"Now, if someone is in a unproblematic, loving relationship; and they have enough money; and no major health problems; and they're signed up for cryonics so death is not approaching inexorably; and they're doing exciting work that they enjoy; and they believe they're having a positive effect on the world...
...and they're still unhappy because it seems to them that the universe is a mere dance of atoms empty of meaning, then we may have a legitimate problem here. One that, perhaps, can only be resolved by a very long discussion of the nature of morali...
I became a convinced of moral Anti Realism by Joshua Greene and Richard Joyce. Took me about a year to get over it. So, not a casual nihilist. And no, arguments that one should be rational have no normative force either, as far as I can see. The only argument for rationality would be a moral one. Anyway, I became a consequentialist like Greene suggested....
Unknown, that was interesting and spot on I guess. I must say however, that personally, I didn't think it made sense to think that you could 'agree to disagree' about factual matters if you had the same amount of evidence before I read this blog. That doesn't seem to make sense to me in an elementary way. So I have no problem with cryonics, transhumanism etc. being possibly 'true' - although I haven't the foggiest, most of these thing seem plausible to me. Perhaps what I should have said viz. the 'the other people being biased' thing is that it seems to in...
Re: people accusing you of bias. I offer this likely irrelevant observation: I think it's the tone of the blog. Although you do an amazing job of explaining very complicated things to us cretins, it is seems to be that the feeling here is that you are speaking to the plebs from a very great hight inded (which is true, I am guessing). However, being the simple apes that we are, its easy to get upset and accuse you of hypocrisy.
Other blogs written by other extremely smart people (possibly even smarter people, if that's possible)do not induce this feeling in ...
Wei Dai, Except that traditionally speaking an infinitelly massive universe is generally considered implausable by the greater scientific community.
But I think the greater matter is that even if it were physicially possible, it's impossible to mentally reason about as a reader of good fiction. And thus has the ability to break internal consistancy of an otherwise good store in the mind of the reader.
Thanks,
Indy