Addendum - Part 1: Information

Refuting Idealism - Part 1: Information - http://youtu.be/CLhKBCdGFoQ?list=UUxi1Dqz8ndY_FwI43pIPkjg

It's hard to see how anything I said in this video could be remotely objectionable, but I'm writing this because I feel that my delivery did not make it clear just how enormously idiotic the points I addressed were.

First, it's absurd that I even had to ask these people for a definition of information since they have been mentioning it in their videos as a crucial part of their ontology. However, despite claiming that the world is somehow made of information, they neglected to define what they even mean by information.

After asking them, I received four inconsistent and incredibly bad definitions. I think I adequately refuted all of these, but I realize I could have been more incisive and brutal in my wording. For example, in the video I stated that, "if 'differences' were to exist, they would be abstract objects, not building blocks of concrete objects." This is correct, but it may need clarification. What I'm saying is that abstract objects like "differences" cannot simply replace things like rocks and chairs. I don't believe "differences" even exist in the first place, but if they did exist, they would exist in addition to such things. The complete list of facts about a particular thing, which would include its properties and differences from other things, would simply be a description of that thing. A description of a thing is not identical to that thing, nor does it compose that thing. That would be like claiming a person is made of their biography. It's simply ridiculous, and perhaps one of the most insane positions ever argued for. It's one thing to say that abstract objects exist, but it is beyond absurd to replace the physical world with them. Abstract objects do not do anything or look like anything. They are literally made of nothing. Such a world would just be an empty void. As Stephen Yablo says, they "have not much more to them than what flows from our conception of them." And to quote Peter van Inwagen, "it seems evident that if everything were an abstract object, if the only objects were abstract objects, there is an obvious and perfectly good sense in which there would be nothing at all, for there would be no physical things, no stuffs, no events, no space, no time, no Cartesian egos, no God..."

Raatz has since changed his definition of information to "sense perceptions", which just makes his position the definition of subjective idealism ("to be is to be perceived"). This will be addressed in Part 3 of the series.

The video was unexpectedly well-received, given that I had taken little time scripting it because I took it as obvious that the idealists's position fell apart immediately upon analysis. However, it was quite hilarious to see derezzed83 claim that none of my points were valid, prior to even watching the whole video (he later retracted this statement). He of course failed to defend any argument against what I said in the video.