OC-ACX-LW Meetup: Reality Tunnels, Creative Agnosticism & Predictive Processing – Saturday, August 30, 2025 Meeting #103

OC-ACX-LW Meetup: Reality Tunnels, Creative Agnosticism & Predictive Processing – Saturday, August 30, 2025 Meeting #103
 Date & time: 2:00 p.m. (wrap ~5–6)
 Place: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com — (949) 375-2045
 Snacks: Welcome but not required

Readings:

• Introduction to Reality Tunnels: A Tool for Understanding the Postmodern World — Mykola Bilokonsky — https://medium.com/reality-tunnels/introduction-to-reality-tunnels-a-tool-for-understanding-the-postmodern-world-72cdd98af9d0
  
   
• Creative Agnosticism — Robert Anton Wilson (Journal of Cognitive Liberties, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000) — https://www.cognitiveliberty.org/ccle1/4jcl/4JCL61.htm
  
   
• Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty — Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) — https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/
  
   

Recommended audio overview (covers all three):
 NotebookLM overview — https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/b89a6b5e-b8a0-47c8-9fd1-90d0f1bdd000?artifactId=6f2de7c4-fcb8-4468-9772-b3d1b5db81c8

Summaries

1) Introduction to Reality Tunnels (Bilokonsky).
 Via Robert Anton Wilson’s notion of “reality tunnels,” Bilokonsky argues that human perception and judgment are always filtered. We reduce overwhelming sensory input to manageable signals, constructing a working “reality” from what our filters let through. The skill is editable: we can consciously shift filters—attending to different cues (emotions, diet, marginalized voices)—to inhabit alternative “tunnels.” Power brokers (ideology, religion, advertising) sell “off-the-shelf” tunnels that claim sole access to Truth and discourage exploration; awareness of filter-construction is therefore both liberating and a defense against manipulation. The headline takeaway: intentionally re-tuning attention changes the reality you experience, for better or worse.

2) Creative Agnosticism (Robert Anton Wilson).
 Wilson contrasts “modeltheism” (being hypnotized by one Model of the ‘Real’ Universe) with “creative agnosticism” (treating models as bets about experience). On this view, cruelty, fanaticism, and “Right Man” righteousness arise when people mistake their model for reality and edit away disconfirming experience. Perception is active model-making; intelligent living means meta-programming—switching models, widening attention, seeking anomalies, and updating. The essay riffs through Nietzsche, phenomenology, and brain hemispheres to argue that multiple “reality tunnels” are legitimate tools; responsibility lies in choosing and revising them rather than enforcing one totalizing map.

3) Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty (predictive processing) (Scott Alexander on Andy Clark).
 Predictive Processing (PP) is a unifying framework where the brain constantly generates top-down predictions that meet bottom-up sensory data; mismatches produce “surprisal” and updates. Attention behaves like precision-weighting: tighten it and sensation constrains perception; loosen it and priors fill in (inattentional blindness, illusions). PP explains imagination/dreaming (top-down simulation with weak constraints), learning (keep models that best predict incoming signals), and even action (minimize prediction error by moving to make predictions come true). The memorable gloss: perception is “controlled hallucination”—and PP supplies the machinery behind our “reality tunnels.”

Crossover note.
 Bilokonsky and Wilson give the vocabulary (tunnels/models; meta-programming/agnosticism); Alexander’s PP review supplies the mechanism (precision-weighted prediction). Together they ask: if perception is model-laden and tunable, what are the epistemic guardrails and the social ethics of choosing our tunnels?

Questions

Article-specific prompts

• Reality Tunnels: What’s one filter you’ve deliberately changed (attention to emotions, diet, media, etc.) that altered your “reality”—and what surprised you most about the shift?
  
   
• Reality Tunnels & Power: Which “off-the-shelf” tunnel (political, religious, corporate) have you seen claim to be the One True Reality? What broke its spell, if anything?
  
   
• Creative Agnosticism: Wilson says we should treat models as bets. What practical habit helps you notice you’re “model-theizing” (becoming the Right Person Who Is Always Right) before it calcifies?
  
   
• RAW’s Ethics: When does switching tunnels become evasive rationalization rather than genuine learning? What’s the line between meta-programming and self-deception?
  
   
• Predictive Processing: Where have you personally caught your brain “cooking the books” (duplicate-word illusions, inattentional blindness, expectations hearing what wasn’t there)? What would shrinking or widening precision look like, on purpose?
  
   
• PP & Agency: If perception is “controlled hallucination,” what keeps us tethered to shared reality? Name one hyperprior or common constraint that makes cooperation possible.
  
   

Crossover prompts

• Mechanism ↔ Practice: PP says we can tune precision/attention; Wilson says we can switch models; Bilokonsky says we can change tunnels. Design a one-minute ritual that nudges you from “modeltheism” to “creative agnosticism” in a heated conversation.
  
   
• Epistemic Hygiene: If groups can weaponize tunnels, what PP-inspired guardrails (e.g., forcing disconfirming evidence into the stream; time-boxed “opposite prior” checks) would keep a community exploratory without drifting into anything-goes relativism?
  
   
• Politics of Filters: When should we not encourage tunnel-switching (e.g., safety-critical contexts), and when is it morally required (e.g., de-polarization)? Offer a case for each, drawing on all three readings.
  
   
• Shared Reality: Can we outline a minimal “commons” of assumptions (hyperpriors, norms, measurement) that different tunnels agree to share so we’re arguing about maps, not denying the territory? What belongs in that commons—and what doesn’t?
  
   

House rules / suggestions

• Good-faith conversation and argument.
  
   
• Steelman others’ views; no straw-manning.
  
   
• Readings suggested, not required.
  
   
• Avoid common social-media takes; aim deeper.
  
   
• Be open to other people’s ideas.