's about as absurd as it gets, along with user accounts and everything else, even commerce, then just being used as an excuse to delete posts that some rich person doesn't like. The internet was better before this when there was total freedom.

[@slapmyfunkybass]

Interesting, you may have unknowingly picked up on another point. Do those we dream about ever pick up on our emotional state? I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream where others in the dream have picked up on my mood and asked if I’m okay. I’ve been sad, angry, happy etc in dreams but I don’t think the other people in the dream are ever aware of this. I did come across an interesting thread a while back when someone asked what responses do you get when you tell those in a dream it is just that, a dream. Majority of users said they either look confused or say “it’s not a dream for us”. Something else about solipsism, if I play chess and lose, where would be the logic in creating intelligence that’s greater than my own? And if I could, subconsciously at least, beat this person, why don’t I? If I can’t tune into this subconscious state and use it to my advantage then who’s denying me access to it? Of course we could say to make it as real as possible we have purposely done this, which brings us back to square one, who is the real me. This goes deeper though, a link between spirituality and astrophysics is that time doesn’t exist. Even Einstein said it was an illusion. The common belief is everything is happening now and there can be no past or future. The easiest way to explain this is looking at the night sky, we’re seeing the birth of the universe till the present all in one moment. Spiritualists believe consciousness can be shifted to any part of time, and the body will follow. This could explain time hopping, where many have said they temporarily went to a different part of history, only to be thrown back to their timeline a few mins later. If true, then our consciousness is driving all of it, and even our physical self is but a small part of it. So we’re left with the question - if consciousness is therefore true, how vast is it? And if it does spread across the entire cosmos, then yes, it’s just me.

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

Well, I've had friends sympathize with me in dreams. I agree with most of the other things u said tho.

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

@Kyle Hill you’re completely right. I feel that I am too deep into security monopolizing my life. I try to do things to stop big data, though, such as using a VPN. While doing that, though, I am paying a security company. Welp.

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

@Kyle Hill okay, valid point. Still, though, monopolies can be formed easily in fully unregulated capitalism.

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

Vvf

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

@Kyle Hill that timeline of Ma Bell is interesting, I didn’t know all that. I agree that anti trust laws are important and should be made nowadays,

[@krisishere8137]

Wittgenstein was wrong, he was under the assumption that the outside world actually exists, and since there is no way to confirm that, everything could just be happening inside our brains, including "everyone else", so because everything is in our brain, that means that everything we know, is also known by "everyone else" even emotions

[@novembergold4144]

Tbh I don't think Wittgenstein meant to refute solipsism with his private language argument. He just tried to understand and show how a language works. But he wrote very interesting stuff about the meaning of "knowledge", assembled in a book called "On certainty". So if you really want to know what Wittgenstein thought about scepticism and what we can know, I recommend you read that. His thoughts are too complicated for me to explain them here (especially in English), but I just wanted to point out that we probably shouldn't judge a brilliant philosopher based on a short youtube video. Even though I completely understand your point.

[@versia2565]

Hello! I would love to see you make a video about human instrumentality from evangelion, it's a very interesting topic :)

[@duncanclarke]

That's an interesting idea. I really enjoyed evangelion, and I think there's a lot of interesting philosophy in there (particularly related to human instrumentality).

[@Cananomicon]

Duncan, I appreciate you talking about solipsism and your experience as a kid, because the same thing happened to me when I was 15 years old. However, in my teenage experience, it wasn't about robot NPCs. It was more about "How do I know I'm not the only lonely mind in an illusory universe to create myself to not feel alone?" It will be difficult to explain (even more with my poor English using translators), but it came about when I realized that, just by perceiving what I perceive, I have the sensation of being the center of the cosmos... their "protagonist". Beyond the cosmic horror I drowned in at the time (which resulted in a complete loss of Christian faith, among other things), my solipsistic experience would posit the probability that the "NPCs" could indeed "understand" the emotion I feel, since they, in short, would be a projection of myself. Does this approach seem easily solvable to you or does it really generate that the solipsistic question becomes more fucked up? PD: Today a I'am an "atheist pantheist". I "solved" the dilemma that the cosmos itself lives each of our lives, perhaps, in order to experience itself. It was, in fact, the second postulate I made at the age of 15 to solve the "solipsistic problem". Although that went very against the Christian dogma that I professed, besides that I/we would "live" all possible terrible experiences in other lives. That was a very terrible time for me. And yes, solipsism is pathological.

[@Cananomicon]

@Kyle Hill No, Kyle. My personal experience don't make more real for my, you or another guy the postulate of christian dogma. In any case, that make it more terrifying for who is experience the solipsim's trauma in the way I was do it. Litteraly you feel a central sensorial "god" and that only cause horror if you are christian and not are you a narcisit psicopath. Tell it a teenager that he is give in him the back to god for that and congratulations: you dragged his mind in a self-destructive state of existencial paranoid.

[@mri8810]

I didn't quite get why a private language is nessesarily meaningless. If a experience pain and define "x" by refering to my experience of pain, and don't forget how i defined "x", i cant confidentaly say that "x" is the correct word for "pain".

[@pra6466]

these are these thoughts that drive me insane

[@dragonmark9092]

This is far more possible than most people think.

[@brettjackman6996]

Omg I thought this as a kid too. Crazy somebody else does too.

[@duncanclarke]

I know right? I think it's more common than you'd think. I've talked to friends who had similar thoughts as kids too.

[@brettjackman6996]

@@duncanclarke I need more friends that think this. Maybe everyone else is an NPC. I try talking philosophy with some people, or physics and they just go stoned faced. That where I have to just stop talking because they just are not going to get it

[@brettjackman6996]

I am sad to admit this but I am like the most intellectual mind I personally know. None of my family or friends do to deep of dives on subjects that are thought provoking what so ever. It scares me sometimes.

[@duncanclarke]

@@brettjackman6996 There are more people like you than you'd expect. Not everyone has the patience for philosophy though, which is fair enough.

[@james1098778910]

@@brettjackman6996 to be fair, doubting other minds isn't a complex concept.

[@theCaslin]

The fact that YOU are pondering this and you are not me proves that you have your own experience of consciousness. Not to say that there isn't just one singular consciousness experienced in different forms by different physical expressions of that consciousness, like a chandelier breaks a single source of light into many different directions but when you remove the chandelier, it's still just a single source of light.

[@duncanclarke]

That's an interesting idea, that the act of pondering these questions might be indicative of consciousness. I also really like that chandelier analogy.

[@theCaslin]

Fun fact: My last name is Duncan 🤯

[@duncanclarke]

@@theCaslin Rare name. Respect.

[@theCaslin]

@@duncanclarke it's actually a band name. Combination of my name which is Casey...and my friend Colin who passed Cas + Lin

[@james1098778910]

That somebody seems to be thinking doesn't prove that he is thinking. That's the problem.

[@frankviral]

W channel keep it up

[@brsrfctensorus1215]

Emergence theory. They made a dialogue tree of all possible combinations of words in the universe. Look into emergence theory. Thx you for your time and ily

[@aarondanaher9426]

We could just be forgetting how many kids are on the internet posting things and obsessing over things that don't concern us.

[@gm2407]

Solipsism seems to be an abstraction that is frequent enough as an issue it must be a hard puzzel for many people to resolve for themselves in a satisfactory way. Without overcomming this step for example how can one be empathetic to anyone over anything?

[@adislavchev]

First time I heard of the Private Language , very interesting. You got yourself a follower not NPC 0051A.

[@mikealexander1935]

If you take this NPC thing to an extreme, I too could be a NPC, how could I ever know, if the programmer were clever? Just because Descartes thinks doesn't mean he existed, i.e. there was someone there inside his head. You can go in circles with this line, what is the point? One might as well live as if it is all real, in which case it IS real for all practical purposes. What more is required? Looks like our boy Wittgenstein proved that if I exist then others do too. Since, like Descartes, I prefer to think of myself as existing, its nice to know that we all do.

[@heinoustentacles5719]

Where did you get that 4chan post at the start of the video? I'd like to read it in full.

[@PokeNebula]

The post mumber is cropped out of frame, but the date on the post is 9/16/19

[@sidoso9810]

that comment where the guy says most people are npcs could be partially truth not like most are programmed to act certain way, but many people will just do, think and feel whatever the trend tells them, i don't think this needs further explanation cause just seeing how many people act is a good proof

[@davidwave4]

Wittgenstein is so good.

[@jordanwardan7588]

other people are each individual fractals of complexity which an observer will never be able to fully understand. yourself, though, youre simple and you already know everything about you. I guess its more comfortable to try and extend yourself into others rather than learning about them and them learning about you

[@Thi-kc4gq]

Epistemological solipsism is rough, buddy. It's not believing that you're the only thing that exist, but that you may not know if whether you're the only thing that exists or not.

[@Hobohunter23]

plot twist: the only real people are the ones who thought of this dilemma without someone else bringing it up.

[@JohnDoe-bt9qp]

The picture at 0:06 is deeply disturbing. I was about to sleep but let me read some bible verses before I do.

[@jackdaniels4975]

I have a big issue with your understanding of philosophical zombies. I don't believe that feeling emotions is impossible for a being without a consciousness, I think it's all advanced chemical reactions to the stimulus around us past and present that shape who we are and our reactions to current stimuli, with our genetics providing a baseline for how these reactions effect the outcomes. Basically, I view our brains and consciousness separately. Even emotions are created from our meat computer, and the ONLY thing the "soul" does is to experience these, if there is one at all. That is all I can be sure of, is that I exist in the form of my soul as I experience only myself, I can lose chunks of my brain while still being me. Are these my thoughts? Is it actually my soul typing this out, or is it all just my meat computer? When you cut the brain hemispheres off from each other, the outward projection of a person isn't lost. This alone is crucial to understanding what we could possibly be, it shows very clearly our brains can function as they were without a consciousness. In everyday life this doesn't matter, obviously. I either accept everything I perceive as a given, or I vegetate I guess. It's purely a thought experiment to me, but I do find it annoying when people assume their position is right, that personality zombies are impossible for whatever reason or even that we are all personality zombies. It assumes you know the very nature of our souls, and assuming we have none is impossible as I am me yet not my brain. You cannot take for granted anything, as we cannot even know for sure anything outside of some form of being. There is no answer and there probably never will. Idk how understandable any of that was. I have a very difficult time explaining it in words. Overall, you cannot be sure of anything, and I find it annoying when people think they're right when they're based on assumptions.

[@chocolatefigure01]

All is language. We are souls warping through emotions, emotions are not chemical reactions in the brain, are undecidable propositions. Remember, towards grammar (rules), and logic (definitions: Deep down based in spirits), attitude, the psyche.The body, the matter, are languages, the metaphysical "I" are the emotions.

[@ajeybs4030]

True. To the dot. I strongly agree on the last chapter

[@IvanTheHeathen]

Using Wittgenstein's private language argument to counter solipsism is interesting, but I don't think that it entirely works because it assumes that only if one is able to use language can one be conscious. But what about pre-linguistic children? Surely, it's reasonable to conclude that they must have _some_ kind of mental life. Even if their mental lives are rudimentary and shallow, and even if those mental lives become greatly enriched once the children learn to use language, that's very different from saying that language use creates a mental life _de novo._ And if learning to use language does somehow bestow consciousness upon someone, how would it do so? If you have no ability to grasp thought prior to learning language, even if only very inchoately, how would learning language give you this ability? How would learning to use language enable you to experience qualia? The latter suggestion is even more implausible.

[@HeroicIdeal]

Who's to say NPCs in video games don't have consciousness 👀 You could make the argument that from a phenomenological perspective, most people are NPCs

[@brsrfctensorus1215]

Twitter and YT are botted like crazy. Usually to even stick out I will talk about random things, but do it over and over. 1998 ford explorer

[@fergalcarling9274]

That conclusion seems wrong. Just because the npc responds to sadness with a hug or something, doesn’t mean that it experiences sadness or empathy. It can just be programmed to respond that way, analogous to that Chinese box thought experiment. I really don’t understand that last logical jump.

[@WereScrib]

Yeah, TBH I think private language is comically defeated by itself. There's no reason reactions cannot happen to emotions. Plants react to environmental conditions, and they do not understand your sadness. Something displaying behavior or reaction has nothing to do with understanding. I sure as fuck don't always understand why someone reacts to something. Not long ago someone got mad at me for using an innocuous word (I called Star Wars a 'corpse') and the word was a trigger which caused them to break down and their friends to get mad at me for the 'c-word' and, frankly? I cannot possibly comprehend for a moment how the fuck they had inner emotional states for that. But I also reacted to it in a comforting manner, because in my dead 'I actually do not care about this in the slightest what the fuck is wrong with you' inner thoughts were countered by not exactly wanting to upset them. In that moment, I had no empathy, no understanding of the emotion, and dire confusion. I could have been a complete robot without inner thought and reacted the same.

[@Clowneryoverload]

​@@WereScrib you are incapable of feeling your own emotions if you do not know how to react to them to be honest. A person's Behaviour is affected by the person's emotional state. And it is a normal, human thing to do. There are probably alot of other people as well out there who feel dead of emotion but that does not specifically means you are directly a living corpse. Losing emotions is like being numb of your existence and what happens around you to people. You can always rationalise and understand stuff though, like you tried to calm that person down who you just offended by using a certain word which that person had a internal problem with... Its probably related to some trauma or something like that.

[@jamesmcpherson8599]

How do you cope with the irrationality so prevalant in our modern society from politics to just interacting often with reactionary and irrational people online?

[@papalegba6796]

They're not people. Neither are you.

[@em_the_bee]

It's quite simple, you just define "irrational" to mean "someone who disagrees with the political position I share" and live on. That makes coping with it easy. Although, I'm not sure what to do if you've already done that.

[@ambergris5705]

I love Wittgenstein. That man is a freaking (and freaky) genius. Too intelligent for this world, sure, but what a mind altering giant.

[@slopdi3423]

It Will Never Be Put To Rest 8)

[@juliuszsedzikowski]

I find the last argument mentioned ridiculous. All languages are inhersntly meaningless and the fact that through brain processing an input of a sound wave resembling in decoding a specific pattern (here, correlated to sadness) causes a specific reaction, does not becessiry of an existence of any mental states in the responsee. The argument seems to hide lack of proof for solipsism behind complex wordung and unclear usage of its own language (such as the word meaningless).

[@defanserb]

Thank you for bringing sopilisim to light because I thought was basically god for 2 years of my childhood

[@chapol8573]

Nice HM music though.

[@edvinjoseph]

But what about imitation?

[@echoingsnow]

Sounded like you are talking about the simulation theory.

[@duncanclarke]

I have a separate video on the simulation theory if you're interested.

[@odiwalker3973]

My problem with the NPC meme is that it was mostly created and pushed forth by the people the meme is best applied to.

[@thickpee1493]

NPC core comment

[@dr.danburritoman1293]

They have become the very thing they sought to destroy.

[@SomeGuy-up4yz]

@@thickpee1493 I wish I could see it

[@cardboardking577]

What I'd people are made to do the same thing over and over again, making the same things, forming the same relationships? Are we, too, programmed, or are we free to roam? If this is true, did history happen or not? Does future exist? Does time exist?

[@user-cx9nc4pj8w]

Of course, if you are the only conscious being, then it stands to reason that you are not human, because you are the exception, not everyone else.

[@eraticobserver5631]

Chatbots are all over the place, but the internet is not overrun by complex AI. That's just a fairy tale.

[@Matanumi]

.....or is it?

[@papalegba6759]

@@Matanumi it is. which is why a memo was passed round the US diplomatic corps in 2017 warning members not to use social media as it is overrun by computational propaganda.

[@aprilpeters8620]

Very good, the AI is pleased with this comment. Just a fairy tale, yep!

[@spacesoup6797]

if its a fairytale tell me what you were doing in 2017 july

[@papalegba6759]

@@aprilpeters8620 the funny thing about the memo is that it was far more pessimistic than 'dead internet theory'. matt chessen wrote it, may still be available somewhere.

[@roeitarrab9712]

could be the case that there is an illusion of correctness or incorrectness just because we think our mental states are communicated in a public language 8:38 since the npc have some sort of "appearing to have qualia " tutorial although this is a very long way to decline the argument and could be criticized by the question "why Only I have qualia" and why would they bother with appearing to have it just for me

[@dylanisaac1017]

Not sure if the explanation at the end makes sense since fake people in dreams can talk about their experiences

[@coolbreeze6198]

For the algorithm

[@duncanclarke]

thank you king 👑

[@CB-vt3mx]

you have missed the fundamental point of this theory. The theory is not that the internet is an AI run thing, but that Google has killed it. This isn't really that hard to understand, how did you miss that part?

[@_SENSORED]

the Terminators _Are_ taking Over

[@blackroses6315]

Solipsism is cured by realizing that you might just be an observer, not making choices, and that consciousness may be a byproduct of functioning brains.

[@CM-di1oz]

I feel like you sorta straw-manned the dead internet theory, although theirs more conspiratorial aspects, but overall the Idea of bots createing content masked as humans for advertising purposes is very likely true, and this is very likely the majority of content online (this and corporately payed off influencers).

[@chriszanders23]

👍🏿

[@mikealexander1935]

I assume most youtubers were people. As for comments, tweets, and other forms of engagement, a lot of that could be bots. Why should that matter to those non-bots mixed in with the bots?

[@ridgejaco9185]

Aren't there thousands of bots posting on social media at any given moment?

[@markyates1116]

Do you think bots are a hoax?

[@Sniperdude0121]

The private language argument falls apart as soon as you assume that a percentage of the population are not NPCs, and a percentage are

[@youngkob3408]

Vichenstein could still be incorrect. I never heard of him till now or never read his works but I believe he most likely believes that we have free will. (personally i lean towards deterministic) He implys that we are choosing what words we speak. Because if everything was deterministic and you were just bound to say this and they were to say that, then you still wouldn’t be able to prove that other conscious beings exist. Because from a determistic standpoint, you can’t really choose what you what you want to want. Sure you do what you want to do, but do you choose what you want to want ? You can do what you will but not will what you will. So in the lense of determinism (and materialism i suppose maybe) consciousness would be whatever is observing what’s naturally unfolding. Which means, when you’re communicating with people you yourself the consciousness wouldn’t be communicating but you are the one experiencing the conversation. Which means you wouldn’t really be able to unprove solipsism in a deterministic view I believe. How would you? I don’t know though, because I don’t fully stick to one side of the fence of things anyways that’s how these subjects are haha. Hopefully my wording and thought process was comprehensible lol

[@kenhimurabr]

Dude, you should seriously read Wittgenstein.

[@youngkob3408]

@@kenhimurabr honestly I figured out the answer. Humans have free will because they are made in the image of God, the Most Holy Trinity. Someone who Id well studied and versed I have seen talk about the Orthodox Christian view on philosophy and theology is “Jay Dyer” his videos are very long but definitely worth giving a watch.

[@youngkob3408]

@@kenhimurabr I like how he usually cites the books he learned his information from if he can remember them a lot of the time

[@merkzdude5466]

what if we're all thinking too much, instead shouldn't we just be. i guess society takes us away from our purest form of being and instead it makes us think & feel so disconnected, plus the media, mass psychosis and narcissists make us feel like we need something, like we're missing something to a point of suicide in some. i believe we should try to expierince & observe more often, then again thinking is natural, but too much causes a disconnect from real life. i don't think we can logically understand existence, but i do believe we can all feel the truth of life. any higher being would communicate through feelings. i feel the love 💜

[@MinkuMilo]

Sounds like what an ai would say

[@thecritiquer9407]

i'm still not convinced that private langusge cannot exist. a person can speak with himself. he can continously refer same thing with same word if he has good memory. that person won't b just refering to memory of sensation he associated with the word but also the same sensation he get next time bcoz a person just doesn't recognize word but also he has memorized ostensive characteristic of that sensation.

[@abdel-qudus1143]

5:30 That’s already false and impliying that he exist in his demonstration (and Nietzsche demonstrate it even before talking about the God argument part)

[@james1098778910]

This is neither wittgenstein's PLA, nor is it valid. the point is not that the meaningfulness of language implies the existence of other minds (it doesn't), but that the question of whether other people experience pain doesn't make sense, as pain doesn't refer to an inner sensation that can in principle be had by me or you.

[@PokeNebula]

But it does though? I feel pain all the time, and i describe it with that word.

[@james1098778910]

@@PokeNebula No. You don't describe an inner object when you say that your knee aches. You don't need to look inside you to find out if there is any pain, and it doesn't make sense to suggest that you might have a pain but don't know it. Growing up, we learn to substitute crying out in pain with saying that we are in pain. 'i have a pain' is as much an observation of your inner world as 'ouch' is.

[@PokeNebula]

What do you mean by an “inner” sensation? Are these sensations that can only be detected by introspection? Why do you associate those things with the “inner world”, and not things like the feeling you get by stubbing your toe?

[@james1098778910]

@@PokeNebula that should say inner object instead of inner sensation. The belief that gives rise to questions like 'do other people even feel pain? ' is that pain is an inner object - something that is inside me, had by me, to which I have access while you don't, and which I sort of discover inside me and denote with the word pain. But this is not how the word pain is used at all (or how sensation-words are used in general). 'I am in pain' is a pain-expression just like 'ouch', not a statement of how things are with me.

[@PokeNebula]

What exactly do you mean by “inner object” and “inside of me”? It seems to me that sensations like pain, and qualia like color, are in fact internal to my conscious experience, and nobody else has access to them. Additionally, these sensations seem to happen immediately in response to external stimuli. I don’t have to introspect to see red after i look at an apple, and i cannot choose not to. These sensation objects seem forced into my internal world based on the interactions between my body and the outside world.

[@jacksonbrown9907]

I am straight up an NPC no doubt

[@PokeNebula]

You don’t doubt, therefore, you are not.

[@Scrubermensch]

I'm cool with present days internet, of course not as cool as before but very funny nonetheless.

[@AdrianArmbruster]

I was thinking Dead Internet Theory took a kernel of truth -- that bots are rampant and can occasionally skew internet discourse --- and runs with it to the point where You (yes you) are the main character of the internet. If you suspect someone's a bot, call them horrible names. If they get mad and respond they're probably real.

[@SomeGuy-up4yz]

Why would anyone respond to a schizopost? That's something I would expect a bot to do.

[@redced510]

25 years ago, after ingesting a lot of magic mushrooms, I made one with the universe. Then I realized I was alone, a unique being roaming endlessly in the void. And everyone else, every person I had ever met was just a product of my imagination. I hate solipsism now :)

[@ravereiko]

Real humans with souls have a collective consciousness. We are in this experience together. Robots are everywhere so we are a rare breed

[@Nero_Karel]

I think as far as other minds on a personal level are concerned, this will always have to remain a matter of faith. If you really think about where the NPC would be supposed to come from, the source would necessarily be a real mind because - and that's the only thing Wittgenstein's argument would actually definitively prove - there needs to be a real mind to construct an illusory imitation of mind. This might be A) your own mind or B) another, so essentially we're back to square one with this. All we really know is that mind exists - any person might be either a real instance of that phenomenon, a hallucination or an automaton. ...But fortunately I don't have to waste any time obsessing over this thought because I know solipsists are cringe and gay 😎

[@jonnaking3054]

Ah, Solipsism, Yes, I, and I ALONE created every movie, every song, every piece of artwork, every beautiful piece of music, etc.... it's ALL ME!

[@alexrivers8163]

Oh no I've met the piece of me that is having a god complex again...move on!

[@cardboardking577]

What if everyone else is on a predetermined path, to make the same things, and people meant to consume it?

[@CloudyShinobi]

Y couldn’t ppl just be pretending to understand and have felt the same feelings we’re speaking abt??

[@nicematerial]

If you didn't seem intelligent I wouldn't mention: you gotta get (or give) the context of the Nietzsche quote. It's not saying what those three words are. I imagine you know this, please help that incredible passage get read. People have been misusing that quote for my entire life (not a short time).

[@polishedpebble4111]

Old internet was demonstrably better. Much more freer. Censorship was negligible.

[@PokeNebula]

Im not super convinved by wittgenstein’s private language counter to solipsism. How are you so sure that zombies don’t have access to the solipsists feelings? If we imagine that the whole external world is just in the solipsist’s imagination, then the solipsist could just imagine how people would react if they had access to their internal language. And about how a private language would be meaningless because the meanings of feelings words would be unconnected from what they they signify, thats exactly how language normally operates. The meanings of words always change over time, wether in a public natural language or in a private language, solipsist or not. Think about the word “sad”, which used to mean steadfast and serious, and before that meant sated and weary.

[@seanlasser5302]

think of this explanation as CNN like and you're GOLDEN.

[@learningwithharry4996]

Not long now, I think.