(Commenters: talking about the ‘supernatural’ in terms of metaphysics is metaphysically interesting but phenomenologically speaking it just clouds the issue unnecessarily. The way most people actually use the concept is just ‘weird things happening that would require human or transhuman agency, in situations where there’s no good reason to suspect human agency’. Talking about reductionism &c. is missing the point—it doesn’t matter whether the agency comes from an engineered superintelligence or an “ontologically fundamental” god, what matters is there’s non-human agency around. Note that all reports of supernatural phenomena can be explained “naturally” by superintelligences, simulators, highly advanced aliens, &c., all of which seem not-unlikely in a big universe. The improbability stems from the necessity of their having seemingly bizarre motivations; the mechanisms themselves, however, aren’t fantastically improbable.)
Hew-mons have a long standing tendency to see agency where it does not belong, from hearth gods, to lightning bolts thrown by Zeus, to suspecting a saber tooth behind every rustling tree. That is a priori reason not to assume agency prematurely.
There are conditions (arbitrarily chosen example: prodromal schizophreny …) that amplify that bias; from hearing voices to seeing hidden messages. While a big (infinite) universe may contain all sorts of curious phenomena, from cosmic planetaria to Hubble volumes in which a deity reigns, the question becomes not “who can list the most agenty hypotheses”, but instead “why privilege agenty hypotheses, why be invested in them in the first place”, a reason for which has historically been the human psyche.
I agreed with this at first, but actually, no. Belief in the supernatural doesn’t require belief in gods, spirits or any non-human agents. You could just believe that humans have some supernatural abilities like reading each other’s minds. When trying to explain these abilties, only reductionists will conclude that there’s some third party agent like a simulator setting things up. Non-reductionists will just accept that being able to read minds is part of how this ontologically fundamental mind stuff works.
(Commenters: talking about the ‘supernatural’ in terms of metaphysics is metaphysically interesting but phenomenologically speaking it just clouds the issue unnecessarily. The way most people actually use the concept is just ‘weird things happening that would require human or transhuman agency, in situations where there’s no good reason to suspect human agency’. Talking about reductionism &c. is missing the point—it doesn’t matter whether the agency comes from an engineered superintelligence or an “ontologically fundamental” god, what matters is there’s non-human agency around. Note that all reports of supernatural phenomena can be explained “naturally” by superintelligences, simulators, highly advanced aliens, &c., all of which seem not-unlikely in a big universe. The improbability stems from the necessity of their having seemingly bizarre motivations; the mechanisms themselves, however, aren’t fantastically improbable.)
Hew-mons have a long standing tendency to see agency where it does not belong, from hearth gods, to lightning bolts thrown by Zeus, to suspecting a saber tooth behind every rustling tree. That is a priori reason not to assume agency prematurely.
There are conditions (arbitrarily chosen example: prodromal schizophreny …) that amplify that bias; from hearing voices to seeing hidden messages. While a big (infinite) universe may contain all sorts of curious phenomena, from cosmic planetaria to Hubble volumes in which a deity reigns, the question becomes not “who can list the most agenty hypotheses”, but instead “why privilege agenty hypotheses, why be invested in them in the first place”, a reason for which has historically been the human psyche.
I agreed with this at first, but actually, no. Belief in the supernatural doesn’t require belief in gods, spirits or any non-human agents. You could just believe that humans have some supernatural abilities like reading each other’s minds. When trying to explain these abilties, only reductionists will conclude that there’s some third party agent like a simulator setting things up. Non-reductionists will just accept that being able to read minds is part of how this ontologically fundamental mind stuff works.