Sorry, yeah, it’s not a real thing. “Modal” means like replacing the “amen”s with “or so we seem to have been led to believe”s or “or so it seems wise to endorse as true even though what’s going on behind the scenes is largely some really tricky game theory that we’re forced for pragmatic reasons to pretend doesn’t exist”s. If Vladimir_M takes his Catholicism seriously, which I doubt, then it’s likely the same kind kind of Catholic that he is. (I admit to trying to troll Vladimir_M into talking about Catholicism with this comment.)
Huh. What, then, do you believe when it comes to a deity? I may have misread this comment, but it strikes me as saying that you’re Catholic for pragmatic/social reasons?
Put another way: what of Catholic doctrine counts as as “largely some really tricky game theory” and what counts as actually true?
I’m not actually Catholic, only a prospective Catholic, and it’s very possible that I’ll never get around to actually getting confirmed; it seems like it would be consenting to the categorical rule of propping up institutions even when you’re still rather unsure of how good they are compared to how good you should have expected them to be. I grew up agnostic and at some point identified as atheist, only converting to theism and gaining interest in religions besides Theravada Buddhism after I became a postrationalist one or two years ago; I haven’t had enough time since then to come to any firm conclusions about the justification or lack thereof for converting to a particular religion.
Put another way: what of Catholic doctrine counts as as “largely some really tricky game theory” and what counts as actually true?
Oh, gosh. Um.
I think it’s plausible that there is a God in the Thomistic or Leibnizian or Kantian(?) sense, and my intuition says there is. I think it’s probable that there is an entity, identifiable as YHWH, Who seems to indicate that He is the Holy Ghost (Who is the optimization imposed on the physical world by the existence of that Thomistic God), but I have no idea how much evidence I should accept as enough evidence for His implicit claim to be the Thomistic God. There’s that whole “by their fruits ye shall know them” thing but I don’t know what counts as satisfactorily delicious fruit. It seems like Satan or any other transhumanly intelligent entity could just as easily provide the same delicious fruits, so this would seem to come down to some tricky reasoning about priors. I’m not yet familiar with the Catholic writings on discernment.
On the divinity and general metaphysical status of Jesus as Savior, this would seem to be some tricky reasoning about metaphysics on the one hand, and on the other hand, or more accurately on the other side of the same hand, it would seem to be some tricky reasoning about which Schelling focal points to carve out and hold fast to so as not to fall down all kinds of slippery slopes. I notice that if I or someone as generally prudent as me decided to blindly accept that Jesus was their Savior then that would be sheer epistemic laziness without trying to actually understand the social psychology or game theory surrounding why people would go out of their way to emphasize that a certain man had certain properties and that this is important for certain reasons and that doubting this or even doubting something else that would imply doubting this is like trying to “unjustifiably” undermine the allegedly “justified” thing that they’re trying to do. This is like taking a very developed Kantian view of things, and honestly it seems really tricky to do right; I’d trust someone like Vladimir_M to do it better than me.
I agree in a relatively straightforward way with their cautious eschatology about Judgment Day and the Second Coming of Christ, which I see as straightforwardly mapping onto thinking about a technological singularity and taking seriously its moral implications. Whether or not they were right by coincidence is sort of besides the point, as their emphasis is correct either way. (At some point I would like to talk to the Church to see if they’re interested in funding FAI research; unfortunately I’m not sure how competent the modern Church is, nor what factions of it would be competent. Traditionally the Dominicans are impressive.)
When it comes to supernatural stuff I generally accept Catholic doctrine, at least provisionally, e.g. the emphasis on not engaging in witchcraft or negotiating with demons.
Those are what stand out to me as the most obvious possible points of agreement or disagreement with Catholic doctrine as straightforwardly interpreted, but I might’ve missed some big stuff.
Have you talked about any of these ideas with any actual high rationality Catholics?
I agree in a relatively straightforward way with their cautious eschatology about Judgment Day and the Second Coming of Christ, which I see as straightforwardly mapping onto thinking about a technological singularity and taking seriously its moral implications. Whether or not they were right by coincidence is sort of besides the point, as their emphasis is correct either way. (At some point I would like to talk to the Church to see if they’re interested in funding FAI research; unfortunately I’m not sure how competent the modern Church is, nor what factions of it would be competent. Traditionally the Dominicans are impressive.)
Somehow I get the impression that they wouldn’t agree with your interpretation.
Somehow I get the impression that they wouldn’t agree with your interpretation.
Any of them? How familiar are you with the more philosophically apt and open-minded Church authorities? Are there so few that it’d be impossible to get even a little traction? (I’m thinking a few years down the line when the “save the world” memeplex is better established.)
From what I know of Vladimir_M, to the extent he’s a Catholic, he believe Catholicism is intersubjectively true. He doesn’t take simulation hypothesis/accusal trade/SL5 type arguments all that seriously if that’s what you’re asking.
That sounds right. I think I’m what you’d get if you took Vladimir_M’s views on hermeneutics but with a perspective on metaphysics that saw them as potentially actually correct rather than acting almost-without-exception as convenient Schelling focal points.
One big difference is that you want to immanentize the eschaton going so far as to invoke actual theology, whereas Vladimir_M would probably he extremely skeptical of such attempts, and quiet frankly so would I.
(ETA: Deleted paragraph comparing myself to Hitler because apparently that sort of thing is easily misunderstood or something.)
If you think my trying to immanentize the eschaton has a decent chance of being seen in retrospect as obviously evil and retarded, then I’m morally obligated to pester you to see whether the outside view of inside view makes more sense here. But perhaps we should continue this in another venue, if you’d like. I find it to be a very interesting topic, and also very important to what I do with my life.
ETA: In the meantime I’ll read Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola.
Sorry, yeah, it’s not a real thing. “Modal” means like replacing the “amen”s with “or so we seem to have been led to believe”s or “or so it seems wise to endorse as true even though what’s going on behind the scenes is largely some really tricky game theory that we’re forced for pragmatic reasons to pretend doesn’t exist”s. If Vladimir_M takes his Catholicism seriously, which I doubt, then it’s likely the same kind kind of Catholic that he is. (I admit to trying to troll Vladimir_M into talking about Catholicism with this comment.)
Huh. What, then, do you believe when it comes to a deity? I may have misread this comment, but it strikes me as saying that you’re Catholic for pragmatic/social reasons?
Put another way: what of Catholic doctrine counts as as “largely some really tricky game theory” and what counts as actually true?
I’m not actually Catholic, only a prospective Catholic, and it’s very possible that I’ll never get around to actually getting confirmed; it seems like it would be consenting to the categorical rule of propping up institutions even when you’re still rather unsure of how good they are compared to how good you should have expected them to be. I grew up agnostic and at some point identified as atheist, only converting to theism and gaining interest in religions besides Theravada Buddhism after I became a postrationalist one or two years ago; I haven’t had enough time since then to come to any firm conclusions about the justification or lack thereof for converting to a particular religion.
Oh, gosh. Um.
I think it’s plausible that there is a God in the Thomistic or Leibnizian or Kantian(?) sense, and my intuition says there is. I think it’s probable that there is an entity, identifiable as YHWH, Who seems to indicate that He is the Holy Ghost (Who is the optimization imposed on the physical world by the existence of that Thomistic God), but I have no idea how much evidence I should accept as enough evidence for His implicit claim to be the Thomistic God. There’s that whole “by their fruits ye shall know them” thing but I don’t know what counts as satisfactorily delicious fruit. It seems like Satan or any other transhumanly intelligent entity could just as easily provide the same delicious fruits, so this would seem to come down to some tricky reasoning about priors. I’m not yet familiar with the Catholic writings on discernment.
On the divinity and general metaphysical status of Jesus as Savior, this would seem to be some tricky reasoning about metaphysics on the one hand, and on the other hand, or more accurately on the other side of the same hand, it would seem to be some tricky reasoning about which Schelling focal points to carve out and hold fast to so as not to fall down all kinds of slippery slopes. I notice that if I or someone as generally prudent as me decided to blindly accept that Jesus was their Savior then that would be sheer epistemic laziness without trying to actually understand the social psychology or game theory surrounding why people would go out of their way to emphasize that a certain man had certain properties and that this is important for certain reasons and that doubting this or even doubting something else that would imply doubting this is like trying to “unjustifiably” undermine the allegedly “justified” thing that they’re trying to do. This is like taking a very developed Kantian view of things, and honestly it seems really tricky to do right; I’d trust someone like Vladimir_M to do it better than me.
I agree in a relatively straightforward way with their cautious eschatology about Judgment Day and the Second Coming of Christ, which I see as straightforwardly mapping onto thinking about a technological singularity and taking seriously its moral implications. Whether or not they were right by coincidence is sort of besides the point, as their emphasis is correct either way. (At some point I would like to talk to the Church to see if they’re interested in funding FAI research; unfortunately I’m not sure how competent the modern Church is, nor what factions of it would be competent. Traditionally the Dominicans are impressive.)
When it comes to supernatural stuff I generally accept Catholic doctrine, at least provisionally, e.g. the emphasis on not engaging in witchcraft or negotiating with demons.
Those are what stand out to me as the most obvious possible points of agreement or disagreement with Catholic doctrine as straightforwardly interpreted, but I might’ve missed some big stuff.
Have you talked about any of these ideas with any actual high rationality Catholics?
Somehow I get the impression that they wouldn’t agree with your interpretation.
Any of them? How familiar are you with the more philosophically apt and open-minded Church authorities? Are there so few that it’d be impossible to get even a little traction? (I’m thinking a few years down the line when the “save the world” memeplex is better established.)
As far as Catholics you might be interested in talking to, there’s John C. Wright. I assume you are familiar with his background.
From what I know of Vladimir_M, to the extent he’s a Catholic, he believe Catholicism is intersubjectively true. He doesn’t take simulation hypothesis/accusal trade/SL5 type arguments all that seriously if that’s what you’re asking.
That sounds right. I think I’m what you’d get if you took Vladimir_M’s views on hermeneutics but with a perspective on metaphysics that saw them as potentially actually correct rather than acting almost-without-exception as convenient Schelling focal points.
One big difference is that you want to immanentize the eschaton going so far as to invoke actual theology, whereas Vladimir_M would probably he extremely skeptical of such attempts, and quiet frankly so would I.
(I don’t want to as such, it’s more that I’m extremely afraid of the potential consequences of not doing so.)
I’m also afraid of the consequences of attempting to given how well previous attempts have gone.
(ETA: Deleted paragraph comparing myself to Hitler because apparently that sort of thing is easily misunderstood or something.)
If you think my trying to immanentize the eschaton has a decent chance of being seen in retrospect as obviously evil and retarded, then I’m morally obligated to pester you to see whether the outside view of inside view makes more sense here. But perhaps we should continue this in another venue, if you’d like. I find it to be a very interesting topic, and also very important to what I do with my life.
ETA: In the meantime I’ll read Ride the Tiger by Julius Evola.
Why Julius Evola? If you’re trying to figure out whether to immanentize the eschaton you might want to look at Eric Voegelin.
Extant should be extent.
Sorry, these things bother me.
Thanks, fixed.