Re: If Magick Exists (was RE: Ideological blinders)

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 18:37:50 MST

  • Next message: Emlyn O'regan: "RE: [IRAQ] warmonger explains war to peacnik"

    Lee Corbin wrote:
    >
    > I did have one friend who was a much greater atheist
    > even than me. He was so incredible in his devoutness
    > that he claimed God would *never* succeed in convincing
    > Spencer of His existence. At every point, Spencer would
    > always suppose it to be something he ate, or some other
    > source of hallucination.

    Given the previous statistical correlation of such subjective experiences
    to their corresponding realities, interpreting an apparent miracle as a
    hallucination makes sense, unless God provides a consilient explanation
    instead of just random miracles. Obviously since I *don't* expect to
    hallucinate, ordinarily, God doing random unimaginative miracles *would*
    be significant evidence, and the probability of theological propositions
    would go up. But it's not enough evidence to promote the probability to
    higher than "it was something I ate". Unless, again, there's a consilient
    explanation. According to the religious worldview, it's not that my
    worldview is exactly right *except* that God exists and nothing else is
    changed; my worldview contains other flaws that lead me to think God's
    existence is anything less than obvious. So if their worldview is
    correct, I am persuadable; it's just that it would take more than the
    sensory experience of random miracles. I would also need the other
    revised beliefs that tell me to interpret sensory miracles as the actions
    of a consiliently existing God, rather than hallucinations or an enclosing
    simulation.

    -- 
    Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
    Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 01 2003 - 18:44:44 MST