Episode 125: Our Lovecraftian Universe?
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Blue: Hello out there. This week on the theory of anything podcast. It was our honor to have back on Micah Redding of the Christian transhumanist podcast We had a joyful conversation touching on religion science fiction and teleology my intention was to look at science fiction and fantasy for an indication of the kind of universe we live in with respect to meaning We also touch on whether or not it makes sense to believe in a personal God that answers prayers What is the difference between panpsychism and teleology and whether there is a difference between an actively malevolent lovecraftian universe and a meaning neutral universe in line with existentialism I
[00:00:49] Green: loved this
[00:00:50] Blue: conversation and I hope someone else does too or the very least I hope someone is inspired to rewatch Ridley Scott’s Prometheus
[00:01:08] Green: Welcome to the theory of anything podcast. Hey guys. Hello Bruce And Micah Hello. Hello. We got Micah Redding with us back again This is a topic that Peter picked Peter. Do you want to maybe introduce the topic? I did want to read my short article at the beginning, but maybe you can explain What it is we’re gonna be discussing
[00:01:31] Blue: Yes, of course. So this is something that you Introduced me to this concept Bruce. I mean obviously or not obviously, but I had read some HP Lovecraft before But when you started talking about this idea of a lovecraftian universe A universe that is actively malevolent a universe Created by perhaps evil wizards that kind of like provoked a chain of thought in my mind and I started thinking about This different ways to look at reality. I mean maybe it kind of coincided with me getting into teleology a little bit more and Suddenly I started Look when I watched science fiction Which I or read science fiction. I started thinking about things in terms of a meaning neutral universe a inherently meaningful universe or a Lovecraftian or actively malevolent universe And I’m just in this space where every everything I see I start like Classifying it in that way. So I guess I found your your your idea pretty Convincing or interesting I suppose and Yeah, so that’s where I’m at and also I just like to give a big shout out to this Paul Davies book the cosmic blueprint which is basically the most Convincing argument I’ve ever read for Teleology or this idea that we live we do live in a universe where That that’s meaningful and and we’ll I’ll get more into that as this conversation transpires, of course, but Bruce, I know you have your essay your article That I thought we could kick things off with so if you want to want to go into that and we’ll we’ll see where this Conversation takes us.
[00:03:44] Green: Sure. So this is a blog post I wrote back in my religious blogger days. This is february 26 22nd 2010 So Howard Phillips Lovecraft born august 20th 1890 was the was the great horror writer of his generation Lovecraft created the so -called Cthulhu mythos, which is even today visited Liberally by imaginative writers the world over even one of my favorite Babylon 5 episodes third space visited Lovecraft’s chilling universe Lovecraft seems to have lived a depressing and lonely life as a young man, particularly from ages 18 to 23 He had quote almost no contact with anyone, but his mother and a quote in night 1924 He married though he and his wife separated a few years afterwards never to live to live with each other again The divorce was never finalized Love Lovecraft was hardly a prolific writer and never wrote even a single full length novel He would have died in an obscurity had it not been for the efforts of his pen pals Particularly august derelith who managed to breathe life into his stories not socially adept lovecraft’s pen pals were his real social life He is believed to have written nearly a hundred thousand letters in his lifetime of which one fifth survive Though his correspondences through his correspondences. He inspired numerous famous authors including fritz Lieber and robert e howard from Conan fame His stories directly inspired The current generation of horror writers such as steven king king called lovecraft quote the 20th century’s great practitioner of the classic horror tale
[00:05:15] Green: Lovecraft invented a whole new genre of horror known today as cosmic horror cosmic pessimism or Cosmicism the love in lovecraft’s tales typically the storyteller is explaining how they stumbled upon Some bit of forbidden knowledge that proves to marginalize the importance of the existence of humankind Unable to deal with the truth said storyteller either goes insane and is locked up in an asylum or commits suicide to escape the truth One of my favorite examples of this is the story of shadow of in smith over in smith Which I might add was crippling brought to life in the video game called cthulhu dark corners of the earth In this classic tale a visitor to the seaport town of in smith Becomes too curious for his own good and begins to research the strange happenings in in smith He accidentally stumbles upon the horrifying tale that the residents of in smith Are actually a crossbreed between humans and the spawn of cthulhu known as the deep ones An ancient advanced race of sea monsters that make humans look like mere monkeys Forced to spend the night in their hotel He soon finds that the denizens do not intend to let him leave in smith alive with his knowledge Though he manages to escape with his life He soon discovers that he was drawn to the town because he himself is a descendant of in smith stock
[00:06:26] Green: He soon finds his human features dissolving day by day as he is drawn to the siren call of the deep ones in the sea This story is an apt illustration of lovecraft’s reoccurring themes particularly psychic disintegration in the face of cosmic horror perceived as truth that was a quote discovery Of advanced races of god’s hostile to humanity and horror at discovering one’s bestial evolutionary heritage Joyce carol oates suggested that lovecraft’s gothic tales quotes gothic tales would seem to form psychic autobiography Apparently inspired by his own religious views commonly called Maltheism where one quote achieves the mere opposite of traditional noses and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality And quote in a letter to robert e howard lovecraft affirms his agnostic atheist beliefs All I say is that I think it is damned unlikely that anything like a central cosmic will a spirit spirit world or an eternal survival of personality exists The they are the most preposterous and unjustified of all guesses which can be made about the universe Indeed is not hard to discern that lovecraft’s horror was nothing less than that of an atheist worldview followed With fidelity to its logical conclusions I should probably note at the time based on the way an atheist would have seen things scientifically at the time Lovecraft’s real gift was his ability to understand the ramifications of his own beliefs and to channel that into horror fiction In love to lovecraft morality was subjective and thus meaningless quote in a cosmos with absolute values We have to rely on the relative values affecting our daily sense of comfort pleasure and emotional satisfaction Which gives us relative painlessness and contentment.
[00:08:10] Green: We may arbit arbitrarily called good and vice versa one’s personality one’s personal morality simply impacted um Upon another with no hope of any sort of universal resolution proving morality a mere illusion quote What now gives one person or race or age relative painlessness and contentment often disagrees sharply with the psychological side From what gives the other the gives these same boons to another person or race or age Therefore good is relative and variably invariable quality Depending on ancestry chronology geography nationality and individual temperament To lovecraft humanity was of no significance in the cosmic scheme of things Quote now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity Or significance in the vast cosmos at large Once properly understood the universe was a terrifying place from which our only protection was ignorance We were a tiny bubble of the of a Lucerary order floating in a sea of universal nothingness that canon would snuff us out when it got around to us It got around to it quote the most merciful thing in the world I think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents We live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of a black sea of infinity And it was not meant that we should voyage far His love for science clashed With what is what it implied about humanity and our utter and import unimportance If we if we really understood madness would be the only option quote The sciences each straining in their own direction have hitherto harmed us little But someday the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality And of our frightful position therein that we shall either go mad from revelation or flee from the deadly light Into the peace and safety of a new dark age His belief in the godless world in part drove Lovecraft to write his weird tales
[00:10:09] Green: Allowing him what he called imaginative liberation from quote the galling limitations of time space and the natural law for which Which for ever imprison us So his fiction was paradoxically a simultaneous release from reality while attempting to face it head on The horrors he wrote reflected his true horror of our place in the universe Yet were somehow more satisfying in that they that we were not alone And were actually surrounded by wondrous and fantastical the wondrous and fantastical just out of sight Even terrible gods like cthulhu and daigon who cared nothing for humanity other than to breed us with their own spawn Would be a relief compared to the non -existent god that cared nothing at all. That’s the end of the uh The post
[00:10:54] Blue: that i’ve got a question for you guys based on that if we can start here We’ve got i you know i i’m a little uh disoriented because We had a little some technical problems, but on our show again the amazing mica Also known as the christian transhumanist um I don’t know if that’s your your name, but i think that could be cool if you were just the You know it seems like that was about 10 years ago on youtube everyone Had a like a handle like that or whatever, but you know We’ve got the christian the christian transhumanist mica and i’m curious based on bruce’s blog post there do you and or bruce do you see a difference between like a more naturalistic meaning neutral universe and a actively malevolent lovecraftian universe Because it seems like what i hear you saying bruce is you’re kind of connecting the two
[00:12:02] Green: Lovecraft was connecting the two in my opinion. Okay, so i i agree with you so Lovecraft saw a meaningless universe not necessarily Directly well That’s not quite right i i could explain in more detail what he the the aspects of it that he thought were somewhat malevolent But there’s kind of this idea within lovecraft in his personal beliefs that the the universe just did not care Right, so that would be more the indifferent universe not the malevolent universe now when he wrote his stories You would have these Really kind of malevolent gods he would always portrayed them as just not caring about us because he was trying to capture That chillingness of an uncaring universe But like they always end up kind of caring about us. They want to mate us and breed us and You know sometimes they just gonna they’re just going to wipe us out at some point because they just don’t care You know like like there’s different depending on the story. There’s different things that he has in mind But a lot of times They come closer to being malevolent. There’s even some that I would even dare say come somewhat closer to being Not caring, but maybe care a little bit. And so there’s they’re almost Not evil some of the some of the god races that that he writes about Um, so it sort of depended.
[00:13:24] Green: I mean like sometimes he’d do pulp Sometimes he’d do more serious science fiction and depending on which story he’s doing he would change things around right so like if you’re reading um done which horror done which horror is very pulpy and Ultimately the way they defeat the cthulhu mythos is they learn a bunch of spells and they cast the spells and they overcome the evil Like most of his stories aren’t like that right where the good guys win He does he does that sometimes But like most of his stories they find out the truth and they just sort of go mad, right? And it’s just a bad ending So it it it always depended somewhat on which story he was telling and he was first and foremost just trying to write fun stories Right, but I think his own personal worldview Probably came closer to not the universe being malevolent malevolent, but to just being indifferent
[00:14:16] Red: Something something that’s different to me about those two things is the role of knowledge So um in in some of those stories, it seems like the idea is that it’s the knowledge itself It’s the knowledge of the kind of horrifying indifference That then is corrupting or destructive to the human mind And so then that ignorance becomes this safety net And I I think there’s a lot of things that are like that. I’m currently reading There is no anti memetics division where It’s to know about the kind of horrors that surround us that actually gives them power over us right so The the the bubble of ignorance that most people live in is actually protective in some way And it seems like in this era that lovecraft is writing in I’m thinking about the the king in yellow which Proceeds lovecraft by a few decades Um
[00:15:20] Green: And that he he wraps into his mythos. So yeah, yeah today consider part of the lovecraft mythos even though it predates him
[00:15:29] Red: Yes, and and I think bruce you kind of open my eyes to the fact that a lot of um There’s a lot of thinking during this era That Is sort of fearful about um This discovery, right? I think even like a niche who you know, other people will understand better than I do But I I think you know the sentiment that he seems to be expressing is you know, god is dead We have killed him and now we are horrified because we don’t know what to do now Uh, we we you know, we’re we’re kind of lost in in some sense and that this seems to me to be a an attitude that was occurring throughout the scientific and intellectual world of of the time Is that yeah, it’s not just that the universe is indifferent, but that there is some kind of a tragedy or horror that’s actually um emerging from that learning of its indifference where um, yeah, it’s it’s actually actually like a psychological danger to us in some ways so I would not you know, I I would distinguish between a meaning indifferent universe a malevolent universe, but it seems like um, that for a lot of people as soon as they considered the The possibility of a meaning neutral universe it went far beyond that into the malevolent territory and maybe that’s because um, even to maintain The kind of capacity for meaning neutrality meaning like, you know knowledge is not ultimately Destructive to the human mind That actually is a kind of meaning as well, right? Like or at least it’s a very hard You know target to hit precisely neutral on that scale of meaningless. That’s a good point meaningful,
[00:17:27] Green: right? so Let me so yes Particularly episode 56 is what Mike is referring to if you called rationality religion in the omega point and Like I go over Tolstoy’s story Tolstoy Is someone who literally I would dare say started going mad over Just trying to deal with what science was the cosmology of science was saying at the time Because it seemed to rip away all meaning out of his life And he couldn’t figure out how to enjoy his life anymore like nothing gave him meaning anymore And what he did to overcome it is ultimately he became a christian But he even struggled with that like he kind of goes through Where he disagrees with christianity things like that of the christianity of of his era and country But I think what Mike is saying is correct that the idea of of Neutrality Was in some sense perceived and I would even argue it continues to be perceived today except by a few as As something malevolent, right that if if the universe isn’t different to us and there’s no meaning That’s that’s really bad. That’s a bad thing and It’s difficult to know what to do about it, right And so I I do think that was definitely the attitude that lovecraft took and he’s channeling this into his stories But this is keep in mind that we’re talking about a guy who was almost surely mentally ill, right? Like so he was at a minimum. He was depressed clinically depressed, right? But it might be something worse than that
[00:19:06] Green: He is channeling this into his stories And he’s taking what he thinks he’s learning from the cosmology of his day the science of his day And he’s trying to put the horror he fills over it into his stories And this is how he’s coming with his horror stories by the way There’s a there’s another really great horror author thomas legotti who’s alive today Who’s considered the modern lovecraft. He’s also mentally ill Like go read about interviews with him or something And he just channels the horror of his life into his stories So you read these horror stories and you can it’s he’s not even trying to hide it Like that like that. It’s all something about his life So like there’s this horror story that I read of his where the boss at work is is a monster And so it’s terrifying to approach the boss The whole story is so obviously just what we all experience when we’re afraid of our boss, right? And how hard it is to try to go reason with them And the way that the company slowly takes away and eats away your time So it takes your dreams from you until finally all you can do is have the dreams that the company wants you to have I mean like it’s very in some ways mundane horror That comes from this kind of Idea that the universe just just does not care right about you about your values about what you care about One thing that occurs to me.
[00:20:36] Blue: I mean I’m speaking to two people who are religious Who are Christian? Which you know is a view that I’m Seem to be getting more sympathetic to But I really want to Steel man This idea, you know before I move on to some other science fiction. We’re going to talk about xenomorphs We’re going to talk about predators borgs some other things But I want to steel man this idea that This universe is um Meaning neutral Uh, you know that We have to create our own meaning. I mean I might be so bad lots of people seem to to do it and are are are fine Uh, and you know, they don’t go mad like toolstoy or lovecraft or Legati is that who you said? Yeah, legati. Legati. They’re just they live Perfectly honorable lives just creating their own Own meaning. So this is a this is a text. I’m just actually reading a text.
[00:21:44] Blue: I I wrote to my girlfriend here, um, and uh in attempting to to steel man this, uh meaning neutral universe idea, I guess some might be kind of a weird person to date if I’m sending these texts to my girlfriend, but So our laws of physics suggest that the universe is deterministic The second law of thermodynamics suggests heat death is the ultimate end of reality as we know it The behavior of subatomic particles is ultimately what defines nature If there is meaning in the universe It’s something we must arbitrarily create for ourselves in our paleolithic minds governed by selfish genes We are ultimately a collections of of atoms perceiving other atoms in a world governed by something like chaos or determinism And if it at times seems we find ourselves in a special kind of world It’s because the multiverse is so large that of course we find ourselves here the anthropic principle So yeah, so like the anthropic principle is conceived of by by douglas adams We’re a puddle wondering why the shape of the hole in the ground fits us so well What’s wrong with this worldview religious guys I mean, why is it so and why is it so compelling to so many people? I I think constitutionally i’m i’m very much a skeptic um and a Naturalist, I think um and I probably would be You know in a in a complete sense if I hadn’t discovered tipler and transhumanism at a at a young age and kind of reconsidered How a lot of these things are framed so um I I find it Yeah, I find it very compelling the the in some ways the the meaning neutral universe and um as certainly seems to
[00:23:57] Blue: In at some level be the truth about our our lives, right?
[00:24:02] Red: We um You know We by and large whatever our ambitions aspirations dreams hopes loves They have failed they they fail and inevitably um but cause we die and other people die and so we whatever we achieve is partial at best incomplete um and We we just have to sort of make the best of it and and when we do that we you know, we actually Can sometimes seem to be making the you know actually Actively doing the best thing possible in in our our lives, right when we recognize that that sort of no one’s coming to save us we can Uh, you know, the best we can do is just kind of make what we can make the meaning we can out of out of our situation That seems to be really effective for some people so I um Yeah, I think I think that that is a compelling idea and it For me at least it is something that I sometimes need to work within What where that fails for me is when you start zooming out farther and start asking about the kind of long -term consequences of this and and whether you Whether you’re sort of implicitly Leaning into something else So, you know, if you are aspiring to something to change the world in some way And and you come up against for very practical reasons you come up against You know the limits of an individual human life If you are still striving for that if you are still striving for these, you know These big changes to create new and glorious knowledge to Help enable a wonderful and beautiful future In some ways, it seems like you are implicitly already working within an assumption that
[00:26:16] Red: the universe is sort of um Ready to meet you in that that you’re you’re you’re leaning into something that’s true beyond your own personal experience and so the more you kind of Go into these larger scale things the more it seems to me like we’re either working within some kind of meaning context that we project onto the universe or we are working within a kind of perspective of despair and There’s a there’s a since we’re all reading quotes There’s something from Bertrand Russell that I always think about and he he says he has this Idea that you know that man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end They were achieving that his origin his growth his hopes and his fears his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental Colocations of atoms that no fire no heroism no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave That all the labors of the ages all devotion all the inspiration all the noonday brightness of human genius Are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system And that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe and ruins All these things if not quite beyond dispute are yet so nearly certain The no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand Only within the scaffolding of these truths only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair Can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built?
[00:27:53] Red: so Bertrand Russell is counseling a philosophy of despair and trying to um You know trying to build something on top of it and yet that philosophy of despair does not look like um an optimistic hopeful Uh, certainly not a transhumanist future Certainly not a future that I would be striving for and so kind of the anti -templar is what i’m hearing That that’s
[00:28:20] Blue: right
[00:28:20] Green: keep in mind that that was the view of the time right like this isn’t just Bertrand Russell We’re talking about this seemed to be this seemed to many many many people that were elites in scientific circles like this Or I guess Bertrand Russell would be a philosophic circle, but you know what I mean That it seemed like these were just implications Of the science we were discovering that and they they truly truly believed that right Um, let me try to give my own answers. I think I agree with what mica is is saying So let me say that I’ve actually experienced this myself. I went through I’ve mentioned on this podcast I went through a period where I was in lots of pain all the time I was really really struggling And I was without a doubt. I was in a fairly deep depression I was not able to I could barely make it through work because it was painful to use a computer because of the Pain in my my shoulder. I have a lot of health problems I just found out I have another very big health problem two days ago so it’s like non -stop, but um When I was in the worst point of that dark period I’m pretty sure I did not believe in God even slightly at that point, right? I was a pessimistic atheist in every conceivable sense similar to Bertrand Russell Or to hp. Lovecraft, right? The thing that always went through my mind was What meaning could I find in my life, right given the new limitations that I thought I had let me luckily I eventually found what the problem was out of my 15th doctor.
[00:30:00] Green: I think and They finally found a way to get me past the pain. So I wasn’t in pain all the time The thing that I always struggled with and I still I think this is I I accept that I am weird, right? Like I accept that most people don’t think the way I do And so I I’m not trying to I I think this is the thing that keeps people getting people confused when I try to talk about this I’m not advocating for anything I’m just trying to explain my own thinking process as a rational person And how I got stuck in a loop like Lovecraft did or like Russell did, right? Like it’s super common to come across these people who got stuck in a loop, right? and The problem that I faced was Yes, you like I understand this idea that you make your own meaning Right, and that’s that strikes me as absolutely the right thing to do And if you can pull it off if you’re not Tolstoy and if you can pull it off Then of course You should make your own meaning and that would be so much better Then having no meaning in your life at all even if it’s just something you just made up Okay If you can do it Then I I guess I don’t if you’re looking at this from the purely pessimistic Atheistic worldview that I was in at the time. I can’t see any downside to it. It’s all upside Okay, it’s of course.
[00:31:25] Green: That’s the right answer Right The problem that I faced was that I couldn’t see how to make it work for me Because it seemed to me that that point of view was Irrational Okay and Yes, an irrational person who isn’t me Might make this work and it would be very very good And so they should under that circumstance be irrational And make up some sort of meaning in their life. Now, what do I mean by irrational? This is the part that I think is tough because there’s no way to prove it one way or the other But let’s say that you very sincerely think you know what I’m Going to go, you know Work in this soup kitchen and I’m going to make people’s lives better And I’m going to make the world a more bet a more beautiful place. Okay So you do and let’s say that creates meaning in your life And that’s all you really probably need you live a happy life a meaningful life and you you die. Okay, again I don’t see any downside go do it if it works for you, right? But let’s say that you zoomed out a little bit and you thought, you know What I’m really doing here because I’m I’m taking the the Lovecraft Russell worldview at the moment What I’m really doing here is I’m allowing these people to propagate so that there’s more human beings and that eventually All of that’s going to come sliding down and I’m actually making the world a worse place by doing this Now you might laugh at me over that But there’s nothing irrational about that thought it actually seems to follow from the Russell worldview that he just expressed, right?
[00:32:57] Green: It’s a very very rational viewpoint um So suddenly you can’t get meaning out of this even something like serving in a soup kitchen Because all you had to do was zoom out just a little bit more and you realized that there was a kind of inversion that takes place Mainly because of something like heat death, right? It’s where no matter what you do in the end it’s going to end in horror, right? And this point of view just sort of seems to undermine everything Where anytime you come up with something meaningful You can quickly think of some reason to say oh, no, actually it’s it’s a net negative, right? Which again sort of seems to follow from the From the whole entropy thing that there there has to be as much negative entropy as there is positive or Order there has to be more entropy actually So if you look at entropy as kind of roughly bad and order is roughly good There’s always going to be more bad than good no matter what you do, right? now This isn’t necessarily the right Scientific worldview, but again, I want to emphasize it was what was widely believed at the time and is still even widely believed today amongst most elite scientists right in some form or another and it’s only been recently where you’ve had tiplers and deuches and Julian barbers that have really kind of started to challenge this and say no actually this this this didn’t follow from our theories We were mistaken, right But when you look at it in this way The the the struggle is to come up with some sort of meaning in your life in a meaningless universe It’s just saying yeah, it’s meaningful to me.
[00:34:34] Green: Okay, sure subjectively. Maybe it is But can you figure out how to make it not illusory? And as a rational person see that that you weren’t just Throwing in there some sort of illusion Okay, I struggled with that right like everything I came up with I would think of some sort of Way in which it was actually illusory now There’s a few things I came up with like let’s make it a kind of a silly example Let’s say that you got your meaning out of your life But making fecal sculptures and what you did is you wanted to show people the beauty of feces Right, I mean this is kind of a dumb example, but I’m intentionally trying to make it as silly as I can Wow Like But let’s say somebody did let’s say somebody actually got meaning out of their life by doing that
[00:35:22] Blue: Someone’s done that. Right. I’m afraid to do a google search, but yeah
[00:35:26] Green: Okay, I I’m not sure I necessarily see Like a entropy negative there, right? So maybe either are some sort of Non illusory meanings in a non meaningful universe you could come up with like like you can almost think of a few like that But they seem like to someone like me it seems meaningless, right? Like it’s really hard to come up with a meaningful subjectively meaningful thing That doesn’t ultimately boil down to some sort of assumption that was tacit that you didn’t realize you had at first But a tacit assumption of meaning that was built into the universe It maybe can be done and I guess I’m not saying it can’t be done But it is so much harder than people who take this point of view ever give thought to Right, like it’s so much harder And I think that’s one of the reasons why I would very much prefer A universe that really does have some sort of more innate non subjective meaning um Again if you are living your life with subjective meaning and it’s working for you and you simply don’t have my mind Where I go to the dark place and I try and I start to realize. Oh, no, actually, that’s illusory I so that one doesn’t work for me if you don’t have that problem, which most people don’t Then do it. I mean in a non meaningful universe, of course subjective meaning would be the best thing that you could strive for, right? And that’s also kind of interesting
[00:36:56] Blue: how that very few people really live like that I mean, they might say like people who are educated in a certain way are probably going to say that The universe is not inherently meaningful at least a lot of them are but That’s not how they live So what’s some what’s the better expression of like what they actually believe? I agree Well, let me let me offer a counter counter example
[00:37:27] Red: So there are lots of people who are sort of in despair at the Um potentially impending climate crisis and because of this Feel like the right thing to do is to not bring children into the world, right? Um and not just You know the for two different reasons one is that This may be a sort of a negative towards life as a whole, right? Like if you bring children in and they are making the climate crisis worse Then you are basically by increasing the number of people You are decreasing the amount of good and ultimately then it’s a zero -sum Thing like even existence itself as a human being as the sort of negative um and and then the other thing which is um The idea that either because of that or because of some other trends in the world something like that that If to bring a new human into the world is to bring them into a future of inevitable suffering and so that is a negative um and If you adopt that kind of view then you will tend to say no no i’m going to opt out of I’m going to opt out of propagating the human species. I’m going to opt out of I’m trying to extend my own life. I’m going to opt out of trying to You know grow or enhance human culture In human civilization in these ways. I think that’s a actually a significant number of people Even my you know members of my own family You know as they were
[00:39:04] Red: getting older Like struggled with this like why do we bring people into this world to you know to suffer and die and to You know to make things worse basically for for other people And they’d already done this but we’re you know, we’re now like I think Sort of second guessing their choices in life. So I don’t think it’s actually purely theoretical I think that a lot of people are making that kind of uh assessment to where The ways that a lot of people have traditionally found meaning are Very conflicted for them because it doesn’t seem to be an unmitigated source of goodness. It actually seems to be Very conflicted if not very negative
[00:39:51] Blue: Yeah, well, it’s it’s it is a compelling world view in a way that humans are parasites and anti -natalism Makes sense when you consider how much Just suffering There isn’t the world
[00:40:08] Red: Yeah, most of our you know, most of our science fiction when we have a super intelligent AI show up That’s their attitude towards human beings that you know humans are a disease Um, you know just in the in the matrix. That’s what the in the matrix thinking
[00:40:24] Blue: that
[00:40:26] Green: Parasite
[00:40:27] Red: that’s
[00:40:28] Green: That’s right And
[00:40:30] Red: that’s not an uh, you know an uncommon view and it’s it’s interesting that we put that in the mouth of the intelligences, right like when it’s like the idea is like Yeah, if you got some more a little bit more intelligence, you would realize that actually, you know, we are We ought not be around
[00:40:48] Green: yeah, so Let me so let me kind of I think what you just said peter is correct. So so you’ve got this idea You can make your own meaning and and this is often presented by more elite people as What’s wrong with this point of view? I mean there’s kind of an attitude. It is often delivered with right the There’s two problems with this. So first of all There’s no problem in the sense that Yeah, this is the best you can do go do it, right? Like like I am not suggesting that I should talk you out of this point of view The question is since you’re delivering it with an attitude and it’s usually Instead of you religious people or something like that, right? The question is is this less religious than the point the religious point of view that you just rejected Is it less illusory than the religious point of view you claim you’re rejecting, right? And I do think you have to see it in that light, right? Obviously If the answer is there is no meaning. So just go find your own Well, then, you know, okay, then being religious even though it’s it’s false Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, that’s a probably one of the better things you could do with your life Now, okay, if you’re going to take the attitude, that’s bad because it’s false then your Your meaning needs to not be illusory too And that’s so much harder than it appears
[00:42:10] Green: For the reason that you gave one is is that you may say the words, but you don’t mean it that your point of view may actually be tacitly assuming meaning And also because you may just not be thinking it through, right? Like I had somebody say to me What about just humanitarianism, you know a humanism? I mean That you believe in as much as you can making life good for humans And I pointed out I said humanism is from the ground up built on Optimistic assumptions about the future of humanity. It is and he said no, it’s not I’m like no it it really is like go Seriously try to go start a humanist movement built on entropy and Second law as your starting point where you know what ultimately No matter the more humans we get the more suffering we’re going to cause like like seriously go try to build humanist Humanistic point of view and philosophy out of that. It cannot be done, right? It is pure illusion if entropy is actually true It’s no less illusory than religion at this point.
[00:43:15] Green: In fact, that’s what it really is It’s just another religion And I think that’s the problem again I don’t want to say it’s completely impossible because of the fecal sculpture example But I do think we’re we’re flattening it to a degree where most of the ones that people who would take this stance Most of their points of view where they say this is my subjective meaning Still is built on either the tacit assumption of objective meaning Or they simply aren’t thinking it through to his logical ends And I think that’s so common so overwhelmingly common That it undermines the value of this point of view for me personally. Does that make any sense?
[00:43:53] Blue: Yeah, why do I feel like the fecal sculpture thing is going to become a recurring theme on the podcast? It probably will.
[00:44:00] Green: Yeah It’s one I’ve been using for many years So I like a lot of these ideas that I bring up on the podcast are things that I’ve been using for years And I’m just happy to finally dump them somewhere So that somebody else can be forced to hear it too
[00:44:15] Blue: Well before we become too depressed and and turn into an existentialist podcast Let me give you the part two Of my text to my my girlfriend and you and you can tell me what what what you think Largely kind of my my summary of paul davies book the cosmic blueprint basically Has the universe ever stopped being creative and self -organizing? Novelty is what the universe does This place started as infinitely dense Time -space matter energy and then has continued to explode into physical space planets stars and finally life with enormous chemical complexity This life force has never stopped creating cool stuff Including human minds capable of infinite knowledge growth Our capacity to create beautiful things might never cease till the universe is controlled by this explosion Of complexity that has begun on this obscure planet Obviously channeling tipler there Does it really seem so far -fetched to suggest that physical reality is self -organizing? That reality moves in the direction of beauty that there is an underlying order orderliness to nature Is this assertion that reality is governed by an optimistic arrow? Really so far -fetched when we contemplate that we live in a world that is not just a collection of particles and energy But contains life and beauty Determinism may be more and not less meaningful than chaos or a god that plays dice with the universe Doesn’t the mysterious algorithm called the human mind manipulate reality ever every Bit as much as subatomic particles or laws of physics Is the universe if the universe is not inherently meaningful, what would an inherently meaningful universe even look like?
[00:46:16] Green: Awesome By the way, peter you need to find that quote that you put from popper that was very similar to that Maybe pull that up in the background and we’ll read it later in the episode Oh,
[00:46:28] Blue: sure That that was
[00:46:29] Green: such a great quote that I had never heard before Well, he seemed to
[00:46:33] Blue: be basically endorsing teleology in his own way. I
[00:46:37] Green: mean he did yeah You know, I I guess my two cents I I could I think that’s a better viewpoint, right? I I I guess You could argue that is itself an elusive like if i’m burtrane russell. Maybe I argue that that is itself an illusory viewpoint But you know what given burtrane russell’s view. I guess I see no problem with illusory viewpoints In fact, it seems to me one of the honest things you must say if you are burtrane russell Is that illusory viewpoints are exactly what we’re striving for and they are preferred Because they’re better So either what you just expressed is false and therefore better than the truth Or it’s true. So it’s either true or it’s true. It’s better than true. It’s got to be one of the two, right? So it it seems to me like this and this is definitely the point of view that I have chosen to to endorse and to Move towards is this more optimistic view principle of optimism type view, right? The optimistic arrow is what was what paul davies calls it. Yes that that there really is Some direction and destiny that we’re moving towards, right? and I would You know, I I think I would be the first to admit That i’m not sure that this qualifies as a best theory.
[00:47:56] Green: Micah might disagree with me on that So and and feel free to do so because obviously I would prefer that this was a best theory But even if it’s not a best theory, I don’t think I care Because the alternative is so bad by comparison That I think I’m prepared to on faith endorse this the the principle of optimism Even if so, I mean it would be a problem if someone could prove to me that it was wrong But like certainly no one can prove to me. It’s wrong. It’s not that sort of thing where where the Entropy worldview is definitively stronger and better, right? So I think that this is just really the right choice like just instrumentally It is for sure rationally the right choice. And I think it even could turn out to be Epistemically the most rational choice
[00:48:44] Blue: Well, I mean even the most hardcore atheist or we would have to admit That non -life we live in a universe where non -life Physical matter created life I mean, that’s
[00:48:59] Green: People
[00:48:59] Blue: don’t like I feel like myself as an former I don’t know what I am. I don’t want to put a label on myself. But even when I was, you know immersed in Hitchens and Dawkins and whoever I mean, I didn’t fully appreciate this Just how crazy that is Like it’s really astonishing that like I mean, it could be the way I feel right now that the evidence for teleology is I mean, it’s almost like We are immersed in it every single day
[00:49:39] Red: I the the thing that I would want to say is I think that that bruce just pointed out the this error or this arrow of optimism as as um Davies uses like this choice of optimism this choice of Of understanding or seeing the the universe as Moving towards Things that are meaningful, you know knowledge growth and and so forth That doesn’t necessarily entail You know like a traditional or conventional kind of religious outlook, right that there certainly We’re aware of people who have this optimistic view that doesn’t aim at something that looks traditionally religious and And personally I’m I’m totally good with that like that is I think that’s great I think optimism is the thing to optimize for and The sense of of meaning that you can You know that meaning is possible Is the thing to optimize for now as I extrapolate that you know in something like a in universe Then that becomes a a religious vision not because it’s it’s the sort of Cause that I’m leaning on but it’s sort of the outcome of where I think that goes and um, so I would I would distinguish those things Just for for, you know, clarity’s sake And I guess I would bring in maybe some philosophical Categories you could you could land on in in
[00:51:19] Red: terms of how you define what that meaning might be um You know existential isn’t where you define meaning for yourself Versus I think the ancient worldview Was in which maybe some very non Human non personal gods sort of define the meaning of the of the universe Uh versus the idea that meaning sort of Coheres in what it means to be a person And that’s where I would want to land ultimately is that meaning is is contained in personhood is not in this The arbitrary existentialist idea where we just have to subjectively make it but actually that personhood Somehow is the sort of meaning or the key to the meaning of the universe. That’s where I would want to land in my sort of hopeful optimistic Framing that I would choose. I don’t know if that
[00:52:17] Blue: Yeah, well, it seems to me a set like a defining characteristic of a universe that is inherently meaningful is that The that the universe is able to Observe itself to know itself and that is the universe. We live it, right? Mm
[00:52:35] Red: -hmm. Mm -hmm
[00:52:37] Blue: Yeah, um, I was also gonna ask you guys and I thought I would have brought up xenomorphs by now This is supposed to be about science fiction, but you know, we’ll go there. We’ll go there later, but uh so Because this touches on what you you were saying Micah Why I mean what what is the argument? You know, you’ve both of you go beyond just Teleology Which is more what I’m sort of sympathetic to I mean that Religion is a lot different than teleology. It seems to me. I mean you’re making assertions about reality That this book is special. This tradition is special This isn’t just well, it’s kind of sort of seems like, you know The universe trends towards chemical complexity and consciousness or something like that I mean, it’s there. It’s a very different kind of a claim they’re interrelated interwoven maybe but What what what pushes you over the edge to a religious religious worldview past teleology Um
[00:53:49] Red: for me It’s something about the the pattern of caring. I think about about the future and the pattern of Um How how we plausibly get there. So, you know, if you think about the Deutsche’s idea about the beginning of infinity, right? It’s it’s that there is a there is a first instantiation Of of a certain piece of knowledge a certain idea and then over time we’ve become very much Um We grow in our understanding of it so that the the understanding of that idea becomes this much richer thing, right? And yet there there’s always that history of of where it started the first moment that it happened um, and That history Has this cultural Continuity, right? So if you look at something like the The the British um empire and the the history of of knowledge growth in in britain and the anglosphere and The you know parliamentary democracy and these sort of institutions of freedom and so forth That has a history that’s deeply interconnected with culture with Place with with people, you know all this kind of stuff And so the way that we sustain That that progress that history of progress is is that in some ways we Stay in Communication with it, right? We we recognize ourselves as as part of the um The British tradition or the enlightenment tradition or the scientific tradition or or something like that because it provides that Starting point it provides that ongoing discussion this conversation that we’re Um that we’re building on and and growing with and and we we never fully detached from that because Much of that is inexplicit much of what allows the parliamentary democracy to continue is Is inexplicit much of what allows these traditions to work is inexplicit
[00:56:12] Blue: I well, I agree with that completely. We’ve all I think we’ve all read tom holland’s dominion Except to push back on what you’re saying. I still don’t hear a defense of a personal god Like a god that answers prayers that you can communicate with Like how do you get there?
[00:56:31] Red: Yeah, so i’m not sure that I would um Make that argument From from those steps, right? So there there’s a there’s a lot of things that in between just teleology and uh and a A religious looking future and the context of religion itself and then A personal god and then a personal god who answers prayers in these specific ways like there’s a lot of things there that are that are going on and um I would I guess I would say Uh, although I’m happy to get to dig into all of those things the the key for me would be the The idea that the huge the ultimate future that we’re going towards um, if it’s something like an omega point, which i’m not It’s the the specifics of that. I don’t think are critical But but the the idea of I have a convergent sort of ultimate Unending ever -growing civilization this looks like the Christian idea of the future I think and it and it looks increasingly like a god -like future and it looks like And it’s a it’s a personal future. It’s a future increasingly defined by personhood, right? So it’s it is a personal god in that sense and And maybe in much deeper senses as well but The the vision that we are moving towards then and growing towards is not a impersonal thing or or a Uh, ultimately a divergent idea, but a convergent idea that that converges on a particularly elevated idea of personhood and and In what you bring up because now i’m talking about like christian theology that in christian theology that’s never um It’s never exclusive.
[00:58:43] Red: It’s always the thing that we’re all supposed to share basically So there is not a there’s not an idea that despite despite the kind of What we might get from popular Level thinking there’s not the idea that there’s just one person who is um Is important in all these ways and then all the rest of us are Are not as important. It’s actually that we’re all important All becoming as as important all becoming as glorious and and great and so forth. There’s just a beginning Of infinity. There’s a beginning where that kind of comes into the world comes into our history And so we’re connected with that and that is something that we relate to in this personal way now Psychologically and memetically and so forth That also already exist in some form in our cultures and our communities and that’s where I would look at uh, probably a jumping off point for talking about all these other kinds of spiritual practices that we engage in there’s there’s God in the sense of this sort of Grand vision of what personhood is in some sense and there’s god in the sense of what What already exists in the communities around us and Yeah, so there So there’s there’s a lot there. I guess I would just say like it’s it really comes down to whether Um, it makes sense to engage in communities that Are cultivating this this vision this idea this optimism this future or whether It doesn’t and that’s going to be yeah decisions that people are going to have to make Over time and I have conjectures about which of those decisions will Pay off the the most but that is something that that Remains to be seen I suppose
[01:00:51] Green: Okay, let me take a shot at it I’m so okay. So I think that you’re asking a really good question And it doesn’t have an easy answer. So I’m going to have to give you a nuanced complex answer instead So let me start with episode 121 about beliefs that came out recently at the time of us recording this One of the things that I’ve argued for is the idea of holding beliefs loosely I’m against the idea of not having beliefs Because I think that’s dangerous. I think that human beings do have beliefs that That if you try to decide that you are not going to have beliefs that will be exactly the same as Having them dogmatically, right? So I would advocate instead for the idea that you go ahead and you have favorite views You have views that you prefer You have reasons Maybe those reasons don’t amount to You know having falsified every single competing view even popper as we discussed when we looked at episode 120 popper and trial Popper believed that you could pick between non falsified views and that there may be basis for doing that How would I apply this as a religious person to my own religious beliefs Yeah, so I’m a Latter -day saint formerly known as Mormons and so we are a kind of Christian We’re actually more traditional than I think even we want to admit We’re we’re pretty highly traditional in many ways But uh, let’s say I were to die And I wake up and I discover that Actually, Buddhism was true. Okay Buddhism is not exactly a bad religion, right?
[01:02:41] Green: Like there are religions out there that I would not want to discover are true Specifically, there are certain Baptist sects that have told me in no uncertain terms that the very fact that I’m a Latter -day saint Means that I will burn in hell forever So I would definitely not want to wake up and find that religion to be true But Buddhism would really not be a bad pick Now Buddhism does not believe in a personal god Now I would argue as a Christian That they actually sort of do believe in a personal god that their idea of the universe ends up mimicking the concept of a personal god but Strictly speaking, they don’t believe in a personal god They believe in a sort of more impersonal force in the universe That causes karma to take place causes justice to exist They they arrive at a lot of the same Final solutions. I don’t want to say they’re right the final solutions They address some of the same problems That’d be a better way to say it as a Christian like a Latter -day saint would address But in some totally different narrative or totally different way Okay, and that narrative does not include a personal god. It is instead includes an impersonal sort of I don’t think they would call it even god But like I would probably still call it god because it’s like basically playing the exact identical role has the same powers But it’s not a person. Okay Would this be a bad thing? Like this is actually the true. I’m trying to imagine I wake up. This is the truth, right? You know, maybe I feel a moment of disappointment.
[01:04:13] Green: Oh, my beliefs weren’t true and these are instead It’s hard to believe I would care that much for for more than a moment And I think most religious beliefs Probably are like that right Where if you were to wake up and you were to find your religion was false and this other religion was true assuming it’s not One that puts you in hell forever or something truly evil like that I think you would find that you’re probably pretty okay with most religions turning out to be true And it would be even I think most atheists like if you were an atheist and you died And suddenly you wake up in an afterlife and you find out that catholicism or at least a form of it, you know It’s true or something like that I doubt you would see it as a bad thing like Like I know people say they would see it as a bad thing. I just don’t believe them Like I don’t think there’s any chance that they’re doing anything But lying to themselves when they say something like that There are so many good things That would be true if one of these religions turned out to be true one of these world religions turned out to be true And I think a lot of times there’s a concentration on what’s bad in that religion But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that a lot of the bad stuff disappears or gets explained in such a way That it’s not a problem I mean presumably if we’re talking about a good god or a good universe or something like that We’re using buddhists as examples to be a good universe
[01:05:34] Green: that Even the things that you dislike about the religion They would end up in some sort of contact either that part turned out to be false Nobody really believes their religion is 100 true There’s still this human element of error that exists in most theologies Or then it turns out that it is true, but not in the way you expected something along those lines So let’s say that those are taken care of for you. It’s just really hard to see this as ever being a negative thing Okay So I think to some degree. That’s what I hear mica saying Keep in mind mica is a transhumanist and I’ve got these really strong transhumanist leanings myself So neither of us is probably typical of members of our religion and we’re maybe atypical in some ways So we’re probably going to think through things like this where A part of me just sort of thinks, hey, you know, this is my best understanding But if it turns out to be something else as long as it’s still good then what do I care? Right and from this point of view, it’s hard to get too worked up about what the ultimate reality turns out to be So long as it’s some sort of good reality Okay, so I think that’s part of the answer is that In some sense, you don’t get to a personal god. I would be Yes, that’s part of my religious tradition and Honestly, I think it’s a better tradition. I think buddhism is sneaking personal gods in the back door For example, so I would consider the the Mormon version of it better But if I’m wrong about that, I I just can’t see myself as caring
[01:07:04] Green: It would still be this really good outcome And it would be like, okay. I I will adjust myself to what the truth actually is and I will move on So from that point of view, I think we’re talking about holding your beliefs loosely. You have them They mean something to you. They may be a driving element in your life But when it comes right down to it, you’re not really that concerned about Well, is this religion true or is that religion true? You argue I don’t even want to say that you are concerned about it. You believe yours. It’s true. Maybe right But if you were to discover it was something else as long as it’s still good as long as it’s as good What does it matter? Right and I do think that that’s part of the answer here is this idea of holding beliefs Loosely now, I don’t feel like that’s a satisfying answer So let me try to give you maybe a second part to the answer now that I I think drives harder towards what you’re asking Peter, okay So the main thing that I think I would explain here It’s similar to what I just said a moment ago is that there isn’t as much middle ground as there appears to be If you think really hard, you can think of middle ground. So for example Let’s imagine that the actual ultimate fate of the universe was the big rift. Okay, so this is the idea that um, the universe continues to expand out and
[01:08:31] Green: Life expands initially it’s it matches a mega point like Stuff, you know, deutch types stuff where the universe is explicable within that time period You can gain knowledge, but at some point suddenly At light speed the the universe just ceases to exist it just rip rips apart And and you’re done. There’s no pain. There’s no suffering. There’s no horror at all It’s just at some point the computation stops and you’re done And that’s the end of the universe Now I’ve seen this put in news media as a horror Okay, and it’s generally treated that way. Oh, what if the universe? What if the big rip was actually I can’t remember if it’s rip or rift, but big rip is actually true And what if just someday you didn’t even see it coming Just life just ceases to exist and you’re done And and this is often portrayed as this horrifying cosmology. There’s nothing horrifying about it at all It surely it’s not an optimistic cosmology like the deutchian Or tiplerian type world where knowledge creation goes on forever and everything eventually becomes explicable and things like that But like there’s no actual Unlike like entropy where there’s a turning point and then everything turns to horror and there’s more horror than there is good The big rip actually allows you to have all good mostly good, you know Subjectively good. I don’t know how to quite put this But at some point that stops but it stops without suffering. It stops without horror. It just stops, okay This would be an example of a neutral cosmology. So they must exist, right?
[01:10:17] Green: But again, I almost had to purposefully come up with it Because it doesn’t naturally or easily follow from our best theories Okay, and I had to almost intentionally cut like with fecal sculptures I had to come up with some super convoluted example Of how I there could be a neutral cosmology, okay? I think the simple truth is is that most cosmologies the ones that kind of follow more naturally from our theories Are either uber pessimistic or uber optimistic With the the neutral ground where it’s not really either being feeling kind of convoluted, right? And who knows maybe the big rip is actually the right cosmology And so therefore maybe the evidence is misleading at this point Okay, but if you’re really trying to get serious about okay, what’s the universe like You’re probably going to feel like you have to choose between Either Lovecraftian or Teplurian, right? Because those are by far the best two options in terms of level of explanatory power today And in that sense, I feel like again, this doesn’t quite answer peter’s question Which was how do you get to a personal god? So i’m answering more. How do you get to a buddhist god? How do you get to any sort of god? Whether an impersonal one or a personal one that’s all good Okay, and I think you you get there by realizing that you’ve kind of really only got two options The really bad one and the really good one With a little tiny slice of in between possible, right?
[01:11:53] Green: And so on faith I choose the more optimistic one I have really no reason to to reject it at this point the arguments for why you should reject it that that used to exist And used to be so popular and even in some circles still are so popular They don’t strike me as very good arguments, right? Like I feel like these other scientists that have come along since then Have shown that it was a mistaken interpretation to begin with right or could be in a mistaken interpretation to begin with Certainly isn’t the surety that was believed in the time of Bertrand Russell And so that is how I get to this this final leap of faith Is just the realization that picking big rip I guess I don’t mind if it’s if big rips what it is then I will subjectively live my life as good as I can I’ll get as much as I can out of it and nothing will matter afterwards I’ll be dead by the time the bed big rip happens. So it won’t matter And so I got no downside to it. My beliefs will have been faults in that universe Right, there will be no truth to them But in that universe it doesn’t matter if there was truth to them or not being untruthful in your beliefs could have in some cases In this particular case was a good thing. So let’s just embrace that and we’re fine And just from an instrumentalist Rational instrumentalist viewpoint. I don’t feel like there’s much option left, right? There is a rational choice and it is the A belief in something that is very much like god.
[01:13:22] Green: I don’t know if it’s a personal god or an impersonal god That is a matter of theology But it’s got to be somewhere in that sector, right? It’s got to be the tiplurian type sector Okay, again, I I hate to say that because of course, I don’t even buy tipler’s theory I feel like tipler’s theory is quite problematic in many ways. Okay And a lot of times I just say a mega point like cosmology because I’m just trying to draw a very broad picture of what I have in mind And tipler just happens to be the best example that exists out there that I can point to specifically But I think that’s how you get to that final leap, right? It is a leap of faith It is ultimately because that other possibility that more negative pessimistic view It’s always I don’t think it ever quite gets eliminated I think there’s always the possibility that that is the truth after all, right? And so I think that you make a sort of choice And you say, you know what given these two options I’m absolutely going to be better off living my my life as if the better of those two options is the right one And that knowledge growth is going to go on forever that all problems are soluble That we’re at the beginning of infinity. I think those are Beliefs that are just great to have Even if they turn out to be false, they’re great to have, right? They’re subjectively good and they might be objectively correct also Okay, that’s my answer peter.
[01:14:43] Red: I just want to Tack on something there that bruce. I think highlighted or clarified which is So there’s the there’s the idea of an inherently meaningful Cosmos right which we’ve been talking about and then there is the The the idea of like what if you could have the ultimately Meaningful cosmos, right? There may be as a scale of Of meaning that you could hypothesize about What’s available in the in the universe, right? And So there’s this this line from a from carl brought brought in in 1969 He says hope is at the heart of existence It seeks an outlet at every level of human life where there is life There is hope and where there is hope there is religion says bloke We will add where religion becomes total hope. There is christianity so What he’s suggesting is that christianity is basically the formulation of The the ultimate Level of hope and optimism that you could have now I think that’s not intuitive to a lot of people that that’s not clear that that’s what christianity is but If you buy that if you buy that That christianity is the formulation of the ultimate most complete optimistic view possible then Then that’s kind of where you might land as as one of bruce’s choices right between this kind of between Meaning negative meaning neutral meaning positive and then like meaning ultimate something like that and so So you might find yourself choosing as as I do to Embrace the the frame is the cultural the language the all of this stuff that actually
[01:16:41] Red: Seems to me like a formulation of total hope You know hope and optimism Sort of raised to the ultimate extent and so that’s where that kind of lands Lands for me I suppose
[01:16:56] Blue: Well Those are great answers. Wow Because we are a critical rationalist podcast I thought it might be a good time to read this quote from carl popper before we move on Where he seems to I mean you tell me if he’s not endorsing teleology right here Because that’s how I’m reading it. This is from one of his his lectures He says I think that scientists However skeptical are bound to admit that the universe or nature or whatever we may call it is creative For it has produced creative men. It has produced shakespeare and michael angelo and motzart and thus indirectly their works It has produced darwin and so created the theory of natural selection Natural selection has destroyed the proof for the miraculous specific intervention of the creator But it has left us with the marvel of the creativeness of the universe of life and of the human mind Although science has nothing to say about a personal creator The fact of the emergence of novelty and of creativity can hardly be denied I think that darwin himself who could not keep out of the question Would have agreed that though natural selection was an idea which opened up a new world for science It did not remove from the picture the universe that science paints the marvel of creativity Nor did it remove the marvel of freedom the freedom to create and the freedom of choosing our own ends and our own purposes Wow
[01:18:41] Green: That’s a great quote
[01:18:43] Blue: Yeah, I was like I
[01:18:45] Green: I don’t popper surprises me over and over with quotes like that where you can definitely catch this this worldview semi -spiritual worldview maybe That he was holding on to that he worked in with his epistemology And you get these glimpses of it. It’s not something he seems to have Like when we did the popper on god and popper in god episode um He didn’t let the interview be published until after he was dead So, I mean like he’s not like trying to hide it, but he doesn’t necessarily want it to define His philosophy, right so
[01:19:26] Blue: Yeah, I think he probably knew that Well, I don’t want to psychologize him But he probably knew that if he emphasized it How people are going to react to that who are interested in the philosophy of science By
[01:19:40] Green: the way that episode’s 106 curl popper in god So we go over his someone who interviewed him about his beliefs in god and what he said It was very interesting what he said
[01:19:53] Blue: Well, I I have one more question about this. This was supposed to be a lighthearted discussion about science fiction But we’ve gotten into some uh Heavy stuff here one one more question. I especially wanted to ask you this Bruce and and and you too Micah But I know bruce that you hate panpsychism I think you have an emotional reaction to it.
[01:20:17] Green: Yeah a little
[01:20:19] Blue: bit which which I I get I I get But you know, I also keep that kept thinking when I’m getting it like thinking about This this this idea that the universe is meaningful that even Subatomic particles even want to form, you know chemical complexity and rocks and stars and life and consciousness moving towards these this thing that can Understand the universe and create knowledge and perhaps, you know dominate the universe One day. I don’t think any of us most people think that’s kind of weird But we might be kind of weird because we all find that pretty plausible. I think that uh one day We’re moving towards a future where Knowledge becomes the dominant force in the universe but Isn’t this a lot like panpsychism though? I mean this Isn’t it isn’t it kind of similar this idea that I mean is that much Is it so different to say that a rock is conscious? Is it so different to say that a rock wants to become ultimately given time to become a Human or a knowledge creating entity. I mean that’s that’s that’s a lot like consciousness, right? And it’s own way I mean it’s not like it’s not like these panpsychists are saying that that rocks have a social life and they like parties or something and
[01:21:54] Green: So I let me clarify First of all, I This is a lot like my buddhist example If I were to wake up after death and find out that the universe was panpsychic I would hardly care right like that it hardly strikes me as a bad belief system So if we’re looking at it as a belief system a religious belief system There’s does strike me as a sort of beauty to it, right? And I think I can even understand Like after reading what was the guy’s book you had me read um, philip goth Yeah, philip goth like after reading his book. I I can see the beauty in his viewpoint like it There’s I’ve got no Spiritual problem with his viewpoint his spiritual viewpoint, right? When I have had a negative reaction to it the negative reaction is my rational side It’s the fact that philip goth specifically and every Panpsychist I’ve ever seen specifically is making horrifically bad rational arguments And I’ve come to associate panpsychic views with these horrifically bad arguments that These people use that try to argue in favor of it If someone were to come along with a panpsychic view that didn’t use horrifically bad rational arguments I would change my mind in a heartbeat, right? Like I’ve got I’m just not someone who When the right argument comes along and I assess it and I go Wow, that was a good critical rationalist argument for a change, right? Like I’m absolutely going to change my mind and want to change my mind Because I don’t care to be a memoid for a certain point of view I just kind of want to follow towards whatever the truth is.
[01:23:50] Green: I have this faithful viewpoint that the truth is good That’s why I’m anxious to go find the truth and so That is what I’m I would move towards if that were actually a good set of arguments The thing that rankles me about panpsychism isn’t the panpsychism itself It’s the really just just awful Arguments that every panpsychist I’ve come across has made now. I guess I’d have to make an exception here Michael levin came out as a panpsychist And his argument for panpsychism is nothing like philip goths And what he really seems to really believe is not that the universe is conscious You know a single conscious entity or that it’s all made up of conscious entities or a rock is conscious But he seems to instead be merely arguing that there is a an element of of agency or you know That that exists down into What we would consider to be non -life Which makes a certain sense to me like I don’t know if I actually believe that to be the truth I kind of doubt it’s true. I suspect there actually is a rock actually is not alive But michael levin’s whole viewpoint is that if you were to come up with the right tests you may well find that a rock Is able to testably Show a level of intelligence So keep in mind michael levin’s whole viewpoint is is that Agency exists down to the cellular level and even down to the tissue level and may well exist Into things that we consider today to be non -life that if you were to figure out the right experiment You may find that a tornado has a degree of agency because it’s not not like in a mystical way right like
[01:25:36] Green: Like because it’s a complex computation That tries to keep itself stable Then it would by definition have to have a degree of intelligence Okay, so and I guess I see no problem with that if that’s what you really mean is that a rock is somewhat intelligent Because it’s going to turn out that it has to hold itself together in some way And then we’re going to come from the set of experiments that shows that that’s equivalent to a really really small degree of intelligence Then sure, I guess I have no particular problem with Panpsychism right, especially if the experiments came out positive they corroborated that idea I would at that point endorse that that particular form of panpsychism But that would still be nothing like philip goth’s right like it’s not even close that they’re not even To call them both panpsychism is to create To create confusion between two completely unrelated viewpoints in my opinion
[01:26:34] Blue: Okay, any thoughts here mica
[01:26:36] Red: before we move on um, I I don’t have any really strong ideas about panpsychism or really like about consciousness in general it’s a it’s a mystery to me, but uh, it’s um, I’m a little bit I think like uh, dutch on this which is um he thinks that consciousness is um Is over emphasized whereas knowledge creation is the more important idea And I think bruce I think I’ve seen you talk about the idea that that perhaps knowledge creation Is a kind of phenomenon that goes down to the smallest levels, right something like that That’s
[01:27:18] Green: Campbell. That’s Campbell’s theory, right? I don’t know if he would say goes down to the smallest levels But it’s a hierarchy that exists and it’s ubiquitous. I don’t know that Campbell would consider a rock Having any sort of intelligence, right? But Campbell’s theories and leaven’s theories have a great deal of overlap Just by chance since I don’t think that they have any awareness of each other, right Campbell’s obviously dead But leaven knows nothing about donald Campbell
[01:27:43] Red: but that but that idea that knowledge creation is um is pervasive and You know it exists in these lower level ways I mean, I think that would fit well with the idea that the that the cosmos has kind of a of an arrow to it and um Seems to be how popper thinks about at least certain things like dogs are engaged in discovery, you know the Trial and error is a kind of a kind of knowledge creation um so You know, yeah, that’s that’s interesting to me as as a possibility Where that lands in terms of panpsychism or or anything like that Um Yeah, I’m kind of agnostic about that. I don’t know I’m not sure what that would mean and I and that maybe I’m Yeah, I guess that that’s where I’m not I’m not actually sure what what panpsychism is ultimately telling us um So that’s where perhaps I need to do more more study on that because I’m I guess I’m confused about About what it actually is at the end of the day Okay,
[01:28:54] Blue: well, it just seems to me about the the optimistic arrow again. I mean, it’s a much more rational World, I mean, it’s a much you would think it would be much more normal If we truly do live in a meaning neutral Universe that the universe would look like something like a collection of hydrogen atoms maybe or or just like a bunch of stuff that’s just just Nothingness in in one way or another maybe nothing this doesn’t exist But there’s a lot of ways you could basically have the same effect I mean the more I the more I the way I’m thinking about the world right now is that It’s it’s pretty obvious That we live in a meaningful universe so I um Anyway, I’m happy to happy to uh Happy with this conclusion. I guess but Anyway, I thought we could kind of shift gears to the science fiction stuff Which is uh, how I originally I you know the the to to reiterate why I thought this would be so interesting is because you know, I I think if there is one Thing that would really at least for myself and maybe maybe maybe you guys too Would settle this discussion one way or another and not even just the idea about teleology Or or religion but also critical rationalism if we meet another species that Creates knowledge in a completely different way That then it seems to me that Critical rationalism might not be right Or if we meet another species and they do Engage and something very similar to critical rationalism broadly speaking.
[01:31:00] Blue: I mean, I’m not talking about the specifics of the epistemology necessarily, but if if they’re curious and moral and respect other points of view and are able to have debates and discussions and Make conjectures and all this then I think that would be be a Pretty good evidence that we do live in an inherently meaningful universe but You know, perhaps arguably we We don’t have access to alien species right now So what we’ve got is science fiction and I have The older I get the more seriously I take science fiction And since Bruce started talking introduced me to this concept of the Lovecraftian Universe suddenly it’s the lens. I’m seeing all this science fiction through um, I’ve got a 13 year old who loves Science fiction and it seems to be What we do together a lot now is that we will watch You know, we just watched the entire mad max all the mad max films We watched all the predator films. We watched all the alien films I read to him every single day almost almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy And it just seems to be how we enjoy our lives Together and I’m kind of looking at the stuff through my weird David Deutsch Carl Popper inspired lens And so, you know, one of the things I Uh to to go through I thought we could go through a couple of examples of this and if you guys have your own please Bring them up But the alien films, I think this is probably the clearest example of the Lovecraftian universe That that I’m aware of But you kind of have to Look at it Watch them pretty closely Uh, especially Prometheus. Some people might not like Prometheus.
[01:33:12] Blue: I Don’t understand those people. I think it was one of the greatest movies of 21st century So the Prometheus the the engineers Okay, so these are these godlike entities There are highly advanced species that travels the universe and seeds Other planets with dna So there’s kind of like a Spanspermia like element to it. They are cosmic gardeners architects they Just like to create stuff. I don’t know the the Movie really Explains why but for some reason humans are dangerous or disappointing to the engineers Who wants who wanted to destroy them by creating a bio weapon? Which the bio weapon I think turned in to the xenomorphs And apparently I did not know this But you might be interested in this mica Apparently there is an illusion in the movie that Jesus might have been an emissary of the engineers And so they might have been pissed off that that he was crucified. So that might have kind of Play played into it So, yeah, the xenomorphs on the other hand Are universal dna rewiring systems So they create knowledge Not through carefully considering other opinions not through debate not through conjecture and refutation They steal the dna to create knowledge. That’s what they’re doing when they Go into your stomach and come out your chest, right and coming out They’re stealing your dna and becoming like they’re they’re kind of like beyond parasites All right, it’s great science fiction. These are some of my my favorite Uh movies ever But I got to say I think it’s a reductio ad absurdum. I don’t think I’m the way I’m watching it It’s not realistic ultimately. It’s not the world We live in um, I think it kind of like it
[01:35:19] Blue: Helps illustrate Why a love crafty and universe I mean you said it seemed like you indicated that you thought it might be plausible. I don’t know I I I think it it might be kind of stupid in a way I don’t think that we live in in a love crafty and universe I I think I think it’s probably when I started really like Taking seriously some of these I’ll be at fictional examples I think it kind of illustrates why why it doesn’t make sense What do you guys think if you want to react to that?
[01:35:56] Red: that uh, the illusion to uh to jesus makes me think of the meme where somebody meets some aliens and They say have you heard of jesus christ and the aliens say yeah, we love this guy. He comes by every year or so Um, why what did what did you guys do to him? When he saw bye So yeah, um, I think uh, uh, I think science fiction is how we do theology and Philosophy and in the modern world right and we wrestle with these these big questions. Um The same questions I think but through these you know through these different lenses It it does get at that the same sort of dynamic as we see in a lot of ai movies the idea that The thing that you know, we’re postulating is greater than us um is antagonistic towards us um sees us as um hateful or disgusting or You know something like this so that our our progress Our our reaching up so to speak is The very thing that brings about Our destruction it brings down the wrath, you know upon us something something like that and you know in this really gruesome way right the the parasitic way of of of kind of entering into human organisms and and treating that dehumanizing them treating them as um Just you know just these kind of Uh
[01:37:39] Red: Very grotesque material Uh sources to feed off of that sort of thing I don’t it doesn’t feel coherent to me those those things never really make a lot of sense to me when I see them portrayed in in movies Um, it always seems like there’s somewhere where there’s there’s a non sequitur like in the matrix with uh them, you know using humans as batteries, you know something that that really like Does not compute like the the rationality of this doesn’t really work But it it works as a projection of our own conflict and feelings about ourselves essentially We don’t feel that great about who we are and um and the kinds of Um The kinds of things we do and the kind of impact we have in the world and some of that’s pessimism and some of it’s Um, some of it’s realism. Some of it is the fact that we are actually kind of Bad to each other and so We we project out that our you know our superiors our betters would Uh have this pretty negative view of us. I think something like that. That’s how I read it initially at least Good answer. So, you know a really good example of what you’re bringing up and why it it doesn’t work came from the tv show star trek voyager They encountered as a they’re reoccurring enemy the borg
[01:39:09] Green: And there’s this other race. I forget the name of the race. It’s got like just a number for the race That the borg aren’t able to assimilate because they’re very very advanced biologically speaking And so the borg There’s a great opening where you see like these three borg cues and we’ve long established by this point in the star trek universe That the borg are the biggest bad days of all times, right? You see these three borg coming towards some ship and they go and it goes Um stop you will be assimilated resistance is futile and suddenly the ship just blows all three of them up And so you realize there’s somebody worse than the borg, right? And it turns out that there’s this fluidic space that this this race lives in They’re they look a lot like aliens, but they’re intelligent um xenomorphs, but they’re intelligent and So it turns out that the borg are helpless against this race because they can’t assimilate them and the way they make Knowledge is by assimilation So they have to turn to the voyager the the only starfleet ship in in the quadrant For help because starfleet uses introspection or critical rationalism in our terms to be able to create knowledge Whereas the borg use assimilation and therefore only starfleet can possibly come up with a way to defeat this other Alien race that is able to defeat the borg, right? Now the whole thing is absurd like at every single possible level think about like The idea let’s let’s go as far as we can to try to make this as believable as we can So there’s a race called the borg And they gain knowledge by stealing knowledge No, that’s not too far -fetched, right?
[01:40:50] Green: Like we can imagine um a race that Goes around assimilating knowledge from other races. They take them over they absorb their knowledge But how do you actually learn that knowledge that you’ve stolen like if if I were to suddenly hand Peter some alien device and then say, okay, here you go. Here’s this knowledge The device isn’t itself knowledge, right? It might be used as the basis for Peter to come up with a series of conjectures And then having that physical device might allow him to test his conjectures as to how it works until he figures it out himself and has recreated the knowledge But if you are able to take still knowledge from another race You have to have the power of what they were calling introspection Right, because it’s the only way to you could ever create knowledge in the first place is conjecture and refutation or variation selection Let’s say it’s a maybe slightly more generic term um so This idea that the borg somehow can run this big advanced technological empire But all the knowledge was stolen from other races Because they can’t create knowledge themselves That’s literally a contradiction Right, like well, do they
[01:42:03] Blue: do they can they create knowledge through their unified consciousness though? I mean, they
[01:42:08] Green: sometimes They sometimes portray them as being quite clever and creative in their unified consciousness But in this particular episode they made a point of saying we can introspect and they can’t therefore We have an advantage and that’s really what i’m criticizing that line So, I mean, there’s no consistency. This is just a Fun TV show, right?
[01:42:28] Blue: But it sounds like you would would you agree though that the if if we made a species that are like the borgs or If you guys are watching that show pluribus At least through episode episode five, you know, that gets into the whole hive mind thing where there’s a there’s Like I don’t even know what it is yet, but it’s some kind of a A hive mind that’s infecting planet earth That if we if we actually if that a species like that actually existed that would refute Papyrian epistemology So would you agree with that?
[01:43:05] Green: I think it would If they were gaining the knowledge without some sort of variation selection process right, so okay, so By the way, just for the record The xenomorph was in fact and that whole universe was in fact inspired by hp. Lovecraft So I looked this up Lovecraft Lovecraftian horror on wikipedia Lovecraft Has also profoundly influenced visual artists and they mentioned h hr geiger His book of paintings which led directly to many of the designs of for the film alien was named necronomicon, which is the famous Book of lore that causes you to go insane inside the Lovecraft universe The name of a fictional book in several of Lovecraft mythos stories and then he says Dan O ‘Bannon the original writer of the alien screenplay Has also mentioned Lovecraft as a major influence on the film so so if the aliens so if the Borg Do have the power to make their own knowledge through conjecture refutation And but they also happened to find it easier to just go steal other races knowledge that wouldn’t necessarily Contradict the Paparian view You would call into question why they’re bothering to do this wouldn’t it make more sense to just go Get their own scientists make their own progress Why why is it better for them to go steal knowledge from races that are clearly and technologically inferior to them?
[01:44:35] Green: Right, so from a certain point of view, I guess it doesn’t make sense But it wouldn’t necessarily violate popper’s epistemology as long as they actually did have the ability to The the when they stole this knowledge what that really meant was is they got access to the knowledge And then they use their scientists to figure it out, okay And I guess I could see something similar with the aliens the aliens go in and they still knowledge from your DNA Well, I mean like, you know parasites do reuse DNA and and we had our episodes on third way evolution They apparently even um, you know bacteria can apparently even go like find which strands of DNA they need And from the population use it to go disperse between The population to find an immunity or something along those lines, right? But it still does it through a trial and error process. So it’s not really in contradiction to Poppers epistemology at all once you realize how it actually works If they could just directly steal it and they didn’t have to figure out how to use it Then yeah, I guess that would be a contradiction to poppers epistemology It would be it would be in fact a form of induction, right that you have you’re given this You’re given this this passive knowledge. You don’t have to rediscover it Right, it’s it’s just suddenly you you’re able to have it And so I guess that would be kind of the empiricist inductivist viewpoint that would refute popper’s epistemology
[01:46:04] Red: Okay, something else that’s uh, you know at play in these stories is the idea of of ethical convergence versus You know arbitrariness, right? So David Deutch is you know rejects this idea of Well, it’s uh in the Less wrong community. Yudkowski has the um Orthogonality thesis, uh, or uh, maybe that’s bostrum. I might be mixing people but anyway, they’re orthogonality thesis Essentially says you can have an intelligence that has any kind of arbitrary um, ethical system Any kind of arbitrary goal system that you want so you could have Like
[01:46:48] Green: yeah, right.
[01:46:51] Red: So so that you can have arbitrarily high levels of intelligence that are that would be evil or You know from our point of view Or completely opposed to our our ethics, you know that that kind of thing and so So if you find a highly advanced alien species that is successfully colonizing the The galaxy and solving problems and and you know building new things and so forth that has this completely alien ethic Then that would seem to really um counteract The the deutchian idea that in fact ethics are a real factor in knowledge creation right and that You know, you need the correct ethics to be a paparian knowledge creator Well, you know, not if not if the The predators or the engineers or something are actually a viable intelligent species, you know um, so So, yeah, I think it would matter to to a great extent when we if we find other Interstellar Technological species it would matter what their ethics turn out to be that would tell us something pretty significant about About what’s true about knowledge creation I agree with
[01:48:22] Green: that. I agree with that. Yeah, and to flush out the
[01:48:24] Blue: predator things so people know where we’re going with this so, yeah, I I watched the predator films with my sons with my with my younger son too and I found them absolutely Excellent that new one badlands so good So but you have in that in that universe You have these well. I say in that universe Right before this podcast I was talking to my son about this and he kind of ruined the whole thing for me by pointing out that the alien and predator universes are the same Perhaps arguably but you know if you get into that alien versus predator movies or whatever But we’re just gonna ignore those. You know, that’s kind of out. What do you say outside the canon or arguably those? Those are what
[01:49:11] Green: if those are what if scenarios for sure? Well, I
[01:49:14] Blue: mean it kind of makes some sense that the predator would would hunt these aliens Considering their whole thing. So okay, so the the predators. I say the predators. Yautja or
[01:49:24] Green: whatever
[01:49:25] Blue: They’re a knowledge creating species with advanced technology And they’ve got those cool dreadlocks And they’re basically trophy hunters that travel the universe In search of worthy opponents to fight So like in the first one they found the commandos and then in the um in prey They found the command chi And so so they’re they they want to find honorable opponents to kill And or to be killed by which is a very very honorable thing to do Um in their culture So this to me seems more consistent with a meaning neutral universe Like if we met a species like that I would who had Values like that and still managed to create enough knowledge to travel the universe I would probably Convert to existentialism or something. Yeah, but it seems I mean again It’s a reductio ad absurdum as it as entertaining as it is. It’s really pretty stupid, right? Most people know that It’s it’s not These things don’t exist. I it’s really hard to imagine any any culture Creating that much knowledge with such a what we would consider um immoral
[01:50:49] Green: right
[01:50:50] Blue: Outlook
[01:50:52] Red: So there’s a there’s a line in uh in the badlands movie Where the the yautja has been You know, basically I think saying Yeah, it’s an honor for you if you you get to watch me kill something or you get to be killed in the process Or you know that it’s a great honor for you and then at one point a representative of the um of the nihilistic corporation It has uh has taken uh, I guess I’m I’m these are spoilers. So I but um as then essentially says like Oh, it’s a great honor for you for for us to um possess you as a item of the of the You know acquisitions of our corporation and I thought that was a really great kind of moment moment where Yeah, the the the sort of essential nihilism or existentialism of the of the thing is has held up and um Yeah, contrasted like we typically don’t think that You know nihilistic corporate actions are Some kind of a great honorable example, but it’s not clear why Right. It’s not clear why that’s any less um of a honor culture than You know something that’s built around Just just trophy hunting and and dying, you know killing and dying on alien planets, you know, there’s nothing Uh really moral about that although I think we tend to Be more sympathetic to the the yautja in this in this scenario. I’m not sure
[01:52:36] Blue: Yeah, particularly the new one sure And you know, it seems to me also that You know when you get more into I don’t know if this is a generalization about all hard science fiction But when you get into more like science fiction that to me at least feels plausible The aliens are nicer
[01:53:00] Green: Right.
[01:53:01] Blue: I you know, if you think about Carl Sagan’s contact Um, I’m reading my son Um, hail mary project hail mary, which is absolutely excellent book David dutch recommended Uh, I think they’re about to come out with a movie about it But you know that in that one you have this alien species the the iridians who are involved on them
[01:53:27] Green: No spoilers haven’t seen the movie or read the book.
[01:53:30] Blue: Okay. Okay. Okay Well, I I’m going to talk about it a little bit bro. So you can cover your ears. Okay The the I won’t give any I won’t give any major spoilers, but the iridians are A species that are they evolve on some planet with ammonia on it And they they they look like giant spiders and they oh they they see through echolocation and there Couldn’t be more different than us in terms of the biology but They are also able to Communicate with humans. They are moral. They’re able to consider other points of view They they Care about life. They they want a care about knowledge They’re just they’re like us In all the the the right ways That that they can even form these inter species friendships With with the the main protagonist Uh, who’s also trying to save his his planet. How about it? I don’t think I gave away too much bro But uh, yeah, uh, I to me that feels more realistic Honestly, I think if we meet an alien species We’re well, it’ll be more like that and Uh, it just it it taps into an into intuition And I guess my intuition is that we live in a In to circle back to our our discussion that we live in an inherently meaningful Universe and that’s why it just feels more realistic That’s why we we create knowledge through that there’s a connection between Creating knowledge and what we would consider an ethical framework
[01:55:15] Red: Yeah, what what i’m curious about is the the the possibility of Static cultures uh being instituted on you know in these advanced species, right so in the Kind of Deutsche and construction of history we have You know hundreds of thousands of years of of static culture In humanity, right? Yeah, and Humanity is presumably at this point advanced beyond the you know, it’s it’s sibling species But it is living in this static static society and So then I have the question, you know, if you do have some kind of alien space faring civilization or perhaps us in our future Is it possible for For that to fall back into a static society that Embraces some of these kinds of anti -rationality and I think You know, I I think maybe I think Deutsch would say no, it’s not possible because basically beyond a certain point We if we were to become static we would be we would destroy ourselves or something something like this I would be interested in teasing out that particular hypothesis Better to better understand if if that is indeed a meaningful way of thinking about this are we once we you know go beyond the orbit of the moon are we then like Sealed to be either a moral ethical knowledge creating species or or self -destruct like what’s the You know, what is actually the the cutoff there? Or could we become something in the future that does look like You know say a a dune universe like a butlerian giha jihad universe where You know knowledge creation has been shut down and we revert to Some kind of ancient Hierarchical society, you know the form a formula of that but
[01:57:31] Green: at some arbitrarily high level of Technology, right, right. Yeah, something like that. It does seem like you could bomb humanity back into static societies By basically removing most of their knowledge and most of the humans or something like that, right? You could
[01:57:46] Red: You
[01:57:47] Green: might be able to in that way, but It does it does seem like it would probably be impossible to have a dune like universe Where you just have a static high level of technology very fact that that high level of technology exists implies the existence of science right, so it’s I mean, I guess you could try to Do the as a moth approach where the science exists for a period of time as a religion like again, it seems ridiculous to me, right? It’s It’s I’m thinking foundation here by the way where it
[01:58:22] Red: It does seem ridiculous. Um, but they you know, like in dune the um It kind of steps through a lot of the things that would be needed in order for this to make sense Or you know to be plausible one of which is that knowledge is actually segmented into very different Cultures that have this like cooperation, but don’t enter Uh interrelate, right? There’s the uh, bini jesoret and then then the navigators and the Uh the mentats, you know and the the aristocracy and they these are basically It’s postulated in the the story that The human mind in this in this story has so fragmented that to reunite the male and female Pathways of knowledge in the brain would be an apocalyptic event that would destroy Destroy the entire society, right? This is the the sort of premise behind the quizach hot rock You know that that they’re going to try to bring it together in a way. That’s not um, That that is apocalyptic, but it isn’t going to destroy them or some something like that, right? So they are postulating an incredible level of Psychological destruction and distortion in order to sustain this um, you know This this society at a particular level and yet maintain it as a static society So that’s kind of it’s it’s I don’t know if if the author was actually Trying to think through that but he I think he did a good job of trying to imagine what it would take I think it still seems ridiculous.
[02:00:08] Red: It’s it’s absurd to imagine that would be where you ended up, but if If you could find yourself in a galactic static society It seems like it would have to rely on On you know breaking the human mind in these particular ways like they do
[02:00:27] Green: Right, which wouldn’t that technically make us not universal explainers anymore?
[02:00:31] Red: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, or at least not functionally, right functionally, right?
[02:00:36] Green: It were only only Universal explainers only exist across some sort of Hive of minds or group of minds or Again, it’s I think it makes good fiction But I think Peter’s right that none of these like it doesn’t really make sense that the the idea of the Of an evil advanced race. I let me just one caution here I have seen crit rats go too far the other way where you don’t even need to worry about the possibility of advanced Artificial intelligence being a challenge to humans because of course they’re going to be morally advanced I actually buy that argument by the way, but then I’ll always ask them. I’ll say, you know, isn’t Hitler sort of a super advanced intelligence compared to say You know times past where we had a lot less knowledge He couldn’t you use the same argument and you could say, oh, we never have to you’re living in the medieval ages We never have to worry about a hitler because those 20th century people with their advanced knowledge They’re gonna have advanced moral so there’s no possibility of a hitler and that doesn’t seem right either for the obvious reason that it wasn’t right So it I do think that there is danger It’s all like how would you how would you put this though? Like it’s not that an alien race if they showed up Would be guaranteed to be meek and undangerous Right that I don’t think that’s the case there there may be differences of What our needs are there could be just like we go to war with ourselves It could be they go to war with us. I don’t think that’s an impossibility, right? but I do think that as
[02:02:23] Green: knowledge grows that so does moral knowledge And the possibility of the hitler and if nothing else it becomes probabilistically less common Right, like maybe there’s still a danger, but as you the further you get along the line It’s hard to imagine I say this in an era where it maybe isn’t so hard to imagine, but it’s hard to imagine a hitler arising In our era, right? I don’t think it’s completely impossible to imagine But like it’s it’s that happened in an era where it it seems more more possible more plausible Then in a more advanced society that we have today where there’s a lot more inter trading and It’s harder to see how it could happen today
[02:03:07] Red: um hitler, uh, you know rose to power in a A culture a country that had only been You know using what we would think of as a modern governmental system for a couple of decades, right? so There is a a lack of stability and so forth in In their culture You know their their governance culture that had that was there it was still like early days in some sense and you know, I think we in the You know in in the american culture, uh, you know, we have we’re the beneficiaries of Many more centuries of kind of governance And and so forth. I I think the question is yeah when when ai Is agi is created or when alien show up or something like that Where will they be in that process? um And will they have the potential to have splinter groups who who in some sense don’t actually have that That culture cultural knowledge Who then go off and and behave like erratically like we have this now, right? It’s it’s totally possible for people to grow up in our Society and yet adopt extremist views and to go off and become terrorists even if Our society is you know at large would not Um would not not do these things Okay, let’s
[02:04:48] Green: let’s use this. We’re critical rationalists, right? So we’re going to try to find the strongest counter example to what we’re saying I think i’m going to put forward china Today as the strongest counter example to what we’re talking about and let me let me just confess before I ask your guys’s opinion on this I am actually shocked That the chinese government hasn’t been overthrown yet by its own people like i’m really really surprised that their move towards capitalism Didn’t undo their governmental authoritarian tendencies because I had a theory back when I was you know teenager or whatever That it was not possible For a capitalistic system to exist and to be competitive with ours Without having a governmental system that was open an open society, right? I don’t know if I would have used the term open society back when I was a teenager because I hadn’t read popper yet So i’m actually surprised that china the chinese government has survived as an authoritarian government as long as they have into a modern society still clearly able to create knowledge right through In ways that might even be considered competitive with us
[02:06:01] Blue: Let let me as as perhaps one of my my final thoughts Let me push back against that a little bit in my from my What extremist? white -pilled optimistic lens You know, I would point out that this that china has become more free than it was in the past That the the Maoism did not work fascism italian fascism and national social socialism died very quickly communism soviet communism died a little more Slowly, but to me like these events of the 20th century do support the idea of final Anthropic principle, you know tipler’s idea that life is never inevitable life is eternal and that knowledge basically grows till it Takes over the universe Maybe it’s maybe it’s more of a a gut feeling than a carefully considered critical rationalist viewpoint, but I think I think that Through a certain lens It kind of seems like what’s happening in in history even as horrific as The implosion of europe was or Chinese communism was and and is still but things are trending in the The right direction and I would like to think that I that we’re on a journey that begun with the big bad angan will end with infinite knowledge I hope so That’s my final thought
[02:07:53] Green: I’m just gonna say I think you’re right peter that My counter example of china is somewhat surprising, but maybe if you look at the broader trend It maybe isn’t such the counter example as I was making it out to be wow I mean, it’s a good example,
[02:08:09] Red: but I think it’s I think it’s the case that you know an Open society or a progressing society Is always going to actually create space for the counterpart to itself Because it’s not going to clamp down on its On You know it’s opposite as as firmly as its opposite would clamp down on it and So you’re always going to allow like if you’re Allowing freedom to critique the establishment. You’re always creating the the openness to actually You know advocate for something completely counter to the society or to you know And by extension to kind of have adjacent societies that are Uh antagonistic to the values of of that society which will Which will be sustained in part by the fact that the Progressing society exists, right? Um, if if there is enough wealth being created and a knowledge being created other societies around Can sort of live parasitically on that Externally and internally and I think that’s just the nature of Of the situation and I think it will always be the nature of the situation now I don’t think it’s it’s The case that it will always be that way in the same to the same degree, right? We won’t always um help You know absolute dictators or whatever Continue to persist, but we all I think we always will Enable something that actually goes counter to the To the view of of progress and And knowledge and all that I think that will always be just kind of A function much as I imagine that some form of of Parasites or disease will probably Always exist at some level just by the the um opportunity created by Healthy organisms
[02:10:35] Red: And maybe i’m wrong about that maybe maybe we can manage biology so extensively that that never becomes a possibility I don’t know but but I think that the good actually does create space for the bad in some some sense and that’s not a Um Council of despair. It’s just we continually have to kind of work to address it and to answer it and to overcome it Over time.
[02:10:59] Blue: No, that’s a very intriguing perspective. Yeah, if you think about how many innovations take place in free societies that are kind of like I don’t want to say stolen but appropriated by by totalitarian societies like Final questions final anything
[02:11:21] Green: We could almost do a separate podcast on this, but I do want to kind of mention Lovecraft had certain ideas And I think deutch has disproven most of them, right? Okay So for example and since we’re talking about how The real universe just doesn’t track with these horror versions of the universe, right? That it’s so much easier for us to imagine a horror universe Then it seems to actually it like for a purpose of a story That it seems that you can make it a self -consistent internally self -consistent Idea, right? It just doesn’t seem like these horror universes can actually exist One of the if you were to look at kind of the main themes that Lovecraft brought up One of them was incomprehensibility So he the discovery of remium geometry And that the fact that that was part of einstein’s theory So he imagined that science was incomprehensible So he has this reoccurring really reoccurring theme of an incomprehensible universe Well, that’s total garbage, right like mathematically It’s not that hard to to understand what remium geometry is It’s true that you can’t have a straightforward intuition for it. Actually, I’m not even sure that’s true I think you probably could if you worked with it enough, right? But it clearly we’re not biologically built from the ground up with a We have a sort of default 3d space Euclidean geometry And but mathematically that doesn’t really stop us from comprehending it We’re able to using our universal explainer ship understand exactly what remium geometry is You know curved space and
[02:12:53] Blue: how that well, that’s a great connection Okay, but to push back on that a little bit I mean there’s there it seems like probably most people think do not subscribe to the universal explainer hypothesis and think that Most of what is worth knowing about the world is beyond human comprehension Right, so that’s a that’s a more more That’s a Lovecraftian view, but yeah, I agree with you. It’s just not right It’s likely if
[02:13:20] Green: we’re gonna go with the best theory. It’s a wrong theory. Let’s put it that way Right, like absolutely that is a wrong theory if we’re going with the best theory Now there’s the other one that comes up all the time with Lovecraft is our our animal heritage So this seems to have been him reacting to The fact that that we have animals in our lineage because of evolution and he was horrified by that So he over and over again brings up this idea that This person discovers that they’re part ape or something like that right or part monster And then they’re horrified by that and it changes who they are and they become They become what we would consider evil, but from their point of view, they’re just doing their thing, right? You know, again, it’s hard to imagine during Lovecraft’s era I can see why people got upset about that because it was such a new idea But like it’s hard to even imagine anyone caring today and seeing that is horrifying anymore, right?
[02:14:12] Blue: Especially we have our DNA tests that were like two percent neanderthals, right
[02:14:17] Green: exactly We think it’s cool and and there’s a good reason it’s because we’ve reimagined Evolution as this this creative process of knowledge growth, which is what it is, right? So it just doesn’t contain the horrifying De -evolutionary ideas those ideas that Lovecraft have they were wrong, right? They have been disproven. Okay Another one that I might be reading in but maybe he didn’t intend was the entropy thing So call of Cthulhu you’ve got this idea that when Cthulhu arises this point in time is going to happen We don’t know when and all of earth will turn to violence and will revel in violence that’s I see that saw that as entropy the reach the point where entropy shifts and now it’s not possible to Have knowledge growth anymore and the only way to survive is by feeding on each other, right? This is kind of the the Second law of thermal dynamics horror story that was being told back then that one I don’t know if we’ve necessarily disproven. I think it’s been strongly challenged at this point What do I just kind of shown and what Templar has kind of shown is that there’s no particular reason why we shouldn’t be able to Have infinite knowledge growth even though entropy is growing You just have to let entropy grow forever basically, but the order can grow forever too And that those two aren’t in contradiction.
[02:15:39] Green: They only seemed to be in contradiction Because we were kind of imagining the universe is a closed box There’s a number of things that we’ve talked about and passed on the show So that one I don’t know if we can Directly eliminate it to the degree of the other two that I just gave But I feel like that one’s been strongly challenged and I think many people would just consider it faults today The the other one that he brings up all the time is just the idea that there’s just no such thing as anything But subjective morality and the problems of subjective morality This one Is a harder case. I think I think the way you would work around that is you would probably believe in an objective Morality due to the need for knowledge growth. So this one I think has also been Strongly challenged not maybe as strongly as the first two I listed But um, you know, there’s still a lot of people Ivan Believes and claims he believes in subjective Bayesianism. I don’t know if I believe he believes in subjective Bayesianism He certainly he believes he does but I’ve always felt like there’s a objective Sorry, not Bayesianism morality. There’s an objective morality kind of hiding in his theories in my opinion She’s fired. Yeah so I I think that um That’s another one that kind of hasn’t survived well, right?
[02:16:56] Green: And I think what you’re going to really find is that as much as he was trying to pour his Horror of what science was finding into His horror stories That the real science turned out to be quite different and turned out to be something way more Optimistic or at least potentially optimistic and that he just couldn’t even conceive of During his time period. It was just so well understood that science was pessimistic That um, he just couldn’t have conceived that there might be better answers out there. So that would be my final thought
[02:17:34] Red: CS Lewis even talks about this I think he calls it the the tragedy of the gods or something like this which is the the tragic view that Was on on offer in the you know scientific consensus of the time something like this Which you know, it’s like oh, we rose to such great heights only to Inevitably be you know be destroyed that there’s nothing, you know, nothing but despair waiting for us and it’s kind of beautiful But it’s tragic, right? Like it’s beautiful in its tragedy that you know and that captured the imagination of a lot of people um at the time I guess the other thing that I would throw out here We didn’t really talk a lot about is the idea that knowledge itself can be dangerous or destructive to one’s mind And I think this is actually something that that deutch brings back in in a weird way In talking about antirational memes And static societies lasting for hundreds of thousands of years It is sort of suggesting that there is a category of knowledge that Has the capacity to to destroy us, you know that that there are some ideas that get perpetrated and and corrupt our minds and turn turn us to You know, yeah, basically something that is not um a universal explainer something that is not Ultimately personal but more beastly something like that. And so there is a horror there I think in contemplating that and I know that’s a whole other thing to unpack and You know nuance and tease out the the the ramifications of of that and you know the Whether that’s the the right way to understand it or something. So I do see like a sort of tension between the
[02:19:27] Red: Optimism of just solving problems and everything is is caused, you know, every every evil is caused by lack of knowledge And also this idea that there are Antirational memes which are in some sense a kind of knowledge which we have to derive but then which Distort us and turn us towards evil and staticity and and so forth I’m I think I think that’s a little bit of a paradox that’s left within the critical rationalist view that I’m not sure how to completely resolve or to to tease out or to erase maybe maybe you guys have the answer to that maybe that’s Yeah, it’s a complex thing. I think so
[02:20:10] Blue: Yeah, I can’t believe we haven’t discussed that yet. Is that yeah, that’s another big love of crafty and theme Isn’t it that they that knowledge is dangerous? Yes, that’s
[02:20:20] Green: that’s what I forgot. Yeah, that knowledge was dangerous. Yeah He’s I’ve probably skipped a couple others too. He’s he’s he’s got some good ones But my point is is that I think all of them have either been proven wrong or I’ve been challenged at this point
[02:20:33] Red: Yeah, there’s something, you know interesting about this. I think there is a way in which knowledge is dangerous that you know, we’re aware of with with young children that that uh, so, you know, I have a three now four year old and Recently he started watching something Animated thing and it has ghosts on it. And so now he’s afraid of ghosts. Right. And so now we’re we’re dealing with that and the So the I think People have this intuitive understanding of like yeah exposure to certain ideas prior to the Ability to you know intellectually grapple with them can be horrifying And and yet once we’ve developed the intellectual architecture Then horror itself is something entertaining right and so so we do You know entertain ourselves with these Lovecraftian universes because we have developed the ability to somehow transmute that horror into Into fun into entertainment and so there’s something like we have to develop the Ideas the knowledge the intellectual architecture To to make all the kinds of knowledge actually be something that that is You know, ultimately a gift and not a not a horror and
[02:22:04] Green: Just we’re giving examples of how knowledge can be Negative The most the one that I think captured people’s imaginations during The earlier era was of course the nuclear bomb or the atomic bomb initially, right? This idea that there’s this knowledge that we’ve discovered that might wipe out the human race Nevels on the beaches Horror story that was very realistic about humanity had done a nuclear war and wiped themselves off out And you have people in by the way great movie go go watch the movie if you don’t want to read the book but Try to live in australia and they’re waiting for the nuclear Cloud to come reach them and they’re all gonna die so they have to all commit suicide and there’s just no hope Right that it was very Lovecraftian, but it did it entirely through just Technologies that actually existed I think that there’s even today. We don’t have that horror as much as we used to I mean think about the Stop drop and roll era where we were so horrified by the bomb that it just kind of Grasp our consciousness and yet there is something like There’ve been multiple times where we almost had a nuclear Bomb go off and something Probably you know just stopped it somebody just refused to do it or something like that, right? And so there is this idea of this forbidden knowledge that has maybe a strain of truth to it, right and in a universe where
[02:23:28] Green: Where nuclear bomb wipes out humanity If you believe in the multiverse, there is such a universe out there unless you believe in the tipler version where those universes don’t exist um You know There’s there is this idea that we that there could be a universe where where humanity wipes itself out with a nuclear bomb And in those universes the nuclear bomb was knowledge that was bad like it was But even then it seems like it is at at worst probabilistic right like some small percentage chance you wipe yourself out wipe yourself out But in general nuclear I’m understanding nuclear powers not necessarily a bad thing, right? It’s got potential downsides By the way another great one go watch Chernobyl. That’s such a great show Terrifying it will terrify you it’s it’s a horror show that really happened, right? So well,
[02:24:18] Blue: I’ve heard the I have not seen it I’ve heard it described as the greatest show ever and I I do need to watch it But I’ve also heard it criticized as being inaccurate in a lot of ways too and contributing to kind of anti nuclear energy. Yeah, it
[02:24:34] Green: probably is So it does show the incompetence of of the russians in dealing with this right and which is probably true Which is why it went off it the problem happened in the first place. It’s not like these were insoluble soluble problems
[02:24:50] Blue: fair
[02:24:50] Green: enough, but yeah, it’s For the people who live near Chernobyl That knowledge was definitely forbidden negative knowledge just like what Lovecraft said But there does seem to be a local quality to it, right? Like it’s there’s no such thing as absolute forbidden negative knowledge There there can be kind of local negative knowledge
[02:25:13] Blue: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. Well On that note, I think we should probably wrap things up here But I’ve gotten everything that I wanted to get out of this conversation and more and Micah the Christian transhumanist I I really appreciate you coming back on our podcast and I hope we can do it again Soon and
[02:25:40] Red: yeah, absolutely. Thank you Thank you for having me and uh, I I love the conversations you guys have and You know how how deep you go into these questions. I think it’s I think it’s great. So um, yeah, I’m just Appreciate it and and thanks for thanks for letting me be a part of it.
[02:25:57] Green: Yeah. Thank you for coming Micah
[02:26:00] Red: Take care.
[02:26:01] Blue: Bye Hello again If you’ve made it this far, please consider giving us a nice rating on whatever platform you use or even Making a financial contribution through the link provided in the show notes as you probably know We are a podcast loosely tied together by the popper dutch theory of knowledge We believe david dutch’s four strands tie everything together. So we discuss science knowledge computation politics art and especially the search for artificial general intelligence Also, please consider connecting with bruce on x at b nielsen 01 Also, please consider joining the facebook group the mini worlds of david dutch Where bruce and I first started connecting. Thank you
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