Mindscape 262 | Eric Schwitzgebel on the Weirdness of the World

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Scientists and philosophers sometimes advocate pretty outrageous-sounding ideas about the fundamental nature of reality. (Arguably I have been guilty of this.) It shouldn't be surprising that reality, in regimes far away from our everyday experience, fails to conform to common sense. But it's also okay to maintain a bit of skepticism in the face of bizarre claims. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel wants us to face up to the weirdness of the world. He claims that there are no non-weird ways to explain some of the most important features of reality, from quantum mechanics to consciousness.
Eric Schwitzgebel received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. He is the author of several books, including the new The Weirdness of the World.
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[@obi5402]

I don't have a version number in my copy, does that mean I've dropped off the wave function?😮

[@bryandraughn9830]

So you're in one of "those" worlds....hmmm...😅

[@GGoAwayy]

I generated a number to choose what color highlighter to highlight my copys version number in. It ended up being yellow.

[@jonathanbyrdmusic]

I can definitely read text and numbers in dreams, but I’ve never been confused as to whether I was dreaming or not.

[@bbbsnuggle]

You don't have to simulate the whole universe to fool someone, you just have to simulate the experience of being in one. You don't have to compute every atom in the universe in a simulation, just the ones that someone is looking at. If someone is looking at the moon, just render a blurry picture to their retina. If someone is "performing a scientific calculation", just inprint the sense of intellectual fulfillment to their virtual brains. "The wave function collapsed, just as I thought it would. I'm good at this. Next level, please."

[@neutralarchive137]

1:11:04 "Dude. You're a panpsychist. You think electrons have feelings. Don't give me a hard time for giving a large credence to following the Schrödinger equation." Lmao, one of the funniest things I've ever heard

[@GGoAwayy]

This was a really good one.

[@ivannogolica364]

It's quite unbelivable that Bernardo Kastrup and Donald Hoffman were not mentioned here. Analytical Idealism is far superior to the simulation argument.

[@peterprochilo4555]

The materialist take on consciousness, IMHO, leads inexorably to the idea that consciousness doesn't exist (unless it finds some sort of dubious end-around ("folk consciousness," etc.). Which is weird, indeed, given that presumably those thinking about the non-existence of consciousness are...conscious. Eric's example (I think drawn from Dennett?) sounds an awful lot like some kind of Idealism. Which, as an Idealist, I don't have a huge prob with... Good discussion!

[@StayPrimal]

That's gonna be a good one cheers to both!

[@steliosp1770]

ayyy new mindscape episode! NICE!

[@glennbalck752]

A better title: On the Weirdness of Concepts Most Likely Not of this World

[@Al-cynic]

Daniel Dennett still relevant..makes me happy!

[@peterprochilo4555]

Bring on the irreducible weirdness...

[@quietwyatt4045]

I'll pick the word "preposterous", and use it to demolish the notion that we're living in a simulation (or a dream). The key is right there in the word "simulation". A simulation needs something other than itself to simulate. I can think of a few things though that can't be simulated. For example: Could someone in a simulation commit suicide and actually succeed? That is, if the person shoots himself in his simulation, does he really die of a gunshot wound in fact? If yes, that means no simulation. If the thing the simulator is simulating (reality, in this case)exists, the simulator is superfluous; ergo no simulation. This is all real my friends. 😊

[@HarryNicNicholas]

talking of AI, it won't be AI until it asks the questions first. you go to work and when you turn on the computer it's been beavering away all weekend and wants you to give it some information. anyway, i generated some AI images on ideogram, which is free and fairly unlimited, and then wondered what i could do with the hundreds of pictures i now had, so, i got chatgtp to generate a fairy story for me, illustrated it, got a text to voice to narrate, edited it all together and posted it on my channel (elora and the phoenix) but then i imagined setting up a channel that would just do fairy stories, an "evergreen". so i got chatgtp to write a sequel, and a third installment. it became apparent chatgtp has no imagination, it just basically repeated the first story but just including the new scenario. AI has a way to go i think.

[@blackbordeaux9741]

Hey what’s up? I tend to sse you on atheist videos. Anyway, you should try huggin face for LLM that were especially trained for generating litterary texts. You can run the models on your own computer or on the cloud and you can tailor them to your use cases. Do not hesitate to ask for more information if you are interested.

[@GGoAwayy]

Making art with AI, or stories with ChatGPT isn't creating, its just composing.

[@zack_120]

7:46 -'... got 4 answers to each question': a powerful evidence if not proof why AI is potentially disastrous to humanity. So, (11:50) as a philosopher so lightly affirming chatgpt merely based on one such shaky experiment is utterly surprising.

[@user-vadimsirbu]

.. I Bet Every Psychotherapeutical Lab Is Weird ..

[@mike9rr]

Re: dreaming, if you want to get down into the weeds, G. William Domhoff has a recent book, _The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming_. It's not a walk in the park reading it, but will clear up some misconceptions about the brain and dreaming.

[@jenshee5975]

Is Immanuel Kant not relevant anymore? I never hear anybody talking about him

[@acorpuscallosum6947]

Yeah, he’s still the most relevant. Most analytic philosophers are stuck in what James Conant calls ‘the Cartesian paradigm’ but some notable exceptions include McDowell, Brandom, and Conant himself

[@Shillbilly]

I can read in dreams

[@bryandraughn9830]

"Weirdness" is one thing, but it seems like there's a surprising number of things that are exactly backwards from the way they should be. That's been bugging me for a while. Superficiality, hypocrisy comes to mind.

[@kathrynlittle2523]

I really liked the easy tripartite credence measure…. Common sense, Experimental evidence, Elegant theory.

[@aerolitos0]

A single cell is not conscious, and it is way better structured than a bunch of human beings in a house, a school or a country. So not a great analogy.

[@sbwetherbe]

I'm reminded of William Lane Craig's statement that if there is just a one in a million chance that Christianity is true it is worth believing. One in a million seems high to me but........

[@bryandraughn9830]

I never could figure out how someone is going to just "decide" what to believe. If I could do that, I would believe that everything is perfect forever and that's that. I've tried. It doesn't work at all.

[@CD-PK-991]

I actually had a dream on the style of Inception even before the movie came out. It is a bit complicated to explain, but only to throw out there the fact that it can independently happen to humans. On an unrelated note, I am a great proponent of simply making stuff up, and not worrying about the truth claim of general super high level questions in everyday life. In a academic setting we should instead spend much more energy in trying to break the stuff we made up. When we cannot break anything anymore, maybe we can start to believe something about the superstructure of the world we live in. Not "shut up and calculate", but it has little sense to put so much effort in trying to make a model fit the data. Which even if it is found out to be generally true, it obviously imperfect right now. 90% claim is almost religious like credence. And the simplicity of a theory is strong bias not based in anything, but an extraction of a historical trend. Method good enough for sociology or history, but not physics. we should have no reason to believe the universe is not taped together by a unbelievable complicated set of unrelated effects of almost comical nature.

[@Ometecuhtli]

But did you have that dream before Paprika? I don't know how you calculate how much is religious like credence, but in any case I don't think the comparison is fair, religion in principle has to stop doubting things, even if proved untrue. But when you measure and calculate something you need to show how the connection is made to the model you're testing, and having to adjust it doesn't make it useless because it's imperfect, much like we still use Newtonian mechanics even if it's limited and will simply give you the wrong answer in many cases, but for everyday life it is more than good enough.

[@CD-PK-991]

@@Ometecuhtli "paprika" never heard. On the religion comparison, it is not a perfect comparison, like all comparison if not it will be comparing the same thing. Otherwise, I am a longtime listener of Sean carroll, and I think he's one of the better critical thinking peoples out there. But I have the feeling that he likes his theory too much. Like all scientists working on a theory for a long part of their life they unknowingly introduce bias of attachment. On the number, I think it is too high for various reasons. For a theory on something so complicated and difficult to do experiment on something over 70% is unreasonable for me. I don't care or think he should adequate to my numbers, or that you should agree with me on this matter. Only a reminder to be more skeptical.

[@GGoAwayy]

Your unconscious mind is able to imagine the same things as, and be as creative as, Christopher Nolan's conscious mind. Thats all. Inception happening to humans would mean you actually went into someone else's dream and changed it around on them.

[@CD-PK-991]

@@GGoAwayy well, yes, you are right on that specif. But I did find it interesting that could happen. It is a strange experience because it really set you to questions the safety of your beliefs. even simple ones like being awake.

[@stephencolbertcheese7354]

i'm 1st again? WEIRD

[@yonaoisme]

nobody cares

[@spaceinyourface]

I was first last month

[@NoonianSoong403]

@@yonaoisme It may be true that nobody cares, but he never claimed as much. He’s only commenting that because it boosts the video in the KZbin algorithm and he gets a tiny dopamine hit. Win win.

[@yonaoisme]

@@NoonianSoong403 no. it's bad manners.

[@NoonianSoong403]

@@yonaoisme Almost all engagement is good engagement, including this 😁

[@tiborkoos188]

why something as big as 10^-3.. why not 10^-10 >.:) physicists...:)!