Psionic in Utopia
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Yes. That's why it isn't a matter, but a quality of a material body. Same for, let's say, speed or weight. Or color, you can't take a mass of redness or blueness.
I'm sorry, am I saying something new here?
So, just to clarify. Yeah, call me obtuse.
Are you actually declaring that heat ITSELF, speed ITSELF, color ITSELF, height ITSELF, weight ITSELF are not qualities but actually material?
Of course, you read that link wholly, you checked about multiple types of materialism (even if author don't want to call some people materialists). Also, of course, you noticed that determenism and materialism are not actually merged (there are materialistic determenism, and, for instance, theological one). Also, for sure, you know that heat (or speed) isn't "made up of such things as electrons, protons, and mesons" - you can't take speed and split it to mesons; you can (theoretically) do it with a moving body, but not with a speed. Also, of course, you know how exactly modern physics broken down the distinction between matter and energy.
So you know that heat (especially including difference between heat and temperature), speed or height aren't material (but are physical) and still stays in modern materialistic view. You can't take height and split it into such things as electrons, protons or mesons. Well, you even know that "material" and "physical" aren't synonyms.
That's good. I was starting to worry.
Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines "immaterial" as "something not consisting of matter." I used this dictionary to check myself before using a word - English not my native language, so I wasn't sure. A link - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immaterial
Matter, as Brittanica tells us (thanks Derp up there), is something made up of such things as electrons, protons and mesons. I can offer links that shows that electrons, protons and mesons have masses, but I believe it's known enough. Ergo, anything made up of such things have mass. Ergo matter have a mass. Well, I'm very up to hear what's you name "matter" if you disagree that link up there. Actually I don't like that article much, for some reasons, but it's good enough in a point I needed to illustrate.
There are... funny things with matter-energy equivalence and light-speed particles, sure. Should we stop here and actually discuss a difference between inertial mass and gravitional mass?
I'm sorry for being such a pedant here. Actually I just wanted to illustrate a simple fact that you can operate abstractions and stays materialist. But an attempt to declare heat (or speed, or height, or color) material kinda throw me out.
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They are properties of material things and they fit wholly within a materialistic framework of the universe.
You're not being pedantic, you're playing dumb.
I can consistently hit the switch on my wall, and light will come out. I can't consistently win the lottery. Sure, occasionally the bulb will be burnt out, or I may get the lucky and hit the one-in-a-zillion jackpot, but the overwhelming majority of the time, I can rely on those two predictions.
I can make predictions about anything: "Stock X is going to go up tomorrow." If my predictions are accurate often enough and the payoff is high enough relative to the losses, then I can consistently make money. If they aren't then I can't. To go back to the ice cream example, I can ask my father for ice cream and consistently get ice cream (or at least, get it often enough to be worth it). If you, a stranger, come up to my father and randomly ask him for ice cream, you are much less likely to get ice cream often enough to be worth it.
Psychics don't (and can't) understand how the Shroud works, but there is a clear connection between it and psionics. Whether psionic effects are actively mediated by Shroud entities (so telepathy is just a minor spirit picking up the thoughts of one person and carrying it to another), or its merely a side effect of the connection they establish (so the spirits are always hovering around psychics, and that presence changes the rules enough to make telepathy possible), it's almost certainly not
completely under control of the psychic (especially at the initial levels). If the Shroud entities like you/are interested in you/are amused by you/whatever, then your powers work consistently enough that psionics become practical. If they don't, then they aren't. And they like spiritualists and dislike materialists.
From the wiki:
Materialist:
As we reach for the stars, we must put away childish things; gods, spirits and other phantasms of the brain. Reality is cruel and unforgiving, yet we must steel ourselves and secure the survival of our race through the unflinching pursuit of science and technology.
Spiritualist:
There are those think it behooves us to remember how tiny we are, how pointless our lives in this vast uncaring universe... What nonsense! The only truth we can ever know is that of our own existence. The universe - in all its apparent glory - is but a dream we all happen to share.
The fanatic versions are even more extreme, as expected, but the key point is that spiritualists are less "tethered" to the world around them (in the fanatic version, even going so far as to say "Consciousness begets reality"), and thus presumably more open to Shroud entities and susceptible to their influence.
That's the very point I'm trying to make, you know. That something that don't consists from elementary particles and even something that not existed separatly (so immaterial by definition of dictionary and article you presented) CAN BE within a materilistic framework of the universe. Thanks.
Great example, thank you.
When you get accuracy of lottery winning as predictable as you have for turning light on, you have a technology of winning lotteries. If you haven't such accuracy, you haven't that technology. That's what gamers calls "tech" or "system" - some extent of tools that (supposedly) allows them to win lottery more often they should.
That's why (I recalling what about we're arguing here) I said "you can't actually technologize something without stable rules."
Just in case. "Stable rules" is not "fully determinism", because I have a feeling now you're mixing it. There are stable rules in lottery - "if you want to win lottery you must at least buy a ticket" or "if you name a number right you get a winning". Without stable rules lottery is impossible.
Determinism is banned even from physics. Quantum mechanics is just statistically right.
Yes. That's why I'm continue to say that difference between having or not having correct result for prediction based on data, not on complete randomness.
And science actually feels itself normal when working with "not enough data" situation.
Actually, we definitly knows SOME of them like spiritualists and SOME of them dislike spiritualists for the extent when they tries to ban spiritualist from Shroud. Shroud entities have different agendas.
Same for Warp in WH40K. There are Daemons there, and it's actually not one united entity, every Daemon actually is a free agent. But (actually even so) psykers in general don't get power from Daemons. It's genetic.
And you can even (in WH40K) make tech devices producing stable warp-based effects.
Wait a second. If you ask a spiritualist here, he will tell you that he IS fully tethered to the world around him, and materialist plainly ignored a big part of it, when playing with insignificant toys. Shroud IS around them, or psi don't work.
There is also a problem with this position. Ok, let's take a presupposition that by some unexplained reason every spiritualist is closer to the Shroud as every materialist (of course "no spirit in Shroud don't like materialists even to joke because they simply don't" isn't explanation). I don't like it at all (because it, firstly, transforms psionics to theurgy and effectivly transforming every psion to a priest; secondly, because it just declaring some ethos "right" and some ethos "wrong"), but ok. It's Shroud. I want to highlight - not materialists, in your theory, don't want to be psions, they plainly can't.
Why can't spiritualists do robotics? Is AI same kind of a mystical technology that you can achieve only if you doing some instructions from higher entity you don't understand? Or it's "well, materialists can't become psychics because they can't, but spiritualists can everything materialist can, but with psionics don't need it"?
No, the point you're trying to make is that you should get psionics as a materialist and you're bending words and definitions in a lame attempt to justify that.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't be so fast.
You declared that statement "heat is immaterial" is wrong.
When I asked you about it, you offer an article from Britannica about materialism. In this article is defined what "matter" (in materialistic context) is.
I gave a dictionary link to the world "immaterial" (because this was argued as well).
What exactly do you disagree in statement "heat is immaterial"?
Yeah, in the end I want to show that thesis "something immaterial isn't possible to work for materialists who don't ever intrested in immaterial" is plain wrong, so it's bad argument for defending idea "entry perk for psionics should be blocked for materialists" (and, to be broader, "no first point in any ascension perk chain should be blocked to any ethic", we just haven't examples for machine and biological ascension). I heard it's called "logic" and "disputing" - when you offer arguments, not just declare your opponent wrong because you said so.
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The only logic you are using is the logic that, if you keep repeating the same distorted and dishonest arguments, you'll wear down the opposition by forcing them to chase loopholes and declare yourself winner by default. There's nothing to dispute because you refuse to even use words properly.
Please show me a word I used improperly and define proper way.
It's definitly possible - as I said English isn't my native language. That's why I used dictionaries. But maybe I'm using wrong dictionaries?
The problem is that we're having a philosophical argument, and relying on dictionary definitions is less helpful for those. By insisting on debating terminology and the "precise meaning" of words, you're refusing and distracting from the more important discussion.
You declare I'm "refuse to even use words properly". I'm asking you to show me where exactly I'm using words improperly. You answering me that I'm "refusing and distracting from the more important discussion".
So is it essentially "you're using words improperly because I said so and you can't argue it because it's distracting"?
You are pedantically debating that Materialists clearly believe in the immaterial (here meant to refer to ghosts and gods and "the collective dream" and the very idea that reality is not fixed and can be influenced through faith) because they believe in things like "colour".
It comes across as dishonest and an attempt to declare victory through manipulating the language used in the conversation.
Yes, I do.
I do. But I fully agree that Materialists shouldn't believe into gods or spirits. I said it before.
And later:
So I just asking - why do you believe materialist can't be intrested in ghost? Not because he is a spiritualist, but because he is believes - there are some entities (some stupid ones calls them "spirits" or even "gods", of course they are not), that can be researched and explained? Why can materialist research Unbidden but can't - Shroud? Why can he research wave collapse, but can't - will-shaping? Ok, you don't like name "immaterial" because you want it to be linked to gods and spirits. Past any other word you want for all that things that materialist admits but that haven't mass and don't consists from elementary particles (I don't know another, that's why I used "immaterial"; but if you have, I'd like to know it for future reference).
Shroud is here. Entities there is here. In the position "any chance to use psi is using actual spiritual powers" it's even more here. It's not subjective, because you need psi to gain a glimpse about Shroud, not vise versa. Shroud isn't about "faith change world". It can be, but nothing in info leaked actually says so.
So why can't materialist say "hmmm, it's very intresting, let's meddle here"?
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For the same reason you lock on to a specific type of FTL technology and can't shift to the other two. The logic for that part is indeed thin for gameplay reasons.
A different question is why they shouldn't be able to start down the path early on, before they lock on to something else. Well, because they have no compelling reason to believe the Shroud or even psionics is real, as it won't be functional on their own worlds early on.
Initial reports of alien psionics will make them believe the spiritualistic part is just a flawed way of looking at some sort of secret technology. Eventually evidence will change their minds, but by then it's late.
Also I doubt the Shroud is remotely well-known in the Stellaris universe, until a nearby alien civilization is fully awakened psionically it's going to be a secretive mumbo-jumbo explained thing that will only be hear-say for materialists. Which might as well be a flawed/propaganda way to explain a secret technology.
You see, I'm trying to stay on "one argument in time". When people says "no decent materialist will be ever intrested in ghosts and spirits" - it's not gameplay argument. It's ethos-based argument, so I oppose it with arguments related to it. That's how I'm trying to show there is no anything in ethos as is to forbid materialistic people be intrested in ghosts or psi. I'd not ever say about it if there would not be so many demanding about "hey, they're materialists they never would intrested in ghosts!".
So, I believe, it's not fair (I'd not say it but there are some people who actually blame me for playing dumb, playing no-fair, being dishonest and try to declare victory through manipulating the language, so I believe I have at least little right to be pissed). The point "it will be bad for gameplay" is not the point "no materialist will ever even intrested in such things" and it's not the point "no materialist will ever be able to actually learn anything about it". It's kinda of hard for me, because I have couple of peolpe actually mixing arguments and taking answers to one arguments as "unrelated" to anothers. To the extent "you're refusing and distracting from the more important discussion". Yes, of course they're unrelated - they're just related to another argument.
Yes, I'm trying to show that "logic for that part is indeed thin", so we can drop this argument, don't use and discuss it again and turn to another ones.
Yeah. Materialists can be intrested in psionic. Yes, they can declare it physical phenomena, some flawed way to explain a secret technology, that's not matter. An argument "they can't be intrested in this because it's ethos thing" is logically flawed and, I believe, wrong. Argument "even if they are intrested, they would never achieve anything here because reasons!" is another one.