It also seems that I was always thinking like that. But I don’t really know if that is really the case or if it’s just the way memory works. Anyway, I’m going to tell the things I remember that may be relevant.
Everything started with reading. I was taught to read since I was three and I liked it almost immediately. You don’t need to ask your parents to read you what was next in the story. That’s great! Also, dinosaurs. I really liked dinosaurs and I got quite a few books about them. When I went to the first grade, I’ve been somewhat familiar with the geochronology, when did different dinosaurs live and so on. I’ve also been given a great book about the history of biology, and I was a fan of J. L. Cuvier. The school I got into had a very nice biology classroom, in our first day they let us look into a microscope and showed us a few other interesting things. When I came home I asked my parents to buy me a biology textbook. My father decided botanics was boring, so he bought me a really interesting seventh grade zoology textbook. A few results (apart from lots of fun I got) was that I had a grasp of evolution at seven and also that I expected the world to make sense and the science to be able to discover and understand it. That was also helped by getting a few books about the history of electricity and similar stuff.
The middle of the nineties in Russia was a so-called Spiritual Revolution. With the government control of ideology null and void, the media space was filled with conspiracy theories, cults and ancient miracles. While I didn’t doubt their existance, as a lot of sane people were convinced these were true, I was sure they still somehow make sense. This feeling was one of the reasons I really got into one New Age book I’m not going to name. Well, my trust in books that were not obviously fairytales was the other one.
Actually, the book was surprisingly reasonable. The main idea, aside from a description of a cool Planescape-like setting that was a half of the book went somehow like this: people sometimes have mystical experiences. These experiences are evidence for existence of their substance. These experiences together with the observable natural phenomena with a lot of traditions, tales and distortions compose a religion. But to remember the experiences right, to describe them using usual human terms and to make sense of them is so difficult that the kernel of truth is actually quite small. There are only two ways—to try getting these experiences yourself (something like they call a mystic’s path) and to collect experiences of a lot of different cultures and search for the common features that are not explained by common human biases like anthropomorphism (an occultist’s path). This made much more sense than just “our religion is the right one, all the others are wrong”.
A completely unrelated features of that time were a Spiderman cartoon and a book about biotechnology I was given. They told me there is a cool thing called genetics (the history of biology book was really old, and the last stories there were XIX century), so I went to the library to learn about it. That was probably the time I got my transhumanist leanings. Fifth grade, probably.
The New Age book was surprisingly reductionistic, which was really nice for a young science fan. There was talking about the worlds with different number of dimensions (I looked up the geometry later) and parallel time streams. The author believed evolution was true. Souls were matter, there were laws for them, and even the afterlife was decided by the soul’s “density” where it got into a place with the most similar spiritual “density”. With all the caveats that this “density” is a methaphor. And the author explicitly told that if science tells us he was wrong anywhere, then he was wrong, and this admission was a huge point in his favor. I guess in my childhood this book has played the role of sci-fi.
I wasn’t sure I will be able to achieve any mystical experiences myself. And my grandmother, who was the best conversation partner about this kind of stuff ever was often saying that I shouldn’t experiment on myself before later, so out of respect I didn’t. And I was curious and I really don’t believe most people here aren’t going to go and investigate this kind of info if they believe it to be real. So the second path was the preferred one. I never really thought that magic is something unintelligible in principle, just something that the wizard already understands and I don’t. Yet.
So yes, I was investigating these things a lot. Well, until I finally found that it’s quite easy to make people believe stuff without a shred of evidence as long as it makes a good story, moves their soul and is comfortable. Or frightening, that also works. And the spiritual experiences have a common thing. That is, they’re human, and they may be and probably are some common bugs in human algorithms. They can even be induced by chemicals, of all things! That was also the time I’ve reinvented memetics. Which explained a lot of common features of the biggest religions. A little bit later I learned about the existence of creationists. No, really. I’ve heard about them before, but I was sure there wasn’t anyone left, except maybe in some really wild places. I’ve joked I thought creationists were a tale mothers use to scare little biologists. This was a really vivid demonstration how people can be wrong about simple stuff. Add to this the info about the contemporary cults believeing their leaders do miracles like ressurecting people. If you remember my relations with the evolution theory you’re going to understand I was afraid I may be wrong about something as simple as the young-earthers or these cultists are. In the college I tried to learn about the best reasons to believe in God and found them… well… not convincing at all. So, epistemic rationality, learning about human biases and atheism. And there’s probably no really cool afterlife for everyone after they pay for their sins. And that seems like a problem that needs a solution.
It also seems that I was always thinking like that. But I don’t really know if that is really the case or if it’s just the way memory works. Anyway, I’m going to tell the things I remember that may be relevant. Everything started with reading. I was taught to read since I was three and I liked it almost immediately. You don’t need to ask your parents to read you what was next in the story. That’s great! Also, dinosaurs. I really liked dinosaurs and I got quite a few books about them. When I went to the first grade, I’ve been somewhat familiar with the geochronology, when did different dinosaurs live and so on. I’ve also been given a great book about the history of biology, and I was a fan of J. L. Cuvier. The school I got into had a very nice biology classroom, in our first day they let us look into a microscope and showed us a few other interesting things. When I came home I asked my parents to buy me a biology textbook. My father decided botanics was boring, so he bought me a really interesting seventh grade zoology textbook. A few results (apart from lots of fun I got) was that I had a grasp of evolution at seven and also that I expected the world to make sense and the science to be able to discover and understand it. That was also helped by getting a few books about the history of electricity and similar stuff. The middle of the nineties in Russia was a so-called Spiritual Revolution. With the government control of ideology null and void, the media space was filled with conspiracy theories, cults and ancient miracles. While I didn’t doubt their existance, as a lot of sane people were convinced these were true, I was sure they still somehow make sense. This feeling was one of the reasons I really got into one New Age book I’m not going to name. Well, my trust in books that were not obviously fairytales was the other one. Actually, the book was surprisingly reasonable. The main idea, aside from a description of a cool Planescape-like setting that was a half of the book went somehow like this: people sometimes have mystical experiences. These experiences are evidence for existence of their substance. These experiences together with the observable natural phenomena with a lot of traditions, tales and distortions compose a religion. But to remember the experiences right, to describe them using usual human terms and to make sense of them is so difficult that the kernel of truth is actually quite small. There are only two ways—to try getting these experiences yourself (something like they call a mystic’s path) and to collect experiences of a lot of different cultures and search for the common features that are not explained by common human biases like anthropomorphism (an occultist’s path). This made much more sense than just “our religion is the right one, all the others are wrong”. A completely unrelated features of that time were a Spiderman cartoon and a book about biotechnology I was given. They told me there is a cool thing called genetics (the history of biology book was really old, and the last stories there were XIX century), so I went to the library to learn about it. That was probably the time I got my transhumanist leanings. Fifth grade, probably. The New Age book was surprisingly reductionistic, which was really nice for a young science fan. There was talking about the worlds with different number of dimensions (I looked up the geometry later) and parallel time streams. The author believed evolution was true. Souls were matter, there were laws for them, and even the afterlife was decided by the soul’s “density” where it got into a place with the most similar spiritual “density”. With all the caveats that this “density” is a methaphor. And the author explicitly told that if science tells us he was wrong anywhere, then he was wrong, and this admission was a huge point in his favor. I guess in my childhood this book has played the role of sci-fi. I wasn’t sure I will be able to achieve any mystical experiences myself. And my grandmother, who was the best conversation partner about this kind of stuff ever was often saying that I shouldn’t experiment on myself before later, so out of respect I didn’t. And I was curious and I really don’t believe most people here aren’t going to go and investigate this kind of info if they believe it to be real. So the second path was the preferred one. I never really thought that magic is something unintelligible in principle, just something that the wizard already understands and I don’t. Yet. So yes, I was investigating these things a lot. Well, until I finally found that it’s quite easy to make people believe stuff without a shred of evidence as long as it makes a good story, moves their soul and is comfortable. Or frightening, that also works. And the spiritual experiences have a common thing. That is, they’re human, and they may be and probably are some common bugs in human algorithms. They can even be induced by chemicals, of all things! That was also the time I’ve reinvented memetics. Which explained a lot of common features of the biggest religions. A little bit later I learned about the existence of creationists. No, really. I’ve heard about them before, but I was sure there wasn’t anyone left, except maybe in some really wild places. I’ve joked I thought creationists were a tale mothers use to scare little biologists. This was a really vivid demonstration how people can be wrong about simple stuff. Add to this the info about the contemporary cults believeing their leaders do miracles like ressurecting people. If you remember my relations with the evolution theory you’re going to understand I was afraid I may be wrong about something as simple as the young-earthers or these cultists are. In the college I tried to learn about the best reasons to believe in God and found them… well… not convincing at all. So, epistemic rationality, learning about human biases and atheism. And there’s probably no really cool afterlife for everyone after they pay for their sins. And that seems like a problem that needs a solution.