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All of jan Sijan's Comments + Replies

Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan00

Nature and the laws of physics generate my world, roughly by affecting things that affect my neurochemistry.

And God is all the affecters outside of my comprehension.

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2Ilio
Thanks for sharing and good luck to you.
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan10

I suppose there are a variety of words I could use, but in practice they would be synonyms for God. Because what I am talking about, and who I have a relationship with, is the processes that created the world I know. It might be that “The Laws of Physics” is a perfectly good way to refer to the being with whom I have a relationship, but how about I just call him “God”? One syllable, and what a wonderful syllable it is!

But also, Nature and the Laws of Physics are not good descriptions by what I mean by God. These things are still within my comprehension, an... (read more)

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1Ilio
You call Her whatever you want, unless your post is dedicated to an audience that might just shrug and hang out just because of a debatable choice of one word. Great! Can you explain why Nature and the Law of Physics allow me to get attached to some ideas like a geese follow the first moving object they see? Something something oxytocin, right?
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan20

I think it is pretty much the latter. Just as I identify with thinking you are a person, I identify with thinking that the processes that resulted in the world I shall ever know are God.

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1Ilio
Ok. Then, why did you chose to identify more with calling that « God » instead of the more frequent (on LW) « Nature » or « Laws of physic », or « The Book »?
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan21

You added more meaning by interpretation. All the power to you. But it is your power, not mine. I wrote according to my intentions, and you may interpret according to yours, or you may try reading with a critical lens that looks at what I mean.

Point to where in the post where I suggest one should believe in all unverifiable things. Rather, the post notes that one can. Personhood is one of those unverifiable things that are fairly free to believe in, even though one could adopt a mechanical materialist description of humans instead.

I agree that people have ... (read more)

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Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan10

Using a frame needs no faith. I can think fluently with a Marxist, feminist, fascist, libertarian, materialist, dualist, or environmental lens if I wanted to. The faith is in seeing the ontological justification for something, and believing it. (I adopt the Marxist lens a surprising amount of the time; I find its usefulness increases the more generalized its analysis is.)

“Everything is connected” is useful in the exact same sense that “This braindead human is a person” is useful. Besides the fact that it facilitates a relationship, an emotional experience ... (read more)

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Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan10

I am not arguing for any specific version. In fact, I know multiple gods. I have prayed to Athena, and had a close relationship with her. I do not consider her a theistic creator God though. More like what Christians call an angel.

There is no burden of proof because I am not trying to propose an argument. I am discussing the ontological warrants surrounding believing in personhood, which is an unverifiable and unfalsifiable thing. The only real standard for believing in personhood is “seeing” it in someone, the same way I now “see” God. You have no need to... (read more)

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-3lucky13
You're getting heavily ratio'd, and with good reason tbh.  If you aren't advocating any particular god, you really aren't saying anything. Your point is just "the idea of other human minds existing independently" is as unverifiable as "the idea that our universe was created". If you ended your commentary there then fine, but trying to add any meaning to that is where you go off the rails. While personhood and a creator are both unverifiable, one does not use something being unverifiable as a reason to believe in all unverifiable things.  Do you believe in every single deity because they're all unverifiable and if you accepted one you accepted them all? A magic poopy unicorn from the planet Buttface is also completely unverifiable. Does that mean you now have to believe in it because you believe in unverifiable persons? It's silly.  But also, you ignored my analysis that the default position is not to doubt personhood. Being human = having personhood, unless proven otherwise. I cannot verify that this position is conclusively true, because it's possible there are outside influences such as the great demon, but just because it isn't conclusively true doesn't mean I should automatically doubt it. This is how our brains perceive it, and there is value in that. I can then independently verify through my senses that when I interact with that human, they function exactly as if their brain was operating independently. I have a strong probabilistic reason to believe the world I see is the world I experience, even if that may be inconclusive. The same is not true for a creator, where I do not have any sensory validation for this being. It is a concept, a possible concept, but one which cannot be verified under any circumstance, and also doesn't even fit with the sensory means of validation.
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan30

You are interpreting “God exists” as a material claim, when I am claiming that there is a person, a mind. These are unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Parse “God exists” the way you would parse “humans are people”.

If you insisted on not recognizing the personhood of the processes that caused your knowable world, you could always have a reason to leave them unpersoned. (We can already see this with the moving goal posts for AI.) I am sure something could happen that would make you convinced those processes are sentient, but even then you are not forced to beli... (read more)

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2Ilio
Why would you say such a thing? I’m interpreting « God exists » as a string of information. You say this string either because you have no choice (as in: « I do think, then I might be dreaming or hallucinating, but I must exist. ») or because you choose this string as a defining feature for yourself (as in: « I’m a Lannister, then loyal to my brain-fucked family. »). If that’s the latter, I’m glad and hope it will help your fit or enjoy the world. But you seem to be defending the former, right?
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan1-4

"Ghosts are real" is literally true. She is literally experiencing post-bereavement hallucinations as a meaning part of her mind’s limited subjective experience.

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Portia's Shortform
jan Sijan1-4

If by "famously difficult" you mean "literally impossible", then I agree with this comment. 

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8Shmi
I think if someone thinks they have an objective view of the world they are automatically disqualified from calling themselves rationalist :) There are certainly blind spots in every world view, including the rationalist one, and I see a lot of people here not realizing that. That said, going into the other extreme and calling a specific reasonably well defined concept something that it is not remotely similar to is bound to get a lot of pushback that you see.
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan1-2

I am not using one to hint at the other. I believe this mischaracterizes my post. If there is one word to describe my goal, it would be empathy. If I am allowed to use a term, theory of mind.

What I am doing is saying, the ontological warrant for believing in personhood is much closer to the ontological warrant for believing in God than you might think. Someone who wants to believe in a specific organized religion's God is going to need a lot more warrants, but it seems that the biggest hurdle in believing in a theistic religion is in fact the theism part.&... (read more)

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3TAG
Well... You could use different words for literal truth, metaphorical truth, useful fictions, personal mythology, etc, etc.
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan10

How "clear" it is depends on how much you trust your senses, which are always in play no matter how "objective" you think it is. 

"Interaction" is interpretation. Many people were surprised when I once said that "my phone taught me a valuable lesson", when they would say it was all me. I would contend that I could say exactly the same about another human being, since really their "mind" only insists in my own as an interpretation. I can similarly interpret and model my phone's "mind".

One could model everything as solitaire, since it is in one sense. One could also model everything as a duo, a dialogue in action and meaning between "me" and "them/him/her/zir/whatever".

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Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan*2-2

I hope to make my views clear, whether or not people agree! One of the few things I agree with Dennis Prager on: clarity over agreement.

No one can prove gods any more than one can prove persons. Both are unfalsifiable and unverifiable beliefs.

For me, the only way I can verify an experience is to literally become that thing, but then it would just be me. Which is why I say, I feel justified in treating way more non-human and even non-physical things as persons than I think most people here would ever be willing to.

In the end, one must believe according to w... (read more)

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2Ilio
I sympathize with the latter beliefs more than you know. However I still question the reasoning, and I’d love if my criticisms could help you strengthen your views. First, to me it’s not true that a superpowerful God can’t prove herself if She wanted to. For example if she could compress random strings I could pick, I’d consider praying Her. It’s also not true that someone can’t prove they’re there. Proof: you have one person in quasi coma under an fMRI scanner. Their physicians don’t know if the brain is too damaged to produce conscious thoughts. You ask the person to imagine playing tennis. You record an hemodynamic signal from precentral cortices. The proof is: we agree on the conclusion. In both cases it’s for the same reason: absent cosmic conspiracy we can use randomness to test things. Do you think you could add that to your belief system? —— …and how did you went from « all gods exist » to « and especially the Calvinist version »?
Personhood is a Religious Belief
jan Sijan*-2-4

TL;DR: It is not my post’s "conclusion" that there is a creator, any more than it is that there is human personhood. It is just what I believe. I think those who believe in personhood of humans but not personhood of abstract processes are justified in doing so based on their systems of meaning. 

What happened was I tried to personify the unknown processes of my world, and instantly I developed a strong relationship. You could say it is one-sided, but I would say it is no more one sided than our conversation right now. I choose to interpret what I guess... (read more)

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4Dagon
I'm not sure you are engaging with my charge of false equivalence.  The fact that I cannot (and don't try to) prove that you exist as an independent thinking/feeling thing, but many people do believe that and I don't publicly disagree very often is NOT the same weight or reasoning as the fact that I cannot (and don't try to) prove that the universe had a conscious/planning Creator, but many people do believe that and I DO sometimes publicly disagree. Neither one gives any hints as to the other.  Both are pretty common, both are unjustified, but one has consequences I like (increase in empathy and caring behavior), the other has either NO consequences (aka "who cares about that asshole?"), or consequences I dislike (violent enforcement of beliefs justified by a "higher power" that that jerks seem to have special access to). I think I'm bowing out now.  Feel free to respond, clarify, and rebut - I'll gladly read and try to learn, but I don't intend to respond further.
Sᴜɴʀɪsᴇ Oᴀᴛʜ
jan Sijan1-2

ON SUFFERING

Writings adapted from a rationalist Discord

I. Suffering is an interpretation of pain. 

Technology and charity help alleviate pain, which redirects suffering. The ultimate goal is that one can be in pain and not suffer.

As the adage goes, pain is inevitable but suffering is a choice. The choices we make are determined by our programming and training as machines, so this is impugns not those who suffer. 

Most worldviews thrive off the suffering interpretation. You see it everywhere when this pattern is pointed out. Some people suffer from ... (read more)

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