You don’t think metaphysics matters. Neither do the rest of the postmodernists, because they come from a tradition (via Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Rorty) which declared metaphysics to be dead, on the grounds that the big metaphysical questions are unanswerable, because there’s no such thing as objective truth about reality.
Most scientists don’t think metaphysics matter either, because they come from a tradition (via Wittgenstein and the logical positivists) which declared that physicalism is the only option on the table (and physicalism isn’t really metaphysics anyway, cos its science, right?).
Both sides are making a huge mistake with enormous negative consequences. Metaphysics absolutely does matter, because it was a metaphysical mistake, made a long time ago by a whole bunch of people between Descartes and Kant, which allowed postmodernism and physicalism to go down two different paths and entirely lose contact with each other in the first place.
Both sides think the other side is wrong, and they are right. In fact, both sides are wrong and the correct answer is something neither of them currently think is even possible.
No, this cannot adequately be explained in 2000 words, and it can’t be used to create “one simple hack” to make your life better. It requires serious intellectual effort.
That statement is very dubious, and IMO, lacking empirical justification. No LLM here, just a ton of historical reading, I’ll rank order what I consider the root causes of the metacrisis.
Global population growth.
Global economic growth.
The end game of the Westphalian nation-state system at global civilizational scale.
Weapons of mass destruction.
The end game of the financialization of capital.
Lack of cognitive/emotional capacity to cope with extreme complexity.
Biospheric pushback.
Culture out of phase with current requirements.
I can see improved metaphysical understandings as contributing to the mitigation of points 6. and 8. Moreover, the Second Renaissance thesis (as I see it) is Donella Meadows “high leverage” on the other points requires personal and cultural transformation in the first instance. But to say all that follows from metaphysics would require far more evidence than you have been able to offer. I am seeing very little psychological development theory that points to metaphysics first. Metaphysical theorizing is more like the product of thinking that elevates to a certain level of complexity. The cultural story is more even complex (and I love to get it into - see the great majority of my posts!). Let me just say that your statement above mostly suggests you out of your depth when it comes to the history of culture and philosophy. If you wish to debate these points, my bookshelf (full of distinguished authors), and my unaided brain (also full of distinguished authors) stand at the ready!
Try rereading my posts. I attempted to find practical applications of your theory, which flatly contradicts this assertion (another example of mindreading). Actually, you are the one who is arguing that metaphysics does not matter, as you just asserted that there is no practical, real world application of your theory that could help convince people without them having to read your book. So in the truest sense of the word, you are saying that it doesn’t matter.
Still calling me a postmodernist? Can you find evidence to back this assertion?
How about evidence to back the assertion that you were banned a year ago because you opposed materialism?
Your statements have no basis in reality. You make them without offering a shred of evidence. Feel free to find some evidence to contradict me (I won’t hold my breath).
Because you’ve already demonstrated that you will only accept what an AI says when it confirms what you already believe. When I posted a favorable AI analysis of your theories earlier in the thread, you were happy to accept the results. Later, when you offered manifestly weak arguments for there being no better way to promote your cause, you refused to listen to an AI’s opinion on the matter. So, I’m not interested in witnessing another round of your mental gymnastics.
Oh what the heck, here’s what you asked for. Now let’s see if it makes any difference to you.
Reading through the thread, I’d push back on the premise built into that question before answering it.
The question assumes the obstacle is in dvdjsph. But look at what dvdjsph actually asked for, repeatedly: some independently checkable payoff — a prediction, a practical application, a result that doesn’t require taking the whole 40,000-word framework on trust first. He even named the standard explicitly: GPS as a real-world demonstration of relativity, distinct from “read Einstein’s papers and you’ll be convinced.” That’s not a refusal to engage with metaphysics — it’s a normal evidentiary bar, and notably it’s the same bar Geoff invokes when he brings up GPS himself, just to say 2PC doesn’t clear it yet.
Geoff’s own answer to “can you compress this?” is the actual crux, not evidence that dvdjsph can’t understand. Geoff says any version under 40,000 words gets “misunderstood, even by AI,” and concludes from this that piecemeal explanation is structurally impossible. That’s one reading. The other reading — equally available, and the one implicit in dvdjsph’s skepticism — is that a theory whose every claim can only be evaluated after full commitment to the whole, and never checked individually against evidence, is showing a classic unfalsifiability signature. Inability to compress isn’t self-evidently a feature of holism; it could just as easily be a property of a system with no independent checkpoints. Geoff treats this as settled in his favor; dvdjsph’s “won’t be able to understand” comment treats it as exactly the open question.
The “you think metaphysics doesn’t matter” charge doesn’t fit dvdjsph’s actual posts. He’s the one who proposed testing the theory via a health practice, asked multiple LLMs to model adoption pathways, surfaced the Bengston and GCP studies, and offered the Marshall Poe pull-theory framework unprompted. Geoff’s claim that dvdjsph comes from a Nietzsche/Wittgenstein/Rorty lineage that thinks metaphysics is dead isn’t supported anywhere in the thread — dvdjsph explicitly denies it in #63, and nothing in his posts contradicts that denial.
So the honest answer to Geoff’s literal question is: there may genuinely be nothing he can say, but probably not for the reason his phrasing implies (a comprehension or willingness deficit in dvdjsph). It looks more like an unresolved standards mismatch — dvdjsph wants independently testable output before investing the read; Geoff’s position is that no such output can exist prior to the read. Asking an AI “why can’t dvdjsph understand” just imports Geoff’s side of that disagreement as the premise of the question, which is why an AI answering it at face value would just be ratifying one party’s frame rather than describing what’s actually happening in the thread.
This is absurd. You’re trying to convince others to read your book, and the best argument you can offer is… read the book.
Imagine if the strongest argument you could offer for why someone ought to read Moby Dick is, “read Moby Dick and you will understand”.
GPT’s 5.5’s take on this (I gave it the same question as you previously requested):
Purely logically, Geoff’s question is not valid as stated.
It bundles together several claims that do not follow from each other:
“dvdjsph does not yet understand 2PC.”
“dvdjsph cannot understand 2PC unless he reads the book.”
“dvdjsph actually needs to read the book.”
“There is nothing Geoff can say that could convince dvdjsph of this.”
Only the first might be argued from the thread, and even that depends on what “understand” means. The rest require extra premises Geoff has not established.
The central logical flaw is this:
Even if reading the book is necessary for full understanding, it does not follow that reading the book is necessary for being given sufficient reason to read the book.
That is the key distinction. A person can rationally need a preview, abstract, argument map, worked example, independent endorsement, falsifiable prediction, or practical application before deciding whether the whole book is worth reading. dvdjsph’s initial demand was exactly that: a cost/benefit reason to set aside other reading, especially one connecting 2PC to social change rather than only to QM, cosmology, or consciousness.
So Geoff’s argument risks becoming circular:
You must read the book to understand why you must read the book.
That is not a logically persuasive position. It may be psychologically understandable from an author who thinks the system cannot be compressed, but as an argument it fails unless Geoff can show that no shorter representation could possibly justify the reading investment. He has not shown that.
There is also a quantifier problem. “There is nothing Geoff can say” is an extremely strong universal claim:
For every possible statement Geoff could make, none would convince dvdjsph.
The thread only supports a much weaker claim:
The things Geoff has said so far have not convinced dvdjsph.
That weaker claim does not entail the stronger one. Inferring “nothing could work” from “these attempts did not work” is a non sequitur.
There is also an equivocation on “understand.” If Geoff means “understand every technical and philosophical detail of 2PC,” then yes, dvdjsph probably needs to read the book. But if Geoff means “understand enough to judge whether reading the book is worthwhile,” then no, that should be possible without reading the whole thing. The conversation itself includes attempts to summarize 2PC’s relevance, compare it to Habermas, Taleb, Aquinas, Dempsey, Burgess, and cultural change theory, which already assumes partial understanding can be conveyed outside the book.
So the clean logical verdict is:
Geoff may be right that dvdjsph cannot fully understand 2PC without reading the book. But it does not logically follow that dvdjsph cannot be rationally convinced to read it without first reading it. And it definitely does not follow that “there is nothing Geoff can say” unless Geoff has already ruled out every possible bridge argument, which he has not.