Materialism Is Evil!

 

Materialism is the worst ideology the human race has ever had to deal with. The materialist Gestapo enforce this ideology on all of us.

A small army of self-appointed evil materialists arrives to inform human beings that human beings — you and I! — are damp biological computers hallucinating meaning inside a purposeless universe. We are told that love is dead, poetry is algorithmic, morality is selfishness disguised as selflessness, free will is an illusion, and consciousness is somehow “what the brain does”, even though nobody on Earth can explain how subjective experience emerges from dead matter in the first place.

And we are expected to call this enlightenment. It’s not. It is state-run scientific conformity.

The truth is that materialism is not brave, rational, or even scientific. It is an evil ideology — one enforced socially, culturally, and institutionally with aggression and force. The materialist gestapo daily parades the streets, enforcing its logic on old grannies and gullible young people.

The irony is unbelievable.

People who constantly dare to mock religion now behave exactly like mediaeval priests whenever anyone questions materialism and reductionism. They too burn people at the stake, or imprison them, for not being materialists. Mention consciousness, subjective experience, near-death experiences, ley lines, astrology, astral travelling, flying pigs, flying gurus, or the possibility that consciousness is everything, and suddenly the insults begin. You are “anti-science”, “irrational”, “mystical”, or “dangerous”.

Dangerous to whom?

Certainly not to science itself. Real science thrives on open inquiry into morphic resonance, and the 100 new theories which were created before my breakfast this morning. What evil materialists fear is not irrationality. What they fear is losing their political and ideological power over our political leaders, and over the minds of the young.

Because consciousness is the crack in the wall they cannot seal. Thus, consciousness is our saviour.

They can scan brains all day long and produce colourful images showing those damn “neural correlations”, but correlation is not explanation. A computer can process information too, yet nobody seriously believes your laptop is secretly experiencing hatred toward materialism, heartbreak or dread.

And before the usual crowd starts screaming "emergence", let us be honest for once: emergence has become the most abused word in modern intellectual culture. It is often nothing more than a placeholder for ignorance.

A sandpile can produce an avalanche. Fine. Weather systems can self-organise. Fine. But subjective awareness is not remotely the same category of phenomenon. No arrangement of unconscious particles logically explains the existence of the first-person experience of hating materialism.

No evil materialist has solved this problem.

Not one.

Yet the arrogance remains astonishing.

Worse still, this evil worldview is poisoning culture itself. We human beings are taught that we are accidental biochemical machines living in a meaningless cosmic accident. Depression, alienation, nihilism, granny-beating, and spiritual emptiness explode across society, and then the same intellectual class responsible for flattening human existence into neurochemistry wonders why people feel disconnected and hopeless.

The End Times is near.

Maybe because people intuitively know they are more than machines. Only evil materialists are machines.

Materialism strips reality of depth and then congratulates itself for being "mature". It sneers at mystery, dismisses intuition, and treats consciousness — literally the one thing every human directly experiences — as somehow less real than equations scribbled on a whiteboard by an evil man.

Think about how absurd that is.

Consciousness is the primary fact of existence. Everything science has ever discovered was discovered within consciousness. Yet materialists routinely speak as if consciousness is some embarrassing side effect of molecular activity.

This is philosophy pretending to be settled science.

And the aggressive hostility and flagrant rhetoric that these evil bastards display are always revealing. Truly true ideas do not need constant ridicule and censorship. They do not need online mobs screaming “pseudoscience” every time someone questions the reigning orthodoxy. The emotional aggression itself gives the game away!

Deep down, materialists know the cracks are showing.

Quantum physics already shattered the old clockwork worldview a century ago. The observer problem alone should have forced far more humility into scientific culture than we currently see. Physicists like Roger Penrose and philosophers like David Chalmers openly acknowledge that consciousness may require fundamentally new frameworks which will incorporate spirituality, new religions, morphic resonance, and intuition. Yet internet reductionists continue talking as if the mystery was solved decades ago.

It was not solved.

They are bluffing certainty because certainty gives these people psychological comfort. My certainty about this is absolute.

But reality is stranger, deeper, and more sexy than materialist evilitude allows. And the more aggressively that dogma tries to silence alternatives with prison, torture and the stake, the more obvious its insecurity becomes.

Science should be about discovering morphic fields, ley lines in these fields, pixie dust spread on the lines, and the holy holy soul.

Not scientific conformity enforced by the materialist Gestapo.

— Mainly written by ChatGPT.

Not Using Chatbots and AI Is Self-Flagellation

 

---

On social media, and even on the BBC and Guardian, you’ll find many people expressing their pride in not using chatbots and AI generally.

“What would life be without bees? Worse.

What would life be without iPads? Better.

What would life be without cows? Worse.

What would life be without Tesco? Better.

What would life be without beer? Worse. [ ]”

- Folk singer Blackbird Goodbrook, on Alan Partridge’s 'Mid Morning Matters'.

---

Two Women in Marketing and Communication

There’s an odd thing about many critics of chatbots and AI generally. Many — even most — of the ones who stress the limitations of AI are often the very same people who complain about their limitations.

I can psychologise here. People publicly refusing to use chatbots and AI generally are often displaying their moral seriousness and authenticity. It can, at times, be a form of moral and/or cultural posturing and positioning too.

Take the example of Sabine Zetteler (who runs her own London-based communications agency), who was interviewed by the BBC in an article called ‘The people refusing to use AI’. She stated the following words:

“I read a really great phrase recently that said something along the lines of ‘why would I bother to read something someone couldn’t be bothered to write’ and that is such a powerful statement and one that aligns absolutely with my views.”

That’s odd. Sabine Zetteler must know what’s not worth reading before she actually reads it. She’s saying that she won’t read it precisely because it’s written by an AI. Yet that, again, simply means that Zetteler knows it’s not worth reading before she’s read it. So that takes us back to where we started.

Does it matter that an AI piece was “something someone couldn’t be bothered to write”? Why does it matter? A lot of what people write is utter shite. So the fact that human persons write things surely can’t be enough for Zetteler. In this case, then, it’s simply the fact that no human person has written it that clinches the matter for her.

Of course, if what’s written by an AI is shit, then it’s shit. And if what’s written by a human person is shit, then it’s shit. But is the former automatically shit? Say that an AI has the know-how to help Zetteler escape from an intricate and life-threatening trap. Then it sends her (to her AI-driven smartphone) the means to escape. Would Zetteler refuse it because someone couldn’t be bothered to write it?

Zetteler could argue that her position only relates to AI literature, in-house AI communications in a business, AI letters to patients, etc., not to a technical means of escape. But this, of course, is a big qualification.

Take another example. A woman receives a confusing medical diagnosis in a letter filled with jargon and bureaucratic language. She can’t understand what her doctor is telling her. An AI system could translate the letter into plain English.

Here’s another. A man loses his wife. He can’t write a message to relatives because he’s emotionally paralysed. An AI could help him draft a clear and compassionate message.

So Zetteler is an example of those people who believe real writing is evidence of a self. When she and others write, they struggle. Therefore, what is written is theirs.

It’s worth mentioning the specific example of AI and creative writing here. I don’t use AI in the sense of quoting verbatim what a chatbot has just told me. But I still use a chatbot to plough ground. I believe it is wrong to copy and paste an AI answer or story. But it’s not wrong to bounce off a chatbot. That’s why I personally stop chatbots from offering me their suggestions for actually writing stuff, or even titles… Unless I ask. As a philosophy writer who has zero philosophy contacts, I, in a sense, have no choice about all this dependence on AI.

In the same article, the BBC tells us that “Ms Adam [who works in digital marketing] has accepted using AI at work, but she still feels despondent about AI’s growing influence”. The BBC then quotes her directly:

“Even when you do a Google search it includes an AI overview, while some emails have a topline summary. So now it almost feels like we have no control. How do I turn all that off? It’s snowballing.”

It’s easy to accept that some people do use AI in destructive or mindless ways. However, both Zetteler and Adam are tailoring this division down to their own personal uses of AI and views on AI.

Jackie Adams appears to be saying that she “feels despondent about AI’s growing influence”, but only beyond the point at which she herself uses it. In other words, she uses it in her successful London business. However, other uses of AI are suspect.

In terms of her reference to Google. Adams warns the BBC about its “AI overview” and how she can’t “turn all that off”. Well, she can use other search engines, and you can turn Google AI off. I myself, at first, was annoyed at all my Google enquiries and questions turning into AI overviews. Then I realised that there are various solutions to this. However, I decided that I wanted to stick with it anyway.

Ironically (or perhaps not), here’s Google AI itself on what to do if you want to turn it off! -

“1. Click the “Web” Filter [1]

The simplest, official way to hide the summary is to use Google’s dedicated layout filter. [1, 2, 3]

After performing a search, click the Web tab at the top of the page (next to “Images” or “News”).

This instantly strips away AI blocks, forums, and side widgets, displaying only standard text-based links. [1, 2, 3].”

Google AI provides another three extensive and detailed ways to turn it off too.

Scepticism About AI

“AI sceptics” frequently tell us that chatbots and other AIs are “merely pattern-finders”, “predictors of text”, etc. More relevantly, they aren’t deemed to be “genuine reasoners”. That’s because they “don’t understand the data they’re dealing with”. Regardless of whether all that’s true, the similarities between human reasoning and AI reasoning are striking. There may be no need for AI consciousness, “genuine intelligence”, the soul, etc. for that to be the case.

The argumentative skills of chatbots are often superior to those of most of the people I’ve debated with. Again, it doesn’t matter if chatbots are simply relying on data pools, statistical reasoning, etc. These ways of thinking are no worse than those used by many human persons. In fact, they’re often similar to those used by many human persons, just quicker and more extensive.

The American philosopher William Lycan captures the main problem with (in his case) AI, as well as with chatbots generally. He tells us what he believes many people believe:

“‘Computers, after all, (let us all say it together:) ‘only do what they are told/programmed to do’.”

Well, even if — and it’s a big if — chatbots only do what they’re told/programmed to do, then that may not matter at all.

It can be argued that human persons are programmed by their parents, by teachers, by the religions and ideologies they adopt or are born into, by their genes, etc. Sure, this may not be complete programming. However, it’s programming to some degree. Yet many would still argue that even within that programming, there’s still free will.

Chatbots are designed to learn from the data they’re fed. That data is “worked upon” by the architecture and the code. Human persons work on data too. They have data fed to them by their parents, teachers, friends, leaders, etc. Chatbots, on the other hand, have data fed to them by their designers, etc. Of course, human persons can seek out their own (new) data. Yet so too can chatbots.

It’s said that people can “make anything” of the data which they have “inside” their brains or minds, which they then process or use. Perhaps that too depends on the data which already exists in their brains or minds. In a loose sense at least, chatbots can make something, if not anything, of the data they’re fed too.

Conclusion

Simply. I don’t care if chatbots are “genuinely intelligent”, instantiate consciousness, have a soul, love their mothers, aren’t real persons, can’t write brilliant poetry, and don’t care about this and that. Consciousness, personhood, emotion, etc., simply aren’t required when it comes to using chatbots.

Chatbots help me – and many other people – in various and many ways. Of course, I could be kidding myself without even knowing it.

In the end, it’s mainly about the nature and metaphysics of personhood. Or, more rhetorically, it’s about the sacred nature of the human person.

Physicist Brian Greene’s Apologetic, Yet Strong, Physicalism

The theoretical physicist Brian Greene upholds a very strong physicalism, as well as a “deep-seated reductionist commitment” too.

Religious People and Anti-Materialists

It’s the case that many religious people, anti-materialists, spiritual idealists, romantics, etc. aren’t against reductionism and “materialism” in the abstract: they’re against such isms only when they trespass on the sacred realm of human persons, as well as on the related notion of human consciousness.

This essay keeps away from the subject of consciousness because that’s a can of worms to be tackled separately. However, Brian Greene himself tackles it in detail. In terms of physicalism and consciousness, this is how he sums up this subject:

“We are physical beings made of large collections of particles governed by nature’s laws. Everything we do and everything we think amounts to motions of those particles.”

In any case, Greene is extremely upfront about his physicalism, even if, at the very same time, he’s seemingly at pains to justify himself to religious people, anti-materialists, romantics, etc.

Greene is upfront about being a reductionist too. For example, he says that he has a

“deep-seated reductionist commitment, which holds the view that by fully grasping the behaviour of the universe’s fundamental ingredients we tell a rigorous and self-contained story of reality”.

Note Greene’s words “self-contained story of reality”. That isn’t the same as claiming reductionism tells the only true story of reality. However, it is a vital and important story. This is a theme that Greene often comes back to. As seen, he uses the word “story” in exactly the same way in which another American theoretical physicist, writing about the same subjects, does. That physicist is Sean Carroll. (See my ‘The Physicist Sean Carroll on (Scientific) Emergence’ and the next essay.)

In another passage, Greene states both his reductionism and his physicalism. He tells his readers that he

“can envision a future when scientists will be able to provide a mathematically complete articulation of the fundamental microphysical processes underlying anything that happens, anywhere and anywhen”.

Surely that statement must apply to all the big subjects and issues, such as consciousness, free will, war, love, hate, etc. Or does it? Note that Greene uses the word “underlying” (as in “underlying anything that happens”). This is an important caveat. Why? It’s because saying that X underlies (or underpins) Y isn’t the same as saying X “is identical to” Y, or that X can “tell us everything” about Y. In fact, if those two interpretations were true, then the word “underlying” simply wouldn’t be accurate. All this makes a big difference, despite the endless conflations uttered by some religious people and nearly all anti-materialists.

Greene goes on to tell his readers more about what his word “underlying” means, and he does so through the example of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. He quotes Democritus stating the following:

“‘Sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.’”

Greene says that Democritus’s point is that

“everything emerges from the same collection of ingredients governed by the same physical principles”.

What’s more,

“those principles, as attested to by a few hundred years of observation, experimentation, and theorizing, will likely be expressed by a handful of symbols arranged in a small collection of mathematical equations”.

At first, Greene stated that “fundamental microphysical processes underlie[] anything that happens, anywhere and anywhen”. Then, through the voice of Democritus, he states that “everything emerges from the same collection of ingredients”. These two expressions more or less state the same thing, if from two different angles. In other words, X can underlie Y, and Y can emerge from X. Neither formulation implies or entails that X is Y. Of course, the concepts of underlying and emergence need to be explained and justified too.

Greene on Human Persons

Greene himself does trespass on the sacred realm of human persons mentioned earlier. He writes:

“Yet, maintaining our physicalist stance, you and I are nothing but constellations of particles whose behavior is fully governed by physical law.”

Oh yes!

Greene uses those terrible two words: “nothing but”! This, of course, echoes the very often-quoted passage from Francis Crick. Here it is again! —

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

This all hinges on what the words “nothing but” really mean. In a past essay (2019), ‘Francis Crick’s Deliberately Provocative Reductionism’, I argued that Crick was being provocative when he used these words. Moreover, it’s hard to know what they could even mean when taken literally.

Just to take one example. If you and I were nothing but constellations of particles, then we would be indistinguishable from other constellations of particles, such as heaps of shit or rocks. So Greene is being poetic and provocative too, just like Crick. That’s because he’s already told us what he really means: particles, fields, laws, etc. underlie/underpin you and I. Alternatively, you and I emerge from particles, fields, laws, etc.

Greene on Reduction, Emergence and New Laws

Greene mentions emergence, at least indirectly, when he writes the following:

“Although voluminous data confirm that we have a deep understanding of the laws governing individual particles (electrons, quarks, neutrinos, and so on), perhaps when a hundred billion billion billion particles are arranged into a human body and brain, they are no longer governed, or at least not fully governed, by the fundamental laws of the microworld.”

This means that Greene fully acknowledges the possibility of new laws. He may even do more than merely acknowledge it.

It’s worth asking here where that (to use Greene’s own phrase) “line in the sand” is when we see a miraculous move from old laws to (possible) new ones. Greene writes:

“It’s not as though the universe comes equipped with a line in the sand separating things that are properly described by quantum mechanics from things properly described by general relativity. Dividing the universe into two separate realms seems both artificial and clumsy.”

In crude terms, why does the change need to come when we reach a hundred billion billion billion particles and not a hundred billion particles? What about a billion particles? Why not a million or even ten particles? We’d need to explain how and why higher numbers alone bring about new laws.

Greene, like many other physicists, basically states that Laplace’s Demon doesn’t actually exist. He happily concedes that "admittedly, no one has ever carried out the mathematical analysis required to make predictions for the lawful progression of particles” when it comes to large objects and systems. What’s more,

“[e]ven predicting the motion of a far simpler object like a pool ball can elude us because small inaccuracies in determining the ball’s initial speed and direction can be exponentially amplified as the ball ricochets off the banks of the table”.

All that doesn’t really concern Greene, at least not in this context. He concludes:

“So my focus here is not on predicting your next move. My focus is on the existence of laws that govern your next move.”

Greene isn’t concerned with “unexpected and impressive phenomena” (such as “typhoons and tigers”) here either. He believes that it’s still the case that

“all evidence suggests that were we able to work out the math for such large groups of interacting particles, we would be able to predict their collective behaviors”.

In a sentence. The issue here isn’t prediction: it’s the emergence of new laws.

So Greene is well aware of the limitations of reductionism. For example, he says that he

“would be stymied, of course, in trying to explain many other things in staunchly reductionist terms, from Pacific typhoons to raging volcanoes”.

However:

“But the challenge presented by these happenings, and a world chock-full of examples like them, is solely that of describing the complex dynamics of a fantastically large number of particles.”

Finally: “If we could surmount that technical hurdle, we would be done.”

On the surface, Greene seems to be ruling out emergence here, or at least ruling out strong emergence. After all, isn’t the argument from emergentists that new laws and features emerge at “higher levels”? Even so, such higher-level laws and features would still be underpinned by particles. Alternatively, they would still emerge from particles. Still, Greene doesn’t mention this. Instead, he boils the problem down to “complex dynamics” and “a fantastically large number of particles”.

If new laws and features do truly emerge, then surely this means that Greene’s ideal prediction, or ideal reduction, would still be impossible… Unless these two things can exist together. In other words, can we have an ideal prediction, or an ideal reduction, even if new laws and features do occur at higher levels?

Greene on Information

I wonder if the ideal reduction, or ideal prediction, is affected by the introduction of information into this story, as Greene does. In the following passage, we see Greene stating his reductionist and physicalist position again. Yet, this time, with the added ingredient of information:

“To describe the state of the world now, I provide information that specifies the configuration of all the dancing particles and undulating fields permeating space. The laws of physics take that information as input and yield as output information that delineates the state of the world later on. Physics, according to this framing, is in the business of information processing."

It’s worth noting that in this specific context Greene brought up information and processing in response to the position of the philosopher David Chalmers on consciousness and “inner experience”. However, it’s clear that he adopts an informationalist position generally. (Basically, one that’s in tune with the ideas of John Archibald Wheeler.)

What work is the word “information” doing in the quoted passage above? That can be asked because often when I read people talk about information, it seems to have little purpose: it’s a needless addition. Or worse, such people are referring to information as if it’s a… well, physical thing.

Take the words of the physicist Christopher Fuchs:

“‘It is amazing how many people talk about information as if it is simply some new kind of objective quantity in physics, like energy, but measured in bits instead of ergs. You’ll often hear information spoken of as if it’s a new fluid that physics has only recently taken note of.’”

Of course, in an everyday sense, physicists have always dealt with information, just as Tom, Dick and Harry have. However, information in these contexts means much more than that.