I don’t agree with everything in this post, but I think it’s a true an aunderappreciated point that “if your friend dies in a random accident, that’s actually only a tiny loss accorfing to MWI.”
I usually use this point to ask people to retire the old argument that “Religious people don’t actually belive in their religion, otherwise they would be no more sad at the death of a loved one than if their loved one sailed to Australia.” I think this “should be” true of MWI believers too, and we still feel very sad when a loved one dies in accident.
I don’t think this means people don’t “really belive” in MWI, it’s just that MWI and religious afterlife both start out as System 2 beliefs, and it’s hard to internalize them on System 1. But religious people are already well aware that it’s hard internalize Faith on System 1 (Mere Christianity has a full chapter on the topic), so saying that “they don’t really belueve in their religion because they grieve” is an unfair dig.
Yes, very much agree with those points. Virtue ethics is another angle to come at the same point that there’s a process whereby you internalise system 2 beliefs into system 1. Virtues need to be practised and learned, not just appreciated theoretically. That’s why stoicism has been thought of (e.g. by Pierre Hadot) as promoting ‘spiritual exercises’ rather than systematic philosophy—I draw some further connections to stoicism in the next post in the sequence.
I don’t agree with everything in this post, but I think it’s a true an aunderappreciated point that “if your friend dies in a random accident, that’s actually only a tiny loss accorfing to MWI.”
I usually use this point to ask people to retire the old argument that “Religious people don’t actually belive in their religion, otherwise they would be no more sad at the death of a loved one than if their loved one sailed to Australia.” I think this “should be” true of MWI believers too, and we still feel very sad when a loved one dies in accident.
I don’t think this means people don’t “really belive” in MWI, it’s just that MWI and religious afterlife both start out as System 2 beliefs, and it’s hard to internalize them on System 1. But religious people are already well aware that it’s hard internalize Faith on System 1 (Mere Christianity has a full chapter on the topic), so saying that “they don’t really belueve in their religion because they grieve” is an unfair dig.
Yes, very much agree with those points. Virtue ethics is another angle to come at the same point that there’s a process whereby you internalise system 2 beliefs into system 1. Virtues need to be practised and learned, not just appreciated theoretically. That’s why stoicism has been thought of (e.g. by Pierre Hadot) as promoting ‘spiritual exercises’ rather than systematic philosophy—I draw some further connections to stoicism in the next post in the sequence.