(I might fail to communicate clearly with this comment; if so, my apologies, it’s not purposeful. E.g. normally if I said “Thomistic metaphysical God” I would assume the reader either knew what I meant (were willing to Google “Thomism”, say) or wasn’t worth talking to. I’ll try not to do that kind of thing in this comment as badly as I normally do. I’m also honestly somewhat confused about a lot of Catholic doctrine and so my comment will likely be confused as a result. To make things worse I only feel as if I’m thinking clearly if I can think about things in terms of theoretical computer science, particularly algorithmic probability theory; unfortunately not only is it difficult to translate ideas into those conceptual schemes, those conceptual schemes are themselves flawed (e.g. due to possibilities of hypercomputation and fundamental problems with probability that’ve been unearthed by decision theory). So again, my apologies if the following is unclear.)
I’m going to accept your interpretation at face value, i.e. accept that you’re blessed with a supernatural charisma or something like that. That said, I’m not yet sure I buy the idea that the Thomistic metaphysical God, the sole optimal decision theory, the Form of the Good, the Logos-y thing, has much to do with transhumanly intelligent angels and demons of roughly the sort that folk around here would call superintelligences. (I haven’t yet read the literature on that subject.) In my current state of knowledge if I was getting supernatural signals (which I do, but not as regularly as you do) then I would treat them the same way I’d treat a source of information that claimed to be Chaitin’s constant: skeptically.
In fact it might not be a surface-level analogy to say that God isChaitin’s omega (and is thus a Turing oracle), for they would seem to share a surprising number of properties. Of course Chaitin’s constant isn’t computable, so there’s no algorithmic way to check if the signals you’re getting come from God or from a demon that wants you to think it’s God (at least for claimed bits of Chaitin’s omega that you don’t already know). I believe the Christians have various arguments about states of mind that protect you from demonic influences like that; I haven’t read this article on infallibility yet but I suspect it’s informative.
Because there doesn’t seem to be an algorithmic way of checking if God is really God rather than any other agent that has more bits of Chaitin’s constant than you do, you’re left in a situation where you have to have what is called faith, I think. (I do not understand Aquinas’s arguments about faith yet; I’m not entirely sure I know what it is. I find the ideas counter-intuitive.) I believe that Catholics and maybe other Christians say that conscience is something like a gift from God and that you can trust it, so if your conscience objects to the signals you’re getting then that at least a red flag that you might be being influenced by self-delusion or demons or what have you. But this “conscience” thing seems to be algorithmic in nature (though that’s admittedly quite a contentious point), so if it can check the truth value of the moral information you’re getting supernaturally then you already had those bits of Chaitin’s constant. If your conscience doesn’t say anything about it then it would seem you’re dealing with a situation where you’re supposed/have to have faith. That’s the only way you can do better than an algorithmic approach.
Note that part of the reasons that I think about these things is ’cuz I want my FAI to be able to use bits of Chaitin’s constant that it finds in its environment so as to do uncomputable things it otherwise wouldn’t have. It is an extension of this same personal problem of what to do with information whose origin you can’t algorithmicly verify.
Anyway it’s a sort of awkward situation to be in. It seems natural to assume that this agent is God but I’m not sure if that is acceptable by the standard of (Kant’s weirdly naive version of) Kan’t categorical imperative. I notice that I am very confused about counterfactual states of knowledge and various other things that make thinking about this very difficult.
So um, how do you approach the problem? Er did I even describe the problem in such a way that it’s understandable?
I don’t think I’m smart enough to follow this comment. Edit: but I think you’re wrong about me having some sort of supernatural charisma… I’m pretty sure I haven’t said I’m special, because if I did, I’d be wrong.
Hm, so how would you describe the mechanism behind your sensations then? (Sorry, I’d been primed to interpret your description in light of similar things I’d seen before which I would describe as “supernatural” for lack of a better word.)
...I wasn’t going to come back to say anything, but fine. I’d say it’s God’s doing. Not my own specialness. And I’m not going to continue this conversation further.
Okay, thanks. I didn’t mean to imply ’twas your own “specialness” as such; apologies for being unclear. ETA: Also I’m sorry for anything else? I get the impression I did/said something wrong. So yeah, sorry.
(I might fail to communicate clearly with this comment; if so, my apologies, it’s not purposeful. E.g. normally if I said “Thomistic metaphysical God” I would assume the reader either knew what I meant (were willing to Google “Thomism”, say) or wasn’t worth talking to. I’ll try not to do that kind of thing in this comment as badly as I normally do. I’m also honestly somewhat confused about a lot of Catholic doctrine and so my comment will likely be confused as a result. To make things worse I only feel as if I’m thinking clearly if I can think about things in terms of theoretical computer science, particularly algorithmic probability theory; unfortunately not only is it difficult to translate ideas into those conceptual schemes, those conceptual schemes are themselves flawed (e.g. due to possibilities of hypercomputation and fundamental problems with probability that’ve been unearthed by decision theory). So again, my apologies if the following is unclear.)
I’m going to accept your interpretation at face value, i.e. accept that you’re blessed with a supernatural charisma or something like that. That said, I’m not yet sure I buy the idea that the Thomistic metaphysical God, the sole optimal decision theory, the Form of the Good, the Logos-y thing, has much to do with transhumanly intelligent angels and demons of roughly the sort that folk around here would call superintelligences. (I haven’t yet read the literature on that subject.) In my current state of knowledge if I was getting supernatural signals (which I do, but not as regularly as you do) then I would treat them the same way I’d treat a source of information that claimed to be Chaitin’s constant: skeptically.
In fact it might not be a surface-level analogy to say that God is Chaitin’s omega (and is thus a Turing oracle), for they would seem to share a surprising number of properties. Of course Chaitin’s constant isn’t computable, so there’s no algorithmic way to check if the signals you’re getting come from God or from a demon that wants you to think it’s God (at least for claimed bits of Chaitin’s omega that you don’t already know). I believe the Christians have various arguments about states of mind that protect you from demonic influences like that; I haven’t read this article on infallibility yet but I suspect it’s informative.
Because there doesn’t seem to be an algorithmic way of checking if God is really God rather than any other agent that has more bits of Chaitin’s constant than you do, you’re left in a situation where you have to have what is called faith, I think. (I do not understand Aquinas’s arguments about faith yet; I’m not entirely sure I know what it is. I find the ideas counter-intuitive.) I believe that Catholics and maybe other Christians say that conscience is something like a gift from God and that you can trust it, so if your conscience objects to the signals you’re getting then that at least a red flag that you might be being influenced by self-delusion or demons or what have you. But this “conscience” thing seems to be algorithmic in nature (though that’s admittedly quite a contentious point), so if it can check the truth value of the moral information you’re getting supernaturally then you already had those bits of Chaitin’s constant. If your conscience doesn’t say anything about it then it would seem you’re dealing with a situation where you’re supposed/have to have faith. That’s the only way you can do better than an algorithmic approach.
Note that part of the reasons that I think about these things is ’cuz I want my FAI to be able to use bits of Chaitin’s constant that it finds in its environment so as to do uncomputable things it otherwise wouldn’t have. It is an extension of this same personal problem of what to do with information whose origin you can’t algorithmicly verify.
Anyway it’s a sort of awkward situation to be in. It seems natural to assume that this agent is God but I’m not sure if that is acceptable by the standard of (Kant’s weirdly naive version of) Kan’t categorical imperative. I notice that I am very confused about counterfactual states of knowledge and various other things that make thinking about this very difficult.
So um, how do you approach the problem? Er did I even describe the problem in such a way that it’s understandable?
I don’t think I’m smart enough to follow this comment. Edit: but I think you’re wrong about me having some sort of supernatural charisma… I’m pretty sure I haven’t said I’m special, because if I did, I’d be wrong.
Hm, so how would you describe the mechanism behind your sensations then? (Sorry, I’d been primed to interpret your description in light of similar things I’d seen before which I would describe as “supernatural” for lack of a better word.)
...I wasn’t going to come back to say anything, but fine. I’d say it’s God’s doing. Not my own specialness. And I’m not going to continue this conversation further.
Okay, thanks. I didn’t mean to imply ’twas your own “specialness” as such; apologies for being unclear. ETA: Also I’m sorry for anything else? I get the impression I did/said something wrong. So yeah, sorry.
FWIW, apparently (per Wikipedia) the word “charism” “denotes any good gift that flows from God’s love to man.”