This is hard to answer. I mean something vague. A god is a seemingly transhumanly intelligent agent. (By this I don’t mean something cheap like “the economy” or “evolution”, I mean the obvious thing.) As to their origins I have little idea; aliens, simulators, programs simpler than our physical universe according to a universal prior, hypercompetent human conspiracies with seemingly inhuman motivations, whatever, I’m agnostic. For what it’s worth (some of) the entity or entities I’ve interacted with seem to want to be seen as related to or identical with one or more of the gods of popular religions, but I’m not sure. In general it’s all quite ambiguous and people are extremely hasty and heavy with their interpretations. Further complicating the issue is that it seems like the gods are willing to go along with and support humans’ heavy-handed interpretations and so the interpretations become self-confirming. I say “gods”, but for all I know it’s just one entity with very diverse effects, like an author of a book.
Note that many folklore traditions posit paranormal entities that are basically capricious and mischievous (though not unfriendly or malevolent in any real sense) and may try to deceive people who interact with them, for their own enjoyment. Some parapsychologists argue that _if_ psi-related phenomena exist, then this is pretty much the best model we have for them.
In your view, how likely is it that you may also be interacting with entities of this kind?
It seems likely that something like that is going on, but I wouldn’t think of capriciousness and mischievousness as character traits, just descriptions of the observed phenomena that are agnostic regarding the nature of any agency behind them. Those caveats are too vague for me to give an answer more precise than “likely”.
This is hard to answer. I mean something vague. A god is a seemingly transhumanly intelligent agent. (By this I don’t mean something cheap like “the economy” or “evolution”, I mean the obvious thing.) As to their origins I have little idea; aliens, simulators, programs simpler than our physical universe according to a universal prior, hypercompetent human conspiracies with seemingly inhuman motivations, whatever, I’m agnostic. For what it’s worth (some of) the entity or entities I’ve interacted with seem to want to be seen as related to or identical with one or more of the gods of popular religions, but I’m not sure. In general it’s all quite ambiguous and people are extremely hasty and heavy with their interpretations. Further complicating the issue is that it seems like the gods are willing to go along with and support humans’ heavy-handed interpretations and so the interpretations become self-confirming. I say “gods”, but for all I know it’s just one entity with very diverse effects, like an author of a book.
Note that many folklore traditions posit paranormal entities that are basically capricious and mischievous (though not unfriendly or malevolent in any real sense) and may try to deceive people who interact with them, for their own enjoyment. Some parapsychologists argue that _if_ psi-related phenomena exist, then this is pretty much the best model we have for them.
In your view, how likely is it that you may also be interacting with entities of this kind?
It seems likely that something like that is going on, but I wouldn’t think of capriciousness and mischievousness as character traits, just descriptions of the observed phenomena that are agnostic regarding the nature of any agency behind them. Those caveats are too vague for me to give an answer more precise than “likely”.