Rixie comments on Guardians of the Truth - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 December 2007 06:44PM

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Comment author: Ian_C. 16 December 2007 03:49:18AM 6 points [-]

If you believe in G-d then you believe in a being that can change reality just by willing it. So therefore you believe it's possible for consciousness to change/control existence.

So that could explain why Guardians fear too many non-believers: they feel threatened by what they perceive as the power of other people's consciousness. They fear that if there are too many non-believers that it might change the truth somehow.

But scientists (Seekers) know that reality is what it is regardless of what other people think, so they don't ascribe so much power to their fellow beings, and therefore don't feel as threatened by them.

Comment author: Rixie 01 November 2012 09:43:34PM -1 points [-]

Christians believe that God doesn't change reality just by willing it. No one really knows how he supposedly created the universe. The theory is that Jesus doesn't perform miracles by bending the laws of nature. I'll explain: Potassium + water = big explosion. But if you added something to the water or to the potassium, you could keep it from exploding. So, on earth, nothing ever happens to water that will turn it into wine. But if God exerted a supernatual force on it, it would, without bending the laws of nature. The idea is that the laws of nature incorporate supernatual meddling, but these are laws that we may never discover because we can't meddle with things supernatualy. God doesn't change reality. And anyways, the Guardians thought that God was all-powerful, and that humans weren't, so I'm not even sure they're thoughts went down that road.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 01 November 2012 10:21:22PM *  0 points [-]

Presumably God, if He exists, implements this by having a Universe that's inherently stochastic. :)

Comment author: Rixie 01 November 2012 11:43:41PM -1 points [-]

If stochastic means what I think it means (random) then yup! Water + divine intervention = wine. But it had to be weird to attract people's attention. Or there's something about the universe that would make sense of all this that we don't know yet. O_o