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MarsColony_in10years comments on I need a protocol for dangerous or disconcerting ideas. - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have. It definitely isn't. It may have been exacerbated by biochemical causes, but it wasn't caused by them alone. (Sertraline did help me, just never as much as nullifying an existential problem.)
So you accept the argument?
I have no idea what you are trying to say, beyond "listen to your instincts because are more suited for the real world than your intellect."
I think he was trying to make a map-territory distinction. You have a mental model of how your brain computes value. You also have your brain, computing value however it actually computes value. Since our values are quite complex, and likely due to a number of different physical causes, it is reasonable to conclude that our mental model is at best an imperfect approximation.
I don't think he's trying to say "listen to your heart" so much as "the map is not the territory, but both are inside your brain in this instance. Because of this, it is possible to follow the territory directly, rather than following your imperfect map of the territory."
That said, we are now a couple meta-levels away from your original question. To bring things back around, I'd suggest that you try and keep in mind that any odd, extreme predictions your mental models make may be flaws in an oversimplified model, and not real existential disasters. In some cases, this may not seem to be the case given other pieces of evidence, but hopefully in other instances it helps.
The greater the inferential distance you have to go to reach an uncomfortable conclusion, the higher the likelihood that there is a subtle logical flaw somewhere, or (much more common) some unknown-unknown that isn't even being taken into account. LessWrong tends to deal with highly abstract concepts many steps removed from observations and scientifically validated truths, so I suspect that a large fraction of such ideas will be discredited by new evidence. Consider shifting your probability estimates for such things down by an order of magnitude or more, if you have not already done so. (That last paragraph was an extremely compressed form of what should be a much larger discussion. This hits on a lot of key points, though.)
That does sound like reasonable advice... however I now have empirical evidence for Dust Theory. Still, most of the horrible problems in it seem to have been defused.
What is your empirical evidence for dust theory?
Point 2: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mgd/the_consequences_of_dust_theory/ck0q
That doesn't even remotely meet the bar for 'evidence' from my standpoint. At best, you could say that it's a tack-on to the original idea to make it match reality better.
Put another way, it's not evidence that makes the idea more likely, it's an addition that increases the complexity yet still leaves you in a state where there are no observables to test or falsify anything.
In common terms, that's called a 'net loss'.
Why do we dream? Because a large amount of conscious beings join the measure of beings who can. That's why we find ourselves as pre-singularity humans. I'd say that's empirical evidence.
Sorry, but evidence doesn't really work that way. Even if we allow it, it is exceptionally weak evidence, and not enough to distinguish 'dust theory' from any other of the countless ideas in that same category. Again, it looks to me like a tack-on to the original idea that is needed simply to make the idea compatible with existing evidence.
As for why we dream, it's actually because of particles, forces, and biochemistry. A mundane explanation for a mundane process. No group hive mind of spirit energy or "measure of beings" required.
Dreaming is a very specific process that seems optimized to the scenario I described with DT. Do these other ideas predict the same?
So you are saying that humans or humanlike minds are the most common type of consciousness that is mathematically possible?
"Dreaming is a very specific process that seems optimized to demonstrate the existence of a dream realm."
"Dreaming is a very specific process that seems optimized to recharge the Earth Spirit that is Mother Gaia."
"Dreaming is a very specific process by which Wyvren allows us to communicate with Legends."
I have literally no idea how you could possibly draw that conclusion from the statement that dreaming has a mundane physics-based explanation. The two things aren't even remotely related.