placebo

The highest pursuit is the search for truth. This includes the challenging act of discarding things that we'd really like to be true, but are false. The success of science can be attributed to extreme selfless intellectual honesty. The more ego gets in the way, the more the truth is compromised. Intelligence can be used in service of finding truth or in feeding our delusions. My view on the distinctions made here between genius and madness are that they correspond to the degree in which intelligence serves truth or delusions. Therefore I'd expect the most outstanding scientists in history were also very humble (perhaps someone with better knowledge on the personality of great scientists can shed more light on this).

And to keep things consistent - I might be wrong and thus welcome challenges to this theory :)

Definitely. I wholeheartedly subscribe to this view (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong). The thinking mind will always be confined to models. The way I see it, the questions posed here are an expected wall one will eventually hit when the mind attempts to explain something that is fundamentally inexplicable - i.e the nature of existence.

My current intuition is that the hard philosophical questions posed by probing deep into what matter essentially is are deeply linked to the hard problem of consciousness.

I'll make an even bolder claim, which is that both of these questions arise from a misunderstanding of what consciousness actually is and that no less than a Copernican revolution in understanding its role is what's needed to put them to rest.

Of course, that won't be the end of physics, as the mystery is endless - but it might be the start of a deeper humility and appreciation of that mystery.

Not necessarily - to start with, a good trade-off is unconditionally better than a bad trade-off.

Also, progress brings with it increasing complexity. Recognizing the best path includes assessing many more parameters and is far more difficult than deciding whether to use a hammer or a rock to nail things. The puzzling nature of many people to over-complicate things instead of simplifying them makes the challenge even more difficult.

By the way, the closest thing I've ever found to a silver bullet in software development (and basically any endeavor) is "Keep it simple". While this is a cliche already, it is still too often overlooked. I think this is because it isn't related to the ability to be a master at manipulating code and logic, but the ability to focus on what's really important - to know how to discard the trendy for the practical, the adventurous methods to the focused and solid - basically passionately applying occam's razor on every abstraction layer. If this was more common, I think articles like "You are not Google" would be less common.

I know one woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I have to smoke; I choose to. I could easily give it up any time I wish to, but I see no reason why I should. But I can assure you, I could if I wanted to.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You couldn’t give up smoking even if you wanted to. You are not strong enough to give it up; you have to smoke. So to make yourself feel better, and to avoid having to confess your own weakness of character, you fool yourself into believing that you choose to. But it’s only a rationalization!” I know another woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I want to smoke; I can’t help myself! I have tried several times giving it up, but I have failed! I'm afraid I just don’t have a very strong character. I would love to stop, but I simply can’t.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You certainly could stop immediately, if you really wanted to. No, you choose to smoke (after all, nobody is making you) and you feel ashamed and guilty for doing that which you know to be harmful. So to avoid any moral responsibility for your acts, you fool yourself into believing that you ‘can’t help it. But this is only a rationalization.” My only question about all this is: “Why are people so incredibly stupid?”

Pity he didn't expand on the last line, but I think deep introspection is required to understand what is really under our control

There are however those who aren't content with just being sophisticated animals. They want to to dive into the depths that no animal can reach, and that requires self-honesty, and uncompromising honesty at that. And there is no way you can truly be honest with yourself while being dishonest with others, for reasons which become evident once you walk this path. This path (if traveled to its full extent) pays way more dividends than any benefit gained from prizes given by the sophisticated jungle. So, whether honesty pays or not, really depends on what sort of existence you seek.

Reading this got me wondering about more philosophical aspects, such as the relation of this conclusion to to the process of human learning and prediction (which obviously works) and whether it's somehow tied in some way to the problem of induction. Could be nonsense, but I'll be putting some more thought into the meaning of this

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/google-duplex-is-cal...

The first change in my perception of this question was many years ago when I read Raymond Smullyan's piece "Is God A Taoist" - I think it's definitely still worth read:

http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/godTao...

The persistence of the notion of free will seems to be an attempt to reconcile a feeling of what seems to be a very real, conscious and subjective "me in here" vs, what seems to be an objective, deterministic "world out there". This division is necessary for science to exist.

But what if there is a deeper truth than just being stuck with the question of whether "I" can control the outcome of events or "I" am powerless to do anything about them. Consider the possibility of access to knowledge before there's an intellectual division into a "me" and "not me", a knowing where the entire notion of whether there's free will or not becomes completely irrelevant. This seems to be the common theme running through various teachings of mysticism, from Zen to Sufism.

I don't think science should try and make use of mysticism, as science starts where mysticism ends (and vice versa), but any attempt by science to wrestle with the question of free will appears to me as pointless as an attempt of a Zen master to wrestle with solving problems in quantum mechanics. It's simply not in their domain.

Whether we are wise enough to handle our intelligence is still an open question.

It's probably difficult to build a case against this reasoning, as it seems quite logical - my first thought as a candidate for a counterexample was claims of "love at first sight". Sure, many of those might end in divorce but does that mean that all the successes are just due to being on the right side of statistics or is there something more going on?

And yet, you just did.

My definition is poor if you turn it into something simplistic and not realise the vast number of ways and levels of abstraction in which truth can be distinguished from falsehood, which gives rise to various forms of intelligence. It boils down to having a less limiting understanding of the concept of truth.

Intelligent atheists and intelligent Christians can't both be right about what? They can both be right about some things and wrong about other things, but that is true of any two different people, not only any two different groups.

regarding what is the nature of truth and the issue of self awareness - that's a can of worms that I'll refrain from opening :)

Not sure in what sense you find the view reductionist, but I suspect it could be from inadequately expressing what I mean

Any human endeavour is worth its salt if it succeeds at discovering and expressing beauty. It can be a mathematical proof, a theory in physics, an elegant algorithm, a painting, a dance, a novel, a relationship - the list is as endless as the number of ways humans can come up with, and can be as deep and complex and subtle as they wish to make it, but it always comes back to finding and expressing beauty.

I understand what you're referring to though, and assume that the very few that have actually fully realised this (and not just on an intellectual level) are not really bothered with death, and not due to lack of awareness of it.

[1] https://medium.com/@Numenta/the-secret-to-strong-ai-61d153e2...

[2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncir.2017.0008...

Amused to see some element of humor added to an article on a subject that will have extremely serious consequences, the likes and extent of which are hard to estimate at the moment