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What if we understood hyperbolic geometry and axiomatic thinking and didn't all immediately believe physicists when they conceptualize the universe as [ ] what if it's ( ).
Oh and btw my name is Marco Antonio Hernandez Muniz. I went to UMass Amherst and studied everything, but especially Computer Science. Physicists can suck my dick by emailing me at marcohmuniz at gmail dot com.
Please email me with questions that are well formed. They contain good writing and links to actual research papers.
All love the fruit of their labor, but the wise savor their labor.
Petition to name the site MORETRUTH MORELOVE or something similar.
Please let me know, loudly and obviously, if I've helped you in ANY WAY. I need it during these troubling times.
Thank you!
This site and world is full of beautiful people, and I don't doubt that ANY MORE.
I was wrong much more than this | many times.
VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV
Spoken from my heart and mind, these may not resonate with you as false, and that means you’re wrong
The universe is out to get me
All people are out to get me
Constantly watching your life in third person is normal and healthy
Chess is a better game than go
Emotions are the opposite of truth, and will mostly mislead you.
My abusive fathers didn’t love me at all
My abusive fathers didn’t hurt me
My mother loved me strictly less than her God
My mother didn’t hurt me
My mother isn't extremely compassionate and loving
True love doesn’t exist
Hate is stronger than love
I didn’t call my mother 2 hours after reading your comment
Hell comes after death and not before it
My life is meaningless
There is an objective way to make life more meaningful to me
I can’t directly feel and interface with other people’s souls (consciousnesses)
I am lazy
I am dumb
I am weak
I have to be perfect
I need to put the needs of the people I love before my own
It is wrong to be angry
It is wrong to be sad
It is wrong to be happy
It is wrong to be alive
I can’t make the world a better place
The world is beyond saving
People don’t want my help
I can’t meaningfully contribute to a community full of people more intelligent than me
I can’t help myself
I’m beyond love
My friends don’t love me
My friends don’t love me if they aren’t people pleasers
Memes are stupid
Memes are mostly just funny
There were strong arguments against evolution
Conservative people are evil
Muslims are evil
Most Muslims are terrorists
Most black people are not smart
Most white people are evil
White people should pay for the sins of their parents
Most people are stupid
I can’t learn something from every person
People should pay for the sins of their parents
I should pay for the sins of my parents
I can’t be right
I can’t be right about anything
I don’t know anything
I will never know anything with certainty
The only thing I can know is that I’m conscious
I should only watch out for myself
Crying is embarrassing
Writing this comment is embarrassing
I shouldn’t cry in front of my friends and family
I shouldn’t cry because I read this post
I shouldn’t express any “negative” emotion to my friends or family
My friends and family don’t love me
Repressing emotions is healthy
Repressing emotions didn’t cause my dissociation
I don’t have a shadow
I’m not smart enough to study computer science
I’m not smart enough to study philosophy
I’m definitely not smart enough to study math
Learning should come easy
If you learned something easily it isn’t worth sharing
I am alone
My loneliness will be permanent
Being lonely is just a consequence of existence
We know how we got here
We don’t know what to do here
We know what’s coming next
Philosophers are stupid
Philosophers need to be more pragmatic
Nietzsche is evil
Nietzsche was dumb
Depression is bad for me
Mania is bad for me
I can’t get smarter after my brain has fully developed
I’ll never speak English fluently
People are scary
People are always judging me
People are always looking at me
Quiet sound isn’t extremely loud
Soft touch isn’t extremely loud
Pain isn’t extremely loud
Everyone can identify people from their footsteps
Sam Harris is correct about everything
Jordan Peterson is correct about everything
Charles Dawkins is correct about everything
John Vervaeke can help others but not me
I can be correct about everything
I need to constantly strive to be correct about everything
Other people’s feelings don’t physically hurt me
I’m not creative
I’m not
I can’t write music people want to listen to
I can’t improvise
I can’t improvise in front of my family
I can’t improvise in front of my friends
I can improvise in front of strangers ;)
I don’t have a gift for music
I wasn’t born to be an artist
I didn’t pursue music as a career out of wisdom and not fear
Sharing things that hurt other people is wrong
Every criticism of me is true
Every criticism of me is valuable
Every criticism of me should be entertained
I will never be confident
I will never be happy
I’m good at interviewing ;)
I’m not good enough to get a PhD ;)
People in academia are generally unkind
People are generally unkind
I’m not extremely neurotic
I should dislike myself
I should hate myself
I shouldn’t be myself
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Spoken from my heart and mind, these may not resonate with you as false, and if using reason, you can explain why they don’t directly hurt me and I agree with you, I would never try to change your mind
I agree. One of the beautiful things about discourse, is that it takes two parties to tango. No dance begins without a direct invitation.
It appears people believe,
- I wrote to persuade, not explain (in hindsight I would agree)
- I wrote in a condescending tone (in hindsight I would agree)
- My critique did not offer anything concrete or any models
- My critique was "not even wrong"
- My critique was obviously false
- My critique was obviously true
- My critique added nothing to the conversation
I'd love for anyone to explain which they thought and why.
Thanks!
And besides the point, I may have unintentionally (worried of criticism) underplayed my knowledge of chaos theory, complex systems, and linguistics research. But, I thought a person who had just read Nate's critique would be especially open to a philosophical (pre-axiomatic or axiomatic) perspective.
My bottom-line thinking reading John's arguments and thoughts was that John's, and even Nate's, disuse of the shared language provided by Kant and Wittgenstein hinted at either,
1. a lack of understanding of their arguments
2. an understanding of one or only a few interpretation of their arguments
While giving a positive affect might work for simple chatbots, I don't think a positive affect would prevent a more intelligent AI from wrecking havoc using vulnerable people.
We need an AI with positive values, goals, and affect, but maybe that is what you meant by personality.
This is an absolutely heartbreaking portend of things to come. I've long believed that AI's need only use social engineering to achieve world domination, and that this is a likely outcome.
Social engineering has been one of my interests for a long time, and the fact socially engineered cyber-crime is so common and effective is terrifying.
Hey Nate, thanks for the 3/4 ass review of John's research.
I'm not very familiar with the current state of complex system, chaos theory, linguistic etc. research so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.
However, I am familiar with the metaphysical and epistemological underpinnings of scientific knowledge, think Kant, Hume, Locke etc., and of language, think Wittgenstein, Russel, Diamond, etc. And solely based on that, I agree with your critique of John's approach.
Kant's and Wittgenstein's metaphysical and epistemological ideas create significant barriers for John's goals, not just his methods. And that any attempt whatsoever to describe how we can gain abstract knowledge from finite samples needs to seriously and dutifully grapple with the problems they posed, and the naive solutions they criticized.
Kant was obsessed with the questions of universal (true of categories) and necessary (true in all possible worlds) empirical truths and our ability to know them, especially how they related to the problems with empiricism that Hume posed.
Kant believed that experience cannot be the result of all of our ideas or knowledge, and that they must instead be contained in our consciousness and greater mind because of simple questions he posed, "There are objects that exist in space and time outside of me” or "Subjects are persistent in time". These questions cannot be proven using a priori or a posteriori methods (try it!), which means that the truths necessary to answer questions like the previous are simply axiomatic.
Additionally, Ludwig Wittgenstein was obsessed with the questions and problems surrounding language and communication. He believed that discussing and understanding the meanings of words independently of their usage and grammar was folly.
In fact, Wittgenstein's research in his later life was centered around the limits of language and communication. The limits of rules, and inner thought. How do we learn rules? How do we follow rules? How do we know if we have successfully followed a rule? How are rules stored in our minds? Are we just appealing to intuition when we apply or follow rules? Yes, he basically contributed questions, and that's the point.
In terms of communication, Wittgenstein believed that person's inner thoughts and language could only refer to the immediate contents of his consciousness. And that consequently, not only do we need shared agreements to communicate, but also shared experiences, “agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life.”
I don't mean to say that it is impossible to achieve the goals that you and John share. But that rummaging around in the dark while some of the greatest thinkers stand nearby with soft candles is as tragic as you and John have hinted.
The unfolding argument: Why IIT and other causal structure theories cannot explain consciousness
I love computation.
Watch this.
mic drop
Hahaha, so actually I love the game of Chess much more than I love the game of Go. I think I just wish I had been born in a country/culture where Go would have been more accessible.
Oh man, where to start...
I agree with the general sentiment of your post; it's something I've thought a lot about.
What causes mental illness?
Honestly, I struggle to think of a more multivariate problem. There's just so many variables, and in my own personal struggles it has been overwhelming trying to figure out which variables contributed the most to my mental illness.
But, for you, I'll try. <3
Here's an unranked list of the most important variables I could think of that contributed to my suffering:
my biology, genetics
my thought patterns
my physical health
my emotional health
my spiritual health.
These factors aren't all mutually exclusive, and I don't want to spend the effort of coming up with a list that is.
I'll now give a weight to each of those variables by how much I think each contributed to my mental illness and a sentence explaining my reasoning.
Genetics 30% - High levels of anxiety runs through my entire extended family. Twin studies have shown that when you drastically alter the environmental factors people still seem to end up having the same mental illnesses.
Thought Patterns 10% - My pattern recognition abilities, make me intelligent, and make me think of all possible problems. Think, catastrophizing, black and white thinking, etc. These intuitive, mental heuristics are great if all you care about is not dying, they suck at making you content.
Physical Health 20% - It's way easier to accept the psychical and psychological symptoms of anxiety when you. Just. Feel. Good.
Emotional Health 10% - Being alone is terrible, not feeling understood is terrible.
Spiritual Health 30% - Why suffer? I've figured out how to make my suffering meaningful to me, and that has made it much easier to accept my suffering.
That's me, and I'm reasonably confident in my weighting, but every individual has a different weighting, AND the most impactful factors may not even be on my list.
I fully agree with your point that "Distract Yourself" seems like bad advice.
I misremembered Claire's steps pretty significantly.
Here they are:
- face the symptoms – do not run away.
- accept what is taking place – do not fight
- float with your feelings – do not tense
- Let time pass – do not be impatient.
I think I misremembered because in her exploration of step 3 "float with your feelings". She mentions in engaging in an activity that isn't thinking about what you're experiencing. Not in hopes that you will distract yourself, but so that you can begin living a normal life i.e. learn to do, while experiencing suffering.
I'll edit the post.
Thanks!