An Interview with Dr. Christopher DiCarlo (Part Six)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/23
Abstract
Dr. Christopher DiCarlo is an Author, Educator, and Philosopher of Science and Ethics. He discusses: in vitro meats; ignorance and getting along; and final thoughts.
Keywords: author, Christopher DiCarlo, educator, philosopher.
An Interview with Dr. Christopher DiCarlo: Author, Educator, Philosopher of Science and Ethics (Part Six)[1],[2]
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
1. Dr. Christopher DiCarlo: Do you know what in vitro meats are?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Are those the ones that are grown in a lab or on sheets? They are thinking of doing it like with 3D farming with plants but with meat cells or muscle cells.
DiCarlo: Yes, exactly, but it is all private, no government in Canada or the states are putting any money into this. We know why. You are going to piss off the dairy, pork, and chicken producers. Agriculture is huge money. A lot of money went into that hamburger. It costs 250 grand to make one burger.
Obviously, they have to raise their capital by any means. In a perfect world, if we can create in vitro meats, animals do not have to suffer. It makes sense to me. If we have the technology to do this, then do we have to continue the mass slaughter of other sentient beings in order to continue to feed us?
I do not see why especially if we can control for the disease. We do not need hormones, steroids, or antibiotics. It all comes down to taste. In vitro meats are at a stage right now, where they are not particularly favourable. I cannot hold people’s feet to the fire. They make their own choices. We have to evolve culturally.
I hope that at some point in the future humans get a level of technology, where it is pretty much Star Trek. I would like an 8-ounce steak and want to talk to the replicator. It makes you the 8-ounce steak and no animal ever has to suffer.
We can transform matter and energy in a way so that we are a lot more compassionate to living, breathing, and sentient beings. We are not there yet; we are still in post-caveman days. So, how we should behave?
The supernaturalists have top-down Divine Command Theory and the naturalists have a ground-up ethics. Let’s figure out the best possible mechanisms we can.
That is why we developed Relational Systemics. If we wish to treat people fairly, we have to take in as many considerations within systemic relationships as we possibly can: “What is to come of me?”
This works in 2 different ways: “What is to come of me as I am alive? What is to become of me in my lifetime? What choices do I make that result in certain consequences? And what is to become of me after I die?”
So, the supernaturalist, obviously, what is to become of me in this life, it depends what type of person you’ve been in the eyes of God. That will determine what type of fate you are going to have while living and after your death. A naturalist says, “I have no idea what is to become of me after I die. I do not have any compelling evidence to think that I may continue.”
However, if you are a good skeptic and a good naturalist, you would say, “I remain agnostic.” Now some people, some hardcore positive atheists might say, “You are belying your worldview, your ideology, as an atheist thinking that something could possibly happen after you die,” to which my son and I had this conversation for years.
We know so little about multiple universes. We know so little about time and probability. Let’s say you and I die simultaneously, we both get struck by lightning. Somehow, where you are and where I am, you and I both die.
We get buried and cremated, and whatnot. Our lives end. It seems like our lives have ended forever. My students keep saying, “But I cannot even imagine what that would be like!” I said, “Really? Do you remember what it was like 10 years before you were born? It would be like that.”
“So, you could imagine what that is like and after you die you won’t be able to imagine it,” Socrates said this. He said, “Life is either going to continue or it is not.” If it does not, you are not around to piss and moan about it.
That makes this life all the more important: get as much out of this life as you can without harming others, get as much as you can out of this life as possible.
Then my son and I thought, “There does not have to be a God in order for us to somehow have our existence continue after we die. All there has to be is enough time, an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of possibility.”
If those two things exist, then it is theoretically possible that you and I are going to have this conversation again at some point in time.
Given an infinite amount of time and the multiple worlds/multiple universe theory, and based on how little we know about aspects of causality, it is theoretically possible that all of the components, all of the stardust that has made you and me, Scott Jacobsen and Chris DiCarlo, have somehow come together in particular ways; I am saying, “You cannot imagine the amount of time.”
Trillions of years are unfathomable to us. However, to a dead person, the passage will be instantaneous. Because if consciousness ceases, and if they are somehow regenerated, their matter reproduces that consciousness to recognize themselves in some other way again or even in not in different ways, then death will be an illusion.
Either we will never experience consciousness again, ever, or we will, but it will take a shit load of time to materialize.
When people come to me and say, “Atheism is so bleak.” I say, “No, you are selling it short. Reflect on your own ignorance. Our ignorance is so incredibly vast as to the true nature of what is actually going on there should there be an actual multiverse.”
I try to take my students from the level of subatomic physics to String Theory all the way through to the levels of cosmology and the expanse of our known universe. The 13.7 billion years that our Big Bang period. To the fact, that now M-theory maintains this may not be our only universe.
There may be an infinite number of universes. This bubble structure or bubble theory/model that they have outside of our own.
If that is the case, this is what Sagan talked about in terms of awe. I am in awe of the natural universe and what could actually be going on with my puny little brain. My insignificant little being in this magnificent huge backyard of a universe that we have.
So, I try to tell people, “What is to come of me?” Ultimately, I have no idea. However, if the answer is nothing, and if I cannot figure out a way to upload my brain as a digital copy like the great Kurzweil thinks we can do in 40 years, then that is it.
However, if I can gain immortality that way, by uploading my brain, digitally copying it then downloading it into an autonomous titanium robotic exoskeletal being, I would do that tomorrow if I could.
The last debate I had with this Christian guy. So, people told me there were Christians in the lobby crying because of what I had said and that it woke them up. That, maybe, that is all there is to the universe that it is all ultimately meaningless.
But like I said, we have what I call Proximal Meaning. Our lives are short and meaningful here. However, in the expanse of space and over an infinite period of time, we are nothing. We are nothing. That affects a lot of Christians. It made some of them cry, which I did not want to do. I do not want people to feel hurt.
But suffering is inevitable and even epistemic emancipation can put people through times in which they are going to suffer because you are trying to think in ways your brain has never allowed you to think before.
So, I try to tell people if the universe is ultimately meaningless, and if that is all there is and when we die that is it, then you are not going to change it.
You are not going to change through thought or through your actions the way the universe actually is. So, why do not we all live as if this may be the only life we have, okay? And whatever happens afterward, as long as you live a life, as a life as your systemic self will allow you to live, then you have nothing to worry about.
You have nothing to worry about. Try to make the world where you are a little bit better for others, especially if you can pay it forward. If you can do that, then I think that is about as much as we can expect of you given what the state of your brain is.
You are not a serial killer; you are not someone who is incapable of acting that way. Enjoy this life as much as you possibly can because we have absolutely no idea how long we have to live at any given time. What’s around the next corner? What’s hurtling through space that might be headed towards this planet?
What idiot might be elected president who has their finger on the button of how many nuclear warheads? None of it is certain so appreciate what we have and try to live the best life you can.
This is what Socrates said, “There is nothing more important than thinking about how we ought to live.” I think you and I have come back full circle to where this conversation began.
2. Jacobsen: Any thoughts or feelings in conclusion?
DiCarlo: I am hopeful for education that it will take a turn out of this bizarre, post-modernist, wacky notion that no ideas are any better than any other ideas.
That we can actually see for ourselves that, at least in terms of pragmatic benefit, that there are better and worse ways of thinking based on how it is we wish to behave towards others.
If we are to be compassionate beings, not to ourselves but to other species as well, then hopefully the turn is coming now, where people can have meaningful dialogue and can be diametrically opposed to one another but see the importance of still getting along.
That is the final message we take from critical thinking and education. We are always going to disagree, but it is extremely important to know why we have these disagreements and still figure out reconciliation techniques to be able to get along. So, that is what I am very hopeful for in the future.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Dr. DiCarlo.
DiCarlo: No problem, thank you.
[1] Author; Educator; Philosopher; Fellow, Society of Ontario Freethinkers; Board Advisor, Freethought TV; Advisory Fellow, Center for Inquiry Canada.
[2] Individual Publication Date: October 22, 2018: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/dicarlo-six; Full Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2019: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
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