Not in my comment section people. You know who you are. I will block accounts if I need to. We are not playing that card. Also big shout out to Tommy Goloboy for discussing some of these ideas with me and helping cook up a response to Dave. Tommy has much more content on the CTMU than I do so be sure to check out his channel and his project, Compatriot Academy; ua-cam.com/channels/dvVtDgpEXI8e2UzBJR-NSQ.html
I am really enjoying this feeling of refresh. Your characteristic style of narration/commenting mixed with a little cinism/humor. Similar to the one used by D.Farina. (to put him as a simple example) I'm enjoying even more the topic: the CTMU, Mr. Langan's theory and its physical and metaphysical propositions. A response that I would expect due to the nature of this channel. Thanks for the attempt to bring such dense material down to earth. Greetings. Edit: Thank you for referring Tommy's content. Seems intriguing.
Dude, I love you and your brain. I'm so psyched you did a video covering the CTMU. Didn't even know you were aware of Chris Langan, let alone in agreement with his work.
Well I'm soooomewhat in agreement with him. I do have a number of criticisms but I'll get to that eventually. That's probably gonna come up whenever I get around to doing an episode on Wittgenstein.
I thanked him for one video that helped me through botany exam. But I said that on metaphysical beef I side with Formscapes. He was mean and called me a seething kiddo. I am mad.
I love seeing all these comments that vividly illustrate Dave’s childish, insecure, and neurotic behavior. Anyone who immediately resorts to ad hominem attacks in defense of their beliefs is (almost) always insecure in their belief. They may try to convince themselves of their own belief in an idea; however, one can clearly see, by their actions, that they lack a full conviction in said idea. Dave immediately becoming combative at the slightest criticism is a poorly camouflaged attempt at getting his viewers or fans (probably mostly bots) to gang up on the person leveling a valid criticism. You can even tell by his body language in many of those clips that he is anxious as all hell to be discussing or debating ideas. I don’t get why Redditors (again, at least 50% bots) love that clown so much. I actually genuinely feel sorry for him. He doesn’t afford himself the blessing of waking up every day with that sense of wonderment and awe at the splendor of nature, the cosmos, fellow humans, and the divine. When I attempted to staunchly adhere to the materialistic, reductionistic, atheistic paradigm, life lost all it’s magic. That’s the only thing that makes the suffering of life bearable. If there will be no mysteries, what is there to attempt to solve? These unsolvable mysteries of the cosmos are what animates mankind. The pursuit of divine, arcane knowledge has been the most consistent driving force all throughout known human history. We don’t consciously devolve to lack the drive to experience divinity. They can’t propagandize away a fundamental, core component of the human experience of reality. When they try to do so, you end up with a multiplicity of cultural crises; just like we have in America, and the “west” at large, right now.
I just feel bad for the awareness trapped inside of the vessel known as Professor Dave... crystallized and stagnant is no place for such a beautiful thing.
Dear Noble. I understand perfectly your comment and I take it with sincere intentions. My curiosity guides me to ask you, do you always express yourself in this manner (objective way) or is there an specific reason why you approach it this way? (Subjective way) Thanks in advance.
In Dave's last hit piece on you he said something quite telling, at the 1 hour and 2 minute mark: "There is some validity to the notion that science is a representation of reality and not reality itself" I think this line is your only way to common ground with this ultra materialist guy.
You cannot fathom how much I appreciate this channel, though I spend almost all my time on UA-cam there was no channel I came back to check so often in the last couple years. I continue to learn a lot and much egotistically, I hope you never stop. Thanks for the video, once again.
I've noticed a bandwagon of videos against Langan since Dave's, and none of them really address the content of his ideas. In fairness, I do think there's merit to the criticism that Langan should be able to convey his ideas in simpler terms, but on the flip-side, you should also be able to get beyond someone's 'initial presentation' (allowing yourself to engage with their ideas maturely). They seem to see themselves as ~"the credentialed intellectuals; fending off the hordes of charlatans, woo-purveyors, and pseudo-science, thus saving mankind from degenerating into superstition and irrationalism". Ironically, they think of their ideological opponents in caricatures.
@@heckinbasedandinkpilledoct7459 Why is it "BS"? What constitutes something which can be "addressed", in your mind? I mean, Ben Goertzel, for instance, was able to address his ideas in a substantive manner that both sang praises and criticisms.
@@Archeidos-Arcana The BS is that he doesnt even have a theory, just a bunch of words. A theory is something that goes through the scientific method, it needs evidence, testing, predictions, pair review, and if it is a phyhics theory it needs math. This dude Langan only have words, so he dont have a theory, he have a religion, a philosophy or a cult, but not a theory.
First 60 seconds you're already spot on lol. Dude cussed me out so bad in his comments over that Langan video 😂 Go there right now and he's still replying to new comments. Dude is WHACKED
I am sorry to say that he is an educator and the world needs them. Even …If he’s not on the same team as others I read once mathematicians at heart are gentle easy souls. Anyway, I agree with what your stand is as presented in this lecture. You have to know this path to understand
Its bad insulting someone of course. But nope science could never become a religion, you can maybe find some similarities, some people that is dogmatic and so on, but could never become a religion, the epistemology of both things its too different.
@@OsvaldoBayerista Not true. Many aspects of science become religious over time, unquestioned doctrines headed by saint-like figures. Great example is Relativity, an incorrect theory with a canonized figurehead (Einstein) that’s never actually been experimentally verified, despite having sold itself as such to the wider public
@se7964 Not true, there is a lot of evidence for relativity, even when he was alive he predicted light curving around stars and that happened. Also if you understand philosophy of science and its history you can see how always the paradigms shift, they may be look rigid for some times, but always changing at the long term, always developing, because the scientific method have knowledge being falsable at it core, every theory is out there competing with new ones, that make science totally diferent from religions, for ever. Maybe you see some scientists who are dogmatic, doesnt care they do not own science, nobody can.
@@OsvaldoBayeristawatch Formscape’s original video Prof Dave first responded to, he makes a good case for why Scientism is very much akin to a modern religion. Note though that Scientism, as Formscapes makes the case, is not the same as science proper itself, if anything it’s very anti-scientific. Formscapes is criticizing the modern cultural landscape that has formed around scientific institutions, one of blind faith in an elite priest-like class of “experts”, and the outdated metaphysical assumptions their materialist worldviews are entirely based upon.
I started watching Dave’s video a few weeks ago on Langan. I tapped out when in the beginning of his video he confused a philosophical theory with a scientific one. Dave is the dunning Krueger effect personified.
@ he probably does. Farina is a typical materialist you see online all the time. No reason to believe he is lying or trying to mislead anyone. I think he just doesn’t know what he is talking about, and doesn’t know that he doesn’t what he is talking about. Combine that with overconfidence and it gets pretty bad. I think he is a smart guy, he just has big blind spots.
@@JustErics101 I see your point, but it's best not to seem to make excuses for the "professor daves" of the world. Blind spots are one thing; lying, hateful, defamatory chimpouts are quite another. Dave is a liar, a troll, and an idiot (smart people possess at least a modicum of self-control), and anyone who thinks that a few for-profit remedial science videos make up for it isn't terribly handy with moral calculations.
There is no such thing as a "philosopycal theory". Langan have a idea not a theory, a theory is a product of the scientific method, and this dude Langan talks about having a theory of everything, thats in the realms of physics, so he needs to present a scientific theory, which he never does, he's a charlatan for sure.
No, you missed the point. "Theory of Everything" is a specific Term of Art in physics. He is saying that if Langan wants to call his theory a "Theory of Everything", then by definition, that theory must be a scientific theory, not a philosophical one, otherwise Langan himself has coined his own definition of "Theory of Everything", which has as much weight as me calling this "The definitively correct comment".
The internet seems to offer much. The problem is finding knowledgeable persons who can express regally what a thinker is unable to provide proper languag to explain
@caxxotmaxci8807 We all have personal and unique experiences, as well as biases, that shape who we are. They get reinforced everyday. Most of what we become isn't because of our personal choices. Alot of it is circumstances.
@caxxotmaxci8807 Because that is the viewer niche that he’s marketing to. If he was even a little bit spiritual it would diminish his appeal to such a large viewer base of people who want an embodiment of cold scientific rigor. I think its a good thing in a way, it would be difficult to fully understand different viewpoints if we didn’t have these characters sort of “playing the part” of defending one specific view and challenging the rest.
@caxxotmaxci8807 His viewership consists almost entirely of kids suffering from acute cases of "Young Man Syndrome"; I.e., guys between the ages of 13 and 23 who are deeply insecure, directionless and therefore highly susceptible to things that give them a cheap sense of self-superiority, self-righteousness and certainty. Dave knows dam well that's the product he's selling, and that's why he can shamelessly get on camera and act like a hysterical teenager. Human beings seek validation, and we are even more compelled to seek validation for the parts of us which we are most insecure about. When we see a public figure - someone who is seemingly successful, respected and intelligent - acting out the most deeply flawed aspects of our own personalities, we feel an immense sense of validation. The psyche says "See! It's not actually bad that I can be like that! It's actually good that I do things like that! F-You, Steve! You're not even my real dad!!!"
I have voraciously consumed all of your videos multiple times since discovering your channel a couple months ago. I was not familiar with Mr. Dave, but your systematic dismantling of him is close enough. I look forward to all of your amazing future work!
Getting to the CTMU part and the way you describe it is very eloquent (in usual Formscapes manner lol). I’ve been trying to understand it for some time now and finally had that “aaaah” moment. I’m sure Chris would be pleased at your understanding and cross reference.
I think Mr Langan has finally found somebody with enough comprehension and hunger for deep understanding that could explain his concepts to idiots like me. Please do more videos and maybe an interview with him. And thank you!
Yeah at some point I'd like to actually unpack some of his formal articulations in detail. Once upon a time I was very deep into formal logic, so I could definitely unpack what's going on if I could find the time. I was thinking about doing a video which analyzes his ideas in contrast to Wittgenstein's later work (The Philosophical Investigations), so hopefully I'll get around to that at some point.
The people who worship him are his army of insecure teenage boys who look to him to validate their own sh*tty attitudes. Even the people who HE worships in the mainstream science community don't take him seriously (because he flunked out of his Chemistry degree TWICE lol)
@@FormscapesMammon's body...his all-devouring, all-possessing body...how do we trick ourselves into thinking we confine him in our pockets? No, my God, we only hold his token, his calling card, his sign, and trade it amongst ourselves as though it were harmless. When, surely, the reality is that we are up to the neck in his pockets. Buried in them, in fact. Trapped next to the burning, feverish heat of his sterile loins. Or something like that.
@caxxotmaxci8807 I was referring (as i thought you were) to how big egos are resistant to change in their beliefs, even if those beliefs don't afford them any progress or apparent movement. Scientism = blind belief without investigation of the underlying research, which is gaining more momentum thanks to the Internet and the tendency for creators to dumb things down for accessibility and attention.
Dave is such a joke. He’s incapable of having an actual debate without resorting to tactics that children use. Possibly one of the biggest clowns on youtube
I couldn't stand Dave's persona long enough to finish his video, but all of the comments were accusing Langan of word salad. I watched the interview, and everything Langan said made sense to me.
His interview with Kurt is much more detailed, but Kurt actually studied the CTMU in advance, so it gets a bit technical with the Jargon. If you skim through some of the articles at the CTMU wiki first it's much easier to watch.
I like the part in the Knowles interview when he confused the right wing talking points about “trans ladies using the wrong bathroom” and “drag queens reading to kids” and then pooped out “drag queens demanding to go inside children’s restrooms.” It’s was uh… entertaining?
@@michaelbyrne9246after a certain amount of studying of this reality, including its history, it becomes very certain that there is a God, the problem is it is near impossible to demonstrate it to someone else in a fluent way, you must personally look
@@GDino33 the christian God, which is also the Muslim, jewish and Sikh God cannot be compared to other Gods, God in this regard is the foundation of all existence, without form and is infinite in nature, the Gods of polytheistic religions like Hinduism are gods with form, a distinct appearance, and share attributes of the creation
23:00 around here, you're missing the fact that two orbiting bodies of sort of similar mass (like earth and moon, or Jupiter and the sun, or other two-body systems like these) would have empirically measurable barycenters. Yes, perhaps we might say from Earth's persective that the moon is just wobbling back forth a tiny bit in its ellipctical motion around us, but it makes more sense to note that the Earth-moon barycenter is about 75% of Earth's radius. That accounts for the observable back-and-forth motion. Also, you seem overly certain that empirical observations didn't help move the zeitgeist away from "perfect celestial bodies above and imperfect terrestrial bodies below," towards, "all bodies follow the same laws." You recalled Galileo seeing craters on the moon. Not only did he see these craters on the moon, but Galileo also saw: sunspots on the sun; phases of Venus; at least four moons around Jupiter and Jupiter's red spot; Saturn's rings; and more from his telescope. All these empirical observations of astronomy helped him move towards a more universal set of rules or laws for the universe. I don't really understand how you say that empircal observations or data collection hasn't had a profound impact on that period of science.
Every single one of those observations could be - and have been - interpreted in different ways, within the context of different cosmological assumptions, and that is the point here; the observations themselves are nothing but noise unless interpreted through a theoretical language and its metaphysical understanding of the world which conditions how we interpret evidence, what even counts as "evidence", what truth is and the metanarratives that these developments perform within.
@@Formscapes I've given your reply some time to cook in my brain, and I've written several drafts for a reply back to you; however, I guess I'm looking for the answer for one main question. What is Galileo's meta? That could be answered with probably a book or several volumes. I honestly don't pretend to know Galileo that well. To answer the question, I figure we need to either be Galileo or probably know him better than he knew himself. This is rather profound. Can we even know anyone better than we know ourselves? Even if we know their meta, can we communicate it effectively to others? I think you're trying, but it's a hard task. Not that I believe or support solipsism, but I recognize that the task of explaining one's whole meta is probably impossible, neverending, and the meta changes as we tell it. This is comedic to me and absurd in a lovely way that's ineffable.
xD! Thanks again my dude these videos really lift my spirits. So well spoken its inspiring! As always. rip 'professor' Dave . he was a funny man somehow.
@@lilfr4nkie yeah while I dont agree with Joscha Bachs materialism, he's the best at making it sound plausible, and he's not afraid of concepts alien to dogmatic science. He's just too rigid in his bottom up mindset.
I believe that Chris Langan has the most accurate model of reality with his CTMU. It interleaves so many aspects of the human experience with the universe both in what we perceive as the physical realm and that of the spiritual realm.
A good bit of you discussion on newton and Carl popper Langan condensed into "linear ectomophic semi model". Thank you for expanding on this, I needed the long form explanation. This is a beacon of clarity on a subject.
I gotta say I'm not a huge fan of Langan's terminology. It's not that difficult to understand, but it just makes things seem unnecessarily convoluted imo. It's kind of impossible to do philosophy without cooking up terminology, though, so I suppose it's a matter of taste when all is said and done.
@@Formscapes There may be some confusion here as to why certain new terms had to be defined. It boils down to the inadequacy of existing conceptual frameworks to fully capture certain implications of what amounts to a new picture of reality. Theories of philosophy, like those of math and science, cannot always be reductively unpacked in some conventional base-language. In fact, the typical scholarly paper is full of newly or recently defined terms - "jargon", if you will - and sourcing them to multiple authors is no excuse for their circular proliferation in academic publish-or-perish feeding frenzies. Sometimes, new terms are introduced because they're actually necessary.
Tremendous video, I learned a lot. And what an excellent explanation of the CTMU. I’ve been interested in this theory for years and im quite knowledgeable on it and you’ve explained it well. A note: syntactors do not expand at the speed of light, they create spacetime within themselves and only appear to expand from our perspective. There is technically no expansion at all in the CTMU. I’m also not sure that the CTMU leaves modern scientific theories unscathed, as you said. I heard in an interview that the conspansive manifold makes the same predictions as morphic resonance, although I personally am unable to figure out exactly why conspansion is logically able to do that, even I can pontificate about it. I have a folder full of all the CTMU images I can find and I’ve never seen those images from around 48:00. I’m curious about where you got them from or the concepts they’re based on.
Let me clarify that a bit: the CTMU does affirm a number of things such as morphic resonance and the various parapsychological phenomena related to that, etc. I'm not sure if Langan is familiar with Sheldrake's ideas but the CTMU implicates morphic resonance in the exact same way that Whitehead's process philosophy does. In the comment about leaving mainstream science unscathed, I was referring mostly to Einstein. I am very critical of SR and GR in a way that Langan isn't, and I don't think Langan takes seriously the fact that SR/GR necessitate a Spinozist block universe in which everything is necessarily predetermined - thus precluding the possibility of genuine freedom; something which is of central importance in the CTMU. With that said, there may be details of the CTMU which reinterpret Einstein in more radical ways than I'm aware of, so take what I just said with a grain of salt, but that's my impression thus far.
Its actually insane how fast an hour can fly past when listening to your ramblings! Sometime in the future I wish for you to write a book so everything can become utterly polished. Don't get me wrong I have yet to view a video of yours that did not amaze me with new perspectives but books will always have a special place in my heart. Writing this I realize that beggars can indeed be choosers..... Cheers!
This whole thing is absolutely going to become a series of books eventually but I just don't have the time currently, and even if I did, I really just don't feel like all of the pieces are in place yet. It would feel preemptive. If you go back to my early videos and work your way forward you can see how these ideas have been expanding and evolving rapidly since this channel's inception (which was like... a year and a half ago? dam time really does fly doesn't it) Anyway, point being; it will happen eventually, but thus far every bit of this has been forshadowing and prologue as far as I'm concerned. The rabbit hole goes far, far deeper than what I've explored on the channel thus far, but I have to be methodical.
@@Formscapes I just wonder how can you deal with the profound loneliness due to the extreme discrepancy between your ideas and values and almost everything else. I am also in a kinda similar path to you, and I feel intelectually different even around academics. It is even difficult for me to talk about philosophy with people. I just have hope I will find worthwhile people in my life at some point where I can be authentic.
@@Nature_Consciousness I know its difficult friend. I studied philosophy and even there i didnt found much people open to talk about this. But there is people out there, you need to be simple about this and you will conect with them better, dont fall in the trap of being different, misteryous and too complex. And also, at the end of the day if you really follow this point of view, the one of the divine, you found you are everything, you feel everything, so loneliness is no a threat to a heart that beats to the cosmic music. Love to you.
So I just delved head first into it without really getting into any secondary literature but I've heard that The Archetypal Process by David Ray Griffin is pretty good; he relates Whitehead to Jung, Hillman etc... Oh and Matthew Segal's book Physics of the World Soul is a really good starting point as well. Matt also has a ton of Whitehead stuff on his YT channel (Footnotes2Plato) which is very useful.
Thank you for making this. It's refreshing to have someone explain what's going on in the background rather than a man in a lab coat throwing assertions at me
0:48 He taught undergrad, aka he was a professor. Not even a minute into the video and there's already misinformation. I want magic to be real just as much as the next person, but if one has to resort to irrationality or false information to prove a point, then one shouldn't believe it.
Lol he taught as a sub under the condition that he would go back to chemistry school (which he had flunked out of) and actually finish his degree, which he attempted to do, and he then flunked out AGAIN lmfao
He himself has even stated that the "professor" moniker started as just a joke and that it isn't a real title. Being offered to teach some undergrad chem classes as a sub without a degree does not make one a "professor". A "professor" is an actual job title - for a job which he has never had.
@@Formscapes I watched the video where he talks about his channel name. Your claims that he "fluked out" is misinformation. He chose to dropped out of his masters in chemistry because he wanted to play music. That is not the same as "fluking out" (aka forced to leave due to poor grades). He withdrew from the masters the 2nd time because he lost funding for it after he got laid off from that O-Chem teaching job due to bureaucracy. This is also not "fluking out." He also got his masters in science education some time after the video I'm referring to got posted. He got the teaching job because he had to take the place of a professor who left that semester. He taught O-Chem 1 & 2 at a university for around 4 years, while doing his masters in chemistry to become a tenured/permanent professor. If you claim that teaching undergrad doesn't make one a professor because they don't have a masters or don't have tenure, then many community college professors are not "professors" to you. A professor is one who teaches at a university or college level. You can call it assistant or associate professor if you want, but it still makes them a professor. "Substitute professor" isn't even a job (title). You're trying to discredit him by falsely by saying "He's not qualified to be a professor / was never a professor," despite him doing the job of a professor for 4 years. And by saying he fluked out twice from his masters, despite that not being the case either. Attack his argument, sure. But starting the video out with misinformation attacking his qualifications within the first minute, then doubling down with more misinformation here about him fluking out is not helping your case.
I made the mistake of commenting on his first video replying to you. Let’s just say that getting replayed to by a 1M+ subscriber channel like a redditor was not something I saw coming
I didn't know who you are before today, but it's always nice to see somebody who isn't stuck in the metaphysically flawed box that Dave and the masses commit themselves to. Subscribing.
I'm planning on having all the transcripts up on my website (once that's back in working order) as well as substack, but both of those plans keep getting delayed. I'm gonna need to reformat them all which is going to take some time ofc, and the holidays have had my schedule crammed to the point of bursting. But if you want any specific transcripts just shoot me an email and I'll send them to you. Love your videos btw. Keep it up.
Globe denier here. What I’ve never understood, is why does anyone even give this clown “professor dave” any credibility in the first place. It’s been proven he gives himself the title of professor.
Dear Kehlan, as per usual a pleasure. Yet I feel compelled to call you out for participating in this drama with Dave. The first 10+ minutes of the video could have been a personal message in my opinion. That said, I am really happy you tackle the CTMU. Though, I have to admit the last 30 minutes or so have been the first contribution of yours that caused a slight headache. Trying to keep up felt strenuous. Maybe it is the jet lag (i.e., I am more ‘dense’), or maybe this one is just more dense than usual. With kind regards and admiration for your openness. Best, Matt
Haven’t quite followed all the work done here on formscapes, but got into ctmu last year and thought-Chris’s work could fit here. Kinda tripped seeing the title. Thanks for your work. Your amalgamations are thorough going, and inform my lower res intuitions, like the same day I’ll be drawing together tangents.. It’s 3am, eight minutes in, talking myself out of making popcorn right now.
I was going to comment on various topics the video reminded me of such as compiler theory, abstract algebra, the syntax/semantics duality, and constructivist logic/math. Especially the terminal vs nonterminal thing, which is pure compiler theory. Then the "syntaxers" thing came up, and it was obvious I wouldn't need to mention most of these. Though it is worth noting, in compliers/programming languages, there is a fluid relationship between models and languages. The model in a lower language can be used to build a higher level language. Where the higher level language encapsulates both operations and domain assumptions into an easier to use grammar. This higher level refers to ease of use. Though there are also levels of grammatical complexity and computational power. Automata are machines that can evaluate simple languages, with more complex models capable of encoding more complex languages, such as memory less vs single item of memory computations. The upper limit is turing complete, which can evaluate all computable computations. On the other gramatical scale, the measure is how much context/pre-computation is needed to decode the grammar. With the "gold standard" as context free. In context free grammars, properly designed parsers can parse statements using only the token (terminal symbol) sequence. In more complex languages some kind of context must be supplied, and indeterminate form must be encoded until later evidence can force a decision, or alternate run time check code must be generated. It seems to me the CTMU is trying to construct a computational model with the syntax / semantics or language / model duality infinitely regressed to include itself via abstraction (much like category theory algebraically abstracts algebraic abstraction). The move from the terminal realm (raw observation as ultimate reality) to the syntaxers idea is akin to moving from tokens only to context dependent grammers. As a neat aside, the Racket language has "language oriented programming" constructs, implemented by "syntax objects". Traditional Lisp macros are implemented with them, but they also can hide language specific context within other objects
Brilliant work as always. Quick question, would you mind posting the script for these videos in essay form? It would be a lot easier to parse and fully understand in written form I feel.
NotaProfessorDave despite being a tutorial youtuber discourages curiosity, truth and actual scientific interest. I find this happens alot with midwits, they desire validation from being smart yet are not brave, they're complacent, Dave is honestly a bully. It's a shame that the nerd archetype became popular and pop science became the norm, now everyones a science guy but lack the actual creativity and wonder. Its gotten to the point that misrepresenting arguments, getting ideas deliberately wrong then mocking said ideas, ridiculing, not actually being a professor, reading Wikipedia for their youtube tutorial channels, did people really set the bar that low for intellectual figure heads.
This. Its basically modus operandi of modern reddit-tier soyence. Idolatry of material and being an ideology at its core. Ignore -> if cant -> attack anything that does not fit the narrative. The apex of this is term "scientific consensus". You might as well call it "party line". Julius Evola correctly pointed out all of this well ahead of his time, namely the pathological tendency of science to ultimately reduce everything to empiric phenomena, which is impossible. Its the same tendency children have to reduce everything they cannot comprehend to their level, so they too can feel smart. Just like little Dave here, the Bill Nye from Temu.
Dave has grown sour from blatant denial of evidence. Imagine you come up with a perfect undeniable theory for a crime and a shady bystander steps out and denies everything with no real evidence to back it up. I would go fucking insane.
This is from the CTMU FB group, Chris Langan's own comment about the video: Eike (FB commenter): "Good stuff, but I am confused why the name 'Langan' is pronounced the way it is. Because of that, I first thought that this could be a troll video." Response (Chris Langan): The narrator seems to have an adequate philosophy background, and his understanding of the theory is impressive relative to most. But it's far from perfect. This is especially obvious when he reserves judgment regarding some aspects of the theory, finds some things about it "suspect", implies that Whitehead (and Bernardo Kastrup of all people) are legitimate competitors, refers to my aggressive and abrasive personality, cites the controvery regarding my IQ, and so on. The constant mispronunciation of my name is also worrisome, as this is a very well-established trolling indicator. Syndiffeonesis wasn't adequately explained, telesis wasn't introduced as a "metasubstance", and the word "supertautology" wasn't mentioned at all, thus obscuring the unequivocal superiority of the CTMU to other theories. So despite the strong points of this defense, I remain undecided about it pending more information. As for bending over backward to maintain the appearance of neutrality, it's no longer justified. After decades of idiotic trolling by the likes of "professor dave" and other mindless chuckleheads, those days are gone. It's time to simply tell the truth.
I once commented on Dave’s page that he may have succeeded in soothing the ears of most of the people watching but he had not succeeded in soothing mine. I think I said he wouldn’t last 2 minutes in the dmt realm lol. He told me “There is no such thing as the DMT realm, sweetie.”
Great video! Technically Mr. Dave is a professor but only in the sense that he's spoken at college campuses. It's kinda like if you purchase a square foot of land in a Scottish bog, you can bestow upon yourself the title of "Lord" 😂
As much as I did really resonate with your reply to Dave’s video about you, I would hope that someone of your experience would not put value into that Langen guy’s BS. He’s a total grift and his theory makes no sense (besides the parts that take advantage of other people’s ideas and generalize them to the point of being a Rorschach ink blob). I’ll edit this comment if my mind’s changed by the end of this vid ❤
He seems to never really put his eggs into one clear basket in terms of labels and I like him like that. It means I actually got to listen to what he's saying in order to come to conclusion, while beforehand my dumb ape brain can start ascribing if I agree with such a labels indications and ideas, if even, on a sub level without my meaning to. And that sort of fits what this is all about. Formscape could believe that the sun is actually tiny little gnomes who are all farting into one really big celestial campfire. It wouldn't matter. This whole habur with Dave started because Form was making a point about social paradigms and the attitude of how we are approaching science and in turn, how science - and with it knowledge/ permitted inquiry - is being exploited, denied and inhibited by very unscientific behavior or institutions. Dave was just a good example of what he was arguing against - and proceed to even be an even better one in his response to him, as were his followers demanding formscapes debunk dave or talk about EE theory even though form directly said in that video the theory wasn't the point - Formscapes being right or wrong about any topic is not more important than asking questions, being inspired to ask questions and trying to articulate and communicate questions and answers. Which I think he achieves even if were revealed to be totally convinced that the universe is in fact generated by very philosophical fart clouds with temporary bouts of cosmic power.
@GFXCXZ I like your point! My real problem is people like Langen, billy carson, terrence howard etc. stealing ideas from very intelligent people who existed outside the mainstream knowledge sphere, and popularizing it for their own gain..they make these ideas repulsive to many people by ruining it with their own baseless ideas and opinions. If that makes sense? Like I can find everything valid about Langen’s theory inside the most ancient texts like the vedas, why should he be able to take credit and damage the perception of this knowledge at the same time? It just gives the mainstream more excuses and reasons to dismiss this information.
Langan’s not a total grift. He’s an arrogant asshole and refuses to make his language amendable to people who don’t have the time to spend months of their life familiarizing themselves with his neologisms. His theory is rather mid imv, even though I agree with a lot of the broad strokes; and his politics pathological and ignorant, but it’s not nonsense. Better to read the brilliant people he was inspired by (Whitehead, tarski, Gödel) then dedicate your time to learning his needlessly obscure system.
So, to my mind, CTMU is probably somewhat resonant with Wolfram's computational account of reality (via ruliad), and implications of Friston's free energy principle - namely, that being is cognition. It's curious though, how all of these metaphysical frameworks are falling into a broad scheme of dialectic between potentiality and actuality.
I couldn't make it through his video, it was more personal attacks than anything else. He hadn't even addressed the CTMU before I stopped watching. Love Chris Langan's theory and have yet to see anyone fully debunk it in any meaningful capacity. It definitely doesn't cover everything but it's extremely comprehensive which is something we don't find too often nowadays. Glad you covered the subject and hope to see more of your interpretations of the CTMU in the future.
I contend that it is dual-aspect. It is fundamentally based in consciousness and has two dual-aspect mechanisms that emerge from the baseline consciousness. Ultimately, it strikes me as an idealist theory where the mechanisms that manifest matter are explained. I am, however, unsure why it is not written in the syntax of analytical philosophy, as it could be.
5:20 you got to the fundamental issue. Linguistic signs can in fact stand in for every other modality of signifciafion. Substantives and relations are equiprimordial in grammar, and this reflects a similar structure in being.
Probably because I make 1-2.5 hour long monstrosities which are a massive chore to even watch. I'm surprised I have more than 10k tbh lol. My whole schtick is fighting against me
Professor Dave has the answer - clearly it's because formscapes is a dumbass, because smart people are rich and super successful by definition, irrespective of conditions.
@@uraloser5553I think it's only a very mildly exaggerated paraphrase of what he spends a lot of time implying in his Langan video (about Langan obvs lol)!
You spoil us Kehlan 😂 this guy just can't help but absolutely embarrass himself and I'm here for the brilliantly articulated exposé all day 🍻 cheers brother!
Great breakdown of the CTMU. I did a video of my own on the CTMU which was very successful and its definitely an increasingly well known theoretic model which people are waking up to. I don't see how the universe could be anything other than a self simulation especially when considering the logical consistency that physics studies with the assumption of. I don't agree with the CTMU entirely, especially with regards to its claim to a kind of logical absolute knowledge, but like a lot of other ideas its barking up the right tree.
Yeah that's more or less my assessment of the matter. It gets alot of things right, but the claims to unassailable absolutism give me bad vibes. Fun ideas though.
Even if Dave is ignorant, so too is Chris Langan. His theory is unscientific nonsense, and demonstrates his lack of formal education. There’s something there, but it’s obfuscated under layers of vague and verbose language
That's really just not true. He uses alot of neologisms, yes, but his ideas really aren't that obscure at all to those familiar with the Logical Atomism movement. He essentially blends together ideas from Russel, Whitehead and Einstein. If you disagree with him, that's one thing, but if you're going to argue that he's just talking nonsense then that's just patently false. "Lack of Education" also means absolutely nothing but elitist slander. In the world we currently live in, people are exactly as educated as they want to be, and Langan certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to the topics he cares about.
@@Formscapes you can’t really blend ideas together if you never understood them thoroughly to begin with. The guy steals other people’s insights and claims he has 200 IQ and solved the problems they weren’t able to. His arrogance isn’t the problem but it’s a symptom of it! it’s a huge red flag that he claims to have a theory of everything but actually has no mathematics in his theory, which would be fine if he were offering something original or giving credit to the sources of his claims. Namaste 🌻
@@sarahcusack He actually does indeed have a formal system, and I even included some examples from certain pages in the video itself. He doesn't have equations with numerical values because that would be a model of physical phenomena, not a metaphysical framework. Once upon a time, Physicists actually took logical formulations like that very seriously, which is why Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica is considered to be one of the most influential books ever written in the field of physics even though contemporary physicists hardly ever even mention it, let alone read it. The Principia - and the CTMU - are indeed mathematical, but they are mathematical in the more general sense that they are formulated in terms of mathematical logic, not equations intended to make measurable predictions of physical phenomena. Dave can screech "where is your math", because Dave does not recognize Langan's math as even BEING math! Which is hilarious of course, but the point is that what you're trying to argue for here just isn't true. There are reasons why one might be critical of Langan, but this really just isn't one of them.
@@Formscapes Whoa there. I didn't call you a troll or insist on "fawning praise"; I merely remarked that after finding your video "impressive", I detected signs that it might not be entirely benign. I said I was withholding judgment pending clarification. It now seems that you may have provided it. My best guess is that you latched onto something I said to one of the libelous trolls who has posted here, erroneously assumed that I was addressing you personally (UA-cam often fails to properly identify the person being responded to), and decided to take an openly adversarial stance. Am I mistaken about this?
@@RealChrisLangan My intentions were entirely benign, and evidently I've been getting some very misleading comments from a number of individuals - most of whom I have now blocked. Feel free to send me an email and we can clear some things up if need be. This comment section has gotten far too hostile. I'll also remove the previous comment.
@@RealChrisLangan Chris Langan himself, I'm a little star struck to be honest. Loved your exposition with Kurt Jaimungal, although I had to watch it several times to get a sense of the CTMU. I can appreciate the depth and ambition of it, but I wish I could understand the insight and perspective it affords. Clearly I agree that this video by Formscapes is not entirely benign. What I saw was a rebuke of professor Daves character and worldview using Daves attempt to discredit you. Whether or not Formscapes accurately summarized your work is not something I can speak to, but his appreciation and respect were obvious to me.
@@redirishmanxlt And what exactly indicates that my intentions were not benign? I went out of my way to stick my neck out for someone who I do not know, and who I do have disagreements with, entirely of my own volition.
@@Formscapes Over the years, I've found that most people who claim total ignorance of my existence turn out to "know" me (or at least to know _of_ me, at least to the extent that my life was rendered an open book by the mass media many years ago). I predict with great confidence that any "disagreement" you have with the CTMU will either vanish in the course of time, or you'll end up holding a leaky bag of baseless, indefensible criticism. As a sincere philosopher, one is effectively a servant of truth; if one's volition deviates from this responsibility, then it requires modification. "Metaphysicians who have never heard of the CTMU" is an oxymoron; the 2002 paper was downloaded literally millions of times, the other papers set records for the journal in which they appeared, and only an ivory-tower hothouse orchid can afford to ignore any of them. All of this being understood, I still regard your philosophical insight as impressive, especially relative to most online philosophy pundits. Now on to the blockage issue. I question the treatment of any seeming CTMU/Langan partisans whom you blocked. Unless I miss my guess, none of them lied. On the other hand, this thread is full of obvious trolls specializing in several blatant lies. To wit: (1) "Langan never even took an IQ test, but just runs around tooting his own horn!"; (2) "Langan's theory contains no math!"; (3) "Langan has no (peer-reviewed academic) publications!"; (4) "Langan has contributed nothing but unintelligible gobbledygook and word salad to scientific and philosophical discourse!", (5) "Professor dave" (who is himself guilty of telling all of these lies) has fully and fairly explained why Langan is an uneducated low-IQ fraud who has never accomplished a single thing in his entire misbegotten life!", et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, you can run your comments section as you choose. But in my experience with various fora, it's much better to get rid of liars than nonliars. Liars who go uncorrected and unblocked effectively preclude reasonable well-informed discourse. Thanks for your attention, and have a nice day.
This philosophy-art genre is like the sacred re-emerging into discourse. I clicked subscribe before I even began to understand what I was watching. It's discussion like this that is rapidly reshaping society. AI is just like a motorized pen that we've found along the way.
Hi! Thanks for the video, a friend of mine loves your channel and recommends it a lot. There are some points in which I agree with and others that not. I started out writing a long comment but now it has basically become an essay. I hope you are able to read it and that I expressed myself clearly. Cheers. One of the points that I agree with, is that in order to do science, a non-empirical conceptual framework is necessary. As a consequence, we can explain paradigm shifts in the sciences as changes in these conceptual frameworks. Regarding the paradigm shift of modern science, it shall be recognized that Galileo's models were not more rational according to their time (in fact, it was more reasonable to assume the opposite position) and explain a paradigm shift as a result of social conditions or that time’s mode of thinking. Nevertheless, if the analysis of modern science is focused on the metaphysics that underlies the theories that constitute it, it is absolutely necessary to mention Kant’s critique. What is the relevance of Kant's critique? One the one hand, it directly addresses the problem that, in order to gain knowledge of things, a transcendental support is necessary. Berkeley had already criticized modern science with the argument that it uses abstractions of thought that were nowhere to be found in empirical experience, and Hume's skepticism took this critique to a higher level. This is but an example of something that Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, many others and yourself admit i.e. pure empiricism results in skepticism. If we only had sensuous experience then we wouldn’t know anything it all. Hence, a grounding of knowledge and the natural sciences needs to prove that the transcendental is accesible. That’s the aim of Kant’s philosophy, and by doing so, it justifies newtonian physics and its reliance on universal laws and forms of thought that are not empirical in nature, but rather are the pre-condition of empirical perception. So yes, there is a metaphysical basis for modern science, and for a video that insists that science must have a metaphysical basis and at the same time critiques modern science, it must mention the biggest effort there was to metaphysically ground modern science. On the other hand, we can also say that Kant’s critique functions as an attack on pre-modern paradigms. If Kant’s critique renders classical metaphysics as invalid and pre-modern science found its grounding in classical metaphysics, then it must be followed that pre-modern science is invalid. While it is true that it can be argued that Kant’s philosophy fails (after all, I’m not even a kantian myself) it is undeniable that post-kantian philosophy must be critical and that it should take into consideration some of Kant’s conceptual distinctions (e.g. the distinction between the transcendental conditions of an object and the object itself). One aspect that caught my attention is that you mention how premodern cosmologies identified celestial bodies as transcendentals, or as mediators between the transcendent and the immanent. If we take the conceptual distinction I mentioned into consideration, it is not possible to speak of celestial bodies (or any empirical object) in such a way. The transcendental is the precondition for conceiving the thing, but not the thing itself, thus it is absurd to think that a thing or entity could be a transcendental. At utmost, we could speak of a thing as an exemplification of a trascendental principle, but not the principle itself. Likewise, this was the major error of classical metaphysics: it treated transcendentals as if they were objects of understanding.
Putting kantian philosophy aside, the analysis also overlooks the fact that, while the Copernican paradigm did not have as much merit at the time of its conception, it began to gain greater merit over time. This merit was not because its foundational concepts had any kind of verification, as a naive scientistic view might suggest, but because the models simply worked better. Newtonian mechanics was much more effective than any other model, and later, the same could be said for Einstein's relativity. While it is true that transcendental concepts are not accesible through empirical means, it is also true that they shape scientific theories, and these theories are going to have empirical consequences. Since we can judge how effective is a given theory, then we can also judge how effective are the concepts that shape theories. Truth is, modern science has proven to be more effective that its previous paradigms. You can object to this (and you do) by saying the aim of science goes beyond merely explaining behaviors. Science shouldn’t just explain the behavior of gravity but gravity itself. My answer to this is with a question: what is gravity outside of the behavior of gravity? In my opinion, the answer is simple: nothing. Gravity is precisely gravitational behaviors, nothing more and nothing less. Talking about a "gravity in itself" separated from gravitational behaviors is a chimera, an empty abstraction of thought. It would be quite adequate to invoque Peirce’s pragmatist maxim: “Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearing you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then your conception of those effects is the WHOLE of your conception of the object.” Of course, such a statement is grounded in a metaphysical thesis i.e. a thing is its actualizations in all its possibilities. You could simply reject my position by denying pragmatism, but I ask of you to consider how it could be possible to meaningfully to speak of something without any sort of reference to its effects on other things. From an epistemological point of view, this makes sense: if a thing has no effects on other things, then it is inaccessible to thought (since there must be a reason the thing is accesible and that reason is precisely the effects of the thing); and if it is inaccessible to thought, then we cannot speak of it. Ontologically, it also makes sense: if a thing does not affect others, we cannot say it is part of the same world; and if it is not part of the same world, then it is an absolute transcendence, which cannot serve as the principle of anything (being a principle of something means that it determines something). It would be an empty, abstract nothingness. This might seem to align with a vulgar empiricism, materialism or any form of nominalism, for the matter. But quite the contrary, Peirce himself was an idealist that thoroughly rejected nominalism. It is not the case that there are no ideal forms, universals or transcendentals, but rather, these forms must be concretized and without concreteness they are nothing. In order to speak of the transcendental, we must always point to the material and the empirical. As Hegel would say, the universal makes no sense without reference to the particular, and vice versa: the particular makes no sense without reference to the universal. Similarly, the transcendent is transcendent by virtue of the immanent, and the immanent is immanent by virtue of the transcendent. For example, how could we talk about justice without reference to just acts? Justice is the principle that determines just acts, and without this determination it makes no sense to speak of it. With this, we can formulate a more precise critique of scientism and naive empiricisms. Yes, science must commit itself to a certain metaphysical conception, but we can no longer speak of a metaphysics of essences abstracted from the plane of immanence. A naive empiricist claims there is only access to actualizations, but actualizations of what? An individual gravitational phenomenon can only be recognized as such only in reference to the generality of gravity, but the generality of gravity can only be recognized as such in reference to all the individual possibilities of gravity. Hegel mentions that the phenomenon must present the essence, and as such, reason must recognize the phenomenon is the essence. Evidently, in order for the understanding to work, there must be a divide between the phenomenon and the essence. Yet, when we transition into the perspective of reason, such divide is sublated. This does not mean that they must be rendered identical and their differences abandoned, but instead, in general terms is the supersensible undifferent that differentiates itself into appearance. Each term is negatively present in the other, and as such, is totality in what is not total (since the non-total is contained in the total): “We see that in the interior of appearance what the understanding in truth gets to experience is nothing other than appearance itself, only not appearance as it is as the play of forces, but rather that play of forces in its absolutely-universal moments and in their movement, and in fact the understanding experiences only itself. Elevated above perception, consciousness presents itself joined together with the supersensible through the middle term of appearance, a middle term through which it gazes into this background. The two extremes, the one, that of the pure interior, the other, that of the interior gazing into this pure interior, have now coincided, and just as they, as extremes, have vanished, so too the middle term, as something other than these extremes, has also vanished. This screen in front of the interior has therefore been drawn away, and the gaze of the interior into the interior is at hand: the gaze of the undifferentiated like-named, which repels itself, posits itself as differentiated interior, but for which just as immediately there is the undifferentiatedness, self-consciousness.” To speak of a thing abstracted from behaviors leads us back to the thing in itself, which is neither accesible (as classical metaphysics pretends) nor inaccesible (as Kant pretends) because it is a fantasy created by an immediate mode of consciousness. This might suggest the assertion that I made regarding the mistake of identifying objects with transcendental principles is false. But no, the object is not identical to the principle, it is rather “negatively united” with it.
Back to modern science, I think it’s incorrect to characterize it as ignorant of its metaphysical foundations. This also applies to twentieth century metaphysics. For example, when Einstein criticized quantum mechanics by saying god doesn’t play with dice with the universe, he did so from a metaphysical standpoint, not an empirical one. Aside from following spinozistic determinism, he was also influenced by Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s epistemology. Other examples of physicists that were quite well versed in philosophy and admitted having been influenced by it are Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger. While there are some physicist that have disregarded philosophy (such as Feynman and Hawking), quite a lot of working physicists have been conscious of the metaphysical horizon in which their field is located. The disdain for philosophy is not intrinsic to contemporary science, but an attitude from a particular group of people (that has sadly been more influential than it should be). One thing that I concede is that philosophical formation within practicing scientists has been poor, when the reality is that they would really benefit from it. Additionally, I think it is a mistake to compromise contemporary science with Popper’s falsifiability, when there are more theories in philosophy of science, and even Lakatos’ more refined version of falsifiability. Lakatos presents a methodology more resistant to the objections that have been made against Popper. For instance, incorrect predictions from a theory aren’t necessarily a refutation of the theory, since theories are part of a bigger program. An individual theory by itself doesn’t say anything, because it only does so in relation to other theories, assumptions and the measurement tools the scientist has at their disposal. Therefore, scientific endeavor doesn’t merely consist in merely finding evidence against a theory or in merely generalizing observations. Science is a constant critical reflection, generating different hypothesis and contrasting different models. This directly contradicts your conception of contemporary science as dogmatic, and in my opinion, closer to your ideal of science (I’m inclined to think you’re an inductivist based on your comments, but accepting induction doesn’t necessarily result in inductivism). The aforementioned Peirce considered science is constituted by three types of reasoning: abduction, deduction and induction. As you correctly point out, a purely deductive account of science is agnostic regarding principles that shape and order the universe, leaving the door open to a chaotic universe, thus deriving in a self-defeating skepticism. Likewise, a purely inductivist account leads to a similar problem, but in an opposite manner. In effect, since induction is based on the generalization of previously given observations, solely relying on induction would neutralize any novelty, thus deriving in a static view of the universe. Peirce introduces abduction in order to preserve the novelty of the universe, since it allows the generation of hypothesis that would lead to deductions, which can be further solidified by induction. This might be closer to the metaphysical exam before the hypothesis that you proposed. I shall diverge in that, to limit oneself to an specific metaphysical conception is far too restrictive. While the scientist should be philosophically conscious, they should have the creative power to reach out of those preconceptions. In this sense, science should be conceived as a dynamic process. The universe always gives new possibilities, and as such, our understanding of it will always be limited. This does not mean that we can’t know about it or that it lacks any order whatsoever, but that we always have new forms of actualizations of that order, and in each new actualization we have a further approximation.
Great content, critically analyse Steven Wolframs ToE next. Specifically, he talks about empirical data he says competing theories lack however ive struggled to find any work from Steven, just a couple cellular automata images and some bad cgi to go with it
If this happens, please for the love of God bring up Transcendental Arguments and the inherent problems with Empiricism’s epistemically unjustifiable foundations (e.g. the analyses of Hume, Quine, etc.).
Dave didn't address any of the core claims of the CTMU in his takedown, just mischaracterized and argued semantics at one point. What formboy is doing here is trying to actually explain the CTMU as an objective framework for the current process of scientific modeling and falsification to be grounded in, and implications for reality that logically follow from it, as science advances.
The point of that history was to illustrate that Dave's one and only actual claim - that theories are just models and not languages - is false, and by extension, so is his entire epistemology. I intentionally kept actual discussion of Dave himself to a minimum due to the fact that he's not worth anyone's time, but his takedown of Langan made for a good opportunity to cover the CTMU, which is something I haven't touched before. Also if Dave is actually dumb enough to respond to me again like he did last time then that'll get me about 2-4k+ new subs, which I'm also cool with lol
I watch a lot of science podcasts and whether it be adherence to a particular epistemology (or ideology), I've never heard quite the pointed critique (or even a simple acknowledgment) of the problems with the standard scientific methodolgy you describe. Those problems have caused many of us to now label science as scientism. Thank you and much good luck in spreading your much more carefully thought-out word.
With Mr. Dave, its a very shrill tone for such a vibrant and buzzing universe. Much prefer your content and tone despite frankly finding myself being largely a physicalist. Mockery and shrill debating should not be an element of such a discourse. Thank you for your content! 🙏
Great video. My favorite argument for the existence of dark matter is the Bullet Cluster. One can observe matter being affected gravitationally by something that does not interact with the electromagnetic force (which includes physical touch). I'm not physicist or anything, but I found the reasoning very convincing.
Fantastic video as always. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into these production. Idea: You could have perhaps also brought in a bit of Pierce and abduction as it is intmately related to the the concept of falsifiability. Abduction is an interesting seeming middle ground between induction and deduction, analytical and synthetic judgements.
he wasn't talking about ctmu though? he was responding to an interview that was rather goofy. thanks for the overview i guess but why should i be mad at dave for not engaging with something barely talked about in the video he was responding to?
His contention, throughout the video, was that Langan is a fraud who just makes things up to sound smart and that his ideas are vacuous nonsense. This is false. I don't even particularly see eye to eye with Langan (as the comments section illustrates), but Dave's claim was immature, defamatory and blatantly false.
@@Formscapes for sure thanks for your reply. i see where you're coming from. i'll give both of your videos a second look and think on it - i liked your engagement with the CTMU, but i do think the Dave critique is a bit nitpicky. Langan does sound like a fraud in these videos. maybe Dave's being intentionally deceptive, but it's also possible that he's just not familiar with him. Langan is a niche figure that i know of due to being chronically online. if this is really dave's first encounter with him, i totally understand the reaction, though i suppose he could stand to look further in the future.
I have been interested in CTMU for a little while now. He comes to a lot of the same conclusions i have over the past 9+ yrs of studying esoterics, philosophy, history, genetics, physics, metaphysics, religion, geography, astrology and astronomy.
Formscapes I love your content, but here you said something I think is interesting and calls forth a question. You claimed that prior to Newton the perspectival notion was underdeveloped which seems true perhaps, and a very interesting thought, but that the notion was not present for the greeks and the Romans seems strange. Maybe it wasn't as developed in their art and thinking, but have a look at this Aristotlean solution to one of Zenos paradoxes. The paradox states: In a race, the quickest runner (often called achilles) can never overtake the slowest (often a tortoise) , since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. If i remember correctly aristotle almost predicts velocity by saying that Achilles is not moving against 2 things, the things being the earth and the tortoise. Motion is defined in terms of two things, the mobile, and the mover. So it becomes a method of subtraction ofc, Achilles speed minus Turtle speed over initial distance. Does this qualify as a kind of perspectival solution? The solution implies that from the point of view of Achilles the turtle is traveling towards him at the of the difference of their speeds, so from this relation the answer is easily determined, but by trying to triangulate and not think in terms of a kind of velocity being set up by the turtles motion on the earth a paradox emerges. It seems a perhaps an uncharacteristically perspectival claim from aristotle, but fascinating don't you think?
Yeah I think that might qualify actually, but I would need to look at the original text to see what all is going on in the argument. There is at least one (very striking) example of perspectival consciousness long before the Renaissance and that's the Fayum Mummy Portraits. But even the exceptions prove the rule. The Fayum portraits depict the deceased as they would have appeared to the living because they were meant to capture the essence of what the dead were like, when they were still alive, **for** the living; they were for mourning and remembrance, in other words. This is actually very unusual in ancient funerary art, which (especially in Egypt) tended towards capturing the archetypal essences of the dead (the Ka or Ba soul in Kemeticism, for example). How the dead would have physically appeared to the living would have seemed as far removed from the immortal essence of the person as possible. This unusual emphasis on immortalizing the embodied life of the dead in art is the unmistakable Hallmark of Christianity, and so I think we can easily conclude that these paintings represent some form of proto-Coptic Christianity which predates the written Gospels. In any case, the takeaway here is this: the germs of subsequent consciousness structures can often be found thousands of years before they come into full bloom, because these things take a very, very long time to fully germinate within the unconscious.
Not in my comment section people. You know who you are. I will block accounts if I need to. We are not playing that card.
Also big shout out to Tommy Goloboy for discussing some of these ideas with me and helping cook up a response to Dave. Tommy has much more content on the CTMU than I do so be sure to check out his channel and his project, Compatriot Academy;
ua-cam.com/channels/dvVtDgpEXI8e2UzBJR-NSQ.html
I don't understand
UA-cam comments get very nasty very easily, especially on matters of religion and science. You either allow it or you put the boot down.
@@faeancestor Then don't worry about it. The people I'm talking to know what I'm talking about
I am really enjoying this feeling of refresh. Your characteristic style of narration/commenting mixed with a little cinism/humor. Similar to the one used by D.Farina. (to put him as a simple example)
I'm enjoying even more the topic: the CTMU, Mr. Langan's theory and its physical and metaphysical propositions.
A response that I would expect due to the nature of this channel.
Thanks for the attempt to bring such dense material down to earth.
Greetings.
Edit: Thank you for referring Tommy's content. Seems intriguing.
@@faeancestor lagnan has some very unsavory social views
Dude, I love you and your brain. I'm so psyched you did a video covering the CTMU. Didn't even know you were aware of Chris Langan, let alone in agreement with his work.
Well I'm soooomewhat in agreement with him. I do have a number of criticisms but I'll get to that eventually. That's probably gonna come up whenever I get around to doing an episode on Wittgenstein.
@@Formscapes Fair enough. I'll be watching that video as well when you get around to it. Until then, keep up the pondering.
For Dave science serves the purpose that religion serves for others.
If he sees this he’s going to put you on a list
@@maintaininganonymity234 Just wait until you meet a classical physicist.
He's talked about this take of himself multiple times
@@maintaininganonymity234 I see your point, but science doesn't come even close to the purpose of religion.
Thank you for pointing out this significant point that is too often overlooked by those in the 'Church of Scientism'
I thanked him for one video that helped me through botany exam. But I said that on metaphysical beef I side with Formscapes.
He was mean and called me a seething kiddo. I am mad.
I love seeing all these comments that vividly illustrate Dave’s childish, insecure, and neurotic behavior.
Anyone who immediately resorts to ad hominem attacks in defense of their beliefs is (almost) always insecure in their belief. They may try to convince themselves of their own belief in an idea; however, one can clearly see, by their actions, that they lack a full conviction in said idea.
Dave immediately becoming combative at the slightest criticism is a poorly camouflaged attempt at getting his viewers or fans (probably mostly bots) to gang up on the person leveling a valid criticism.
You can even tell by his body language in many of those clips that he is anxious as all hell to be discussing or debating ideas. I don’t get why Redditors (again, at least 50% bots) love that clown so much. I actually genuinely feel sorry for him. He doesn’t afford himself the blessing of waking up every day with that sense of wonderment and awe at the splendor of nature, the cosmos, fellow humans, and the divine. When I attempted to staunchly adhere to the materialistic, reductionistic, atheistic paradigm, life lost all it’s magic. That’s the only thing that makes the suffering of life bearable. If there will be no mysteries, what is there to attempt to solve? These unsolvable mysteries of the cosmos are what animates mankind. The pursuit of divine, arcane knowledge has been the most consistent driving force all throughout known human history. We don’t consciously devolve to lack the drive to experience divinity. They can’t propagandize away a fundamental, core component of the human experience of reality. When they try to do so, you end up with a multiplicity of cultural crises; just like we have in America, and the “west” at large, right now.
I guess according to Dave science is indeed the only TRUTH and the existence of more than one worldview in an individual is just impossible.
@0psec_not_good
You can't deny what makes you human, blind rationalism is a belief of faith, its not more objective to deny foreign concepts
"For those within the mythos no explanation is necessary, for those outside none is possible."
Who said this? You? I think it's an interesting aphorism.
I just feel bad for the awareness trapped inside of the vessel known as Professor Dave... crystallized and stagnant is no place for such a beautiful thing.
Dear Noble. I understand perfectly your comment and I take it with sincere intentions.
My curiosity guides me to ask you, do you always express yourself in this manner (objective way) or is there an specific reason why you approach it this way? (Subjective way)
Thanks in advance.
@@33rdNBYon How much do you want to bet he/she/it listens to psy-trance and smokes weed at least bi-monthly ?
We like being Professor Dave!!!!!
In Dave's last hit piece on you he said something quite telling, at the 1 hour and 2 minute mark: "There is some validity to the notion that science is a representation of reality and not reality itself" I think this line is your only way to common ground with this ultra materialist guy.
You cannot fathom how much I appreciate this channel, though I spend almost all my time on UA-cam there was no channel I came back to check so often in the last couple years.
I continue to learn a lot and much egotistically, I hope you never stop. Thanks for the video, once again.
I've noticed a bandwagon of videos against Langan since Dave's, and none of them really address the content of his ideas. In fairness, I do think there's merit to the criticism that Langan should be able to convey his ideas in simpler terms, but on the flip-side, you should also be able to get beyond someone's 'initial presentation' (allowing yourself to engage with their ideas maturely).
They seem to see themselves as ~"the credentialed intellectuals; fending off the hordes of charlatans, woo-purveyors, and pseudo-science, thus saving mankind from degenerating into superstition and irrationalism". Ironically, they think of their ideological opponents in caricatures.
There’s really nothing to “address” in his bullshit theory
@@heckinbasedandinkpilledoct7459 Why is it "BS"? What constitutes something which can be "addressed", in your mind? I mean, Ben Goertzel, for instance, was able to address his ideas in a substantive manner that both sang praises and criticisms.
In classic narcicistic fashion...
They are the very thing they accuse others of being
@@Archeidos-Arcana The BS is that he doesnt even have a theory, just a bunch of words. A theory is something that goes through the scientific method, it needs evidence, testing, predictions, pair review, and if it is a phyhics theory it needs math. This dude Langan only have words, so he dont have a theory, he have a religion, a philosophy or a cult, but not a theory.
but Dave say mean words and he say them very loud while shilling establishment, that makes him right...no???
Unga scientism bunga
@@Akaeus How is google translating this wtf
@@grailknightchesterton232 It translated it to "don't be a scientist" lol.
Cringe
First 60 seconds you're already spot on lol. Dude cussed me out so bad in his comments over that Langan video 😂 Go there right now and he's still replying to new comments. Dude is WHACKED
he’ll instantly reply to new comments on years-old videos with complete vileness then delete them. The dude has serious mental health issues.
I am sorry to say that he is an educator and the world needs them. Even …If he’s not on the same team as others I read once mathematicians at heart are gentle easy souls. Anyway, I agree with what your stand is as presented in this lecture. You have to know this path to understand
He cussed me out and insulted me for commenting that science can become a religion. God have mercy on him
He is walking ad hominem fallacy.
Its bad insulting someone of course. But nope science could never become a religion, you can maybe find some similarities, some people that is dogmatic and so on, but could never become a religion, the epistemology of both things its too different.
@@OsvaldoBayerista Not true. Many aspects of science become religious over time, unquestioned doctrines headed by saint-like figures. Great example is Relativity, an incorrect theory with a canonized figurehead (Einstein) that’s never actually been experimentally verified, despite having sold itself as such to the wider public
@se7964 Not true, there is a lot of evidence for relativity, even when he was alive he predicted light curving around stars and that happened. Also if you understand philosophy of science and its history you can see how always the paradigms shift, they may be look rigid for some times, but always changing at the long term, always developing, because the scientific method have knowledge being falsable at it core, every theory is out there competing with new ones, that make science totally diferent from religions, for ever. Maybe you see some scientists who are dogmatic, doesnt care they do not own science, nobody can.
@@OsvaldoBayeristawatch Formscape’s original video Prof Dave first responded to, he makes a good case for why Scientism is very much akin to a modern religion. Note though that Scientism, as Formscapes makes the case, is not the same as science proper itself, if anything it’s very anti-scientific. Formscapes is criticizing the modern cultural landscape that has formed around scientific institutions, one of blind faith in an elite priest-like class of “experts”, and the outdated metaphysical assumptions their materialist worldviews are entirely based upon.
I started watching Dave’s video a few weeks ago on Langan. I tapped out when in the beginning of his video he confused a philosophical theory with a scientific one. Dave is the dunning Krueger effect personified.
I have a hard time believing that he believes his own bs. He is just another con man and cult leader.
@ he probably does. Farina is a typical materialist you see online all the time. No reason to believe he is lying or trying to mislead anyone. I think he just doesn’t know what he is talking about, and doesn’t know that he doesn’t what he is talking about. Combine that with overconfidence and it gets pretty bad. I think he is a smart guy, he just has big blind spots.
@@JustErics101 I see your point, but it's best not to seem to make excuses for the "professor daves" of the world. Blind spots are one thing; lying, hateful, defamatory chimpouts are quite another. Dave is a liar, a troll, and an idiot (smart people possess at least a modicum of self-control), and anyone who thinks that a few for-profit remedial science videos make up for it isn't terribly handy with moral calculations.
There is no such thing as a "philosopycal theory". Langan have a idea not a theory, a theory is a product of the scientific method, and this dude Langan talks about having a theory of everything, thats in the realms of physics, so he needs to present a scientific theory, which he never does, he's a charlatan for sure.
No, you missed the point. "Theory of Everything" is a specific Term of Art in physics. He is saying that if Langan wants to call his theory a "Theory of Everything", then by definition, that theory must be a scientific theory, not a philosophical one, otherwise Langan himself has coined his own definition of "Theory of Everything", which has as much weight as me calling this "The definitively correct comment".
If Dave could understand this he would be very upset.
This is the only channel off the top of my head, that i HAVE to listen to in 1x speed.
This work is so important. Thanks bro
I love you man. Thank you for putting it on for all of us, people and thinkers deserve better than a lot of what the internet at large has to offer
The internet seems to offer much. The problem is finding knowledgeable persons who can express regally what a thinker is unable to provide proper languag to explain
Thanks!
Thanks fam!
Dave is so arrogant and stuck in a materialistic paradigm!
Why is he so arrogant and materialistic? Just wondering.
@caxxotmaxci8807 We all have personal and unique experiences, as well as biases, that shape who we are. They get reinforced everyday. Most of what we become isn't because of our personal choices. Alot of it is circumstances.
@caxxotmaxci8807 Because that is the viewer niche that he’s marketing to. If he was even a little bit spiritual it would diminish his appeal to such a large viewer base of people who want an embodiment of cold scientific rigor. I think its a good thing in a way, it would be difficult to fully understand different viewpoints if we didn’t have these characters sort of “playing the part” of defending one specific view and challenging the rest.
@caxxotmaxci8807 His viewership consists almost entirely of kids suffering from acute cases of "Young Man Syndrome"; I.e., guys between the ages of 13 and 23 who are deeply insecure, directionless and therefore highly susceptible to things that give them a cheap sense of self-superiority, self-righteousness and certainty. Dave knows dam well that's the product he's selling, and that's why he can shamelessly get on camera and act like a hysterical teenager.
Human beings seek validation, and we are even more compelled to seek validation for the parts of us which we are most insecure about. When we see a public figure - someone who is seemingly successful, respected and intelligent - acting out the most deeply flawed aspects of our own personalities, we feel an immense sense of validation.
The psyche says "See! It's not actually bad that I can be like that! It's actually good that I do things like that! F-You, Steve! You're not even my real dad!!!"
@@Formscapes Yup. Echo chambers.
I have voraciously consumed all of your videos multiple times since discovering your channel a couple months ago. I was not familiar with Mr. Dave, but your systematic dismantling of him is close enough. I look forward to all of your amazing future work!
Getting to the CTMU part and the way you describe it is very eloquent (in usual Formscapes manner lol). I’ve been trying to understand it for some time now and finally had that “aaaah” moment. I’m sure Chris would be pleased at your understanding and cross reference.
I think Mr Langan has finally found somebody with enough comprehension and hunger for deep understanding that could explain his concepts to idiots like me. Please do more videos and maybe an interview with him. And thank you!
Yeah at some point I'd like to actually unpack some of his formal articulations in detail. Once upon a time I was very deep into formal logic, so I could definitely unpack what's going on if I could find the time. I was thinking about doing a video which analyzes his ideas in contrast to Wittgenstein's later work (The Philosophical Investigations), so hopefully I'll get around to that at some point.
@@Formscapes I think there exists at researchgate at least one very brief paper where the CTMU is contrasted with Wittgenstein's Tractarus.
I will 2nd this.
This is refreshing, thanks for this. Everybody seemed to worship Mr. Dave. I couldn't find anybody talking about what i was seeing, until now. 👍 🔥
The people who worship him are his army of insecure teenage boys who look to him to validate their own sh*tty attitudes. Even the people who HE worships in the mainstream science community don't take him seriously (because he flunked out of his Chemistry degree TWICE lol)
@@Formscapes What is "mainstream science"?
What's wrong with people that they want to take others down? Ideology is a disease of the soul.
Money
@@FormscapesMammon's body...his all-devouring, all-possessing body...how do we trick ourselves into thinking we confine him in our pockets? No, my God, we only hold his token, his calling card, his sign, and trade it amongst ourselves as though it were harmless. When, surely, the reality is that we are up to the neck in his pockets. Buried in them, in fact. Trapped next to the burning, feverish heat of his sterile loins.
Or something like that.
Indeed. Ideology always rots the brain.
I could say the same about conservative religious people 🙄.
@@GDino33 Religion is ideology.
I am beginning to understand it. Inertia is resistance to change in motion, not motion itself.
Exactly, and scientism is accelerating
@@Shplump52 Wdym scientism is accelerating?
@caxxotmaxci8807 I was referring (as i thought you were) to how big egos are resistant to change in their beliefs, even if those beliefs don't afford them any progress or apparent movement. Scientism = blind belief without investigation of the underlying research, which is gaining more momentum thanks to the Internet and the tendency for creators to dumb things down for accessibility and attention.
@@Shplump52 Same due to the profit motive.
this sounds like basic newtonian physics lmao
This is much appreciated 🙏🏻
Dave is such a joke. He’s incapable of having an actual debate without resorting to tactics that children use. Possibly one of the biggest clowns on youtube
Thank you for making this video. It was amazingly interesting.
I couldn't stand Dave's persona long enough to finish his video, but all of the comments were accusing Langan of word salad. I watched the interview, and everything Langan said made sense to me.
His interview with Kurt is much more detailed, but Kurt actually studied the CTMU in advance, so it gets a bit technical with the Jargon. If you skim through some of the articles at the CTMU wiki first it's much easier to watch.
😂😂😂
I like the part in the Knowles interview when he confused the right wing talking points about “trans ladies using the wrong bathroom” and “drag queens reading to kids” and then pooped out “drag queens demanding to go inside children’s restrooms.”
It’s was uh… entertaining?
Dave is the materialist lolcow we needed. Dawkins and Harris are too respectable
Idk, a lot of Dawkins' stuff from his "militant atheism" days have aged reaaaaally badly lol
Sam Harris shilled for the jab.
Harris is shockingly closed minded and egotistical. Dawkins is just disinterested in anything outside his wheelhouse
I think harris is at least agnostic on materialism. He's more open minded as he features a lot of so called "woo woo" people on his waking up app.
Harris says anti sionism is anti semitism, he is the less respectable.
The fool says in his heart "There is no God."
And how about the fool who is so sure there is? The truth is likely more complex than either assertion.
@@michaelbyrne9246after a certain amount of studying of this reality, including its history, it becomes very certain that there is a God, the problem is it is near impossible to demonstrate it to someone else in a fluent way, you must personally look
@@michaelbyrne9246Yes, it's chatgpt, no, you don't deserve a human response.
That's because there is no evidence for the Christian god .Btw what about other gods from other religions lol.
@@GDino33 the christian God, which is also the Muslim, jewish and Sikh God cannot be compared to other Gods, God in this regard is the foundation of all existence, without form and is infinite in nature, the Gods of polytheistic religions like Hinduism are gods with form, a distinct appearance, and share attributes of the creation
23:00 around here, you're missing the fact that two orbiting bodies of sort of similar mass (like earth and moon, or Jupiter and the sun, or other two-body systems like these) would have empirically measurable barycenters. Yes, perhaps we might say from Earth's persective that the moon is just wobbling back forth a tiny bit in its ellipctical motion around us, but it makes more sense to note that the Earth-moon barycenter is about 75% of Earth's radius. That accounts for the observable back-and-forth motion.
Also, you seem overly certain that empirical observations didn't help move the zeitgeist away from "perfect celestial bodies above and imperfect terrestrial bodies below," towards, "all bodies follow the same laws." You recalled Galileo seeing craters on the moon. Not only did he see these craters on the moon, but Galileo also saw: sunspots on the sun; phases of Venus; at least four moons around Jupiter and Jupiter's red spot; Saturn's rings; and more from his telescope. All these empirical observations of astronomy helped him move towards a more universal set of rules or laws for the universe. I don't really understand how you say that empircal observations or data collection hasn't had a profound impact on that period of science.
Every single one of those observations could be - and have been - interpreted in different ways, within the context of different cosmological assumptions, and that is the point here; the observations themselves are nothing but noise unless interpreted through a theoretical language and its metaphysical understanding of the world which conditions how we interpret evidence, what even counts as "evidence", what truth is and the metanarratives that these developments perform within.
@@Formscapes
I've given your reply some time to cook in my brain, and I've written several drafts for a reply back to you; however, I guess I'm looking for the answer for one main question. What is Galileo's meta? That could be answered with probably a book or several volumes. I honestly don't pretend to know Galileo that well. To answer the question, I figure we need to either be Galileo or probably know him better than he knew himself. This is rather profound. Can we even know anyone better than we know ourselves? Even if we know their meta, can we communicate it effectively to others? I think you're trying, but it's a hard task. Not that I believe or support solipsism, but I recognize that the task of explaining one's whole meta is probably impossible, neverending, and the meta changes as we tell it. This is comedic to me and absurd in a lovely way that's ineffable.
@@Paraselene_Tao Hilarious. No response from him.
ngl i kinda respect you even more now. dave as an educator i can appreciate but im glad youve thrown him off his high horse
xD!
Thanks again my dude these videos really lift my spirits. So well spoken its inspiring! As always.
rip 'professor' Dave . he was a funny man somehow.
Need you to dialogue with Curt Jaimungal 💯
He just announced an episode with Matthew Segal. It's not that implausible.
Dis^
Been saying this for awhile now, need a theolocution with formscapes & joscha bach
@@lilfr4nkie yeah while I dont agree with Joscha Bachs materialism, he's the best at making it sound plausible, and he's not afraid of concepts alien to dogmatic science. He's just too rigid in his bottom up mindset.
Riiight?! .. Jonathan Pageau was on there yesterday. Excited to see the episode with Matthew Segall.@Formscapes
I believe that Chris Langan has the most accurate model of reality with his CTMU. It interleaves so many aspects of the human experience with the universe both in what we perceive as the physical realm and that of the spiritual realm.
A good bit of you discussion on newton and Carl popper Langan condensed into "linear ectomophic semi model". Thank you for expanding on this, I needed the long form explanation. This is a beacon of clarity on a subject.
I gotta say I'm not a huge fan of Langan's terminology. It's not that difficult to understand, but it just makes things seem unnecessarily convoluted imo. It's kind of impossible to do philosophy without cooking up terminology, though, so I suppose it's a matter of taste when all is said and done.
@@Formscapes There may be some confusion here as to why certain new terms had to be defined. It boils down to the inadequacy of existing conceptual frameworks to fully capture certain implications of what amounts to a new picture of reality. Theories of philosophy, like those of math and science, cannot always be reductively unpacked in some conventional base-language. In fact, the typical scholarly paper is full of newly or recently defined terms - "jargon", if you will - and sourcing them to multiple authors is no excuse for their circular proliferation in academic publish-or-perish feeding frenzies. Sometimes, new terms are introduced because they're actually necessary.
Tremendous video, I learned a lot. And what an excellent explanation of the CTMU. I’ve been interested in this theory for years and im quite knowledgeable on it and you’ve explained it well. A note: syntactors do not expand at the speed of light, they create spacetime within themselves and only appear to expand from our perspective. There is technically no expansion at all in the CTMU. I’m also not sure that the CTMU leaves modern scientific theories unscathed, as you said. I heard in an interview that the conspansive manifold makes the same predictions as morphic resonance, although I personally am unable to figure out exactly why conspansion is logically able to do that, even I can pontificate about it.
I have a folder full of all the CTMU images I can find and I’ve never seen those images from around 48:00. I’m curious about where you got them from or the concepts they’re based on.
Let me clarify that a bit: the CTMU does affirm a number of things such as morphic resonance and the various parapsychological phenomena related to that, etc. I'm not sure if Langan is familiar with Sheldrake's ideas but the CTMU implicates morphic resonance in the exact same way that Whitehead's process philosophy does.
In the comment about leaving mainstream science unscathed, I was referring mostly to Einstein. I am very critical of SR and GR in a way that Langan isn't, and I don't think Langan takes seriously the fact that SR/GR necessitate a Spinozist block universe in which everything is necessarily predetermined - thus precluding the possibility of genuine freedom; something which is of central importance in the CTMU.
With that said, there may be details of the CTMU which reinterpret Einstein in more radical ways than I'm aware of, so take what I just said with a grain of salt, but that's my impression thus far.
Hopefully it’ll be like the James Tour back and forth and we get tens of videos. Popcorn ready 🍿😊
Its actually insane how fast an hour can fly past when listening to your ramblings! Sometime in the future I wish for you to write a book so everything can become utterly polished. Don't get me wrong I have yet to view a video of yours that did not amaze me with new perspectives but books will always have a special place in my heart. Writing this I realize that beggars can indeed be choosers..... Cheers!
This whole thing is absolutely going to become a series of books eventually but I just don't have the time currently, and even if I did, I really just don't feel like all of the pieces are in place yet. It would feel preemptive. If you go back to my early videos and work your way forward you can see how these ideas have been expanding and evolving rapidly since this channel's inception (which was like... a year and a half ago? dam time really does fly doesn't it) Anyway, point being; it will happen eventually, but thus far every bit of this has been forshadowing and prologue as far as I'm concerned. The rabbit hole goes far, far deeper than what I've explored on the channel thus far, but I have to be methodical.
@@Formscapes I just wonder how can you deal with the profound loneliness due to the extreme discrepancy between your ideas and values and almost everything else.
I am also in a kinda similar path to you, and I feel intelectually different even around academics. It is even difficult for me to talk about philosophy with people. I just have hope I will find worthwhile people in my life at some point where I can be authentic.
@@Nature_Consciousness I know its difficult friend. I studied philosophy and even there i didnt found much people open to talk about this. But there is people out there, you need to be simple about this and you will conect with them better, dont fall in the trap of being different, misteryous and too complex. And also, at the end of the day if you really follow this point of view, the one of the divine, you found you are everything, you feel everything, so loneliness is no a threat to a heart that beats to the cosmic music. Love to you.
@Formscapes can you suggest some prerequisite reading before I delve into Process and Reality?
So I just delved head first into it without really getting into any secondary literature but I've heard that The Archetypal Process by David Ray Griffin is pretty good; he relates Whitehead to Jung, Hillman etc... Oh and Matthew Segal's book Physics of the World Soul is a really good starting point as well. Matt also has a ton of Whitehead stuff on his YT channel (Footnotes2Plato) which is very useful.
@@Formscapes thanks so much.
Thank you for making this. It's refreshing to have someone explain what's going on in the background rather than a man in a lab coat throwing assertions at me
0:48 He taught undergrad, aka he was a professor. Not even a minute into the video and there's already misinformation.
I want magic to be real just as much as the next person, but if one has to resort to irrationality or false information to prove a point, then one shouldn't believe it.
Lol he taught as a sub under the condition that he would go back to chemistry school (which he had flunked out of) and actually finish his degree, which he attempted to do, and he then flunked out AGAIN lmfao
He himself has even stated that the "professor" moniker started as just a joke and that it isn't a real title. Being offered to teach some undergrad chem classes as a sub without a degree does not make one a "professor". A "professor" is an actual job title - for a job which he has never had.
@@Formscapes I watched the video where he talks about his channel name.
Your claims that he "fluked out" is misinformation.
He chose to dropped out of his masters in chemistry because he wanted to play music. That is not the same as "fluking out" (aka forced to leave due to poor grades).
He withdrew from the masters the 2nd time because he lost funding for it after he got laid off from that O-Chem teaching job due to bureaucracy. This is also not "fluking out." He also got his masters in science education some time after the video I'm referring to got posted.
He got the teaching job because he had to take the place of a professor who left that semester. He taught O-Chem 1 & 2 at a university for around 4 years, while doing his masters in chemistry to become a tenured/permanent professor.
If you claim that teaching undergrad doesn't make one a professor because they don't have a masters or don't have tenure, then many community college professors are not "professors" to you.
A professor is one who teaches at a university or college level. You can call it assistant or associate professor if you want, but it still makes them a professor. "Substitute professor" isn't even a job (title).
You're trying to discredit him by falsely by saying "He's not qualified to be a professor / was never a professor," despite him doing the job of a professor for 4 years. And by saying he fluked out twice from his masters, despite that not being the case either.
Attack his argument, sure. But starting the video out with misinformation attacking his qualifications within the first minute, then doubling down with more misinformation here about him fluking out is not helping your case.
I’ll say it again. Best intro ever
*Just saw this Notif*
*SAVES IN WATCH LATER*
Thank you Formscapes 💯😮💨🔥
This right here is the reason that formscapes is the top dog of the online branch of the metaphysics community
About to have a coffee and do some work, always love listening to your debates
Oh boy... Our friend 'the professor' is gonna need therapy after this surgical reduction of his bullshit XD
I made the mistake of commenting on his first video replying to you. Let’s just say that getting replayed to by a 1M+ subscriber channel like a redditor was not something I saw coming
He must be consumes. I'm wondering how he has time to science.
I didn't know who you are before today, but it's always nice to see somebody who isn't stuck in the metaphysically flawed box that Dave and the masses commit themselves to. Subscribing.
Anyway you could post your transcripts on substack?
I'm planning on having all the transcripts up on my website (once that's back in working order) as well as substack, but both of those plans keep getting delayed. I'm gonna need to reformat them all which is going to take some time ofc, and the holidays have had my schedule crammed to the point of bursting. But if you want any specific transcripts just shoot me an email and I'll send them to you.
Love your videos btw. Keep it up.
@
Understandable and no rush. Your content is very dense in a good way, so I’d love the chance to really dissect them.
thanks, brotha. Means a lot.
Globe denier here. What I’ve never understood, is why does anyone even give this clown “professor dave” any credibility in the first place. It’s been proven he gives himself the title of professor.
nice one brother. u on the pulse!
Dear Kehlan,
as per usual a pleasure. Yet I feel compelled to call you out for participating in this drama with Dave. The first 10+ minutes of the video could have been a personal message in my opinion.
That said, I am really happy you tackle the CTMU. Though, I have to admit the last 30 minutes or so have been the first contribution of yours that caused a slight headache. Trying to keep up felt strenuous. Maybe it is the jet lag (i.e., I am more ‘dense’), or maybe this one is just more dense than usual.
With kind regards and admiration for your openness.
Best,
Matt
This line is imminently important. Stay here and commit fully to this. It will pay off massively. Things are going to change.
Haven’t quite followed all the work done here on formscapes, but got into ctmu last year and thought-Chris’s work could fit here. Kinda tripped seeing the title. Thanks for your work. Your amalgamations are thorough going, and inform my lower res intuitions, like the same day I’ll be drawing together tangents.. It’s 3am, eight minutes in, talking myself out of making popcorn right now.
The UA-camr boxing event I’ve been waiting for! Formscapes v Dave let’s go!!!
I was going to comment on various topics the video reminded me of such as compiler theory, abstract algebra, the syntax/semantics duality, and constructivist logic/math. Especially the terminal vs nonterminal thing, which is pure compiler theory.
Then the "syntaxers" thing came up, and it was obvious I wouldn't need to mention most of these.
Though it is worth noting, in compliers/programming languages, there is a fluid relationship between models and languages. The model in a lower language can be used to build a higher level language. Where the higher level language encapsulates both operations and domain assumptions into an easier to use grammar.
This higher level refers to ease of use. Though there are also levels of grammatical complexity and computational power. Automata are machines that can evaluate simple languages, with more complex models capable of encoding more complex languages, such as memory less vs single item of memory computations. The upper limit is turing complete, which can evaluate all computable computations.
On the other gramatical scale, the measure is how much context/pre-computation is needed to decode the grammar. With the "gold standard" as context free.
In context free grammars, properly designed parsers can parse statements using only the token (terminal symbol) sequence. In more complex languages some kind of context must be supplied, and indeterminate form must be encoded until later evidence can force a decision, or alternate run time check code must be generated.
It seems to me the CTMU is trying to construct a computational model with the syntax / semantics or language / model duality infinitely regressed to include itself via abstraction (much like category theory algebraically abstracts algebraic abstraction). The move from the terminal realm (raw observation as ultimate reality) to the syntaxers idea is akin to moving from tokens only to context dependent grammers.
As a neat aside, the Racket language has "language oriented programming" constructs, implemented by "syntax objects". Traditional Lisp macros are implemented with them, but they also can hide language specific context within other objects
Brilliant work as always. Quick question, would you mind posting the script for these videos in essay form? It would be a lot easier to parse and fully understand in written form I feel.
I'm planning on having all of the scripts up on my website once that's up and running again but for now just shoot me an email if you want a script
NotaProfessorDave despite being a tutorial youtuber discourages curiosity, truth and actual scientific interest.
I find this happens alot with midwits, they desire validation from being smart yet are not brave, they're complacent, Dave is honestly a bully. It's a shame that the nerd archetype became popular and pop science became the norm, now everyones a science guy but lack the actual creativity and wonder.
Its gotten to the point that misrepresenting arguments, getting ideas deliberately wrong then mocking said ideas, ridiculing, not actually being a professor, reading Wikipedia for their youtube tutorial channels, did people really set the bar that low for intellectual figure heads.
"reading Wikipedia articles for video tutorials" is probably the most accurate description of Dave I've ever read lol
This. Its basically modus operandi of modern reddit-tier soyence. Idolatry of material and being an ideology at its core. Ignore -> if cant -> attack anything that does not fit the narrative. The apex of this is term "scientific consensus". You might as well call it "party line". Julius Evola correctly pointed out all of this well ahead of his time, namely the pathological tendency of science to ultimately reduce everything to empiric phenomena, which is impossible. Its the same tendency children have to reduce everything they cannot comprehend to their level, so they too can feel smart. Just like little Dave here, the Bill Nye from Temu.
Dave has grown sour from blatant denial of evidence. Imagine you come up with a perfect undeniable theory for a crime and a shady bystander steps out and denies everything with no real evidence to back it up.
I would go fucking insane.
Remember, idiots resort to mockery when they can't come up with an argument
Dave refuted a lot though, and there's not much to refute about the CTMU, since there's no publish for it.
This is from the CTMU FB group, Chris Langan's own comment about the video:
Eike (FB commenter): "Good stuff, but I am confused why the name 'Langan' is pronounced the way it is. Because of that, I first thought that this could be a troll video."
Response (Chris Langan): The narrator seems to have an adequate philosophy background, and his understanding of the theory is impressive relative to most. But it's far from perfect.
This is especially obvious when he reserves judgment regarding some aspects of the theory, finds some things about it "suspect", implies that Whitehead (and Bernardo Kastrup of all people) are legitimate competitors, refers to my aggressive and abrasive personality, cites the controvery regarding my IQ, and so on. The constant mispronunciation of my name is also worrisome, as this is a very well-established trolling indicator.
Syndiffeonesis wasn't adequately explained, telesis wasn't introduced as a "metasubstance", and the word "supertautology" wasn't mentioned at all, thus obscuring the unequivocal superiority of the CTMU to other theories. So despite the strong points of this defense, I remain undecided about it pending more information.
As for bending over backward to maintain the appearance of neutrality, it's no longer justified. After decades of idiotic trolling by the likes of "professor dave" and other mindless chuckleheads, those days are gone. It's time to simply tell the truth.
Is this implying that Langan himself is going to respond to Dave?
@@PILLOWKVLT I think that in itself would stand for his response
Langan being narcissistic as always lmao
Who can resist a thumbnail like that?
I once commented on Dave’s page that he may have succeeded in soothing the ears of most of the people watching but he had not succeeded in soothing mine. I think I said he wouldn’t last 2 minutes in the dmt realm lol. He told me “There is no such thing as the DMT realm, sweetie.”
@Formscapes what do you think of stochastic gravity?
You should write a book about the history of science and philosophy! I and I bet many other people would buy it.
Great video! Technically Mr. Dave is a professor but only in the sense that he's spoken at college campuses. It's kinda like if you purchase a square foot of land in a Scottish bog, you can bestow upon yourself the title of "Lord" 😂
Very interesting coverage of CTMU, because most others would cover the supertautologies first, not the actual language part
As much as I did really resonate with your reply to Dave’s video about you, I would hope that someone of your experience would not put value into that Langen guy’s BS. He’s a total grift and his theory makes no sense (besides the parts that take advantage of other people’s ideas and generalize them to the point of being a Rorschach ink blob). I’ll edit this comment if my mind’s changed by the end of this vid ❤
He seems to never really put his eggs into one clear basket in terms of labels and I like him like that. It means I actually got to listen to what he's saying in order to come to conclusion, while beforehand my dumb ape brain can start ascribing if I agree with such a labels indications and ideas, if even, on a sub level without my meaning to.
And that sort of fits what this is all about. Formscape could believe that the sun is actually tiny little gnomes who are all farting into one really big celestial campfire. It wouldn't matter. This whole habur with Dave started because Form was making a point about social paradigms and the attitude of how we are approaching science and in turn, how science - and with it knowledge/ permitted inquiry - is being exploited, denied and inhibited by very unscientific behavior or institutions. Dave was just a good example of what he was arguing against - and proceed to even be an even better one in his response to him, as were his followers demanding formscapes debunk dave or talk about EE theory even though form directly said in that video the theory wasn't the point -
Formscapes being right or wrong about any topic is not more important than asking questions, being inspired to ask questions and trying to articulate and communicate questions and answers. Which I think he achieves even if were revealed to be totally convinced that the universe is in fact generated by very philosophical fart clouds with temporary bouts of cosmic power.
@GFXCXZ I like your point! My real problem is people like Langen, billy carson, terrence howard etc. stealing ideas from very intelligent people who existed outside the mainstream knowledge sphere, and popularizing it for their own gain..they make these ideas repulsive to many people by ruining it with their own baseless ideas and opinions. If that makes sense? Like I can find everything valid about Langen’s theory inside the most ancient texts like the vedas, why should he be able to take credit and damage the perception of this knowledge at the same time? It just gives the mainstream more excuses and reasons to dismiss this information.
Someone's finally catching on to the cosmic gnome flatulation theory I've been hinting at this whole time.
Color me impressed.
Langan’s not a total grift. He’s an arrogant asshole and refuses to make his language amendable to people who don’t have the time to spend months of their life familiarizing themselves with his neologisms.
His theory is rather mid imv, even though I agree with a lot of the broad strokes; and his politics pathological and ignorant, but it’s not nonsense. Better to read the brilliant people he was inspired by (Whitehead, tarski, Gödel) then dedicate your time to learning his needlessly obscure system.
I like the nature footage that you put in your videos. It is kino.
So, to my mind, CTMU is probably somewhat resonant with Wolfram's computational account of reality (via ruliad), and implications of Friston's free energy principle - namely, that being is cognition.
It's curious though, how all of these metaphysical frameworks are falling into a broad scheme of dialectic between potentiality and actuality.
I am always rendered speechless by your videos 😂
I couldn't make it through his video, it was more personal attacks than anything else. He hadn't even addressed the CTMU before I stopped watching. Love Chris Langan's theory and have yet to see anyone fully debunk it in any meaningful capacity. It definitely doesn't cover everything but it's extremely comprehensive which is something we don't find too often nowadays. Glad you covered the subject and hope to see more of your interpretations of the CTMU in the future.
Spoiler: he doesn't address it AT ALL during the entire video lol
I contend that it is dual-aspect. It is fundamentally based in consciousness and has two dual-aspect mechanisms that emerge from the baseline consciousness.
Ultimately, it strikes me as an idealist theory where the mechanisms that manifest matter are explained. I am, however, unsure why it is not written in the syntax of analytical philosophy, as it could be.
5:20 you got to the fundamental issue. Linguistic signs can in fact stand in for every other modality of signifciafion. Substantives and relations are equiprimordial in grammar, and this reflects a similar structure in being.
This feels very important to me. 15k views and 650 comments? Dafuq?
How the hell do you only have 60000 subscribers?
Probably because I make 1-2.5 hour long monstrosities which are a massive chore to even watch. I'm surprised I have more than 10k tbh lol. My whole schtick is fighting against me
Professor Dave has the answer - clearly it's because formscapes is a dumbass, because smart people are rich and super successful by definition, irrespective of conditions.
@eubique I could totally see him saying that, LMFAO.
@@uraloser5553I think it's only a very mildly exaggerated paraphrase of what he spends a lot of time implying in his Langan video (about Langan obvs lol)!
@eubique Oh yeah, he'd be using much more vulgar language, in between each word of that sentence.
You spoil us Kehlan 😂 this guy just can't help but absolutely embarrass himself and I'm here for the brilliantly articulated exposé all day 🍻 cheers brother!
Great breakdown of the CTMU. I did a video of my own on the CTMU which was very successful and its definitely an increasingly well known theoretic model which people are waking up to. I don't see how the universe could be anything other than a self simulation especially when considering the logical consistency that physics studies with the assumption of. I don't agree with the CTMU entirely, especially with regards to its claim to a kind of logical absolute knowledge, but like a lot of other ideas its barking up the right tree.
Yeah that's more or less my assessment of the matter. It gets alot of things right, but the claims to unassailable absolutism give me bad vibes. Fun ideas though.
Even if Dave is ignorant, so too is Chris Langan. His theory is unscientific nonsense, and demonstrates his lack of formal education. There’s something there, but it’s obfuscated under layers of vague and verbose language
This!! and slapping his name on valid ideas only diminishes them.
That's really just not true. He uses alot of neologisms, yes, but his ideas really aren't that obscure at all to those familiar with the Logical Atomism movement. He essentially blends together ideas from Russel, Whitehead and Einstein.
If you disagree with him, that's one thing, but if you're going to argue that he's just talking nonsense then that's just patently false.
"Lack of Education" also means absolutely nothing but elitist slander. In the world we currently live in, people are exactly as educated as they want to be, and Langan certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to the topics he cares about.
@@Formscapes you can’t really blend ideas together if you never understood them thoroughly to begin with. The guy steals other people’s insights and claims he has 200 IQ and solved the problems they weren’t able to. His arrogance isn’t the problem but it’s a symptom of it! it’s a huge red flag that he claims to have a theory of everything but actually has no mathematics in his theory, which would be fine if he were offering something original or giving credit to the sources of his claims. Namaste 🌻
The classic argument from authority fallacy. By far the laziest way to dismiss someone's arguments, and ideas.
@@sarahcusack He actually does indeed have a formal system, and I even included some examples from certain pages in the video itself. He doesn't have equations with numerical values because that would be a model of physical phenomena, not a metaphysical framework.
Once upon a time, Physicists actually took logical formulations like that very seriously, which is why Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica is considered to be one of the most influential books ever written in the field of physics even though contemporary physicists hardly ever even mention it, let alone read it.
The Principia - and the CTMU - are indeed mathematical, but they are mathematical in the more general sense that they are formulated in terms of mathematical logic, not equations intended to make measurable predictions of physical phenomena. Dave can screech "where is your math", because Dave does not recognize Langan's math as even BEING math! Which is hilarious of course, but the point is that what you're trying to argue for here just isn't true. There are reasons why one might be critical of Langan, but this really just isn't one of them.
Thank you for making a video on this. His video on Langan was even worse than I wold have expected. Literally no substance. Just insults and mockery.
Man, I'm so glad you did a video on this. Langan can be cringy at times, but he didn't deserve such a dishonest exposition of his work.
@@Formscapes Whoa there. I didn't call you a troll or insist on "fawning praise"; I merely remarked that after finding your video "impressive", I detected signs that it might not be entirely benign. I said I was withholding judgment pending clarification. It now seems that you may have provided it. My best guess is that you latched onto something I said to one of the libelous trolls who has posted here, erroneously assumed that I was addressing you personally (UA-cam often fails to properly identify the person being responded to), and decided to take an openly adversarial stance. Am I mistaken about this?
@@RealChrisLangan My intentions were entirely benign, and evidently I've been getting some very misleading comments from a number of individuals - most of whom I have now blocked. Feel free to send me an email and we can clear some things up if need be. This comment section has gotten far too hostile. I'll also remove the previous comment.
@@RealChrisLangan Chris Langan himself, I'm a little star struck to be honest. Loved your exposition with Kurt Jaimungal, although I had to watch it several times to get a sense of the CTMU. I can appreciate the depth and ambition of it, but I wish I could understand the insight and perspective it affords.
Clearly I agree that this video by Formscapes is not entirely benign. What I saw was a rebuke of professor Daves character and worldview using Daves attempt to discredit you. Whether or not Formscapes accurately summarized your work is not something I can speak to, but his appreciation and respect were obvious to me.
@@redirishmanxlt And what exactly indicates that my intentions were not benign?
I went out of my way to stick my neck out for someone who I do not know, and who I do have disagreements with, entirely of my own volition.
@@Formscapes Over the years, I've found that most people who claim total ignorance of my existence turn out to "know" me (or at least to know _of_ me, at least to the extent that my life was rendered an open book by the mass media many years ago). I predict with great confidence that any "disagreement" you have with the CTMU will either vanish in the course of time, or you'll end up holding a leaky bag of baseless, indefensible criticism. As a sincere philosopher, one is effectively a servant of truth; if one's volition deviates from this responsibility, then it requires modification. "Metaphysicians who have never heard of the CTMU" is an oxymoron; the 2002 paper was downloaded literally millions of times, the other papers set records for the journal in which they appeared, and only an ivory-tower hothouse orchid can afford to ignore any of them. All of this being understood, I still regard your philosophical insight as impressive, especially relative to most online philosophy pundits.
Now on to the blockage issue. I question the treatment of any seeming CTMU/Langan partisans whom you blocked. Unless I miss my guess, none of them lied. On the other hand, this thread is full of obvious trolls specializing in several blatant lies. To wit: (1) "Langan never even took an IQ test, but just runs around tooting his own horn!"; (2) "Langan's theory contains no math!"; (3) "Langan has no (peer-reviewed academic) publications!"; (4) "Langan has contributed nothing but unintelligible gobbledygook and word salad to scientific and philosophical discourse!", (5) "Professor dave" (who is himself guilty of telling all of these lies) has fully and fairly explained why Langan is an uneducated low-IQ fraud who has never accomplished a single thing in his entire misbegotten life!", et cetera, et cetera.
Of course, you can run your comments section as you choose. But in my experience with various fora, it's much better to get rid of liars than nonliars. Liars who go uncorrected and unblocked effectively preclude reasonable well-informed discourse.
Thanks for your attention, and have a nice day.
This is a great history lesson. I have a few books on physics but I havent read them so this is a nice primer for that.
This philosophy-art genre is like the sacred re-emerging into discourse. I clicked subscribe before I even began to understand what I was watching. It's discussion like this that is rapidly reshaping society. AI is just like a motorized pen that we've found along the way.
Haven't even watched yet, But this is gonna be Go0od. AS usual, I'm sure
Hi! Thanks for the video, a friend of mine loves your channel and recommends it a lot. There are some points in which I agree with and others that not. I started out writing a long comment but now it has basically become an essay. I hope you are able to read it and that I expressed myself clearly. Cheers.
One of the points that I agree with, is that in order to do science, a non-empirical conceptual framework is necessary. As a consequence, we can explain paradigm shifts in the sciences as changes in these conceptual frameworks. Regarding the paradigm shift of modern science, it shall be recognized that Galileo's models were not more rational according to their time (in fact, it was more reasonable to assume the opposite position) and explain a paradigm shift as a result of social conditions or that time’s mode of thinking. Nevertheless, if the analysis of modern science is focused on the metaphysics that underlies the theories that constitute it, it is absolutely necessary to mention Kant’s critique.
What is the relevance of Kant's critique? One the one hand, it directly addresses the problem that, in order to gain knowledge of things, a transcendental support is necessary. Berkeley had already criticized modern science with the argument that it uses abstractions of thought that were nowhere to be found in empirical experience, and Hume's skepticism took this critique to a higher level. This is but an example of something that Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Husserl, many others and yourself admit i.e. pure empiricism results in skepticism. If we only had sensuous experience then we wouldn’t know anything it all. Hence, a grounding of knowledge and the natural sciences needs to prove that the transcendental is accesible. That’s the aim of Kant’s philosophy, and by doing so, it justifies newtonian physics and its reliance on universal laws and forms of thought that are not empirical in nature, but rather are the pre-condition of empirical perception. So yes, there is a metaphysical basis for modern science, and for a video that insists that science must have a metaphysical basis and at the same time critiques modern science, it must mention the biggest effort there was to metaphysically ground modern science.
On the other hand, we can also say that Kant’s critique functions as an attack on pre-modern paradigms. If Kant’s critique renders classical metaphysics as invalid and pre-modern science found its grounding in classical metaphysics, then it must be followed that pre-modern science is invalid. While it is true that it can be argued that Kant’s philosophy fails (after all, I’m not even a kantian myself) it is undeniable that post-kantian philosophy must be critical and that it should take into consideration some of Kant’s conceptual distinctions (e.g. the distinction between the transcendental conditions of an object and the object itself). One aspect that caught my attention is that you mention how premodern cosmologies identified celestial bodies as transcendentals, or as mediators between the transcendent and the immanent. If we take the conceptual distinction I mentioned into consideration, it is not possible to speak of celestial bodies (or any empirical object) in such a way. The transcendental is the precondition for conceiving the thing, but not the thing itself, thus it is absurd to think that a thing or entity could be a transcendental. At utmost, we could speak of a thing as an exemplification of a trascendental principle, but not the principle itself. Likewise, this was the major error of classical metaphysics: it treated transcendentals as if they were objects of understanding.
Putting kantian philosophy aside, the analysis also overlooks the fact that, while the Copernican paradigm did not have as much merit at the time of its conception, it began to gain greater merit over time. This merit was not because its foundational concepts had any kind of verification, as a naive scientistic view might suggest, but because the models simply worked better. Newtonian mechanics was much more effective than any other model, and later, the same could be said for Einstein's relativity. While it is true that transcendental concepts are not accesible through empirical means, it is also true that they shape scientific theories, and these theories are going to have empirical consequences. Since we can judge how effective is a given theory, then we can also judge how effective are the concepts that shape theories. Truth is, modern science has proven to be more effective that its previous paradigms.
You can object to this (and you do) by saying the aim of science goes beyond merely explaining behaviors. Science shouldn’t just explain the behavior of gravity but gravity itself. My answer to this is with a question: what is gravity outside of the behavior of gravity? In my opinion, the answer is simple: nothing. Gravity is precisely gravitational behaviors, nothing more and nothing less. Talking about a "gravity in itself" separated from gravitational behaviors is a chimera, an empty abstraction of thought. It would be quite adequate to invoque Peirce’s pragmatist maxim: “Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearing you conceive the object of your conception to have. Then your conception of those effects is the WHOLE of your conception of the object.” Of course, such a statement is grounded in a metaphysical thesis i.e. a thing is its actualizations in all its possibilities. You could simply reject my position by denying pragmatism, but I ask of you to consider how it could be possible to meaningfully to speak of something without any sort of reference to its effects on other things. From an epistemological point of view, this makes sense: if a thing has no effects on other things, then it is inaccessible to thought (since there must be a reason the thing is accesible and that reason is precisely the effects of the thing); and if it is inaccessible to thought, then we cannot speak of it. Ontologically, it also makes sense: if a thing does not affect others, we cannot say it is part of the same world; and if it is not part of the same world, then it is an absolute transcendence, which cannot serve as the principle of anything (being a principle of something means that it determines something). It would be an empty, abstract nothingness.
This might seem to align with a vulgar empiricism, materialism or any form of nominalism, for the matter. But quite the contrary, Peirce himself was an idealist that thoroughly rejected nominalism. It is not the case that there are no ideal forms, universals or transcendentals, but rather, these forms must be concretized and without concreteness they are nothing. In order to speak of the transcendental, we must always point to the material and the empirical. As Hegel would say, the universal makes no sense without reference to the particular, and vice versa: the particular makes no sense without reference to the universal. Similarly, the transcendent is transcendent by virtue of the immanent, and the immanent is immanent by virtue of the transcendent. For example, how could we talk about justice without reference to just acts? Justice is the principle that determines just acts, and without this determination it makes no sense to speak of it. With this, we can formulate a more precise critique of scientism and naive empiricisms. Yes, science must commit itself to a certain metaphysical conception, but we can no longer speak of a metaphysics of essences abstracted from the plane of immanence. A naive empiricist claims there is only access to actualizations, but actualizations of what? An individual gravitational phenomenon can only be recognized as such only in reference to the generality of gravity, but the generality of gravity can only be recognized as such in reference to all the individual possibilities of gravity. Hegel mentions that the phenomenon must present the essence, and as such, reason must recognize the phenomenon is the essence. Evidently, in order for the understanding to work, there must be a divide between the phenomenon and the essence. Yet, when we transition into the perspective of reason, such divide is sublated. This does not mean that they must be rendered identical and their differences abandoned, but instead, in general terms is the supersensible undifferent that differentiates itself into appearance. Each term is negatively present in the other, and as such, is totality in what is not total (since the non-total is contained in the total):
“We see that in the interior of appearance what the understanding in truth gets to experience is nothing other than appearance itself, only not appearance as it is as the play of forces, but rather that play of forces in its absolutely-universal moments and in their movement, and in fact the understanding experiences only itself. Elevated above perception, consciousness presents itself joined together with the supersensible through the middle term of appearance, a middle term through which it gazes into this background. The two extremes, the one, that of the pure interior, the other, that of the interior gazing into this pure interior, have now coincided, and just as they, as extremes, have vanished, so too the middle term, as something other than these extremes, has also vanished. This screen in front of the interior has therefore been drawn away, and the gaze of the interior into the interior is at hand: the gaze of the undifferentiated like-named, which repels itself, posits itself as differentiated interior, but for which just as immediately there is the undifferentiatedness, self-consciousness.”
To speak of a thing abstracted from behaviors leads us back to the thing in itself, which is neither accesible (as classical metaphysics pretends) nor inaccesible (as Kant pretends) because it is a fantasy created by an immediate mode of consciousness. This might suggest the assertion that I made regarding the mistake of identifying objects with transcendental principles is false. But no, the object is not identical to the principle, it is rather “negatively united” with it.
Back to modern science, I think it’s incorrect to characterize it as ignorant of its metaphysical foundations. This also applies to twentieth century metaphysics. For example, when Einstein criticized quantum mechanics by saying god doesn’t play with dice with the universe, he did so from a metaphysical standpoint, not an empirical one. Aside from following spinozistic determinism, he was also influenced by Kant’s and Schopenhauer’s epistemology. Other examples of physicists that were quite well versed in philosophy and admitted having been influenced by it are Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrödinger. While there are some physicist that have disregarded philosophy (such as Feynman and Hawking), quite a lot of working physicists have been conscious of the metaphysical horizon in which their field is located. The disdain for philosophy is not intrinsic to contemporary science, but an attitude from a particular group of people (that has sadly been more influential than it should be). One thing that I concede is that philosophical formation within practicing scientists has been poor, when the reality is that they would really benefit from it.
Additionally, I think it is a mistake to compromise contemporary science with Popper’s falsifiability, when there are more theories in philosophy of science, and even Lakatos’ more refined version of falsifiability. Lakatos presents a methodology more resistant to the objections that have been made against Popper. For instance, incorrect predictions from a theory aren’t necessarily a refutation of the theory, since theories are part of a bigger program. An individual theory by itself doesn’t say anything, because it only does so in relation to other theories, assumptions and the measurement tools the scientist has at their disposal. Therefore, scientific endeavor doesn’t merely consist in merely finding evidence against a theory or in merely generalizing observations. Science is a constant critical reflection, generating different hypothesis and contrasting different models. This directly contradicts your conception of contemporary science as dogmatic, and in my opinion, closer to your ideal of science (I’m inclined to think you’re an inductivist based on your comments, but accepting induction doesn’t necessarily result in inductivism). The aforementioned Peirce considered science is constituted by three types of reasoning: abduction, deduction and induction. As you correctly point out, a purely deductive account of science is agnostic regarding principles that shape and order the universe, leaving the door open to a chaotic universe, thus deriving in a self-defeating skepticism. Likewise, a purely inductivist account leads to a similar problem, but in an opposite manner. In effect, since induction is based on the generalization of previously given observations, solely relying on induction would neutralize any novelty, thus deriving in a static view of the universe. Peirce introduces abduction in order to preserve the novelty of the universe, since it allows the generation of hypothesis that would lead to deductions, which can be further solidified by induction. This might be closer to the metaphysical exam before the hypothesis that you proposed. I shall diverge in that, to limit oneself to an specific metaphysical conception is far too restrictive. While the scientist should be philosophically conscious, they should have the creative power to reach out of those preconceptions. In this sense, science should be conceived as a dynamic process. The universe always gives new possibilities, and as such, our understanding of it will always be limited. This does not mean that we can’t know about it or that it lacks any order whatsoever, but that we always have new forms of actualizations of that order, and in each new actualization we have a further approximation.
Great content, critically analyse Steven Wolframs ToE next. Specifically, he talks about empirical data he says competing theories lack however ive struggled to find any work from Steven, just a couple cellular automata images and some bad cgi to go with it
Never argue with ignorance; it will drag you to its level and beat you with experience.
If this happens, please for the love of God bring up Transcendental Arguments and the inherent problems with Empiricism’s epistemically unjustifiable foundations (e.g. the analyses of Hume, Quine, etc.).
Mr Dr. Dave is a good, well behaved scientist. Therefore he will never be a relevant scientist.
Interesting history of ideas, but what does any of this have to do with Dave and Chris?
Dave didn't address any of the core claims of the CTMU in his takedown, just mischaracterized and argued semantics at one point. What formboy is doing here is trying to actually explain the CTMU as an objective framework for the current process of scientific modeling and falsification to be grounded in, and implications for reality that logically follow from it, as science advances.
The point of that history was to illustrate that Dave's one and only actual claim - that theories are just models and not languages - is false, and by extension, so is his entire epistemology. I intentionally kept actual discussion of Dave himself to a minimum due to the fact that he's not worth anyone's time, but his takedown of Langan made for a good opportunity to cover the CTMU, which is something I haven't touched before. Also if Dave is actually dumb enough to respond to me again like he did last time then that'll get me about 2-4k+ new subs, which I'm also cool with lol
I watch a lot of science podcasts and whether it be adherence to a particular epistemology (or ideology), I've never heard quite the pointed critique (or even a simple acknowledgment) of the problems with the standard scientific methodolgy you describe. Those problems have caused many of us to now label science as scientism. Thank you and much good luck in spreading your much more carefully thought-out word.
With Mr. Dave, its a very shrill tone for such a vibrant and buzzing universe. Much prefer your content and tone despite frankly finding myself being largely a physicalist. Mockery and shrill debating should not be an element of such a discourse. Thank you for your content! 🙏
I knew the Mr. Dave Saga was never going to be limited to one little skirmish.
Great video. My favorite argument for the existence of dark matter is the Bullet Cluster. One can observe matter being affected gravitationally by something that does not interact with the electromagnetic force (which includes physical touch). I'm not physicist or anything, but I found the reasoning very convincing.
Fantastic video as always. Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into these production. Idea: You could have perhaps also brought in a bit of Pierce and abduction as it is intmately related to the the concept of falsifiability. Abduction is an interesting seeming middle ground between induction and deduction, analytical and synthetic judgements.
Just wondering, have you heard of Wolfgang Smith?
he wasn't talking about ctmu though? he was responding to an interview that was rather goofy. thanks for the overview i guess but why should i be mad at dave for not engaging with something barely talked about in the video he was responding to?
His contention, throughout the video, was that Langan is a fraud who just makes things up to sound smart and that his ideas are vacuous nonsense. This is false. I don't even particularly see eye to eye with Langan (as the comments section illustrates), but Dave's claim was immature, defamatory and blatantly false.
@@Formscapes for sure thanks for your reply. i see where you're coming from. i'll give both of your videos a second look and think on it - i liked your engagement with the CTMU, but i do think the Dave critique is a bit nitpicky. Langan does sound like a fraud in these videos. maybe Dave's being intentionally deceptive, but it's also possible that he's just not familiar with him. Langan is a niche figure that i know of due to being chronically online. if this is really dave's first encounter with him, i totally understand the reaction, though i suppose he could stand to look further in the future.
I have been interested in CTMU for a little while now. He comes to a lot of the same conclusions i have over the past 9+ yrs of studying esoterics, philosophy, history, genetics, physics, metaphysics, religion, geography, astrology and astronomy.
Formscapes I love your content, but here you said something I think is interesting and calls forth a question. You claimed that prior to Newton the perspectival notion was underdeveloped which seems true perhaps, and a very interesting thought, but that the notion was not present for the greeks and the Romans seems strange. Maybe it wasn't as developed in their art and thinking, but have a look at this Aristotlean solution to one of Zenos paradoxes.
The paradox states:
In a race, the quickest runner (often called achilles) can never overtake the slowest (often a tortoise) , since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.
If i remember correctly aristotle almost predicts velocity by saying that Achilles is not moving against 2 things, the things being the earth and the tortoise. Motion is defined in terms of two things, the mobile, and the mover. So it becomes a method of subtraction ofc, Achilles speed minus Turtle speed over initial distance. Does this qualify as a kind of perspectival solution? The solution implies that from the point of view of Achilles the turtle is traveling towards him at the of the difference of their speeds, so from this relation the answer is easily determined, but by trying to triangulate and not think in terms of a kind of velocity being set up by the turtles motion on the earth a paradox emerges. It seems a perhaps an uncharacteristically perspectival claim from aristotle, but fascinating don't you think?
Yeah I think that might qualify actually, but I would need to look at the original text to see what all is going on in the argument. There is at least one (very striking) example of perspectival consciousness long before the Renaissance and that's the Fayum Mummy Portraits.
But even the exceptions prove the rule. The Fayum portraits depict the deceased as they would have appeared to the living because they were meant to capture the essence of what the dead were like, when they were still alive, **for** the living; they were for mourning and remembrance, in other words. This is actually very unusual in ancient funerary art, which (especially in Egypt) tended towards capturing the archetypal essences of the dead (the Ka or Ba soul in Kemeticism, for example). How the dead would have physically appeared to the living would have seemed as far removed from the immortal essence of the person as possible.
This unusual emphasis on immortalizing the embodied life of the dead in art is the unmistakable Hallmark of Christianity, and so I think we can easily conclude that these paintings represent some form of proto-Coptic Christianity which predates the written Gospels.
In any case, the takeaway here is this: the germs of subsequent consciousness structures can often be found thousands of years before they come into full bloom, because these things take a very, very long time to fully germinate within the unconscious.