Author: harpertom888

Burgeoning scientist (biochemistry), armchair philosopher, and author of the novel "Incarnate: Existence."
information universe simulation theory

Integrated Information Theory and Cosmology

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Information can be broadly defined as the reduction in uncertainty. The reason that the location and momentum of 100 particles in a 1×1 meter box contains less information than either A) the location and momentum of 100 particles in a 10×10 meter box or B) 1,000 particles in a 1×1 meter box is because, in case A, one must specify a greater number of microstates (i.e. there are more possible arrangements of particles) and in case B, there are more particles whose position must be specified. What can we say about cosmology using the integrated information of all particles in existence?

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COVID19: Hysteria or Crisis?

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The death toll in the U.S. as a result of COVID is equal to the U.S. death toll of WW1 and WW2 combined, but in half the time. This is not even mentioning the people who got sick but survived and are now dealing with long term complications and financial stress as a direct result of being sick with COVID19. Was (and is) our reaction to the COVID19 pandemic hysteria? Or was/is it a reaction commensurate with a real crisis?

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Aristotle square of opposition categorical syllogism

The Phenomenology and Nominalism of Logic: Is Logic Objectively Valid?

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When using formal logic, what are the referents of a given proposition? If we take a proposition to be of the form X is P where the subject X is some object or concept sublated to a predicate i.e. a more general concept P, what is it that X and P refer to? Logicists like Gottlob Frege would say that X refers to some object in the world while P refers to a concept; Ferdinand de Saussure would deny that X refers to anything in the real world, instead saying that it refers only to the psychological concept of some object.

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COVID and Gain of Function Research

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About a month ago I recorded a video examining the scientific evidence of the lab-leak hypothesis for the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Since then, a heated exchange between Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci has transpired in which the issue of whether the United States, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has funded so-called gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). I was planning on making another video on this subject (and probably will at some point), but after some discussion with a commenter on my earlier video, some more philosophical questions have emerged that I am going to discuss here a bit.

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A Deontological Supreme Principle of Morality

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Most people who are familiar with the term deontological ethics are likely acquainted with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative most famously set out in his The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter referred to as Groundwork). Descriptively speaking, I think most people follow a sort of ethical intuitionism; prescriptively speaking, I think most people would subscribe to some hybrid form of ethical consequentialism. Deontology, particularly given the widespread misinterpretation and misunderstanding of Kant’s deontological moral philosophy, is often regarded as a sort of wooden formalism meant which is meant to be universally and unquestioningly adhered, leading to scores of counterexamples where it would dictate we take actions that are clearly morally wrong. But it is actually quite difficult to fully ground any system of ethics without what Kant would have thought of as the supreme moral principle.

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Cancel Culture: Good or Bad?

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So-called “cancel culture” is the inclination, usually on social media, to draw negative attention toward those individuals who have transgressed certain cultural mores. This is often observed when someone has made a social media post that is construed as bigoted against a marginalized group. This “cancel culture” is an interesting phenomenon that takes something very human – ostracizing transgressors – and cranking it up exponentially.

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Why I Am No Longer a Libertarian

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The first election in which I voted was the 2004 race between the Democrat challenger John Kerry and the Republican incumbent George W. Bush. I voted for Kerry primarily because I was against the war in Iraq. In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama, again because of the war (and because I didn’t like McCain’s hawkishness), but also because I believed Obama to be the candidate that would best preserve the civil liberties that Bush had been attempting to dismantle during his tenure. By 2012, though, I had become disillusioned with the Democratic party – Obama did not deliver on the things I felt were important (getting out of our Middle Eastern wars and upholding civil liberties at home). I could never bring myself to vote Republican, though, since in my mind they were (and still are) the party of neocon war hawks and pearl-clutching social conservatives. So, in 2012 I voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian party candidate (which I did again in 2016; I voted for the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen in 2020).

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Veganism, Animal Rights, and Cognitive Dissonance

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I am not a vegan, or even a vegetarian, but I recognize my own cognitive dissonance on the issue. That’s not to award myself any brownie points or anything, just a statement of fact. Indeed, it likely only makes my own cognitive dissonance on the issue even worse.

I think even the most avid hunter or advocate of the carnivore diet would decline to offer any defense of the factory farming industry, which is an important subcategory of the overarching animal rights issue in general. But there is more hypocrisy involved than just the overt acceptance of factory farming imposed by law and the tacit acceptance of factory farming in everyday people as they turn a blind eye to it and continue consuming animal products, thereby maintaining the very demand that resulted in the invention of factory farming.

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Is Sex a Social Construct?

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Here I am not talking about gender, or the mode in which a person self identifies. I have talked about the biological underpinnings of gender in the past. What I am discussing in this post is whether sex – being male or female as determined by primary and/or secondary sex characteristics – is a social construct.

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The Is/Ought Problem of Morality – Can Hume’s Guillotine be Dodged?

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The is/ought problem, or dichotomy, is the idea from David Hume that one cannot get an ought (prescription) from an is (description) – one cannot determine how one ought to behave given just a description of the world. Sam Harris, in his book “The Moral Landscape” disagrees with this, arguing that values/ethics can be derived from science. Is Harris correct or misguided?

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