My reply turned out to be a bit long. Perhaps you can jsut skim it for the aspects you care about?
I think wrapping science in spirituality can work, but for people in this community, it’s probably tempting to think in objective, well-defined tokens rather than thinking in the concepts and subjective tokens which align with how the brain works and with ones own values. But the rules of the mind and the rules of mathematics are entirely different, and ones “objective” quality of life matters much less for well-being than their subjective worldview does, which is partly why we’re not really getting any happier.
If you try walking, and thinking consciously about every movement you make, you will probably find that walking becomes much harder. Your mind also has its own symbolic language which is much more efficient than mathematics for many things, and science is sufficently inhuman that it’s destructive not just to human errors, but to human nature in general.
My suggestion here was that we adjust what science is so that it no longer creates the problems you are pointing at
You could partly do that by correctly stating that everything is relative, and thus that an absolutist worldview might not be ideal. But moving further than that is difficult as people have an almost religious view of science. They think that the subjective doesn’t matter much, that things are only worth something if you can prove them, that science can discriminate between good and evil or morality and immorality.
People also seem to either reject reality, or desperately attempt to construct a morally correct hypothesis which explains the pattern they see in reality, and then make up excuses as the hypothesis repeatedly fails to predict the future. The idea that people seek the truth is a lie, they can only be objective about things that they don’t care about too much, which is why controversies repeatedly form around things connected to politics and morality. People who don’t realize this don’t even have a basic understanding of themselves (or other people, or humanity in general) which is the actual cause of our problems.
science can be quite spiritual and can generate well-being when it’s driven by genuine wonder, curiosity and intention to make life more wonderful
It can when you put the latter first, so that science becomes second. That feeling of wonder literally requires a lack of complete understanding. The people who enjoy science the most are those who know it the least, and they will become disillusioned until they once again meet something that they don’t understand, which causes an explosion in possibilities bigger than what you can wrap your mind around. “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you”, the latter part is only true because we don’t understand quantum science. It’s our good luck that we didn’t manage to “solve” science.
And again, we have to watch out for Goodhart’s law. If you “improve” peoples lives in a way which makes them miserable, then it’s not an improvement, even if the metrics state otherwise. Another reason I dislike scientific views is that I think it results in Moloch. the only winning move is not to play, and the only way to avoid playing is if the optimal solution remains unknown. Psychologically speaking, having full information about something seems really undesirable. Possibly because you do the mental equivalence of when the state reduces human lives to numbers on a spreadsheet.
I’m autistic so thinking objectively has always been easy for me, I appear “better” at scientific thought than most, which is why I’m so conscious of all the pitfalls one can run into. Anyway, I think the many psychological issues appearing in society are directly connected to the domination of scientific thought and the death of religion, and thus that you’re trying to solve the problem with the tools which caused it, and that you only consider this a good idea because you feel something wonderful in science… Which actually exists in yourself (or in your relation to science). The whole “beauty in mathematics” is, I think, the brains reaction to symmetry and harmonious patterns, making it beautiful in the same way that music is beautiful. Of course, a lot of things can be made possible through science, so it’s not incorrect to perceive a lot of hidden value waiting to be discovered. It just has to be for the sake of humanity instead of at the cost of humanity.
But everywhere in society I see a hatred of humanity and attempts of destroying it. Usually in order to make humanity “better” or “more moral”, which translates into destroying aspects of human nature or replacing them with less human ones. An easy example which is not too controversial is destroying “laziness” and making people into efficient workers. Which also hints at the fact that the optimization of “productivity” and the optimization of “humanity” go in two different directions, meaning that we’ll start our own darwinistic process of destroying human aspects (as the genetic “fitness” values inhuman/objective things). Which is ironic as the purpose of technology is improving human life, rather than to, say, replace it.
Thanks for this—and sorry I missed it earlier. I marked a couple of your statements that especially hit me.
Overall great analysis—I’m only be a bit more positive about these things myself. Mainly:
I do think science is a tool that may be qualitatively different than all other tools we have—just looking at the impact it managed to have on the world. And in so far as it is “special,” it’s worth considering whether it can solve our problem
I don’t think it’s ever possible to completely understand the world—and so there will always be “God at the bottom of the glass”—no matter how much we do solve. I also don’t think there is anything bad about completely understanding some aspect of the world—our wonder just transitions to another aspect. Planetary motion no longer creates wonder, we take it for granted, and use it as a workhorse on which we build other things that do generate wonder (like “why are the laws what they are?”). The things we completely understand we just stop noticing really—but we start noticing other things. Driving a car becomes mundane once you’re good at it—but the road and places you can visit become exciting.
That’s alright! And I’m happy some of it resonated with you.
While science seems to solve a lot of problems, I think it creates new problems as it solves the old ones, and that most of the problems were trying to solve now wouldn’t be as bad if they weren’t amplified by technology. I think science will always both solve and create problems, and that this is unavoidable because science itself is unbiased and free-for-all, and that they problems will get worse since technology is a power-amplifier (by the way, as technology allows for stronger tools over time, society needs more laws and restrictions in order to keep people from being able to harm one another, and if you try to design a video game in which players progress like this you will notice that no player is going to enjoy the end-game)
I also don’t think we should give science the entire credit. The knowledge of humanity is mainly improved by few, extremely intelligent people (Einstein, Newton, Tesla, Hawking, and so on). Even before the scientific method, a few highly influential people accounted for most changes in the world. Most peoples education consist of studying other peoples discoveries and theories, with the hope that they can reach a level where they provide more benefit than harm. This almost makes common people sound superficial, but that’s also because science is getting harder to use. 200 years ago you’d likely be alright if you could operate a shovel and a wheelbarrow, whereas you’re at a disadvantage today if you can’t make it through college.
It is impossible to understand the world. At best you can make a mental model which can predict it because, in some sense, your internal model is a bisimulation (I’m not sure if that’s the right term, but the idea should be close). We refine theories so that they predict the world with less and less error. But the human brain already does this by its own, and intelligence isn’t actually required, nor is understanding. It’s just trial and error, you try things, and if their outcome is good, you keep them, and otherwise you get rid of them. But isn’t this how darwinism works? And how cultures and traditions originate? But they don’t need to know why something works, only that it does. We don’t give tradition much credit because traditional explanations are irrational, but as far as pure results go I think traditions do quite well. Most arguments against tradition aren’t rational but rather moralistic, and society doesn’t seem aware of this, but morality and truth are at great conflict.
Besides the psychological consequences of understanding something (a kind of disillusionment), I think Moloch might be the greater danger. Moloch seems to me a result of legibility, and glorifying science makes people think that legibility (and order) are good-in-themselves, i.e. something where more is always better. This is not the case. I didn’t yet know this when I wrote my previous comment, but the issue is known as “high modernity”. Nassim Taleb has written about how forcing orderliness on society is dangerous, and it’s my personal belief that a lack of legibility is what holds back Moloch. The game theoretical collapse of society is only happening now, in the modern age, since the modern age is what has made it possible, by creating enough order and simplicity (or given the illusion of these) that we now have enough information available that the dilemmas are visible. And now that they’re visible you’re either required to join them or to put yourself at a disadvantage by not joining them. I believe that online social media is unhealthy, whereas real-life socialization is often healthy, because the latter is more chaotic (literally) and has less visible metrics that one could start optimizing for.
To generalize, most undesirable mechanics in life are caused by excess legibility, and by the belief that something singular is good and ought to be optimized for. Rationality, legibility, morality, equality, happiness… Whatever metric we choose, the outcome will be terrible. The alignment problem in AI should perhaps teach us that focusing on anything singular is bad, i.e. that balance is key. But Taoists knew this more than 2500 years ago. I’ve often been told that religious people are just stupid and that the category of people who speak of Heaven/Nature/GNON and warn against “playing god” don’t include hyper intelligent people, but from my limited experience with rationalism and science, this is wrong.
Of course, this community will largely disagree with me, since it believes that society is clearly improving while I believe it’s clearly getting worse.
My reply turned out to be a bit long. Perhaps you can jsut skim it for the aspects you care about?
I think wrapping science in spirituality can work, but for people in this community, it’s probably tempting to think in objective, well-defined tokens rather than thinking in the concepts and subjective tokens which align with how the brain works and with ones own values.
But the rules of the mind and the rules of mathematics are entirely different, and ones “objective” quality of life matters much less for well-being than their subjective worldview does, which is partly why we’re not really getting any happier.
If you try walking, and thinking consciously about every movement you make, you will probably find that walking becomes much harder. Your mind also has its own symbolic language which is much more efficient than mathematics for many things, and science is sufficently inhuman that it’s destructive not just to human errors, but to human nature in general.
You could partly do that by correctly stating that everything is relative, and thus that an absolutist worldview might not be ideal. But moving further than that is difficult as people have an almost religious view of science. They think that the subjective doesn’t matter much, that things are only worth something if you can prove them, that science can discriminate between good and evil or morality and immorality.
People also seem to either reject reality, or desperately attempt to construct a morally correct hypothesis which explains the pattern they see in reality, and then make up excuses as the hypothesis repeatedly fails to predict the future. The idea that people seek the truth is a lie, they can only be objective about things that they don’t care about too much, which is why controversies repeatedly form around things connected to politics and morality. People who don’t realize this don’t even have a basic understanding of themselves (or other people, or humanity in general) which is the actual cause of our problems.
It can when you put the latter first, so that science becomes second. That feeling of wonder literally requires a lack of complete understanding. The people who enjoy science the most are those who know it the least, and they will become disillusioned until they once again meet something that they don’t understand, which causes an explosion in possibilities bigger than what you can wrap your mind around. “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you”, the latter part is only true because we don’t understand quantum science. It’s our good luck that we didn’t manage to “solve” science.
And again, we have to watch out for Goodhart’s law. If you “improve” peoples lives in a way which makes them miserable, then it’s not an improvement, even if the metrics state otherwise. Another reason I dislike scientific views is that I think it results in Moloch. the only winning move is not to play, and the only way to avoid playing is if the optimal solution remains unknown. Psychologically speaking, having full information about something seems really undesirable. Possibly because you do the mental equivalence of when the state reduces human lives to numbers on a spreadsheet.
I’m autistic so thinking objectively has always been easy for me, I appear “better” at scientific thought than most, which is why I’m so conscious of all the pitfalls one can run into. Anyway, I think the many psychological issues appearing in society are directly connected to the domination of scientific thought and the death of religion, and thus that you’re trying to solve the problem with the tools which caused it, and that you only consider this a good idea because you feel something wonderful in science… Which actually exists in yourself (or in your relation to science). The whole “beauty in mathematics” is, I think, the brains reaction to symmetry and harmonious patterns, making it beautiful in the same way that music is beautiful. Of course, a lot of things can be made possible through science, so it’s not incorrect to perceive a lot of hidden value waiting to be discovered. It just has to be for the sake of humanity instead of at the cost of humanity.
But everywhere in society I see a hatred of humanity and attempts of destroying it. Usually in order to make humanity “better” or “more moral”, which translates into destroying aspects of human nature or replacing them with less human ones. An easy example which is not too controversial is destroying “laziness” and making people into efficient workers. Which also hints at the fact that the optimization of “productivity” and the optimization of “humanity” go in two different directions, meaning that we’ll start our own darwinistic process of destroying human aspects (as the genetic “fitness” values inhuman/objective things). Which is ironic as the purpose of technology is improving human life, rather than to, say, replace it.
Thanks for this—and sorry I missed it earlier. I marked a couple of your statements that especially hit me.
Overall great analysis—I’m only be a bit more positive about these things myself. Mainly:
I do think science is a tool that may be qualitatively different than all other tools we have—just looking at the impact it managed to have on the world. And in so far as it is “special,” it’s worth considering whether it can solve our problem
I don’t think it’s ever possible to completely understand the world—and so there will always be “God at the bottom of the glass”—no matter how much we do solve. I also don’t think there is anything bad about completely understanding some aspect of the world—our wonder just transitions to another aspect. Planetary motion no longer creates wonder, we take it for granted, and use it as a workhorse on which we build other things that do generate wonder (like “why are the laws what they are?”). The things we completely understand we just stop noticing really—but we start noticing other things. Driving a car becomes mundane once you’re good at it—but the road and places you can visit become exciting.
That’s alright! And I’m happy some of it resonated with you.
While science seems to solve a lot of problems, I think it creates new problems as it solves the old ones, and that most of the problems were trying to solve now wouldn’t be as bad if they weren’t amplified by technology. I think science will always both solve and create problems, and that this is unavoidable because science itself is unbiased and free-for-all, and that they problems will get worse since technology is a power-amplifier (by the way, as technology allows for stronger tools over time, society needs more laws and restrictions in order to keep people from being able to harm one another, and if you try to design a video game in which players progress like this you will notice that no player is going to enjoy the end-game)
I also don’t think we should give science the entire credit. The knowledge of humanity is mainly improved by few, extremely intelligent people (Einstein, Newton, Tesla, Hawking, and so on). Even before the scientific method, a few highly influential people accounted for most changes in the world. Most peoples education consist of studying other peoples discoveries and theories, with the hope that they can reach a level where they provide more benefit than harm. This almost makes common people sound superficial, but that’s also because science is getting harder to use. 200 years ago you’d likely be alright if you could operate a shovel and a wheelbarrow, whereas you’re at a disadvantage today if you can’t make it through college.
It is impossible to understand the world. At best you can make a mental model which can predict it because, in some sense, your internal model is a bisimulation (I’m not sure if that’s the right term, but the idea should be close). We refine theories so that they predict the world with less and less error. But the human brain already does this by its own, and intelligence isn’t actually required, nor is understanding. It’s just trial and error, you try things, and if their outcome is good, you keep them, and otherwise you get rid of them. But isn’t this how darwinism works? And how cultures and traditions originate? But they don’t need to know why something works, only that it does. We don’t give tradition much credit because traditional explanations are irrational, but as far as pure results go I think traditions do quite well. Most arguments against tradition aren’t rational but rather moralistic, and society doesn’t seem aware of this, but morality and truth are at great conflict.
Besides the psychological consequences of understanding something (a kind of disillusionment), I think Moloch might be the greater danger. Moloch seems to me a result of legibility, and glorifying science makes people think that legibility (and order) are good-in-themselves, i.e. something where more is always better. This is not the case. I didn’t yet know this when I wrote my previous comment, but the issue is known as “high modernity”. Nassim Taleb has written about how forcing orderliness on society is dangerous, and it’s my personal belief that a lack of legibility is what holds back Moloch. The game theoretical collapse of society is only happening now, in the modern age, since the modern age is what has made it possible, by creating enough order and simplicity (or given the illusion of these) that we now have enough information available that the dilemmas are visible. And now that they’re visible you’re either required to join them or to put yourself at a disadvantage by not joining them. I believe that online social media is unhealthy, whereas real-life socialization is often healthy, because the latter is more chaotic (literally) and has less visible metrics that one could start optimizing for.
To generalize, most undesirable mechanics in life are caused by excess legibility, and by the belief that something singular is good and ought to be optimized for. Rationality, legibility, morality, equality, happiness… Whatever metric we choose, the outcome will be terrible. The alignment problem in AI should perhaps teach us that focusing on anything singular is bad, i.e. that balance is key. But Taoists knew this more than 2500 years ago. I’ve often been told that religious people are just stupid and that the category of people who speak of Heaven/Nature/GNON and warn against “playing god” don’t include hyper intelligent people, but from my limited experience with rationalism and science, this is wrong.
Of course, this community will largely disagree with me, since it believes that society is clearly improving while I believe it’s clearly getting worse.