[AnimalMuppet]

> We don't understand enough about thinking/consciousness to reduce them entirely to physics (the literal brain).

We don't understand enough to know whether (or how) they reduce entirely to physics. But if the materialist position is correct, then matter (including energy particles) and the laws of physics all there is. So thinking and consciousness have to reduce entirely to physics, because there's nothing else for them to reduce to. We may not know how, but we know they do - if the materialist position is correct.

> > The answer to this is that, upon more careful introspection, it seems I don't even really feel like I have free will either.

> Why did you write the above reply then?

Because he had to, of course! (/s, or not, depending on your philosophical position...)

[strogonoff]

Looks like a good summary and a balanced take (except without additional context it could’ve been a she).

I find materialism weird because it seems like a given that all we do is motivated by our minds, including physical models—but then we are tempted to make a leap and claim that metaphors from those models (particles flying, strings vibrating, fields permeating, wave functions collapsing) are objective facts about environment rather than metaphors that try to predict how our environment would behave (in order to satisfy our minds’ curiosity and increasingly achieve some goal relevant to our minds), and that our environment and our mind itself completely reduces to those metaphors. I blame it on lack of philosophical sophistication.

That is not to claim it’s one way or another—just that we should at least be aware that it is a leap without positive proof.

[AnimalMuppet]

> except without additional context it could’ve been a she.

True. And sometimes I even say "he/she" or "they". But 1) the vast majority of people on HN are male (I'd guess 90%, but I have no hard data), 2) the default "she" for doesn't fit on a male-dominated site, especially when referring to a real individual, 3) "he/she" sounds more inclusive, but it still misses nonbinary people, and 4) "they" just sounds off to me when referring to an individual.

I could have, instead of saying "he", gone up-thread and used the name of the poster, but... sometimes I'm lazy.

[vacuity]

I try to use people's names directly but sometimes I forget and sometimes it just reads weirdly. On HN I'd use "parent", "grandparent", etc. anyways because it's a fun little quirk here. I don't like using "they" to refer to an individual either.