From: Michael Vassar (michaelvassar@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jan 04 2006 - 00:21:35 MST
Maybe psi is real.
And maybe everything is a simulation or a dream.
And maybe all of this so called "science" is just Western imperialism and
jockeying for power.
And maybe the history our fnord was a lie and fnord
Or overwhelming memes are just jerking us around.
Or this instant is the result of a brain appearing complete with memories in
the quantum foam, to cease its existance momentarily.
Or this email message and its author are the content of a book in Borges
library
or....or....
but
It seems to me that that isn't what this site is for.
It seems to me that shock level four refers to a set of common assumptions
and beliefs
These beliefs basically revolve around taking something like the consensus
of modern physics and logic and pushing them to the limit in terms of what
they tell us about the effect of certain sorts of information processing.
Those assumptions may be wrong.
I don't even know how, as a human, to assign a probability to the
possibility that they are wrong.
But I do know that if they are wrong then "everything I know is wrong".
>From my perspective, from decision theory for humans purposes, the entire
huge space of universe states describable as "everything I know is wrong"
simply renormalizes out of my decision function.
It's not worth our talking about it.
If we're wrong, and psi is real, then we're simply wrong, and useless, and
who cares. The universe is full of futile religions. I don't mind
Christians existing, why should I mind existing as their equivalent, if that
is how things are?
But if we are right, then working from the assumptions of approximately
consensus physics and logic is worth doing.
In which case thinking about psi is not.
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