Every birth necessitates a new eternity of suffering.
Joined March 2014
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A very cool argument!
The Argument from Change:
1. Death of your body marks a change in spatial arrangement of matter.
2. You don't depend on any spatial arrangement of matter (by reason and experience).
3. Therefore, you don't depend on whether your body is dead.
4. If you don't depend on whether your body is dead, then there is life after death.
5. Therefore, there is life after death.
Science is definitely a political endeavour, and this is a fun line of reasoning to illustrate that
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Delighted to announce → wp.me/pvO07-2qM ← the publication of our special Luhmann Conference 2025 issue of Information Technology & People on “Coding Society: Programmatic Encounters Between Information Systems and Social Theory.”
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Sometimes we limit ourselves based on negative associations. Example many people associate "unfalsifiable" with "don't believe that." But:
"The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently." - David Graeber
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Your 'moment of doom' for Sept. 9, 2026 ~ Pandora's Forest
"It would take over 100 years of afforestation and forest management at the current scale, and zero residual CO2 emissions, to bring warming back by 0.1°C."
newrepublic.com/article/2151…
I've been thinking of a similar thing in relation to meaning (and complexity within social systems) and this year's Luhmann Conference!
A seed for a paper I'm writing:
1. Mind can ground a wider range of states than matter can. [youtu.be/AtduNjJV-6E]
2. Whatever can ground a wider range of states is more fundamental.
3. Therefore, mind is more fundamental than matter.
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Dear Christians, in case it is relevant to you or someone you know:
If human beliefs are fallible, that applies to the human belief that the Bible (the Church, Pope, etc.) is infallible.
Even if the Bible IS infallible, your BELIEF in it is not.
Application: if reason or evidence challenges your belief in a divine source, you should NOT automatically subject your evidence to [your prior belief in] that source.
Privileging one fallible belief over all others is epistemically bad practice. The habit leads you to be a prisoner of whoever can convince you that THEY speak for God (even *if* they do).
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Crazyy...someone measured Claude's vocabulary across 47,464 GitHub pull requests.
A word cluster that didn't exist in 2025 is now 45% of human-authored PRs.
The top word is "load-bearing"
"The thesis of this Element is that we don't know. Science lags, while engineering sprints ahead."
I think this is correct, and it's disappointing that many people don't understand what science is in relation to engineering, math, logic - or even how science relates to truth.
Don’t miss your chance to read the new Cambridge element, AI and Consciousness by Eric Schwitzgebel! Free access available until 26 August at
cup.org/4qdyhfO
#cambridgeelements #philosophy
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Every college syllabus should include these graphs.
Use AI for homework, you will get it done faster and get a higher grade, and then get crushed on the exam.
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
👇 sehr interessante Vortrag des Mathematikers Terrence Tao zur aktuellen und diesmal durch #KI ausgelösten Sinnkrise der Mathematik beginnt schon mal einigermaßen lustig mit einer Fußnote an einem von den #LLM so geliebten Gedankenstrich - mal sehen, ob sich das durchsetzt. 1/14
Dr. Richard Pretorius retweeted
Kant said that ‘being is not a predicate’. But Coleridge said ‘being is its own predicate’. The latter view is far more profound: there is no existential without copulative existence and therefore being can analogically differ and is not just univocally ‘either there or not’.