Physicalism Abridged
We live in a physical world. This has many implications, that are not pondered enough.
Resources are scarce
There is a limited amount of energy, matter, negentropy, space and time. By improving technology, we can leverage them more, but there are no ways to create more of them.
Thereby, we need to allocate those resources. Economics can help us make the right choices, given some specific goals and technological constraints.
For instance: because we have finite resources, we can only allocate up to a finite amount to each person. And from this we derive that there is a price tag attached to each person: the price that we will - in practice, not in theory - pay to keep them alive, beyond which we will let them die.
The universe keeps existing when we close our eyes
There is a universal truth, independent of what we think about it. Even when we censor our beliefs, truth still remains.
When we discover new facts about our universe, the universe does not change. As Andy Anderson puts it: the lines where always there, but now we can see them.
Related to the point above, when people refuse to name the price tag to human lives, the price tag does not magically disappear.
The universe keeps obeying the laws of physics. Resources stay scarce. We still do not have enough to save everyone.
What happens instead is that we become ignorant of the true cost of things, and we commit preventable mistakes / unforced errors.
The laws of physics are universal
Thanks to this principle, by witnessing something in one place, I can predict what will happen in another place. This is the engine behind formalism and the basis of science.
Conversely, it also means that we can not escape from physics.
By default, the universe is unhospitable and bad for us
The four fundamental forces of the universe are the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. Looking at their overview on Wikipedia, something jumps out: it is gibberish.
Consider:
In the conceptual model of fundamental interactions, matter consists of fermions, which carry properties called charges and spin ±1⁄2 (intrinsic angular momentum ±ħ⁄2, where ħ is the reduced Planck constant). They attract or repel each other by exchanging bosons.
The interaction of any pair of fermions in perturbation theory can then be modelled thus:
Two fermions go in → interaction by boson exchange → two changed fermions go out.
lol.
What the hell is this?
As a human, this makes no sense to me. I have an intuitive understanding of what people, emotions, ideas, etc. are. But this gibberish? No.
However, this is the native ontology of the universe. The universe acts through these forces and through these elements.
This is unfortunate. This means that the universe is by default unhospitable. Concretely, if we drop any human at some random place and time in the universe, they would simply die. The same is true if we dropped all of us at a random place and time. We'd just all die.
Similarly, it is possible for us to wipe ourselves. The universe would do nothing to stop us. Even worse, the laws of physics permit evil to triumph. It is physically permissible for a sadistic sociopath to win and build a stable world order where we are all tortured forever.
To the extent that our world becomes more hospitable over time, it is solely because we spend a tremendous amount of resources to make it so. Left to its own devices, the universe couldn't care less, and things would just gradually worsen over time.
We should not take this for granted. We should not leave our future to a vague notion of techno-moral progress or to the whims of non-existent gods.
If we want to live in a hospitable world, we must build a reliable process by which we can convert effort into progress, and then put in the effort.
We might have been lucky so far, but we should not count on it: the universe doesn't feel like it owes us anything.
Consciousness is physical
Through purely physical means, what we may call our soul (our long-term personality and values) can be altered. Such physical means include drugs, medication, neurodegeneration and concussions.
Similarly, when we die, we do not respawn as in video games. We do not get a new body in a spiritual world with a backup of our appearance, personality and values at the height of our life. We just get obliterated from the universe.
This is the most straightforward way to witness the inhumanity of the universe. There has not been one single day since the beginning of human time where the universe decided to spare us from death. It kills us all, relentlessly.
Changing the world requires work
To physically move the world to a desired state, we need to perform physical work.
There are a couple of situations where this is not true. For instance:
- The world is already on a trajectory to the desired state, in which case we can simply wait.
- There is no friction nor obstacles. In which case, the energy cost is 0.
But in the real world, there are always frictions, and thus changing things requires work.
Changing the world requires control
To physically move to a desired state, we need to exert control. Control is a physical process, not an abstract concept that takes "science" and "smarts" as inputs and results in "technology" or "engineering".
The most common system from Control Theory is the Closed Loop Feedback Controller. The system measures the value, compares it to the setpoint, and applies a correction to the system to move it closer to the setpoint. Think of some AC's thermostat: when it's too cold, it turns on the heater, when it's too hot, it starts cooling.
While it is quite basic, it features all the essential elements of a complete control system: a sensor that observes the world, an actuator that acts upon the world, and a controller that processes observations and computes the correct actions.
To the extent that we can reliably steer the world to a desired state, it solely because we implement such a control system. We must check how far we are from our desired state, compute what we need to do to move closer to it, and then perform the necessary actions.
This whole process is physical. If we fail to implement it, no matter how smart we are, no matter how much self-loathing we feel, no matter how much we complain, no matter how convincing our arguments are, things will go wrong.
To the extent that things ever go right, it is solely because we have pursued this process one way or another, possibly without even noticing it!