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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 25/02/2025 01:00, Jason Resch wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at
2:12 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<div> On 24/02/2025 10:49, Jason Resch wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Feb 23,
2025, 1:52 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a
href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
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A long time ago, I came up with an idea called
'relativity of <br>
importance'...<br>
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<div dir="auto">That's a nice idea!</div>
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<div dir="auto">Do you think it is possible to
rationally justify an ordering? E.g., would you
expect two superintelligences to arrive at a roughly
the same ordering?</div>
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<br>
Well, I'd expect each individual to come up with their own
list, and their own ordering. It doesn't matter if they are
a village idiot, an average human or a superintelligence.
The point is to come up with your own list, and your own
ordering. This is in keeping with the (or rather, my) answer
to the meaning of life: You Decide.<br>
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<div>> I guess what I was asking is whether you see any
possibility that goal prioritization could be made an
objective science.<br>
<br>
No. It is subjective.<br>
<br>
> If not, then I think this supports what Einstein said
about goals not coming from science. If science can't decide
it, then what is its source?<br>
<br>
I am.<br>
And if you decide to adopt this method, you are.<br>
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<div>> Note that charity ranking services (like GiveWell)
struggle with this: how do you weigh and compare lifting
someone out of poverty vs. saving someone's life, vs.
restoring sight to a blind person, vs. avoiding a bout of
severe illness?<br>
<br>
There's a good reason for this. These are subjective
priorities. The answers will be different depending on who you
are, or which group you belong to.<br>
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<div><br>
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<div>> Is there a way to measure these in units of "utils"?<br>
<br>
Probably, but the results will be different for each person.<br>
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<br>
Lots of 'Einstein quotes' are apocryphal.<br>
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<div dir="auto">That's true. I checked the validity of
this quote many times to be sure.</div>
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<div dir="auto">It comes from his 1954 article Science
and religion.</div>
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<div dir="auto"><a
href="https://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://einsteinandreligion.com/scienceandreligion.html</a></div>
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<div dir="auto">Here is the full context:</div>
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<div dir="auto">"Now, even though the realms of
religion and science in themselves are clearly
marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist
between the two strong reciprocal relationships and
dependencies. Though religion may be that which
determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned
from science, in the broadest sense, what means will
contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set
up. But science can only be created by those who are
thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth
and understanding. This source of feeling, however,
springs from the sphere of religion. To this there
also belongs the faith in the possibility that the
regulations valid for the world of existence are
rational, that is, comprehensible to reason.</div>
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<div dir="auto">I cannot conceive of a genuine
scientist without that profound faith. The situation
may be expressed by an image: science without
religion is lame, religion without science is
blind."</div>
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<div dir="auto">What, specifically, do you think is
wrong in what he said?</div>
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<br>
All of the above. It's written from the pespective of
someone brought up in a society where the local religion is
taken seriously, as if it had some essential wisdom and
wasn't a pack of lies designed to make people do what
they're told by a group of other people who were originally
clever enough and unprincipled enough to trick everyone into
being afraid of some stuff they just made up.<br>
<br>
It's just fundamentally wrong.<br>
<br>
"I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that
profound faith" says it all. For someone who came up with
two theories of relativity, it shows a disappointing lack of
imagination.<br>
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<div>> To be clear though, the "profound faith" Einstein was
referring to was not a profound faith in god, or creed, but
the profound faith that the universe is comprehensible and
amenable to human reason.<br>
<br>
'Faith' can have several interpretations, but the most common
one is "a firm belief in something for which there is no
proof". Another one is 'trust'. There's a clear difference
between faith and 'something you think is probably true, based
on the available evidence'.<br>
<br>
I <i>think</i> that the universe is probably comprehensible,
and may be amenable to human reason (which I take as meaning
that humans are capable of comprehending it), but it's also
possible that humans are currently incapable of understanding
it. due to it being more complex than our minds can cope with.
But that's another rabbit hole, because you can consider a
single average human, a particular human, a collection of
humans, all humans, etc., and also considering that we don't
know how deep 'the universe' goes, how big it is, how uniform,
even what are the most basic elements that it's composed of.<br>
(I'm starting to change my mind! perhaps the universe is
intrinsically incomprehensible, in total, to any mind. I
certainly do think that at least parts of it are amenable to
being understood by human minds, though. In fact we already
know that)<br>
<br>
Of course, what Einstein meant by "a genuine scientist" and
what I mean by it could well be different things.<br>
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And for me, religion is pretty much the worst
way of deciding <br>
on our goals. That's basically just letting some
priests tell you what <br>
you should be doing. And we're all familiar with
the tragic consequences <br>
of that.<br>
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<div dir="auto">Not all religions are those told to us
by priests. The belief that science is the best (or
only) tool for finding the truth is a belief (one
some might call a religion (scientism)). I think you
just have an impoverished conception of what
religion can be.</div>
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<br>
I have a realistic conception of what religion is, in
practice, in the main. I'm sure there are some religions
which can be fairly inoffensive, but they are by far in the
minority.<br>
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<div>> Nascent medicine was quite bad. But that didn't mean
all treatments were bad, nor that the entire field should have
been written off and never improved.<br>
<br>
That's not a very good analogy. Medicine has, largely,
improved over time, mainly because of the application of
rational thought and empirical methods. It also has a clearly
defined, unambiguous goal. Religion is not like that at all.<br>
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<div>> If you think science is the best tool to refine,
improve, discard, and revise ideas, why not apply it to
refine, improve, discard, and revise ideas that originated in
the sphere of religion?<br>
<br>
That's pretty much what I have done, for myself. With the
inevitable result: No religion left.<br>
Try this with most of the population of the world, though, and
see how far you get. In quite a few parts of the world, you
probably wouldn't even survive the attempt.<br>
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<div> Religions, on the whole, are based on superstition, and
are a tool for controlling people.</div>
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<div>> Would you agree then, that modifying those that are,
such that they're not based on superstition, and not used as
tools of control, would be a net positive?<br>
<br>
Absolutely.<br>
I'm reminded of this: "What do you call alternative medicine
that works? - Medicine!"<br>
What do you think that a religion not based on superstition,
and not used as a tool to control people, would look like?<br>
<br>
Let me take a stab at it:<br>
<br>
"There is no god, and you won't burn in hell, but be nice
anyway"<br>
(stolen from Ricky Gervais)<br>
<br>
How about rewriting the 10 commandments of christianity?<br>
<strike>1 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall
have no other gods before Me.</strike><br>
<strike>2 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image,
or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that
is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I,
the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth
generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to
thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.</strike><br>
<strike>3 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your
God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who
takes His name in vain.</strike><br>
<strike>4 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh
day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do
no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male
servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your
stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord
made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day and hallowed it.</strike><br>
<strike>5 “Honour your father and your mother, that your
days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is
giving you.</strike><br>
6 “You shall not murder.<br>
7 “You shall not commit adultery, unless your significant
other is ok with it<br>
8 “You shall not steal, unless you have a really good
reason (not applicable to non-tangible items).<br>
9 <strike>“You shall not bear false witness against your
neighbour</strike>. You shall not tell lies, unless you have
a good reason, or are asked 'does my bum look big in this?'<br>
<strike>10 “You shall not covet your neighbour's house;
you shall not covet your neighbour's wife, nor his male
servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey,
nor anything that is your neighbour's.”</strike><br>
<br>
That leaves only 3, totally common-sense rules. Do we really
need religion to tell us these things? Aren't they already
common to all human societies?<br>
<br>
Anything else might really be called 'recommended suggestions'
rather than commandments. And you can find lots of them in
books written by people like Dale Carnegie, Steven Covey,
Anthony Robbins, etc.<br>
<br>
<br>
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It also implies that there are only those two
options, science and <br>
religion, which is far from true.<br>
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<div dir="auto">He didn't frame it as either or, he
thought both had interdependent relationships.</div>
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<br>
He is only presenting those two, and not mentioning anything
else, implying there is nothing else.<br>
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<div>> His article is titled "Science and Religion"; it's not
meant to cover other topics.<br>
<br>
So it was a silly idea right from the start. A bit like
writing an article about "Ramps and Lifts ('Elevators', if
you're american)" when you want to discuss methods of moving
around vertically, that only focuses on those two methods.<br>
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<div> Do you think that transubstantiation, the holy trinity,
original sin, immortal souls, the infallibility of the pope,
just to pick some examples from the most familiar religion
in the west, are amenable to logical thinking?<br>
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<div>> Yes, I think so. One could work to clearly define
those ideas,<br>
<br>
I suspect that 'clearly defining those ideas' might be a
long-term project, to understate things. You might have better
luck clearly defining what a unicorn's tail looks like.<br>
<br>
> and consider whether those definitions are logically
consistent or not.<br>
<br>
"If an infinite number of angels can dance on the head of a
pin, then angels must be infinitesimal" is a consistent
logical argument. So is "All nuxmargs are gronsh, except
frampian nuxmargs. Therefore all frampian nuxmargs are not
gronsh, and all non-gronsh nuxmargs are frampian".<br>
<br>
Do you see my point?<br>
<br>
> If we cannot find any logically consistent definition, we
can abandon the idea. If we do find a logically possible one,
then we can further consider if it is nomologically possible,
if there is evidence for or against it within this universe,<br>
<br>
So that rules out my four examples above, and at least 90% of
ideas contained in almost all religions (this may well be by
design. If you could find evidence for or against the main
ideas in most religions, they wouldn't be much use, as you
wouldn't need 'faith' (which basically means "don't ask
questions, just do what I say")).<br>
<br>
> and whether its existence (or non-existence) would lead
to any observable consequences.<br>
<br>
I'm not sure how that's relevant. The existence of Jinn would
lead to observable consequences, but we have already
discounted them because they are logically impossible. The
non-existence of Mohammed (who very probably did exist) would
definitely have observable (and beneficial) consequences. But
so what?<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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