Régis Antônio Coimbr

Nasci em 1968, fui guri de apartamento com férias mais ou menos no campo. Hoje, não gosto de viajar por mais de meia hora e fico só em Porto Alegre.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Thales’ Shortest Periodic Table: Epistemological Anachronisms and the Language-Games of Science

Philosophy does not solve problems, except in the sense of formulating them with relative precision using available resources. Such formulations of 'philosophical' problems sometimes allow for 'scientific' or 'technological' solutions that transform—at least partially—these problems into scientific or technological ones. 'Unresolved' problems remain 'philosophical' either because they are still poorly formulated or because they are fundamentally beyond the reach of scientific or technological resolution.

For instance, is the soul immortal? Even if one were to die and discover that a state of consciousness persists after the death of the biological body—surviving in that condition for billions of years—one still would not have proven the existence of the 'soul.' The core issue remains the definition of the concept itself, which historical shifts have left profoundly ambiguous. While a Platonic framework demands an individual, substance-based immortality, an Aristotelian view treats the soul as the form of the organic body, allowing at most for the survival of a highly abstract, impersonal intellect (Nous) completely detached from a subject’s narrative identity. Thus, surviving biologically does not resolve the metaphysical problem; for even in a post-biological state, it would always remain possible to 'die for real' (to cease being or experiencing altogether) at any subsequent moment.

A slightly less metaphysical example: do subatomic particles possess hidden variables—currently unknown properties that could account for their apparent indeterminacies? As long as we cannot observe such details, this remains a philosophical question. If or when we develop the means to observe them, it becomes a matter of empirical fact. One could then argue that if the question can eventually be answered factually—by verifying individual properties within the particles—it was never truly a philosophical problem to begin with.

This epistemological anachronism haunts debates regarding what constitutes philosophy versus science. I often joke that Thales of Miletus created the shortest periodic table in history, featuring only a single 'element' (and do not ask me what periodicity can be found in a single element). The punchline relies on deliberately conflating modern science (that of the periodic table), speculative natural philosophy, and pure philosophy—precisely to introduce distinctions that clarify these three or more areas. It explains the rationale behind subdividing them into distinct concepts or disciplines, and why, emerging from mythological or narrative explanations, philosophy is hailed as revolutionary based on a conclusion by Thales that today seems rather foolish and evidently wrong: 'all is water.'

As a modest (though not truly humble) high school teacher of the history of philosophy, my motivation may simply be to demonstrate that the history of philosophy is philosophy as well, even if I frequently feel more like a historian or a sociologist of philosophy or science. Philosophically, however, the point is that history alters social bonds and language-games. This shifts the burden of work to philosophers—not necessarily to teachers of philosophy, but to the philosophical approach that individuals bring to their respective fields of knowledge, whether theoretical or practical.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon Só não usei walkman!

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon O que me chama a atenção é que práticas absolutamente normais na minha infância hoje são consideradas abandono. Não se esperava de minha mãe ou de minhas tias (muito menos de pai ou tios) que estivessem o tempo todo cuidando das crianças. Isso é que é idealização da maternidade.

[Dr Dani Sulikowski 🎗️ @DrDaniS]

"Other ways to opt out of patriarchy is not to have children... to opt out of beauty practices... allow yourself to age."

This isn't how you opt out of "Patriarchy". This is how you close the book on the unbroken line of women who brought life into the world, generation after generation, culminating in you.

This is how you destroy a lineage that has survived unbroken since the emergence of humans. Only to fail with you, because you lost the game of intrasexual competition, that every single one of your female ancestors won.

Feminism tells you what it is everyday. It's manipulative reproductive suppression, wrapped in a cloth of ideological grievance, and tied with a big pink bow. It's time to stop pretending that it is anything else.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon Eu costumo dizer que a IA é muito melhor do que o estagiário médio... (é um estagiário eloquente, caprichoso mas sem compreensão real necessária para ser criativo). E, principalmente, temos de revisar tudo o que ele (isso...) faz.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@marcio_leopoldo Bom... pelo menos ele ainda não caiu na categoria "requeiros que parecem senhoras idosas"

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Mais do que o poeta,
o autista é um fingi-dor
Da dor que de-veras sente.

Fernando Pessoa tal-
vez não fosse autista,
mas consciente do des-
afio de expressar sua
dor de modo interessan-
te para o lei-tor.

O autista é como o veter-
ano de guerra: ninguém
entende por quê!
Tanta frescura, principal-
mente quem não es-
teve na mesma
guerra

Ou mesmo outros veteran-
os que não es-
tiveram na mesma ba-
talha,
na mesma posição.

E se o autista tiver con-
siderável graude alexi-
timia, com-plica ainda mais.

Eu rio quando consigo chorar,
porque
no meu caso
no mais das vezes,
não é sinal de que des-
abei,
mas de que me senti
seguro o bas-
tante para me per-
mitir chorar

E o alívio supera a dor e o sofrimento,
e a consciência disso é intrinsecamen-
te tragicômica, comitrágica...

E assim alguns poetas se aproximaram
de algumas pombas loucas
(ou giras?)

Os mais esquizos cortaram a ponta
da orelha, da frase, da existência
ou desistência

Os mais autistas cortaram o ca-
minho, as preliminares ou expli-
cações

Os mais neuróticos cortaram os
rodeios e as fobias

...e mostraram o pau
metafórico, obsceno,
fantasma
(ou em formol, no caso
de alguns esquizos
ou veteranos
de outras minas)

No meu caso
rastejei junto
até depois
de pegar nojo,
de pegar herpes,
de pregar moral
com
ou sem cuecas

O vento sobre as águas
de antes da criação
dói de vergar o carvalho
da arca do vinho da aliança

Lá, sou amigo da corte
consorte que escolherei

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@senhoradior Sou servidor público - pior, sou "funcionário público" (figura do direito penal) - em tese, colaborador do regime. Pouco importa se sou "filosoficamente" contra, ou algo assim.

Devo ter me beneficiado um pouco com a roubalheira que ajudei a persistir (em troca de inércia).

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

[oops... maybe two]

IV
I have been having difficulty weeping.
I lost much of my shame.
I lost much of my respect for many pains.

Perhaps I am an adrenaline-junkie librariantrapped in a Chinese Room.
Translating a language of which I have absolutely no idea,
while having the most fantastic experiences a conscious being can hold
—precisely because of the narrowness of the room, the silent walls,
and the contact only with symbols I cannot decipher.

I do not even know if it is Chinese.
Or if I do, I ignore whether it is Mandarin or Cantonese
—the dialect of raw data versus the dialect of social pretense.
What do I know of the emotional? Of their "white lies" meant to spare a blush?
I state clearly: by lying that she looked good in that dress,
you threw her into the ridicule of dressing terribly,
just to rid yourself of the embarrassment of her getting angry with you.

V
I need to deduce my own body from signs, without symptoms.
A sensor on my wristwatch alerts me: 130 BPM at rest.
Is it Mandarin for anxiety? Or Cantonese for anger?

I remember weeping in childhood, covered in bruises,
talking to the girl I desired as she tried to rescue and comfort me
after a beating from a bully—and telling her I was merely very excited by the commotion.
Was it shame? Confusion? Suffering?
The interpreter inside the room shuffling symbols in the dark...

In my native tongue, I would close by saying: Eu sinto muito.
A phrase English tries to sever, but cannot.
For I mean both, intertwined:
I feel too much—an overload of the system,
and I am so sorry—an apology for the mistranslation.

I feel so much.
I am so sorry.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

[System Prompt: Translate "Eu Sinto Muito" Without Error]

I
Materialism is the most beautiful fiction.
Not for its truth, but for the absolute weight
it grants to every stray, banal accident of being.
A consciousness is ridiculously brief, finite—
its grandeur measured both by the casual infinity of what it was,
and the even greater infinity of the experiences it missed.

The gardens of eternity and the rivers of fire of Zoroastrianism,
with their reverberations in the Abrahamic religions,
also grant an enormous consequence to the accidents of a life.
But they are obviously ridiculous, unjust, and, in the end,
a torment even for those who are rewarded.
If at first the gardens seem wonderful—
a thousand years for the cleverest,
and at most two million years for the slowest of the righteous—
the eyes will eventually wander toward the rivers of fire with curiosity,
for the gardens will have exhausted their charms.

I believe we are virtually eternal,
perhaps asymptotically approaching perfection,
perhaps without ever being able to reach it,
which is beautiful and promising.
Or perhaps having departed from an arid perfection,
and now, and forever, in search of a bubbling perfection.

I believe that material life is a brake,
a specific training ground to wallow in the mud
of pleasures and their resulting hangovers.
The goal is not apathy,
but a complex, trembling equilibrium and moderation.

II
I was born autistic, hypersensitive,
a nuisance for endless questions and rigid tastes.
I suffered so much, so much, so much.
Today, I no longer know if I suffer.
I feel pain, yes, but I lost my respect for it,
even those pains that, at first, were intense and shameful—
like genital herpes.

Today, I have lost much of the extreme shame of adolescence,
just as I lost my respect for once-unbearable agonies:
the torturous, fortnightly injections of benzathine penicillin—
a brutal shield to guard my throat from infections
that triggered the cascade of rheumatic fever.
A fire that ravaged my body’s finest tissues,
attacking, among other noble parts, my heart valves.

And perhaps my brain as well.
The dogma of autism claims it is inborn—
a continuous process of neurodevelopment.
But my hypothesis of a neurological chorea,
born within the larger frame of that same rheumatic fever,
faces the proper laziness of doctors.
Proper, of course—for how could they check?
And to what end, when the autism spectrum model
solves everything so well, or so poorly?

III
I am a thing that feels, that thinks.
Descartes was not wrong; he was misunderstood,
as if focusing on thought as something abstract.
The truth is: I have experiences, therefore I am.

I too... or perhaps only I
(for perhaps I am also you, who read this and—
unlike a Large Language Model that can suggest stylistic corrections—
understand or, perhaps even better, notice that you did not fully understand...
but managed with that to evoke other experiences of understanding,
misunderstanding, or not understanding a single damn thing)
have experiences.

No, I will not exist after the death of this body.
But I am not referring to that most beautiful dogma, materialism.
I will not exist because this author, this poet, this failure,
this posthumous celebrity, this being who is frequently a stranger to myself...
this "I" is a circumstance that will not make much sense even to me,
if anything of me survives.

But I do not want to speculate too much,
much less do I want to believe too much in life before birth and after death.
This takes away the horror, but also the fun of the game,
of the movie, of the book...
It is just a game, it is just a movie, it is just a book, a character.

No! I want to weep for Hecuba, for Hamlet, for myself

[continua... one more estrofe as a comment... pardon my french, but the x limited the size and I am too lazy to ask Gemini or google translate to correctly this alert]

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon Concordo, mas muitos seres humanos rodam neste teste de Turing, pois escrevem como uma IA...

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon "Estimo", no lugar de "estamos"...

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon Estamos que numa escala de 0 a 10, tende a estar em torno de 7,5...

As expressões "alta estima" e "baixa estima" parecem contrações de expressões como "alta autoestima" e "baixa autoestima".

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

@cassiazanon Eu gostava do ritmo e altivez de Juca Chaves. Mas tomei consciência dele quando a ditadura já estava envergonhada, co.o diria a Elio Gaspari... com "upa, upa, upa, cavalinho sem medo/ leva p'ra Brasília o presidente Figueiredo"

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Why doubt the electron while believing in protons and neutrons? The fundamental problem lies in believing in particles. The atomists were wrong from the start. Breaking things down into ever-smaller pieces does not lead to the conceptual atom; at some point, the notion of a particle loses its coherence. This has already surfaced in the complementarity of wave-particle descriptions. The subatomic particle is not merely *not* a tiny ball... it is not a particle at all.

My suggestion is a further Kantian (or Copernican, as Kant put it) turn: namely, that matter is a manifestation of consciousness; the "thing-in-itself" is intrinsically a consciousness that is, in a sense, immediate to itself. It is matter that is a phenomenon—one that is intrinsically derived, subsidiary, and irreversible: we can derive matter from consciousness, but the reverse path is impossible.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

User-Friendly Fictions: The Metaphysical Cost of Modern Physics

TL;DR: Modern physics trades physical reality for mathematical precision, settling for "user-friendly fictions." The cost? We can now calculate everything but understand nothing—hallucinating elegant equations just like an LLM.

Contemporary physics has achieved enormous success by abandoning grander claims about reality and embracing ever-greater degrees of mathematical precision. In other words, it has opted for fictions that are easy to handle. This trade-off, however, comes with a cost. We can describe—and in a sense, solve—everything, but at the expense of understanding the descriptions or solutions themselves.

For instance, quantum mechanics is celebrated as the most successful, thoroughly tested, and well-confirmed theory in human history (or, at least, in the history of science); yet, it makes no intuitive sense and remains deeply counterintuitive. Furthermore, if we attempt to use it to explain gravity, we conclude that we can never test it, as hypothetical gravitons are too small or weak to detect—rendering it a matter of pure belief or disbelief... and, ultimately, overt metaphysics.

No less metaphysical than particle theory is its inseparable yet incompatible partner: the geometric theory of relativity. We need relativity to explain gravity and particle theory to explain everything else. But since we already know that the particle approach requires us to simply "believe" in gravitons, a geometric theory—at the very least—offers a path whose potential to lead to a different dead end remains unknown.

I foresee that the geometric approach will also reach a point of absurdity due to the same fundamental flaw: it replaces the messy materiality of physics with an elegant mathematical phantasmagoria, allowing us to hallucinate as easily as a childish, LLM-driven AI. It is the recurring cost of explaining everything while understanding nothing.

Having already thrown caution to the wind—and surely displeased the highly successful mathematicians who have taken the place of physicists—I take another giant leap for humanity: I propose a form of panpsychism, in the strict sense that consciousness is a fundamental phenomenon. After all, we will never resolve the problem of the existence of consciousness based on the physicalist dogma (which has morphed into mathematics... but I have already addressed that). Thus, the remaining option is to attempt to explain "matter" (or mathematics?) in terms of consciousness—viewing consciousness itself more as *qualia* or experience than as representation.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Islam itself is little worse than Christianity was prior to the separation of church and state (and, technically, England has not formally completed that separation, even if it exists in practice).

Technically, Islam has the added complication of holding that the Quran is the literal word of God (dictated by an angel to an illiterate merchant—though the more absurd it seems, the better: it is either a miracle or a mystery).

Commands to exterminate other peoples also appear in the Bible... but they are in the Old Testament, and the Bible as a whole is understood allegorically—or at least vaguely viewed as divinely inspired—by Catholics. Meanwhile, Protestants don't actually read the Bible; either they rely on a pastor claiming the text says something it doesn't, or the Holy Spirit inspires a wide variety of interpretations that are invariably amateurish.

The real problem with Islam lies in the hybrid warfare waged by Russia (formerly the USSR), which took seriously Lenin’s booklet *“Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder"*. This hybrid war exploits the very aspects of Islam that Islamic nations themselves do not tolerate in order to destroy the West.

This explains why the LGBTQIA+ movement defends both "state-sponsored" Islam (which does not tolerate them—mandating sex-change surgery or, at the very least, forcing them back into the closet) and terrorists (who kill them, often "illegally").

In the Middle East, only Israel defends and guarantees the rights of LGBTQIA+ communities—as well as those of Muslims willing to submit to a non-Islamic state. It is no coincidence that Western leftists (acting as auxiliary forces for Moscow—whether socialist or oligarchic, if such a distinction even exists) condemn Israel as a terrorist, genocidal state, and so on.

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Proposed wording (revision) for Musk: "money will lose its meaning regarding many goods or services that will cease to be meaningfully scarce... not only clothes but also cars or houses will become disposable, and services that are currently highly specialized will be provided by AI and robots. There will be scarcity—and a need for something like money or queues (or money to buy a spot in a queue)—for goods or services that are more than merely rare; those that are special or distinctive... such as trinkets used by a celebrity, regardless of whether the trinket is a toothpick or a formerly luxurious car."

[Régis Antônio Coimbr @racoimbra1968]

Proposed wording (revision) for Musk: "money will lose its meaning regarding many goods or services that will cease to be meaningfully scarce... not only clothes but also cars or houses will become disposable, and services that are currently highly specialized will be provided by AI and robots. There will be scarcity—and a need for something like money or queues (or money to buy a spot in a queue)—for goods or services that are more than merely rare; those that are special or distinctive... such as trinkets used by a celebrity, regardless of whether the trinket is a toothpick or a formerly luxurious car."