[ExI] A science-religious experience

[efc at disroot.org]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Keith Henson wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 8:30 AM efc--- via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 20 Feb 2025, Keith Henson wrote:
>>
>>> The meta-level question is why humans have religions at all.
>>>
>>> I think I know, but it is almost impossible for most people to understand.
>>>
>>> Humans seem to have a bias against too much insight.
>>
>> Evolutionary advantage at the dawn of time?
>
> Perhaps not that far back, but humans were selected for war sometime
> before the migration out of Africa.
>
> The model shows an almost 40% better survival for genes by going to
> war rather than starving in place.  But the model also shows half the
> warriors dying.  (Their genes go on because their female children are
> incorporated into the winner's tribe.)
>
> It is a weird situation where a person is at odds with their genes.
> Genes win, being selected to make people insanely optimistic about
> winning.  They also have selected people who will form strong beliefs
> about those they are attacking.  (My god is better than your god for
> example.)  It just makes sense that people would be selected to reject
> insight as to their evolved motivations.
>
> I.e., genes that lead to insight were anti-selected.

When it comes to going to war, I can easily imagine that believing that if 
you die, you go to heaven and meet many beautiful women makes it more 
likely that you'll go to war, than believing you'll die and that's it.

>>> Keith
>>>
>>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2025 at 7:43 AM efc--- via extropy-chat
>>> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 19 Feb 2025, Jason Resch via extropy-chat wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 12:05 PM BillK via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>       On Wed, 19 Feb 2025 at 16:32, Darin Sunley via extropy-chat
>>>>>       <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>     >
>>>>>     > " This offers a solution to the problem of evil. Infinite computational gods can't destroy or change what is out there
>>>>>       already, but they can provide continuation paths (afterlives) for those beings after they cease to exist in their
>>>>>       universe."
>>>>>     >
>>>>>     > This is the most elegant argument for deism I've ever heard.
>>>>>     >
>>>>>     > On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 6:10 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>     >> Computational capacity provides only the power to explore and create (or rather, rediscover what already is in the
>>>>>       infinite reality). Computational capacity doesn't enable one to destroy other universes which already are.
>>>>>     >>
>>>>>     >> This offers a solution to the problem of evil. Infinite computational gods can't destroy or change what is out there
>>>>>       already, but they can provide continuation paths (afterlives) for those beings after they cease to exist in their
>>>>>       universe.
>>>>>     >>
>>>>>     >> Jason
>>>>>     >> _______________________________________________
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>       Yes, but it's a pity that Gods don't exist.
>>>>>       It’s a divine evasion for the gods. ‘Don’t hold us accountable for
>>>>>       engineering suffering in the first place! We’ll compensate by granting
>>>>>       you paradise once you’re dead.’ What a generous bargain!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> What can complicate these discussions is that there are two kinds of things here, each of which has variously been called "god" by
>>>>> different religions in different contexts:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. All of Reality (e.g. Nirguna Brahman, Divine Ground of Being, God the Father) - that which is responsible for the existence of all
>>>>> universes (e.g., the set of all program executions existing in arithmetical truth)
>>>>> 2. The Great Programmer(s) (e.g. Saguna Brahman, Demigods, Personal Gods, The Simulators, God the Son) - are omnipotent over their
>>>>> creations (e.g. their computer simulations over which the programmer has complete access and control)
>>>>>
>>>>> It's been said that the material universe is where God has lost control:
>>>>>
>>>>> "Matter is the border of the universal mind of the universal person that the universal (Turing) machine can't avoid to bet on when
>>>>> looking inward and intuiting the gap between proofs and truth.
>>>>> This entails two processes: the emanation of God into Souls and Matter, and the conversion of the Souls, using Matter to come back to
>>>>> God (which is a sort of universal soul attractor)."
>>>>> -- Bruno Marchal
>>>>>
>>>>> So if you are looking for who to blame for evil, it would be the "type 1" God which you can equate with all of reality -- a reality
>>>>> that is infinite and comprehensive, and necessitates that all possible universes exist. There is much evidence for this type of
>>>>> reality, it can be proven constructively by anyone who presumes arithmetical truths like "2+2=4" exist independently of the minds who
>>>>> think them or material particles that instantiate them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Type "type 2" personal gods have their own will and discretion regarding what universes to simulate, how to engineer afterlives,
>>>>> which beings to save, etc. But they can no more override what exists in all of reality, any more than they could delete the fact that
>>>>> 2+2=4.
>>>>>
>>>>> You could poetically say God's omnipotence doesn't override his omniscience. There is no power to forget for a mind that knows
>>>>> everything, including the knowledge of what it is like to be any of the beings that suffer or experience evil. Moreover, for the type
>>>>> 2 gods to find the beings to save, they must still simulate the universes where bad things happen. You, in your current state (as
>>>>> well as everyone in our future lightcone) wouldn't exist if WW2 didn't happen, we either would never have been born or would have a
>>>>> brain with different memories. So would it be better for WW2 to have never happened, if it meant the non-existence of everyone who
>>>>> now lives, and and will live in the future of the history of life on earth? Remember the set of all universes contains all possible
>>>>> histories of the multiverse, so the people in the WW2-happened-branch exist along with the WW2-never-happened-branch. The naive
>>>>> approach to addressing the problem of evil is to prevent bad things from happening, but note that in so doing, requires wiping out
>>>>> all the inhabitants of any universe-branch where something unfortunate happened. Does the goodness of all those people in that
>>>>> universe outweigh that one unfortunate thing to be avoided? The question becomes more complicated under the light of the true cost of
>>>>> correcting an evil.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jason
>>>>
>>>> Another way is to deny the existence of objective email, and affirm our
>>>> opinion about events. Sometimes our opinions align, sometimes the opinions
>>>> of the majority align, sometimes the opinion changes. At the end of the
>>>> day, we have particles, which is not something you can read "evil" into._______________________________________________
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