This may or may not be the result of day 2 of modafinil. :) I don’t think it is, because I already had most of the pieces in place, it just took that sentence to make everything fit together. But that is a data point.
Hm, a trace-debug. My thought process over the five minutes that this took place was manipulation of mental imagery of my models of the universe. I’m not going to be able to explain much clearer than that, unfortunately. It was all very intuitive and not at all rigorous, the closest representation I can think of is Feynman’s thinking about balls. I’m going to have to do a lot more reading as my QM is very shakey, and I want to shore this up. It will also probably take a while until this way of thinking becomes the natural way I see the universe. But it all lines up, makes sense, and aligns with what people smarter than me are saying, so I’m assigning a high probability that it’s the correct conclusion.
An upper speed limit doesn’t matter—all that matters is that things are not instantaneous for locality to be valid.
A conversion experience is a very appropriate term for what I’m going through. I’m having very mixed emotions right now. A lot of my thoughts just clarified, which simply feels good. I’m grateful, because I live in an era where this is possible and because I was born intelligent enough to understand. Sad, because I know that most if not all of the people I know will never understand, and never sign up for cyronics. But I’m also ecstatic, because I’ve just discovered the cheat code to the universe, and it works.
I just made a long-winded addition to my comment, expanding on some of the gaps in Eliezer’s reasoning.
I’m also ecstatic, because I’ve just discovered the cheat code to the universe, and it works.
Well, you’re certainly not backing down and saying, hang on, is this just an illusory high? It almost seems inappropriate to dump cold water on you precisely when you’re having your satori—though it’s interesting from an experimental perspective. I’ve never had the opportunity to meddle with someone who thinks they are receiving enlightenment, right at the moment when it’s happening; unless I count myself.
From my perspective, QM is far more likely to be derived from ’t Hooft’s holographic determinism, and the idea of personal identity as a fungible pattern is just (in historical terms) a fad resulting from the incomplete state of our science, so I certainly regard your excitement as based mostly on an illusion. It’s good that you’re having exciting ideas and new thoughts, and perhaps it’s even appropriate to will yourself to believe them, because that’s a way of testing them against the whole of the rest of your experience.
But I still find it interesting how it is that people come to think that they know something new, when they don’t actually know it. How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an incentive to believe that the ideas currently before you are indeed the truth, rather than just an interesting possibility?
From experiences back when I was young and religious, I’ve learned to recognize moments of satori as not much more than a high (have probably had 2-3 prior). I enjoy the experience, but I’ve learned skepticism and try not to place too much weight on them. I was more describing the causes for my emotional states rather than proclaiming new beliefs. But to be completely honest, for several minutes I was convinced that I had found the tree of life, so I won’t completely downplay what I wrote.
How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an incentive to believe that the ideas currently before you are indeed the truth, rather than just an interesting possibility?
I suspect it has evopsych roots relating to confidence, the measured benefits of a life with purpose, and good-enough knowledge.
Reading ‘t Hooft’s paper I could understand what he was saying, but I’m realizing that the physics is out of my current depth. And I understand the argument you explained about the flaws in spatial (as opposed to configuration) locality. I’ll update my statement that ‘Many-Worlds is intuitively correct’ to ‘Copenhagen is intuitively wrong,’ which I suppose is where my original logic should have taken me—I just didn’t consider strong MWI alternatives. Determinism kills quantum suicide, so I’ll have to move down the priority of cyronics (though the ‘if MWI then quantum suicide then cyronics’ logic still holds and I still think cyronics is a good idea. I do love me a good hedge bet). But like I said, I’m not at all qualified to start assigning likelyhoods here between different QM origins. This requires more study.
I don’t see the issue with consciousness as being represented by the pattern of our brains rather than the physicality of it. You are right that we may eventually find that we can never look at a brain with high enough resolution to emulate it. But based on cases of people entering a several-hour freeze before being revived, the consciousness mechanism is obviously robust and I say this points towards it being an engineering problem of getting everything correct enough. The viability of putting it on a computer once you have a high enough resolution scan is not an issue—worst case scenario you start from something like QM and work up. Again this assumes a level of the brain’s robustness (rounding errors shouldn’t crash the mind), but I would call that experimentally proven in today’s humans.
This may or may not be the result of day 2 of modafinil. :) I don’t think it is, because I already had most of the pieces in place, it just took that sentence to make everything fit together. But that is a data point.
Hm, a trace-debug. My thought process over the five minutes that this took place was manipulation of mental imagery of my models of the universe. I’m not going to be able to explain much clearer than that, unfortunately. It was all very intuitive and not at all rigorous, the closest representation I can think of is Feynman’s thinking about balls. I’m going to have to do a lot more reading as my QM is very shakey, and I want to shore this up. It will also probably take a while until this way of thinking becomes the natural way I see the universe. But it all lines up, makes sense, and aligns with what people smarter than me are saying, so I’m assigning a high probability that it’s the correct conclusion.
An upper speed limit doesn’t matter—all that matters is that things are not instantaneous for locality to be valid.
A conversion experience is a very appropriate term for what I’m going through. I’m having very mixed emotions right now. A lot of my thoughts just clarified, which simply feels good. I’m grateful, because I live in an era where this is possible and because I was born intelligent enough to understand. Sad, because I know that most if not all of the people I know will never understand, and never sign up for cyronics. But I’m also ecstatic, because I’ve just discovered the cheat code to the universe, and it works.
I just made a long-winded addition to my comment, expanding on some of the gaps in Eliezer’s reasoning.
Well, you’re certainly not backing down and saying, hang on, is this just an illusory high? It almost seems inappropriate to dump cold water on you precisely when you’re having your satori—though it’s interesting from an experimental perspective. I’ve never had the opportunity to meddle with someone who thinks they are receiving enlightenment, right at the moment when it’s happening; unless I count myself.
From my perspective, QM is far more likely to be derived from ’t Hooft’s holographic determinism, and the idea of personal identity as a fungible pattern is just (in historical terms) a fad resulting from the incomplete state of our science, so I certainly regard your excitement as based mostly on an illusion. It’s good that you’re having exciting ideas and new thoughts, and perhaps it’s even appropriate to will yourself to believe them, because that’s a way of testing them against the whole of the rest of your experience.
But I still find it interesting how it is that people come to think that they know something new, when they don’t actually know it. How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an incentive to believe that the ideas currently before you are indeed the truth, rather than just an interesting possibility?
From experiences back when I was young and religious, I’ve learned to recognize moments of satori as not much more than a high (have probably had 2-3 prior). I enjoy the experience, but I’ve learned skepticism and try not to place too much weight on them. I was more describing the causes for my emotional states rather than proclaiming new beliefs. But to be completely honest, for several minutes I was convinced that I had found the tree of life, so I won’t completely downplay what I wrote.
I suspect it has evopsych roots relating to confidence, the measured benefits of a life with purpose, and good-enough knowledge.
Reading ‘t Hooft’s paper I could understand what he was saying, but I’m realizing that the physics is out of my current depth. And I understand the argument you explained about the flaws in spatial (as opposed to configuration) locality. I’ll update my statement that ‘Many-Worlds is intuitively correct’ to ‘Copenhagen is intuitively wrong,’ which I suppose is where my original logic should have taken me—I just didn’t consider strong MWI alternatives. Determinism kills quantum suicide, so I’ll have to move down the priority of cyronics (though the ‘if MWI then quantum suicide then cyronics’ logic still holds and I still think cyronics is a good idea. I do love me a good hedge bet). But like I said, I’m not at all qualified to start assigning likelyhoods here between different QM origins. This requires more study.
I don’t see the issue with consciousness as being represented by the pattern of our brains rather than the physicality of it. You are right that we may eventually find that we can never look at a brain with high enough resolution to emulate it. But based on cases of people entering a several-hour freeze before being revived, the consciousness mechanism is obviously robust and I say this points towards it being an engineering problem of getting everything correct enough. The viability of putting it on a computer once you have a high enough resolution scan is not an issue—worst case scenario you start from something like QM and work up. Again this assumes a level of the brain’s robustness (rounding errors shouldn’t crash the mind), but I would call that experimentally proven in today’s humans.