Tom_McCabe2 comments on Angry Atoms - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 March 2008 12:28AM

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Comment author: Tom_McCabe2 31 March 2008 04:04:45AM 4 points [-]

"But materialism isn't that easy. It's not as cheap as saying, "Anger is made out of atoms - there, now I'm done.""

If materialism required a detailed understanding of every solved problem in science, none of us could ever be materialists, at least not with human brains. How many times do you have to learn the same lesson ("complex systems can be built from simple parts which don't share the defining properties of the larger system")? Hopefully, after a few iterations, you'll start imagining unseen layers of complexity, rather than phlogiston and elan vital.