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yli comments on Personal Evidence - Superstitions as Rational Beliefs - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: OrphanWilde 22 March 2013 05:24PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 22 March 2013 10:13:15PM *  19 points [-]

(Commenters: talking about the 'supernatural' in terms of metaphysics is metaphysically interesting but phenomenologically speaking it just clouds the issue unnecessarily. The way most people actually use the concept is just 'weird things happening that would require human or transhuman agency, in situations where there's no good reason to suspect human agency'. Talking about reductionism &c. is missing the point---it doesn't matter whether the agency comes from an engineered superintelligence or an "ontologically fundamental" god, what matters is there's non-human agency around. Note that all reports of supernatural phenomena can be explained "naturally" by superintelligences, simulators, highly advanced aliens, &c., all of which seem not-unlikely in a big universe. The improbability stems from the necessity of their having seemingly bizarre motivations; the mechanisms themselves, however, aren't fantastically improbable.)

Comment author: yli 06 November 2013 06:56:33AM *  1 point [-]

I agreed with this at first, but actually, no. Belief in the supernatural doesn't require belief in gods, spirits or any non-human agents. You could just believe that humans have some supernatural abilities like reading each other's minds. When trying to explain these abilties, only reductionists will conclude that there's some third party agent like a simulator setting things up. Non-reductionists will just accept that being able to read minds is part of how this ontologically fundamental mind stuff works.