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

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 12:24:25 MST

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    Samantha Atkins wrote:
    > Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
    >
    >> Samantha Atkins wrote:
    >>
    >>> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
    >>>
    >>>> 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.
    >>>
    >>> But wouldn't your criteria mean that God would have to be a being
    >>> among other beings within the framework of what, to be God, would
    >>> be God's creation? I guess you're safe from theism because this
    >>> looks like a clearly impossible hoop to jump through.
    >>
    >> Does not follow. God could be the framework, or could be outside the
    >> framework, or whatever it is the theologians insist on. The only
    >> requirement for consilience is that the explanation be consistent.
    >> Physics is consilient with biology, for example, and physics is not a
    >> lifeform among other lifeforms.
    >
    > So what does a purported creator being consistent with the creation
    > look like? Or is that not the criteria you would use?

    An example of inconsistency is the assertion that God predates all physics
    and existence, yet contains complex dynamic structure, and behaves in an
    anthropomorphic fashion, showing emotions that are the signature of
    sustained natural selection in a game-theoretical context. The simplest
    explanation for memes containing such assertions is that they are the
    confabulations of storytellers who lacked the scientific knowledge and
    investigative mindset to detect the inconsistencies in their own stories,
    and simply made stuff up that sounded good to them, while transparently
    ridiculous from the view of later centuries. It is conceptually possible
    that despite such storytelling having a clear and consilient explanation
    as fiction, there is nonetheless some even simpler explanation under which
    it is true. But I am not holding my breath.

    Similarly, the successive theological rationalization of such
    confabulations farther and farther away from the original unpalatable
    fictions has produced a great deal of extremely vague spirituality. This
    vague spirituality allows people with moderate levels of scientific
    literacy to deceive themselves without believing things so blatantly
    ridiculous that they would lose their self-respect. But such defensive
    rationalization is not any more likely to be correct, nor will the new
    fictions produced be able to fool anyone with a higher level of scientific
    knowledge or less eagerness to be deceived.

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


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