WOW! OIS Commentary (spoilers for commentary)

POSTED BY: heb
UPDATED: Saturday, July 17, 2004 05:48
VIEWED: 19844
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DARKSKY

Monday, June 21, 2004 8:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by heb:

This is why I want to be a physicist - to find out as much as there is to know.

Shiny! I'm a physicist myself!

HEB

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:04 PM

Ok firstly to say: You all beat me to replying to that post and all put it much better than I did. Sorry mine wasn't expressed very well

Quote:
Originally posted by StarPilotGrainger:
The way I look at it is that we act as though we have free will, so then the question's moot. Whether it's free will, "Not Actually Free Will But An Incredible Simulation", "I Can't Believe It's Not Free Will", doesn't really significantly alter how we act, and a difference which makes no difference is no difference.

'An incredible simulation' - that was so totally well put.
The fact that it makes no difference was kind of what I was trying to say when I was saying that we can't live our lives like we are merely a bunch of particles. But you put it a million times better.

Damn you all to Hades for your eloquence and coherent ideas.

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood

HEB

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DarkSky:
Quote:
Originally posted by heb:

This is why I want to be a physicist - to find out as much as there is to know.

Shiny! I'm a physicist myself!

Cool! What do you do? I'm going to Uni in the Autumn (grades permitting) to study either Physics or Natural Sciences with a view to specialising in physics later.

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood

HEB

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:16 PM

Ok three posts from me in a row is getting sad and obsessive but I forgot to say something:

Quote:
Originally posted by wydraz:
OiS is one of my favorites too. Funny thing is, perhaps because I'm not an atheist, it helped confirm some beliefs I have about God.

Yeah it is interesting that we interpret things in different ways. I guess that's what makes us all different. Like in Firefly - the War (if we intrepet his back story this way) confirmed/started Book's faith in God, whilst for Mal it made him lose his faith in God (whether he still believes he exists or not).

Objects in Space is a great episode. And thanks for offering some conflicting opinions to this thread; it was in danger of just being a thread full of people hanging around agreeing with each other, which is never healthy.

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood

DARKSKY

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by heb:

Cool! What do you do? I'm going to Uni in the Autumn (grades permitting) to study either Physics or Natural Sciences with a view to specialising in physics later.

I'm a PhD student, working in experimental nuclear physics.

HEB

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DarkSky:
Originally posted by heb:

I'm a PhD student, working in experimental nuclear physics.

Shiny. I'm quite interested in theoretical physics. I tend to break, collapse, destroy experiments and end up apparently proving that the speed of light in free space is 5m/s or that 1=4. Basically I shouldn't really be allowed near experiments. But hopefully if someone hands me some experimental data then I might be able to interpret that.

I used to want to be a cosmologist. Now I'm not really sure all I know is something theoretical would be good. If I get on the course I want to do though I'd have to study chemisty and biology for the first year as well.

If you could maybe sum up a complex piece of nuclear physics in a few words in captain-dummy-talk then I'd be interested to know what it is you are researching.

Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood

JCOBB

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:30 PM

I got a question that has been nagging me for a bit.

If in fact there is no God, (I am fairly agnostic) then is their any real pervasive morality inherent in the universe? I mean, if there is no template to base our lives upon, or anything to hold us accountable, then why are things like rape and murder "wrong?" What gives us the right to judge others for their actions. If society is the end all be all, and the arbiter of all, then must we accept that our lives are held to others standards, and their morality may, and is forced down upon the individual? Are the collective always right? Looking back in history slavery was accepted for thousands of years, does that mean slavery, for that time, was an acceptable practice? Will the morals we live by today be scoffed at fifty or a hundred years in the future?

I don't know. I accept Christianity, (for example) as a good moral compass for many people, though I am as of yet undecided as to the existance of God. It seems to me that, if nothing else, it is a workable philosophy, and is no less "odd" then any other basis of morality.

Anyways, just some thoughts I've had in the past. If any of you have insight I would love to hear it.

I don't care, I'm still free.

STARPILOTGRAINGER

Monday, June 21, 2004 9:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JCobb:
I got a question that has been nagging me for a bit.

If in fact there is no God, (I am fairly agnostic) then is their any real pervasive morality inherent in the universe? I mean, if there is no template to base our lives upon, or anything to hold us accountable, then why are things like rape and murder "wrong?" What gives us the right to judge others for their actions. If society is the end all be all, and the arbiter of all, then must we accept that our lives are held to others standards, and their morality may, and is forced down upon the individual? Are the collective always right? Looking back in history slavery was accepted for thousands of years, does that mean slavery, for that time, was an acceptable practice? Will the morals we live by today be scoffed at fifty or a hundred years in the future?

It's an interesting and very difficult question. Like you, I accept much (though not all) of what you'd describe as 'Christian' morality (it's not exclusively Christian of course, but it's what my upbringing was so I use that in absence of a better label).

I tend to believe morality is subjective, but there are certain precepts that hold true and can be arrived at through reason. 'The Golden Rule' for example, makes an awful lot of sense. You do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. You behave in ways that benefit the community, because a strong community benefits you. That does open it up for unscrupulous people who live within a community to take advantage of it, but you build up a system of laws to take advantage of that.

That doesn't completely address certain tetchy aspects of 'what is morality' (slavery, for example. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think that's wrong), or different cultural values. Certain things in these areas you could argue that you can reach through the same rational process (Slavery may seem to be a good for society, but really it keeps down contributions of people who might contribute in a much better way of their own free will... a slave working out on the fields who could become a brilliant scientist as a free man is a shameful waste), but for others the best you may be able to do is say, 'We (our cultures) disagree on the morality of this, and we are willing to fight to make sure our way stands'.

All in all, the moral code I try to live by is to not do things that I would be ashamed of later. This naturally presupposes a moral teaching, which can be achieved any number of ways.

Although the book was only okay, 'Hominids' by Robert J. Sawyer (a SF book wherein a Neanderthal from a parallel universe crosses into ours) does have a couple interesting insights on the basis of an atheist morality (the Neanderthals in the book have no religion, but are remarkably moral). As I recall (and it's been a while since I read it), part of the idea was that without an afterlife, you can't justify that you can make up for your wrongs... if you kill someone, that's all there is for them, they don't get an afterlife of eternal bliss. You have to deal with the fact that you permanently ended them and there's no undoing it.

Not to shift the debate, but there are also problems with morality _with_ a God-being, because it usually also winds up being a form of 'might makes right'. Without a God, 'right' is determined by the majority, or the more powerful group, but at the same time is decided by every individual soul in a different way.
All interpretations are equally valid. With a God, morality is determined by the most powerful being, and it is valid only because 'right' is defined as 'what the omnipotent being said'.

Star Pilot Grainger
"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/newnumber6

JCOBB

Monday, June 21, 2004 10:05 PM

Okay, here's a question.

Say I was unashamed to commit murder, say I just don't have a value for human life. Say I recognize that there is no God, and that humanity is one big cosmic joke, (the sum of a series of highly improbably random events that lead to life) and that human life has no intrinsic value. Would it be wrong for me to take a life? What if my morality had no qualms with murder, or rape, would it then be acceptable for you to judge me based on this? Say society, as a whole, adopted this philosophy, would that make it right? I mean, the majority, I would assume, of us would immediately say that it would be wrong, but why is it wrong? Because we were brought up to believe so? Several thousand years ago the Roman's had no qualm with setting up blood sport tournaments and then pitting man against man, and they were a remarkably successful and "advanced" society. Perhaps are baser instincts that desire such death and destruction are closer to the surface then many of us would care to admit?

Anyways, it just seems odd to me. I suppose, if nothing else, I hope that there is a God. I want there to be something or someone to hold me accountable for my actions if there is an afterlife. (I would like to think this would help me be a better person.)

I don't care, I'm still free.

RADHIL

Monday, June 21, 2004 10:10 PM

Quote:
then is their any real pervasive morality inherent in the universe?

Technically speaking.... no.

But then, things are so much less interesting taken technically.

Quote:
I mean, if there is no template to base our lives upon, or anything to hold us accountable, then why are things like rape and murder "wrong?"

We can conceive of them, of right and wrong. That is enough.

After all, if there is nothing inherently moral, then the morality of everything is what we make of it.

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