Endward23

The most dangerous solution to the Fermi paradox is that many things are possible.

Isn't it a good thing?

I mean, we donÄt have such lucky experiences with monopols of technology. Many different developments, maybe even Open Source, could help to make a better place out of this world.

I'm unsure if this piece belongs in a group called "science". Its more about philosophy or arts, at least if you ask me.

But the questions it explored about the nature of reality – and our supposed affinity to it – go back further.

The idea of a Matrixlike state is as old as the first human thoughts.

Would it matter to you if it wasn't "real"?

That is not the same situation as Cypher in Matrix. Cypher wants himself to be fully ignorant about the fact that something like the Matrix even exist. He wants a "normal" life within the Matrix.

In other words: He wants the exchange of a unpleasant reality for a lie. And this is the reason he is the true antagonist of the movie. The machines (eg. Agent Smith) are the evil ones, sure. Yet he is the one who makes a choice like Neo. Neo wants to beginn this heros journey with his new found mentor, while Cypher wants to go back in the old situation and even forces Neo and the others back.

Even within the structur of the story, the movie makes a strong statement againt Cypher's approach.

The second was that "we want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person", and we cannot truly be anything in the experience machine.

I don't understand this one.

Through the lack of "contact with any deeper reality," we would lose access to meaning and significance.

That implies that in this reality lies deeper meaning and significance.

If we assume this is true, then the inference is unavoideble. What about a state of doubt? Maybe it would still follow, maybe not.

Hindriks says. Their goal was to test whether versions of the experience machine that kept participants more in contact with reality would be more acceptable to them. They found that respondents were significantly more willing to take an experience pill

Any fictioal book or movie or video game is a kind of this experience pill. Therefor, we already know that people are willing to take the pill if they stay in contact to the reality and don't forgot the truth.

My intuition tells me, the two reason we favore reality over a experience pill are:

• 1. Genuinly angst of the creature. If you have just fictional experiences, you can easily become a victim of a predator. Its a evolutionary thing to search reality.
• 2. When people want to climb a mountain, they actually want to climb the mountain. Hypnosis that makes them believe this is simply not what they want. It is a trick.

Got it.

Metal meteoroids are mostly iron, which is cheap on Earth and of little use in space.

As far as I understand your point, the mining in space needs a entire new infrastructure and new methodes in terms of metallurgy and all that.

But fighting corruption is not a goal I'm ready to pay any prize for.

Do you think the human brain operate on a similiar base?

“Strong” Sapir-Whorf might be bullshit, but the weak version is worth checking.

Really persuasiv sounding. ;-)

My hypothesis is that the sort of people who’d engage on persuasive bullshit cares less about truth value of the statements, and that’s what giving them a hard time asserting the truth value of what others say.

Hontestly speaking. This viewpoint isn't completely false. In some contextes, other aspects are more important than just straight up true value. For instances, some people seems to be used to judge a view not on the merit of it's reasons, but because of the socially consequences which would arise if the view would hold by a lage mayority. Even if we agree that such points should be irrelevant for a rational discussion, we already know that not all discussions are rational.

I really hope this impressiv and "scientific sounding" headline is more than just another example of the named effect. ;-)

In a series of studies conducted with over 800 participants from the US and Canada, the researchers examined the relations between participants’ self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines.

Selfreporting. And this 800 participants, where are they from? Students?

Is this a realistic goal?

Is this something good or evil?

Reads a bit like a mix of popsci article and an add.

Quite interesting, anyway.