philh comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 October 2012 02:11AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2012 05:49:27AM 1 point [-]

Koan 1:

"You say that a universe is a connected fabric of causes and effects. Well, that's a very Western viewpoint - that it's all about mechanistic, deterministic stuff. I agree that anything else is outside the realm of science, but it can still be real, you know. My cousin is psychic - if you draw a card from his deck of cards, he can tell you the name of your card before he looks at it. There's no mechanism for it - it's not a causal thing that scientists could study - he just does it. Same thing when I commune on a deep level with the entire universe in order to realize that my partner truly loves me. I agree that purely spiritual phenomena are outside the realm of causal processes, which can be scientifically understood, but I don't agree that they can't be real."

How would you reply?

Comment author: philh 13 October 2012 12:59:04PM 1 point [-]

(Written without reading other comments.)

Let us stipulate that your cousin is indeed psychic. This is not a purely spiritual phenomenon. Then there is certainly correlation between me drawing QH and between him saying "queen of hearts". Probably no direct causal link - I'd guess it has intermediate nodes related to patterns of neurons in his brain - but the graph certainly has a path between the two nodes.

If something does not correlate with anything, then it is not real in the sense that it does not determine your experiences.

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