I think I prefer Will Newsome’s world to Eliezer Yudkowsky’s world.
I have never been clear what Will Newsome’s world is. Is he writing about it more fully somewhere else? But my almost invariable experience is that things of which I hear tantalising hints turn out, when they turn out to be anything, to be merely interesting-if-true, along with alien abductions, the Loch Ness Monster, and interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Eliezer’s world is as clear and inviting as a summer day in comparison (although I would not extend that to what all of his admirers make of it). ETA: I’m leaving out his views on fooming AI, which I don’t take an interest in even though it’s his entire motivation for creating LessWrong, and MWI, which I don’t consider myself qualified to have opinions about. I’m not signed up for cryonics either.
I have never been clear what Will Newsome’s world is.
Me neither man. There are, like, these gods, right? Or one god-like thingy at least. And also I’m supposed to help some humans build their own new god somehow? Except I don’t really know how the already-present gods feel about that, and at any rate the humans are all kinda crazy and bizarrely terrible at moral philosophy, I guess because whatever process made them apparently wasn’t thinking very far ahead, so instead the humans just sit there metabolizing and ineffectually signaling at each other until they die. It is occasionally beautiful.
Will Newsome’s is a demon-haunted world. But I think he’s still around, and might pipe up himself.
Perhaps a better known person than Will who wrote more would be Phillip K. Dick. Phillip K. Dick saw “something” once (perhaps due to a temporal lobe epilepsy), and spent the rest of his life trying to come to terms with what he saw. His writing is not very clear at all, but that is because he is tackling a very difficult problem.
I’d think the non-cuddly theism of the Will Newsome or Philip K. Dick sort would be sort of like paranoid schizophrenia, but without the consoling part that it’s all just misfirings in your brain and not all actually out there. Not quite sure you’d want to live there, though it might certainly be occasionally more interesting than staid materialism. Muflax used to have a post about something that sounds like that, but it got disappeared.
Pretty much anyone who at some point goes “and therefore it must obviously be that God is benevolent” sounds like a candidate. My vague impression is that a bunch of religious philosophers like Bishop Berkeley and Descartes had arguments you could caricature as “reality might actually be really messed up, so it’s a good thing God has to be benevolent then and see that thing stay fixed up”. Usually only the “reality might be really messed up” part is what stays in the philosophical canon.
Also there’s Raymond Smullyan’s Who Knows? which I read and liked some years ago.
I’ve read a fair amount of Dick, and while the fiction may be entertaining, I can’t take the “something” as anything more significant than the crud you get on your screen if your graphics card goes wrong. It may be very entertaining crud, it may even inspire great art, but in itself it’s of no significance.
I find this view somewhat unempathetic: “this impacted tooth pain is not very significant, it is just a cluster of neurons firing here and also here.” What he saw was significant to him.
A few days ago, for the second time in my life, I had a nested dream. In other words, I dreamed that I was dreaming, that I woke up within a dream. Interestingly, the dream within the dream was, from the perspective of this level of reality, completely sane. While the world I woke up to, within the dream, was very different. I dreamed that I dreamed that our neighbours removed some bushes from their garden. Which they didn’t do on this level. But everything else was seemingly exactly like it is here. But the world to which I dreamed to wake up to was weird (which I was not aware of in there). There was a foggy harbor next to our house, and a big ship was passing through it. Whereas in this level, and the nested level, the sea is far away.
Is this experience significant? Well, it could mean that there are many levels of reality, this just being another one I will wake up from sooner or later. It’s possible. But I just don’t see how it could be reasonable to take this into account when trying to figure out what is out there, as long as more sensible approaches have not been ruled out. Where sensible stands for concrete, specific, lawful, empirical activities that can be falsified in an intersubjective (objective) manner.
Oh yes, it was very significant to him. Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke was significant to her. Aldous Huxley’s drug experiences were significant to him. John C. Wright’s heart attack was significant to him.
But none of these are significant to me, and the tales they tell are told by compromised witnesses. If brain damage is the entry price for a glimpse of the interesting-if-true things they saw, I’ll pass.
I have never been clear what Will Newsome’s world is. Is he writing about it more fully somewhere else? But my almost invariable experience is that things of which I hear tantalising hints turn out, when they turn out to be anything, to be merely interesting-if-true, along with alien abductions, the Loch Ness Monster, and interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Eliezer’s world is as clear and inviting as a summer day in comparison (although I would not extend that to what all of his admirers make of it). ETA: I’m leaving out his views on fooming AI, which I don’t take an interest in even though it’s his entire motivation for creating LessWrong, and MWI, which I don’t consider myself qualified to have opinions about. I’m not signed up for cryonics either.
Me neither man. There are, like, these gods, right? Or one god-like thingy at least. And also I’m supposed to help some humans build their own new god somehow? Except I don’t really know how the already-present gods feel about that, and at any rate the humans are all kinda crazy and bizarrely terrible at moral philosophy, I guess because whatever process made them apparently wasn’t thinking very far ahead, so instead the humans just sit there metabolizing and ineffectually signaling at each other until they die. It is occasionally beautiful.
Will Newsome’s is a demon-haunted world. But I think he’s still around, and might pipe up himself.
Perhaps a better known person than Will who wrote more would be Phillip K. Dick. Phillip K. Dick saw “something” once (perhaps due to a temporal lobe epilepsy), and spent the rest of his life trying to come to terms with what he saw. His writing is not very clear at all, but that is because he is tackling a very difficult problem.
I’d think the non-cuddly theism of the Will Newsome or Philip K. Dick sort would be sort of like paranoid schizophrenia, but without the consoling part that it’s all just misfirings in your brain and not all actually out there. Not quite sure you’d want to live there, though it might certainly be occasionally more interesting than staid materialism. Muflax used to have a post about something that sounds like that, but it got disappeared.
I got a backup here. Screenshot here.
Are there any serious cuddly theists? “He is not a tame lion.”—C.S. Lewis. (I don’t like C.S. Lewis).
Pretty much anyone who at some point goes “and therefore it must obviously be that God is benevolent” sounds like a candidate. My vague impression is that a bunch of religious philosophers like Bishop Berkeley and Descartes had arguments you could caricature as “reality might actually be really messed up, so it’s a good thing God has to be benevolent then and see that thing stay fixed up”. Usually only the “reality might be really messed up” part is what stays in the philosophical canon.
Also there’s Raymond Smullyan’s Who Knows? which I read and liked some years ago.
Perhaps so, but it’s not unpleasant, not for that reason anyway.
I’ve read a fair amount of Dick, and while the fiction may be entertaining, I can’t take the “something” as anything more significant than the crud you get on your screen if your graphics card goes wrong. It may be very entertaining crud, it may even inspire great art, but in itself it’s of no significance.
I find this view somewhat unempathetic: “this impacted tooth pain is not very significant, it is just a cluster of neurons firing here and also here.” What he saw was significant to him.
A few days ago, for the second time in my life, I had a nested dream. In other words, I dreamed that I was dreaming, that I woke up within a dream. Interestingly, the dream within the dream was, from the perspective of this level of reality, completely sane. While the world I woke up to, within the dream, was very different. I dreamed that I dreamed that our neighbours removed some bushes from their garden. Which they didn’t do on this level. But everything else was seemingly exactly like it is here. But the world to which I dreamed to wake up to was weird (which I was not aware of in there). There was a foggy harbor next to our house, and a big ship was passing through it. Whereas in this level, and the nested level, the sea is far away.
Is this experience significant? Well, it could mean that there are many levels of reality, this just being another one I will wake up from sooner or later. It’s possible. But I just don’t see how it could be reasonable to take this into account when trying to figure out what is out there, as long as more sensible approaches have not been ruled out. Where sensible stands for concrete, specific, lawful, empirical activities that can be falsified in an intersubjective (objective) manner.
Oh yes, it was very significant to him. Jill Bolte Taylor’s stroke was significant to her. Aldous Huxley’s drug experiences were significant to him. John C. Wright’s heart attack was significant to him.
But none of these are significant to me, and the tales they tell are told by compromised witnesses. If brain damage is the entry price for a glimpse of the interesting-if-true things they saw, I’ll pass.