Can you talk a bit more on this? I’m curious to know how you imagine talking yourself into believing something you don’t believe, like some kind of double-think. And it seems avoiding scary thoughts is not a habit a rationalist would want to encourage.
Ok, let’s spend a minute to construct a rational theology. At first, we need to prove that God exists. There are several independent ways to prove it:
1) Simulation argument. We are most likely are living in the world created by some form Superintelligence. It may create miracles, afterlife, whatever, and prevent us from proving that we live in the simulation. If we accept simulation argument, we also should accept multilevel simulation model, with higherst possible superintelligence on the highest level.
2) Mathematical Universe Platonia. If all possible math objects exist, then most complex objects exist too, more over, complex objects are dominating by the number between all possible math objects (like large digit are dominating on smaller digits). Thus most complex superintelligent computer programs must dominate as pure mathematical objects (programs are mathematical objects). However, it contradicts observations: we see a rather simple world. Solution could be that each superintelligence in platonia create multilevel simulation, so most observers any ways are downstream of simulations.
3) All the hell break loose if we accept Platonia, because not only mathematical ideas must exist, but also any linguistically presentable ideas. Thus in Platonia idea of God is equal to the God existence.
4) Forget Platomia and Simulation. But anyway we are going to create benevolent superintelligence during AI self-improvement in the next decades. It will be indistinguishable from God. However, it will exist only future half of infinity.
5) Forget Superintelligence. If some exotic interpretations of QM are true, and consciousness cause collapse, we need one and only one instance of consciousness to do so for all possible universes. Surprisingly, it is me: I am the only consciousness being in the world, all others are p-zomby. (High danger of mania of grandiosity detected.)
6) The same way anthropic principle in its worst form says that all visible universe must exist only for me to be able to ask a question what the fuck I am doing here. It implies some form of the illusion of retrocausality. (High danger of mania of grandiosity detected.)
7) Fuck off anthropic principle and QM. Let’s turn to qualia. There is only two solution to dualism: either qualia don’t exist at all (and it contradicts my experience), or qualia is the only substance that actually exist. In the last case, we have some ocean of possible subjective experiences and Panpsychism rules.
Now we have too many proofs that God exist, and they are rather contradictory. Surely, if I spent more time, I could generate more ideas like this, and now it will be rather improbable that at least one of them is completely untrue.
In the next part, I may try steelmaning Christian theology.
The panpsychism argument is probably the most compelling one among all of these. The problem with it is that if percepts are the basic substance of the universe howcome we have experiences that we cannot predict? It implies our future experiences are determined by something outside of our own minds.
One way to answer it is to turn to the solipsistic way—that is, there is no outside universe, but there are laws which convert one experience into the next one. I would not try to defend the point, as it has one clear weakness: it is not parsimonious, as it requires extremely complex laws to convert one experience in the next, and, more over, these laws are exactly the outside world, after some normalisation.
That is my view precisely. One way out is to assert that there is at least one mind responsible for providing the percepts available to other minds, and from its perspective nothing is unknown and it fills the function of the “outside world”.
Can you talk a bit more on this? I’m curious to know how you imagine talking yourself into believing something you don’t believe, like some kind of double-think. And it seems avoiding scary thoughts is not a habit a rationalist would want to encourage.
Ok, let’s spend a minute to construct a rational theology. At first, we need to prove that God exists. There are several independent ways to prove it:
1) Simulation argument. We are most likely are living in the world created by some form Superintelligence. It may create miracles, afterlife, whatever, and prevent us from proving that we live in the simulation. If we accept simulation argument, we also should accept multilevel simulation model, with higherst possible superintelligence on the highest level.
2) Mathematical Universe Platonia. If all possible math objects exist, then most complex objects exist too, more over, complex objects are dominating by the number between all possible math objects (like large digit are dominating on smaller digits). Thus most complex superintelligent computer programs must dominate as pure mathematical objects (programs are mathematical objects). However, it contradicts observations: we see a rather simple world. Solution could be that each superintelligence in platonia create multilevel simulation, so most observers any ways are downstream of simulations.
3) All the hell break loose if we accept Platonia, because not only mathematical ideas must exist, but also any linguistically presentable ideas. Thus in Platonia idea of God is equal to the God existence.
4) Forget Platomia and Simulation. But anyway we are going to create benevolent superintelligence during AI self-improvement in the next decades. It will be indistinguishable from God. However, it will exist only future half of infinity.
5) Forget Superintelligence. If some exotic interpretations of QM are true, and consciousness cause collapse, we need one and only one instance of consciousness to do so for all possible universes. Surprisingly, it is me: I am the only consciousness being in the world, all others are p-zomby. (High danger of mania of grandiosity detected.)
6) The same way anthropic principle in its worst form says that all visible universe must exist only for me to be able to ask a question what the fuck I am doing here. It implies some form of the illusion of retrocausality. (High danger of mania of grandiosity detected.)
7) Fuck off anthropic principle and QM. Let’s turn to qualia. There is only two solution to dualism: either qualia don’t exist at all (and it contradicts my experience), or qualia is the only substance that actually exist. In the last case, we have some ocean of possible subjective experiences and Panpsychism rules.
Now we have too many proofs that God exist, and they are rather contradictory. Surely, if I spent more time, I could generate more ideas like this, and now it will be rather improbable that at least one of them is completely untrue.
In the next part, I may try steelmaning Christian theology.
The panpsychism argument is probably the most compelling one among all of these. The problem with it is that if percepts are the basic substance of the universe howcome we have experiences that we cannot predict? It implies our future experiences are determined by something outside of our own minds.
Or that our minds define a probability distribution over future experiences.
One way to answer it is to turn to the solipsistic way—that is, there is no outside universe, but there are laws which convert one experience into the next one. I would not try to defend the point, as it has one clear weakness: it is not parsimonious, as it requires extremely complex laws to convert one experience in the next, and, more over, these laws are exactly the outside world, after some normalisation.
these laws are exactly the outside world
That is my view precisely. One way out is to assert that there is at least one mind responsible for providing the percepts available to other minds, and from its perspective nothing is unknown and it fills the function of the “outside world”.