Philosopher, author, and host of the Patterson in Pursuit podcast. Covering logic and epistemology, metaphysics, political theory and economics, mathematics, the philosophy of mind, religion, and social commentary and criticism.| Steve Patterson
I’ve become persuaded by a version of Platonism. The universe seems to be composed of concrete and abstract things, and the abstract things seem to exist separate from our individual minds. For years, I’ve been making anti-Platonist arguments. One of my most popular articles, “No, Chairs Do Not Exist” sketches out a conceptualist position, which […]| Steve Patterson
Reductive physicalism undermines itself and cannot explain how interaction happens at all. The post The Problem of Physical Interaction appeared first on Steve Patterson.| Steve Patterson
Mathematics is an extension of logic. Every domain in mathematics can be reduced to logic.| Steve Patterson
Humans are lazy when thinking about infinity. Usually it doesn’t matter, but sometimes, our imprecision comes with big philosophical implications.| Steve Patterson
For the last several years, I’ve been on the hunt. I’ve been searching for an explanation for the popularity of irrational beliefs. People casually accept contradictions into their worldview; they are convinced that paradoxes exist. I’ve been trying to understand why. Their arguments frequently end up appealing to mistaken interpretations of quantum physics or the […]| Steve Patterson
I’m working through the implications of discrete space and am starting to build some intriguing intuitions. I am trying to reduce the physical world down to a bunch of geometric atoms changing state—essentially, to a grid of voxels. I don’t claim the following is true, only that it’s a coherent way to explain a bunch …| Steve Patterson
The spiritual domain heavily overlaps the informational domain—the world of patterns. I don’t think there’s a complete reduction of one domain to the other, but there is considerable overlap. Consider a few spiritual ideas: “Telling the truth is of spiritual importance. Lies destroy, while the truth heals.” This is not a claim about atoms or …| Steve Patterson
I was recently impressed by a series of tweets from Joscha Bach. I’ve never heard somebody use this language before. That’s a wonderful and provocative notion that accords with my own quixotic ideas. Perhaps we don’t need to reform mathematics, but replace it altogether. That sounds like fun. What’s wrong with math? If you ask a computer scientist, they …| Steve Patterson
Immaterial things are hard to understand, and taking their existence seriously has been unfashionable for centuries. Modern materialists have gotten comfortable simply defining them or laughing them out of existence. But since my philosophical conversion to Platonism, I now think that immaterial stuff way more important than material stuff—and there’s even a meaningful sense in which …| Steve Patterson
I recently did an interview with Bob Murphy on our attempted resolutions the mind-body problem. You might enjoy it. Years ago, I wrote an article explaining my own theory of indirect interaction. For some silly reason, I never created any visuals to go along with the article, though they would have helped immensely. So that was corrected in …| Steve Patterson
Very enjoyable conversation with Phil Harper on the Dark Age Hypothesis. We get into some deep concepts. Related ArticlesInterview w/Bob Murphy on the Mind-body ProblemThe Bitcoin Brothers Interview with Bob MurphyInterview on the Dark Horse Podcast with Dr. Bret Weinstein| Steve Patterson
As many of you know, I’ve been working on a new book about Bitcoin for the last few years, and it’s finally ready! It is a collaboration with Roger Ver (aka “Bitcoin Jesus”), and we tell the story of how BTC was slowly hijacked over a period of several years. “This is the book that had to …| Steve Patterson
Countless thinkers for the past two thousand years have appealed to Euclidean geometry as an example of rock-solid reasoning. The proofs in Euclid’s Elements are beautiful deductive structures. One proof builds on the next, and by accepting the starting axioms, you are compelled to agree with the final conclusions. The geometric objects within Euclid have properties which …| Steve Patterson
I come in peace, fellow rationalists. I know that some truths can be discovered through the application of pure reason, without appealing to empirical data. These truths are limited in number and tend to be very abstract, but they still exist and are foundational to our other beliefs. I give an argument for them in […]| Steve Patterson
Perhaps the most famous paradox of all time is the “Liar’s Paradox”. And like every other paradox, upon inspection, it turns out to be nonsense.| Steve Patterson
It’s been nine months since GPT4 was released. I’m still trying to make sense of things. There’s a dearth of level-headed analysis out there. Most people’s analysis seems to be framed by science fiction novels, or they are still using frameworks inherited from the pre-GPT world, which did not anticipate the success of LLMs. Even […]| Steve Patterson
There’s an ongoing quest to reduce everything to mathematics. It’s part of the reason we’re in a dark age. Seems like a good time to ask the question: is everything quantifiable? Were the Pythagoreans correct in saying that “All is number”? Consider three statements: 1 Alice is taller than Bob. This claim is easy to quantify. […]| Steve Patterson
For the last fifteen years, I’ve been researching a wide range of subjects. Full-time for the last seven years. I’ve traveled the world to interview intellectuals for my podcast, but most of my research has been in private. After careful examination, I have come to the conclusion that we’ve been living in a dark age […]| Steve Patterson
