shokwave comments on Were atoms real? - Less Wrong

61 Post author: AnnaSalamon 08 December 2010 05:30PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 December 2010 11:02:32PM *  0 points [-]

People have also solved good chunks of: "Is there a God?", "Is there likely to be an after life?", and "In what sense do we have free will?", among other questions.

Er... I think a small number of people have made some progress, and I guess you could call that progress 'good chunks', but I get the feeling that the vast majority of rationalists are very confused about the first two questions (or would be if they noticed their confusion). Atheists and theists are both right and wrong in their own way, but neither have a solid understanding of the important underlying considerations. If you asked me if souls are real or if God is real, I'd say yes to both, but the explanation thereof would be excruciatingly difficult, and I'd be tempted to label the question 'not even wrong', akin to 'If a tree falls in the forest...'. (And I'm not talking about trivially true ensemble universe stuff, either -- I think there's more to it than just being smugly meta-contrarian.) Your point stands that there are a lot of solved philosophy problems, I'm just disputing your first two examples. Free will is a good example, though.

Comment author: shokwave 09 December 2010 05:12:50AM 3 points [-]

If you asked me if souls are real or if God is real, I'd say yes to both

Having read your explanation, I think you ought to say both are not real. Your description of God and souls as parallelized cognitive algorithms does not predict what "God is real, souls are real" predicts.

I think it would be more accurate to say "the belief that 'God is real, souls are real' is definitely real, and regardless of the truth value of the statement, the belief itself affects the world". That makes the same predictions as your cognitive algorithm idea (which I quite like), but doesn't cause misunderstandings with people who are using the word 'real' in very common ways.