Matthew_C
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Matthew_C has not written any posts yet.
Actually rather than rehashing the entire psi debate here, I'd much prefer you just read the material instead. Chapter 3 of Irreducible Mind is particularly powerful, and I will send excerpts to anyone who gives me a US postal address or PO box (email mcromer @t blast dawt com). The natural history of these phenomena are very easily available, and often very well documented.
If you've already decided which side to argue for, the work of rationality is done within you, whether well or poorly. But how can you, yourself, decide which side to argue? If choosing the wrong side is viscerally terrifying, even just a little viscerally terrifying, you'd best integrate all the evidence.
OK, here, now go take your own advice. As an academic imprint it's pretty expensive, so if you can't find it in your local university library I'll snail-mail you some relevant extracts.
HA,
The Ouroboros is simply a symbol.
The symbol represents the self consuming itself, which is a good description of the process that happens once "you" start investigating the nature of "you" seriously. That's what Nick and I are referring to, although I suspect Nick conceptually reduces it all to brain states, while I see brain states and personal egos as phenomena playing out within the fundamental unity of Awareness.
Nick did a very nice job explaining why seeing the reality of the "self" explodes egotism.
In fact, altruism may even be more reasonable, on grounds of symmetry and the fact that 'the self' is an illusion.
I think Richard Dawkins is on the right track with his idea of "memes". If the Buddha were alive today, I suspect he would call the self, and self-centered thinking a particularly prevalent and virulent meme infesting our cognitive facilities. And amazing but true, it is quite possible to visualize the operation of the "self" in its meme-hood and cease to identify with it, as even materialistic atheists like Susan Blackmore and Sam Harris can attest.
I look at it from the perspective that I enjoy (apparently) existing as a subjective... (read more)
This is exactly what I mean, there are strong cognitive biases underlying the singularitarian ideas. . .
I'm not sure what he means much of the time, but Kevembuangga hits this particular ball out of the park. Perhaps someone will write up a disagreement case study about the "Singularity" and post it here. That would be quite the treat. I'm already working on a different disagreement case study that will be posted to my own blog in the relatively near future. Cool concept, these disagreement case studies. . .
Michael,
I think the problematic belief system is not just "materialism" but rather "reductionistic materialism". A good example of that would be someone who is certain that all phenomena in the universe are simply an outcome of the Schrodinger Equation. The kinds of evidence that I feel are incompatible with reductionistic materialism include spontaneous precognition, spontaneous telepathy, controlled laboratory studies showing these effects, triple-blind mediumship studies, etc.
The truth-seeking approach is to allow observations and data to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our models. Much more commonplace is that we use our models to filter the observations and data we are willing to accept. And that is especially prevalent among adherents to the dominant paradigms of any particular age.
Mitchell,
What I find particularly interesting reading his papers is his emphasis that space and time are features of the macroscopic world, and don't go "all the way down".
They seem absolute and real to us because of our evolutionary psychology and especially the "space and time" orientation of the visual maps in our brains. He contrasts his view with interpretations which postulate an infinitely sliced spatial manifold which is fundamentally real, but cannot be measured at the finest scales. I'm assuming by that he is referring to MWI.
I also find his arguments about particle identity intriguing. That all our notions of separate identity are predicated on spatial and other measurable... (read more)
Mitchell,
Have you heard of the Pondicherry interpretation of QM?
McCabe's single-paragraph dismissal of an 800 page book with hundreds of footnotes that he hasn't read, based on wikipedia entries seems to be the precise opposite of the raison d’être of Overcoming Bias. And Yudkowsky, I simply dare you to read this book. You talk the good talk here about The Way and the search for truth. I dare you to expose yourself to some of the meticulously-documented lacunae in your worldview by reading Irreducible Mind. I dare you to your sense of intellectual pride. Chapter 3 is a good place to start. . .