The Contrarian Status Catch-22
It used to puzzle me that Scott Aaronson still hasn't come to terms with the obvious absurdity of attempts to make quantum mechanics yield a single world.
I should have realized what was going on when I read Scott's blog post "The bullet-swallowers" in which Scott compares many-worlds to libertarianism. But light didn't dawn until my recent diavlog with Scott, where, at 50 minutes and 20 seconds, Scott says:
"What you've forced me to realize, Eliezer, and I thank you for this: What I'm uncomfortable with is not the many-worlds interpretation itself, it's the air of satisfaction that often comes with it."
-- Scott Aaronson, 50:20 in our Bloggingheads dialogue.
It doesn't show on my face (I need to learn to reveal my expressions more, people complain that I'm eerily motionless during these diavlogs) but at this point I'm thinking, Didn't Scott just outright concede the argument? (He didn't; I checked.) I mean, to me this sounds an awful lot like:
Sure, many-worlds is the simplest explanation that fits the facts, but I don't like the people who believe it.
And I strongly suspect that a lot of people out there who would refuse to identify themselves as "atheists" would say almost exactly the same thing:
What I'm uncomfortable with isn't the idea of a god-free physical universe, it's the air of satisfaction that atheists give off.
BHTV: Yudkowsky / Robert Greene
Latest Bloggingheads up with Robert Greene, bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power and most recently The 50th Law ("Fear nothing").
Excellent commentary/summary by Andy McKenzie here.
The most important piece of advice I got from The 50th Law was "always attack before you are ready".
Why I'm Staying On Bloggingheads.tv
Recently, Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, and Phil Plait have all decided to stop appearing on BloggingHeads.TV (BHTV), and PZ Myers announced he would not appear on it in the future, after a disastrous decision to have creationist Michael Behe interviewed by the linguist and non-biologist John McWhorter, who failed to call Behe on his standard BS.
I'm hereby publicly announcing that I intend to stay on BloggingHeads.TV.
Why? Two main reasons:
1) Robert Wright publicly said that this was foolish, apologized for the poor editorial oversight that led to it, and says they're going to try never to do this again. This looks sincere to me, and given that it's sincere, people really ought to be allowed more chance than this to recover from their mistakes.
2) Bloggingheads.TV has given me a forum to debate accomodationist atheists who are insufficiently condemning of religion - for example my diavlog with Adam Frank, author of "The Constant Fire". Adam Frank argues that, while of course we now know that God doesn't exist, nonetheless scientific wonder at the universe and its mysteries has a lot in common with the roots of religion. And I said this was wishful thinking, historically ignorant of how religions really arose and propagated themselves, and a continuation of such theistic bad habits as thinking that things of which we are temporarily ignorant are "sacred mysteries". And no one at BHTV complained that I was being too confrontational, or too anti-religious, or that it was unfair to have the diavlog be between two atheists.
With whom shall I diavlog?
Bloggingheads.tv can't exactly call up, say, the President of France and get him to do a diavlog, but they have some street cred with mid-rank celebrities and academics. With that in mind, how would you fill in this blank?
"I would really love to see a diavlog between Yudkowsky and ____________."
BHTV: Yudkowsky & Adam Frank on "religious experience"
BHTV episode with myself and Adam Frank, author of "The Constant Fire", on whether or not religious experience is compatible with the scientific experience, or worth trying to salvage.
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