BHTV: Yudkowsky & Adam Frank on "religious experience"

• Joseph Campbell (1904 – 1987), American mythologist, writer, and lecturer best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion.
• John W Campbell (1910 – 1971), editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact), generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Random thoughts:

I couldn't do that debate, I would have exploded with frustration and indignation much earlier, and sat there saying "But what on Earth do you mean by that ? You're saying all these things and they don't mean anything!"

The thinker namedropping alone would be enough to drive me crazy.

I'm sure that it seems to Frank that he won that debate.

The map/territory misunderstanding is absolutely central to all the errors he makes.

Every time Eliezer gets very, very still while someone else is speaking on Bloggingheads, I think:

"Ah-ha! I knew it, he's a robot!"

or

"Is that part of the art? Be absolutely motionless so that more blood can be redirected from various muscles to the brain?"

or

"Great, Eliezer was disconnected and I'm seeing a frozen video frame."

This is a very old post, but I have to say I finally get what Douglas Adams was talking about in the Hitchhikers' Guide. I laughed like everyone else when people discovered the answer to the fundamental Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything without actually knowing the question - but I never spent an hour listening to someone who took it completely seriously. Frank seems to be asking a question without asking a question. Does he understand that "the question of Being" is in fact a noun phrase, not a question? It is unanswerable in the same way "the question of Bunny Rabbits" is unanswerable. What about Bunny Rabbits? Where's the verb, Mr. Frank? If you found the answer to your question, you would not even be able to recognize it as such.

Adam Frank blogs on the BH episode:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/realitybase/2009/03/16/science-religion-and-the-mystery-train/

28:20, Adam Frank makes the point that

This ideal of pure reason is a poor substitute for people in their lives.

Which I didn't hear a good answer to from Eliezer. In fact, I think that this was probably the most important question in the whole BH talk, if not the most important thing I've heard on LW since Anna Salamon's excellent Cached Selves article.

Other than this, Adam Frank mostly talks nonsense.

Overall, a good showing from EY. Some important insights along the lines of "lets consider throwing out all of the religion stuff and starting over"

Throwing out religion would be like throwing out folk medicine - you lose all the traditional knowledge about which plants are good for what. In both cases, it's best to squeeze out the cultural juices before consigning to the dustbin of history.

It seems to me that Adam Frank doesn't do himself any favors in this debate by linking "spiritual endeavor" to religion. While one can argue that "spiritual endeavor" is the basis on which most religions are founded, if one wishes to debate the subject with an atheist it is probably better to not bring up religion at all.

You're more likely to have a fruitful conversation if you discuss "understanding the true nature of subjective reality" rather than "spiritual endeavor", "the overview effect" rather than "religious experiences", and neurological research rather than the Bible.

But even then it is probably pointless. The Buddha says that a student only obtains proof of the validity of his teachings when he becomes a Sotāpanna. Before that, the Buddha's teachings must be taken on blind faith -- not something any self-respecting skeptic is going to do.

Eliezer i so much younger than I expected!

I hope you email with him about the quantum physics point, and post the result of the conversation.

What does this have to do with being less wrong or sharpening our rationality?