I’ve been talking to some friends who have some rather odd spiritual (in the sense of disorganised religion) beliefs. Odd because its a combination of modem philosophy LW would be familiar with (acausal commuication between worlds of Tegmark’s level IV multiverse) ancient religion, and general weirdness. I have trouble pointing my finger at exactly what is wrong with this reasoning, although I’m fairly sure there is a flaw, in the same way I’m quite sure I’m not a Boltzmann brain, but it can be hard articulating why.
So, if anyone is interested, here is the reasoning:
1) Dualism is wrong, due to major philosophical problems as well as Occam’s razor
2) I think therefore I am, so I know that the ‘mental world’ exists.
3) Therefore Idealism is true, the mental world exists but the physical is just an illusion
4) In response to ‘so why can’t you fly?’ the answer is a lack of mental discipline: after all, its hard to control your thoughts
5) If two different people existed in the same universe, there is no reason why they would perceive the same illusions.
6) Therefore, each universe consists of one conscious observer and their illusory reality
7) But Tegmark’s level IV multiverse is true, so we can acausaly communicate between worlds, in fact all conversations are actually acausal communication between worlds.
8) This also implies there is reincarnation, of a sort—there is no body to die, so you just construct a new illusory reality.
From here on it gets into more standard ‘spiritual’ realms, although I did find it amusing when my friend told me that there are at least aleph-2 gods.
I should state that these beliefs are largely pointless, in that its not obvious that they actually influence any decisions the believers make, and that they do seem to make people happy without any major downsides.
I should also make it clear that I don’t believe this, because I wouldn’t want to lose status as a rationalist by believing in something unpopular!
TL;DR
To a large extent, this boils down to: how do I distinguish between the hypothesizes that the universe is lawful, and the hypothesis that the universe is determined by my beliefs, and I believe it to be lawful.
In response to ‘so why can’t you fly?’ the answer is a lack of mental discipline: after all, its hard to control your thoughts
How do you know what you claim to know? (Okay, not you, but whoever said this.) Do you have any reproducible experimental proof of whatever violation of physical laws using mental discipline?
Isn’t it suspicious that undisciplined thoughts are enough to create an illusion of physical reality perfectly obeying the physical laws, but are unable to violate the laws? That sounds to me like speaking about an archer who always perfectly hits the middle of the target, but is unable to shoot the arrow outside of the target, supposedly because he is too clumsy. I mean, isn’t hitting the center of the target more difficult that missing the target? Wouldn’t creating a reality perfectly obeying the laws of physics all the time require more mental discipline than having things happen randomly?
I am sure there can be dozen ad-hoc explanations, I just wanted to show how it doesn’t make sense.
This also implies there is reincarnation, of a sort—there is no body to die, so you just construct a new illusory reality.
So, if you get killed, your mental discipline will improve enough to let you create new reality you can’t create now? Interesting...
How do you know what you claim to know? (Okay, not you, but whoever said this.) Do you have any reproducible experimental proof of whatever violation of physical laws using mental discipline?
To play devils’ advocate … do you have any reproducible experimental proof of believing that an event would happen that would violate the laws of physics, and then the laws were upheld?
Isn’t it suspicious that undisciplined thoughts are enough to create an illusion of physical reality perfectly obeying the physical laws, but are unable to violate the laws?
Yes, I quite agree. It’s also odd that I cannot play the violin, and yet other people can, which would imply that I can imagine people with knowledge that I don’t have. If reality was an illusion, I would expect it to be a lot more like wonderland.
However, we are dealing with priors and intuition here, in that we cannot run experiments, getting disembodied consciousnesses to imagine realities and then observing what they imagine. Its difficult to even run thought experiments, given that you would be trying to model something that supposedly works outside of physics.
So: if you have a prior belief that an illusory reality would be undisciplined (and I agree here), and someone else has a prior that this is not a problem, and that reductionism is highly implausible, how can this disagreement be resolved?
Even if both parties were perfect Bayesian reasoners, Aumann’s agreement theorem doesn’t apply, because there is no experimental evidence to update on. How can we determine which prior is correct?
Perhaps we could agree that approximate Kolmogorov complexity provides an objective prior, although I think objections would be raised, but even in that case it doesn’t help in practice unless you can actually calculate approximate Kolmogorov complexity.
So, if you get killed, your mental discipline will improve enough to let you create new reality you can’t create now? Interesting...
I think the mental discipline is supposed to be needed to control reality, not to create it. Nevertheless, anything that allows one to escape death does make ‘motivated cognition’ spring to mind.
It looks like you and your friends have rediscovered Lebniz’s monadology. Leibniz believed that only minds were real, matter as distinct from minds is an illusion, and minds do not interact causally, but they seem to share a same “reality” by virtue of a “pre-established harmony” between their non-causally related experiences. This last part can perhaps be reexpressed in modern terms as acausal communication.
I guess the fact that I lack mental discipline is also the reason that I lack mental discipline, and the reason that lacking mental discipline causes me to lack mental discipline, too.
Sorry, to clarify, are you saying that the reasoning is circular and thus faulty?
Thing about the mental health is that it is circular, in that there are vicious cycles. If I have mental discipline, I can discipline myself to practice discipline more.
Where do your friends get this stuff? Did they read the Sequences on LSD or something? Do they do anything differently in everyday life on account of it (besides talking about it)?
To a large extent, this boils down to: how do I distinguish between the hypothesizes that the universe is lawful, and the hypothesis that the universe is determined by my beliefs, and I believe it to be lawful.
Where do your friends get this stuff? Did they read the Sequences on LSD or something?
I doubt it, for the sequences are very long and I don’t think one’s attention span would hold while tripping. They might have read David Lewis on LSD.
It comes from many different places. Friend A got here through psychedelics and Schrodinger, friend B through their families’ Hindu beliefs dating back thousands of years. Oddly enough, they mostly agree with each other.
Do they do anything differently in everyday life on account of it (besides talking about it)?
Not really. Many of them try to influence reality through positive thinking, but then this probably has psychosomatic benefits anyway. But, if for instance one of them was ill, they would use conventional medicine.
How did you get the belief that it is lawful?
Why do I believe that the universe is lawful? Because it appears lawful, and due to reasons discussed in other replies to my post, and my common sense has marked the alternative as insane.
Why do I believe that the universe is lawful? Because it appears lawful, and due to reasons discussed in other replies to my post, and my common sense has marked the alternative as insane.
Well then, there’s how you:
distinguish between the hypothesizes that the universe is lawful, and the hypothesis that the universe is determined by my beliefs, and I believe it to be lawful.
You observe lawfulness, not just believe in lawfulness. Whatever the source of that lawfulness, the lawfulness itself is right there in your observations.
Is it lawful independently of you, or is it lawful because you are God but have forgotten yourself? I suppose you could seek out and practice spiritual exercises to remember your true being as God, and only if that fails to produce a smidgen of miracle-working ability, consider that you might not be God after all. But “we are subject to physical law because we have forgotten our divine nature” is already too much like claiming to have an invisible dragon.
7) But Tegmark’s level IV multiverse is true, so we can acausaly communicate between worlds, in fact all conversations are actually acausal communication between worlds.
That latter part seems to rely on a misleading use of words. There seems to be a rather distinct difference between acausal conversation and causal conversation.
Talking I can understand, I mean I suppose acausal communication could be as fun? What’s perhaps more surprising is altruism and empathy. Would you buy someone a drink if it doesn’t cause them to drink it? What if you one-box?
I suppose that the causality goes mind → physical in an idealist veiwpoint, whereas in a materialist viewpoint phyiscal things cause mental things, and in a monist viewpoint mental and physical are two aspects of the same thing.
At least one of my friends claims to have some weak ability to alter physical reality by thinking (which is possible if physical reality is an illusion), which is interesting because he is otherwise a very intelligent scientist.
Also, believing that physical reality is an illusion is, like whoa man, its really deep.
I’ve been talking to some friends who have some rather odd spiritual (in the sense of disorganised religion) beliefs. Odd because its a combination of modem philosophy LW would be familiar with (acausal commuication between worlds of Tegmark’s level IV multiverse) ancient religion, and general weirdness. I have trouble pointing my finger at exactly what is wrong with this reasoning, although I’m fairly sure there is a flaw, in the same way I’m quite sure I’m not a Boltzmann brain, but it can be hard articulating why. So, if anyone is interested, here is the reasoning:
1) Dualism is wrong, due to major philosophical problems as well as Occam’s razor
2) I think therefore I am, so I know that the ‘mental world’ exists.
3) Therefore Idealism is true, the mental world exists but the physical is just an illusion
4) In response to ‘so why can’t you fly?’ the answer is a lack of mental discipline: after all, its hard to control your thoughts
5) If two different people existed in the same universe, there is no reason why they would perceive the same illusions.
6) Therefore, each universe consists of one conscious observer and their illusory reality
7) But Tegmark’s level IV multiverse is true, so we can acausaly communicate between worlds, in fact all conversations are actually acausal communication between worlds.
8) This also implies there is reincarnation, of a sort—there is no body to die, so you just construct a new illusory reality.
From here on it gets into more standard ‘spiritual’ realms, although I did find it amusing when my friend told me that there are at least aleph-2 gods.
I should state that these beliefs are largely pointless, in that its not obvious that they actually influence any decisions the believers make, and that they do seem to make people happy without any major downsides.
I should also make it clear that I don’t believe this, because I wouldn’t want to lose status as a rationalist by believing in something unpopular!
TL;DR
To a large extent, this boils down to: how do I distinguish between the hypothesizes that the universe is lawful, and the hypothesis that the universe is determined by my beliefs, and I believe it to be lawful.
How do you know what you claim to know? (Okay, not you, but whoever said this.) Do you have any reproducible experimental proof of whatever violation of physical laws using mental discipline?
Isn’t it suspicious that undisciplined thoughts are enough to create an illusion of physical reality perfectly obeying the physical laws, but are unable to violate the laws? That sounds to me like speaking about an archer who always perfectly hits the middle of the target, but is unable to shoot the arrow outside of the target, supposedly because he is too clumsy. I mean, isn’t hitting the center of the target more difficult that missing the target? Wouldn’t creating a reality perfectly obeying the laws of physics all the time require more mental discipline than having things happen randomly?
I am sure there can be dozen ad-hoc explanations, I just wanted to show how it doesn’t make sense.
So, if you get killed, your mental discipline will improve enough to let you create new reality you can’t create now? Interesting...
To play devils’ advocate … do you have any reproducible experimental proof of believing that an event would happen that would violate the laws of physics, and then the laws were upheld?
Yes, I quite agree. It’s also odd that I cannot play the violin, and yet other people can, which would imply that I can imagine people with knowledge that I don’t have. If reality was an illusion, I would expect it to be a lot more like wonderland.
However, we are dealing with priors and intuition here, in that we cannot run experiments, getting disembodied consciousnesses to imagine realities and then observing what they imagine. Its difficult to even run thought experiments, given that you would be trying to model something that supposedly works outside of physics.
So: if you have a prior belief that an illusory reality would be undisciplined (and I agree here), and someone else has a prior that this is not a problem, and that reductionism is highly implausible, how can this disagreement be resolved?
Even if both parties were perfect Bayesian reasoners, Aumann’s agreement theorem doesn’t apply, because there is no experimental evidence to update on. How can we determine which prior is correct? Perhaps we could agree that approximate Kolmogorov complexity provides an objective prior, although I think objections would be raised, but even in that case it doesn’t help in practice unless you can actually calculate approximate Kolmogorov complexity.
I think the mental discipline is supposed to be needed to control reality, not to create it. Nevertheless, anything that allows one to escape death does make ‘motivated cognition’ spring to mind.
It looks like you and your friends have rediscovered Lebniz’s monadology. Leibniz believed that only minds were real, matter as distinct from minds is an illusion, and minds do not interact causally, but they seem to share a same “reality” by virtue of a “pre-established harmony” between their non-causally related experiences. This last part can perhaps be reexpressed in modern terms as acausal communication.
I guess the fact that I lack mental discipline is also the reason that I lack mental discipline, and the reason that lacking mental discipline causes me to lack mental discipline, too.
Sorry, to clarify, are you saying that the reasoning is circular and thus faulty?
Thing about the mental health is that it is circular, in that there are vicious cycles. If I have mental discipline, I can discipline myself to practice discipline more.
Lack of mental discipline is also the reason I can’t answer your question without breaking character.
Where do your friends get this stuff? Did they read the Sequences on LSD or something? Do they do anything differently in everyday life on account of it (besides talking about it)?
How did you get the belief that it is lawful?
I doubt it, for the sequences are very long and I don’t think one’s attention span would hold while tripping. They might have read David Lewis on LSD.
It comes from many different places. Friend A got here through psychedelics and Schrodinger, friend B through their families’ Hindu beliefs dating back thousands of years. Oddly enough, they mostly agree with each other.
Not really. Many of them try to influence reality through positive thinking, but then this probably has psychosomatic benefits anyway. But, if for instance one of them was ill, they would use conventional medicine.
Why do I believe that the universe is lawful? Because it appears lawful, and due to reasons discussed in other replies to my post, and my common sense has marked the alternative as insane.
Well then, there’s how you:
You observe lawfulness, not just believe in lawfulness. Whatever the source of that lawfulness, the lawfulness itself is right there in your observations.
Is it lawful independently of you, or is it lawful because you are God but have forgotten yourself? I suppose you could seek out and practice spiritual exercises to remember your true being as God, and only if that fails to produce a smidgen of miracle-working ability, consider that you might not be God after all. But “we are subject to physical law because we have forgotten our divine nature” is already too much like claiming to have an invisible dragon.
That latter part seems to rely on a misleading use of words. There seems to be a rather distinct difference between acausal conversation and causal conversation.
I am using words as clearly as possible. To clarify, my friend believes it is impossible for one sentient being to causally influence another.
And yet your friend bothers to talk. Why?
Talking I can understand, I mean I suppose acausal communication could be as fun? What’s perhaps more surprising is altruism and empathy. Would you buy someone a drink if it doesn’t cause them to drink it? What if you one-box?
In what sense does the mental world exist and physical is an illusion? What’s the difference between an illusion and reality in this case?
I suppose that the causality goes mind → physical in an idealist veiwpoint, whereas in a materialist viewpoint phyiscal things cause mental things, and in a monist viewpoint mental and physical are two aspects of the same thing.
At least one of my friends claims to have some weak ability to alter physical reality by thinking (which is possible if physical reality is an illusion), which is interesting because he is otherwise a very intelligent scientist.
Also, believing that physical reality is an illusion is, like whoa man, its really deep.
areyoufuckingkiddingme.jpg
Ok, I know this topic is unimportant compared to many other things, such as FAI and HPMOR, but there’s no need to be rude.
Kant you have a sense of Hume about it?