🧵 scientific question about NTE
Anonymous at Sun, 8 Sep 2024 22:43:15 UTC No. 16368840
NTEs, aka non-thinking entities, are people who believe they are nothing more than biological computers enacting a deterministic program according to some unknown algorithm. What is the reason for this belief and can science determine how to avoid becoming an NTE?
Anonymous at Sun, 8 Sep 2024 22:50:54 UTC No. 16368854
>>16368840
The reasoning is that when a lot of particles interact, they tend to exhibit deterministic behavior (even though those particles themselves are defined by probability distributions of where they are, how spontaneous can they appear in a vacuum, etc.). That might be a limitation of our models but midwit saying "errrr everything follows from physical laws" are just plain wrong from what we currently know.
Now how to avoid this kind of pitfall many edgy teenagers fall thinking life is "meaningless", because you have no agency? Simple, realize that regardless of having "free will" or not, you cannot act less of a human being or act like you don't have free will. It' baked into your brain that your actions have consequences that you "WANT" to avoid or rewards you "WANT" to pursue. Implicitly giving yourself agency reinforces behavior that are beneficial by promoting self reflection at a meta level (way more effective than just associating bad chemicals to a hurtful memory like most animals do)