What if?

Oct. 22nd, 2015 10:14 am
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In Mind and Cosmos, Thomas Nagel puts forward an idea that values, such as "good" and "bad", are as objective as molecules and atoms. This is not even a hypothesis yet; therefore, I'm not going to discuss it's veracy here; reading the book would be a better way to get his point.

From my POV, the beauty of this idea is that it removes key differences between natural and artificial sciences. (Natural sciences are generally considered to study "what is", while artificial sciences study "what ought to be"). Also, it allows us to postulate existence of "value fields" that act as a cause in human actions. More specifically, we could say that human transactions flow in the direction of the field's lines. Once we figure out the structure of the value field, we can start predicting the flow, using all the math apparatus accumulated over the last two centures. Fascinating.

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