[HN Gopher] Kurt Godel, his mother and the argument for life aft...
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       Kurt Godel, his mother and the argument for life after death
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 77 points
       Date   : 2024-01-05 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aeon.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
        
       | pmarreck wrote:
       | Hopefully as an FYI that is free of too much skeptical criticism
       | (I mean... I actually get it, but I just don't want to deal with
       | negativity right now), there's actually a rapidly growing number
       | of NDE accounts on YouTube right now. I am putting together a
       | playlist of the most compelling ones:
       | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvnDbwjRqIOkgR1eUMfpn...
       | 
       | Some of these are from well-educated people like doctors, former
       | skeptics and at least 1 neuroscientist.
        
         | ScoobleDoodle wrote:
         | NDE is an initialism for "near death experience" here.
        
         | csharpminor wrote:
         | I've noticed these near-death-experience videos coming up in my
         | recommendations and found it truly odd. They don't seem to have
         | anything to do with what I normally watch. I have to wonder if
         | they're the top of the funnel for religion campaigns like
         | "hegetsus".
        
         | stvltvs wrote:
         | Skepticism is indispensable precisely because smart people
         | believe dumb ideas all the time. It's our only defense against
         | flimflam and bad reasoning.
        
           | mistermann wrote:
           | Is this to say that you possess necessarily accurate
           | knowledge about the objectively true status on an afterlife,
           | or is this more so just standard culture war rhetoric?
        
         | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
         | I just watched this one:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_IbXrBOnME.
         | 
         | What he described actually sounds a lot like lucid dreaming.
         | Even complete with waking up. I am still interested in watching
         | a few more of these but I'm getting the feeling that I'll be
         | thinking that a lot.
         | 
         | (There also appears to be an unrelated video in the playlist,
         | FYI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bzQYKm3xTA.)
        
         | 748 wrote:
         | I would strongly assume that a big chunk is made using
         | generative AI with the purpose of spreading one particular
         | religion, or just making the population more spiritual and
         | therefore less opposed to certain changes. With all due
         | respect, we don't know everything, but know enough about our
         | brain to be fairly certain that there is nothing even close to
         | any afterlife, with all respect to people's own beliefs that
         | they are entitled to. It is wishful thinking, it makes humans
         | feel good, gives them hope and is a pretty significant
         | psychological relief, especially given the current mental
         | health situation on earth, but what happens after life is
         | fairly certain - nothing. I suspect the letters were written
         | with the exact goal I have listed above - to give hope, to make
         | happy and to give psychological relief. After all, you want
         | people you interact with to be happy. If you will tell them the
         | truth in cold blood, well, that won't be a very pleasant moment
         | and it will lead to sadness. I do the same to be honest. Small
         | lies that make people that I care about happy. It makes me
         | happy in return. Is it bad? What even is bad? Everyone defines
         | bad for themselves. Making other people happy is definitely not
         | bad in a system of values where bad is on the opposite side of
         | happy. But what do I know.
        
       | Xcelerate wrote:
       | Funny this came up. Just today I was reading about a letter Godel
       | wrote to von Neumann in 1956 asking him about an idea relating to
       | the precursors of P vs NP and Hutter search (https://ecommons.cor
       | nell.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/46ae...).
       | 
       | Godel was quite ahead of his time. Even though he tended to
       | prefer theory over practical applications, it would be really
       | interesting to have his thoughts on prediction and induction as
       | they relate to the recent advances in machine learning.
        
         | atticora wrote:
         | > it would be really interesting to have his thoughts on
         | prediction and induction as they relate to the recent advances
         | in machine learning.
         | 
         | For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his oeuvre
         | and ask it.
        
           | teacpde wrote:
           | I can understand the downvotes, but at the same time it does
           | makes sense, especially given the target is a logician.
        
           | mingus88 wrote:
           | You'll get an answer with all of the linguistic flavor of
           | Godel's texts and absolutely none of his insights or
           | reasoning.
           | 
           | LLM is a language model, not Deep Thought from the
           | hitchhikers guide.
        
             | atticora wrote:
             | It works on embeddings, which are concepts. So it would at
             | least be manipulating a similarly weighted network of
             | concepts, though much shallower. It would be an answer from
             | his literal domain of discourse. It would be evocative
             | rather than authoritative.
        
               | piaste wrote:
               | What you describe would be literally worse than nothing.
               | The use of those concepts would make about as much sense
               | as the use of topological concepts in a Lacanian text. A
               | typewriting monkey in a trenchcoat.
        
           | riku_iki wrote:
           | > For a possibly not useless proxy, train an LLM on his
           | oeuvre and ask it.
           | 
           | all major LLMs are likely already trained on his works, so
           | you can already ask: "Hi, ChatGPT, pretend to be Kurt Godel"
        
         | cushpush wrote:
         | Reflecting deeply on Godel's Completeness and Incompleteness
         | Theorems, I'd like to contribute to the discussion. The essence
         | of Completeness lies in the notion that a system, constructed
         | on foundational axioms (such as facts, truths, or mathematical
         | operations), encompasses all possible facts derivable within
         | its framework. Interestingly, this completeness paradoxically
         | begets contradictions. It implies the existence of 'axiomatic
         | islands' - distinct realms of truth where a fact valid in one
         | may contradict another in a different realm. Hence,
         | Completeness inherently entails contradiction.
         | 
         | On the other hand, Incompleteness, which targets a specific
         | subset of all possible truths or derivations, can achieve
         | absolute consistency by avoiding these contradictions. This is
         | because it deliberately excludes certain 'axiomatic regions,'
         | maintaining coherence within its defined scope but at the
         | expense of being incomplete.
         | 
         | Godel's genius lay in unveiling the deceptive nature of
         | mathematics when navigating these axiomatic territories. His
         | theorems present a profound duality: the local context, where
         | truths are confined to specific axiomatic systems, and the
         | universal context, which can be akin to an 'ultimate truth' in
         | spiritual terms. This ultimate truth transcends individual
         | systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding.
        
       | fsckboy wrote:
       | TLDR Godel believed we lived in a rational world. "Precisely in
       | virtue of the fact that our lives consist in unfulfilled or
       | spoiled potential makes him confident that this lifetime is but a
       | staging ground for things to come. But, again, that is only if
       | the world is rationally structured."
        
         | Detrytus wrote:
         | Yes, once you discover limitations of logic you start hedging
         | your bets by believing in illogical things :)
        
         | spywaregorilla wrote:
         | https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3
        
         | nkjnlknlk wrote:
         | > I like Jordan Peterson's evolutionary take on these
         | philosophical questions
         | 
         | Why when actual evolutionary biologists disagree with Peterson
         | on most of his "takes"?
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | Peterson's a psychologist, an important field that many
           | evolutionary biologists and HNers sadly don't quite
           | understand, though they do very good work otherwise.
        
             | some_furry wrote:
             | > Just for the record since people can't see it, I had tons
             | of upvotes before I added the part about Peterson. All the
             | "logicians" here suddenly were not able to like (an
             | emotion) the part of my comment that they had previously
             | liked :)
             | 
             | Please don't turn an unrelated topic into a flamewar about
             | Jorpson
        
             | mistermann wrote:
             | > You seem to be a person of faith, there's no arguing with
             | people of faith.
             | 
             | Can you describe the methodology you used to determine that
             | this is necessarily true, with zero exceptions?
             | 
             | > I just understand the limits of what we can actually
             | know...
             | 
             | Ah, a perfectly rational human....this is like the 50th or
             | so I've encountered this week!
             | 
             | Careful...faith is fundamental to human consciousness, and
             | cultures, it comes in a wide variety of forms, and those
             | who suffer from it typically are rendered unable to self-
             | diagnose.
        
       | nonameiguess wrote:
       | Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this?
       | Putting aside that smart people in one realm are often quite
       | irrational outside of their expertise, e.g. Isaac Newton being
       | super dedicated to alchemy, Jack Parsons at JPL believing he
       | could summon demons, there is also a quite obvious limitation to
       | this line of evidence. I have very good reason to believe I'm
       | going to survive the next five minutes. That doesn't mean I'm
       | going to "survive" in the sense that we care about regarding why
       | religions draw people in, that is, even conclusive proof we
       | survive past bodily death doesn't make us immortal. An immaterial
       | soul that lingers to experience more stuff for another 20 minutes
       | hardly makes a difference, but even if we can conclusively prove
       | near-death experiences are real, that's all we'd be proving.
       | 
       | Same thing with the ontological argument. Even if you can
       | convince yourself the universe must have some kind of intelligent
       | creator that made it on purpose, that does not imply this creator
       | has any kind of human-intelligible personality and monitors or
       | cares what we do, let alone that it must be the Christian creator
       | or any other specific religion's idea of what a god is.
       | Ironically, my wife put on just this morning an episode of Rick
       | and Morty in which Morty gets trapped in the Roy game and Rick
       | has to go in and convince everyone they're in a video game and
       | are really part of a larger reality, which was meant to be a
       | parody of religion. That is, their universe truly did have an
       | intelligent creator, but they were NPCs in a video game and the
       | larger reality is they were really a 14 year-old boy in the real
       | universe. We have no particularly good reason to prefer a priori
       | Christianity versus Hinduism versus we're all 14 year-old boys
       | trapped in a video game just because we're convinced we have a
       | creator and some part of us survives death in this particular
       | simulation. Notably, the real Morty is still going to die in the
       | real world.
        
         | ffhhj wrote:
         | > Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding
         | this?
         | 
         | The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have
         | Godel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be
         | disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are
         | those thoughts valued?
        
           | zvmaz wrote:
           | You can posit the existence all sorts of entities as
           | "hypotheses that have not been disproved". See for instance
           | Russell's teapot [1].
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
        
         | nprateem wrote:
         | What's your point exactly? Oh I see, should we care. I don't.
         | You can reason it either way.
         | 
         | As for alchemy it's a meditative practice that makes sense if
         | you understand it. Where the external alchemists went wrong was
         | no one told them what the symbols meant so they thought it was
         | a physical transformation of base metals rather than of
         | consciousness, which is what it is. In fact, the alchemists
         | aimed for direct spiritual knowledge, not faith. From that
         | perspective it's perfectly rational.
        
           | 7thaccount wrote:
           | What does your second paragraph even mean? I don't mean to
           | come across as disrespectful btw. I just honestly don't
           | understand what you're trying to convey.
        
             | nprateem wrote:
             | It means there's a meditation that is supposed to provide
             | direct spiritual realisation. As this involved a
             | transformation of consciousness, it was known as alchemy -
             | change.
             | 
             | However, historically the instructions were kept secret and
             | shared using coded language. All that philosophers stone
             | business, changing lead into gold etc. But they were just
             | symbols which basically refer to sexual energy and
             | consciousness.
             | 
             | Here's an example of some of the symbology from the Taoist
             | tradition: https://www.mantakchia.com/inner-alchemy-level-
             | iv-lesser-enl...
             | 
             | So, as far as someone like Newton was concerned, a quest
             | for direct spiritual experience rather than just belief
             | makes sense. Some of us just have to know.
             | 
             | This experience - raising the kundalini underpins most
             | major religions IMO. A simple look on reddit should
             | convince you this is a very real phenomenon [1]. Gopi
             | Krishna is the canonical case illustrating the dangers,
             | which is likely one reason the meditation was kept secret.
             | 
             | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/wiki/warnings
        
               | ziddoap wrote:
               | > _A simple look on reddit should convince you this is a
               | very real phenomenon [1]_
               | 
               | Interesting, for sure, but some reddit wiki is not
               | convincing in any shape or form.
        
       | anonzzzies wrote:
       | Math people seem to have this more than other engineering/science
       | etc ; math, and this is actual bloody Godel, seems so perfect and
       | beautiful that is has to have a creator. Everything else is
       | incredibly sloppy (including most software).
        
         | aragonite wrote:
         | Well, Maxwell was so impressed by the perfect similarity of the
         | hydrogen molecules he concluded that they must have been
         | created!
         | 
         | > No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the
         | similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies
         | continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or
         | decay, of generation or destruction.
         | 
         | > None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature
         | began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties
         | of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the
         | existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties
         | to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural.
         | 
         | > On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all
         | others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well
         | said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and
         | precludes the idea of its being eternal and self existent.
         | 
         | > Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very
         | near to the point at which Science must stop. ... Science is
         | incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of
         | nothing ...
         | 
         | > ... But though in the course of ages catastrophes have
         | occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient
         | systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their
         | ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built --
         | the foundation stones of the material universe -- remain
         | unbroken and unworn.
         | 
         | > They continue this day as they were created, perfect in
         | number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable
         | characters impressed on them we may learn that those
         | aspirations after accuracy in measurement, truth in statement,
         | and justice in action, which we reckon among our noblest
         | attributes as men, are ours because they are essential
         | constituents of the image of Him Who in the beginning created,
         | not only the heaven and the earth, but the materials of which
         | heaven and earth consist.
         | 
         | https://victorianweb.org/science/maxwell/molecules.html
        
           | nprateem wrote:
           | They never thought of infinite multiverses with random
           | variations in each, and survivor bias.
        
         | mingus88 wrote:
         | Yeah there is a nice crossover also in religion, where some
         | sects have agreed that theories like the Big Bang are not
         | incompatible with a creator.
         | 
         | But my initial take on Godel's belief here is that even if he
         | is correct, and the order of the universe demands that there is
         | more to existence than this, why do Humans get the afterlife?
         | 
         | Parameciums don't have the inherent consciousness or great
         | individual potential, so there is a cutoff where beings would
         | "qualify" for an afterlife to continue developing their
         | potential, as he posits it.
         | 
         | Are lesser apes bound for the afterlife? Are dolphins?
         | 
         | Or are Humans just the first to get here, and we will be
         | supplanted by an even more rationally destined species to be
         | blessed with the afterlife?
        
           | krapp wrote:
           | I think that at the end of the day, every rationalization of
           | an afterlife is personal - people believe humans get an
           | afterlife so they can assure themselves of life after death.
           | 
           | Of course it's entirely possible for the universe to have
           | been designed and still operate under purely naturalistic
           | rules, without any hint of supernatural elements, but what
           | would be the point of believing that?
        
             | austinjp wrote:
             | Oh, now that's a nice twist, if I follow you. A universe
             | with a creator, but no afterlife. Or another possibility: a
             | universe without a creator, but with an afterlife.
             | 
             | Huh. Don't think I've considered those options before. I'm
             | sure some religions have proposed these possibilities
             | already, though?
        
           | anonzzzies wrote:
           | > But my initial take on Godel's belief here is that even if
           | he is correct,
           | 
           | He was/is correct about many things, but not about the
           | afterlife. It's just because some people are so lucky to see
           | the face of god by deep and hard mental studies, they believe
           | there is such a thing. And if you have been told all your
           | life that is reality _and_ you  'saw' it, why question it?
        
             | mistermann wrote:
             | > He was/is correct about many things, but not about the
             | afterlife.
             | 
             | What method did you use to objectively determine whether
             | there is an afterlife, in a manner that is impossible to be
             | incorrect?
             | 
             | > And if you have been told all your life that is reality
             | and you 'saw' it, why question it?
             | 
             | You arrived at this extremely popular yet epistemically
             | unsound "fact" entirely independently did you?
        
           | vasco wrote:
           | Humans are "special" in the sense that at least in genesis
           | god creates humans in his own image:
           | 
           | "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
           | likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the
           | sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and
           | over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that
           | creepeth upon the earth."
           | 
           | More simply, if you're creating a moral system that values
           | human life to prevent a number of bad things, it's useful to
           | put humans apart from other beings, so that you can justify
           | commandments like "don't kill yourselves please" at the same
           | time as the people being commanded see all other animals
           | killing each other, and themselves need to kill other animals
           | for survival. Put more bluntly, how do you get masses of
           | uneducated people to not behave by animals? You tell them
           | they are special, and definitely not like animals, and you
           | hold them to a higher standard.
           | 
           | Most of everything in the bible at least is used as an
           | illustrative reason to guide you towards some specific
           | behavior. If man isn't made in the image of god and isn't
           | special there's a bunch of things in there that get harder to
           | demand or explain.
           | 
           | In post modern philosophical thinking, there's a reinvention
           | of nature where animals are more "all the same" and should
           | have similar rights to humans, should not be killed etc,
           | which is part of the wider movement to treat the whole earth
           | as our home and to see humans as a part of a wider system
           | rather than special.
        
           | imchillyb wrote:
           | > ...theories like the Big Bang are not incompatible with a
           | creator.
           | 
           | First there was energy-mass, in one place. The laws of
           | thermodynamics do not allow such an energy-mass.
           | 
           | The energy-mass is at equilibrium. Then the energy-mass is
           | not at equilibrium, and it explodes outward, creating the
           | mass-mass and energy-energy that we know.
           | 
           | Now there are laws, such as the laws of thermodynamics, that
           | will not allow such an energy-mass to exist.
           | 
           | Where did the laws come from? An external source certainly.
           | We know this because the energy-mass was at rest, not
           | exploding; no laws.
           | 
           | Now there are laws suddenly. Laws don't make themselves. It
           | takes external force to create a law. What was that external
           | law-creating force?
           | 
           | I believe it was God with a big G. I have no proof except the
           | very laws of the universe that were put into motion when the
           | energy-mass exploded.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | > ...Everything else is incredibly sloppy (including most
         | software).
         | 
         | Clear mind is like the full moon in the sky. Sometimes clouds
         | come and cover it, but the moon is always behind them. Clouds
         | go away, then the moon shines brightly. So don't worry about
         | clear mind: it is always there. When thinking comes, behind it
         | is clear mind. When thinking goes, there is only clear mind.
         | Thinking comes and goes, comes and goes. You must not be
         | attached to the coming or the going.
        
         | knome wrote:
         | I don't know. If just following logical consequences of
         | elementary school arithmetic leads you to discover that numbers
         | have to be two dimensional to work ( in requiring 'i' for
         | square roots of negatives to function, and from there 'i' being
         | found peppered throughout the rest of our exploration of the
         | consequences of numbers ), it might be that all things fail to
         | be as simple as we would like.
        
       | teacpde wrote:
       | If I read the article correctly, Godel's rationale is pretty much
       | "The world is orderly organized, therefore after life is supposed
       | to exist"?
       | 
       | I must have read it wrong, because I couldn't see the causality
       | at all.
        
       | noncoml wrote:
       | If there is afterlife and I die today will I be in the mental
       | state I was just before I died?
       | 
       | If so is my grandmother that had Alzheimer's destined to
       | experience the eternity in that horrible state?
        
         | networkchad wrote:
         | By my understanding the answer according to Christian belief is
         | no. Your body is restored to its fully capability when you
         | enter the kingdom of heaven.
        
       | erikson wrote:
       | Kary Mullis the Nobel award winning inventor of PCR did too. He
       | ends his book with this notion.
        
       | CooCooCaCha wrote:
       | A reminder that even smart people are human and can get caught up
       | in irrationality.
        
       | javajosh wrote:
       | I rather like to believe that the universe is infinite[1], and
       | that the laws of physics change imperceptibly across long
       | distances, meaning that our observable part has properties that
       | helped life, and intelligent life, evolve[2]. There does seem to
       | be a compelling negentropic "urge" present at almost every level
       | of physical reality, that complexity accretes over time in a
       | manner that almost seems designed[3]. This idea preserves both
       | the notion that the universe is rational in some sense, AND that
       | we occupy no special place in it. Indeed, one could see the
       | biosphere of earth, and humans, as merely data pointing to a
       | particular bundle of physical constants in this local region.
       | 
       | I do not believe there is a heaven unless we build one.
       | 
       | 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe,
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle
       | 
       | 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
       | 
       | 3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy
        
       | george-in-sd wrote:
       | Article doesn't really really explain the proof of god - but a
       | version of the proof is here https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.4526.pdf
        
       | layer8 wrote:
       | > The idea that everything in the world has meaning is, by the
       | way, the exact analogue of the principle that everything has a
       | cause on which the whole of science is based.' Godel - just like
       | Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whom he idolised - believed that
       | everything in the world has a reason for its being so and not
       | otherwise.
       | 
       | This is the core mistake, I believe, to assume that causation
       | implies meaning, instead of causation just being a logical
       | correlation, and meaning being a construction of the human mind.
       | 
       | It's interesting, though, that Godel took his incompleteness
       | theorems as an indication that materialism (or naturalism) can't
       | be the truth, while still thinking that the world is rational.
        
       | imiric wrote:
       | > His rationale for belief in an afterlife is this:
       | 
       | > If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it
       | must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to
       | bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of
       | possibilities for personal development and relationships to
       | others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it?
       | 
       | Far from my petty mind to challenge a great thinker like Godel,
       | but I don't follow this line of thinking.
       | 
       | First of all, the world being rational is a property humans
       | ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific rules,
       | yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a higher
       | level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as rational,
       | or having any sort of deeper meaning.
       | 
       | Even if we assume that to be true, why would that be a reason to
       | believe that humans are expected to deliver some sort of
       | "meaning" to the universe? And why would that entitle us to
       | immortality? This all sounds deeply egotistical.
       | 
       | > Only the human being can come into a better existence through
       | learning, that is, give his life more meaning.
       | 
       | I wonder what Godel would think about modern AI. As we have
       | found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in
       | fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life,
       | though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being bound
       | by our fleshy meat sacks and all.
       | 
       | I don't know. I'm not well read in philosophy, and my only
       | exposure to it was during a semester at college, but this
       | particular philosophy reads like someone trying to bring peace
       | about mortality to their elder mother, and not like a fully
       | fleshed out line of thinking. Which is fine. Life is indeed
       | strange and confusing, and we should find peace in whatever way
       | we can, but maybe there's a reason why these thoughts were never
       | made public.
        
         | kevindamm wrote:
         | > I wonder what Godel would think about modern AI. As we have
         | found, learning is not a special ability of humans, and can, in
         | fact, be simulated. That on its own doesn't grant eternal life,
         | though AI certainly has more chances of survival, not being
         | bound by our fleshy meat sacks and all.
         | 
         | Instead bound by substrate and power grid that are both
         | inefficient and minimally redundant. I'd wager more on the meat
         | sacks.
        
         | freejazz wrote:
         | >First of all, the world being rational is a property humans
         | ascribe to it. On an atomic level matter follows specific
         | rules, yes, and we extrapolate a certain order from this on a
         | higher level. But I don't see how any of it can be defined as
         | rational, or having any sort of deeper meaning.
         | 
         | You might not be read in philosophy, but surely you understand
         | the word "if"
        
           | voxl wrote:
           | Right, the parent attacks the axioms as-if they where the
           | argument while simultaneously attacking the source as
           | egotistical.
           | 
           | The axioms are of course suspect, but if you give reasonable
           | interpretations to them then the conclusion is not far
           | fetched as they basically necessitate some kind of creator.
        
         | madaxe_again wrote:
         | I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer
         | technology as a whole, Godel would today be a simulationist of
         | Bostrom's cut.
         | 
         | If we ever have the means to accurately simulate reality -
         | which we already do, at small scales and with significant time
         | dilation - then it becomes almost inevitable that we reside
         | within a simulation, as the simulations would vastly outnumber
         | physical reality, and therefore the balance of probability is
         | that we reside within a simulation - possibly nested within
         | many other layers of simulation.
         | 
         | It isn't necessary to simulate an entire universe at utter
         | fidelity - just that which is observed - which rather neatly
         | ties into the current understanding of quantum mechanics, and
         | waveform collapse. It also isn't necessary to do it in
         | realtime, as from within the simulation all would appear
         | synchronous regardless - aeons could pass between states, while
         | the substrate orbits a white dwarf whiling away the cold
         | eternity at the heat death of the parent universe.
         | 
         | Whether that implies an afterlife is another matter - perhaps
         | we are ephemeral after all - but taking Godel's argument about
         | the wastefulness of imbuing consciousness only to then snuff it
         | out, half baked, it would stand to reason that any simulator
         | would seek to accrue that experience, and use it for other
         | purposes.
         | 
         | Perhaps there is only one consciousness, asynchronously living
         | every life, every existence. I find this useful to bear in
         | mind, as the person to whom I am asshole today may be an aspect
         | of me from another iteration.
         | 
         | I prefer to look at this not as woo-woo, or belief, but rather
         | logical deduction based on sound premises.
         | 
         | Of course, it may all be bunkum, and we may be alone in the
         | universe, and life may indeed be meaningless and fleeting - but
         | we cannot know, as that would foul up the simulation no end.
        
         | bardsimpson wrote:
         | Rationality is not an inscribed property but rather a natural
         | consequence of observing the order in place.
         | 
         | For example, the table of elements expresses the properties of
         | integers as inherent to reality. As such, it is rational and
         | rationally-ordered.
         | 
         | This is not so much "philosophy" as it is "logic", it is the
         | conclusion of philosophy and mathematics and the subsequent
         | origin of the computational reality.
        
       | jackbravo wrote:
       | > And because the correspondence was private, he did not feel the
       | need to hide his true views, which he might have done in more
       | formal academic settings and among his colleagues at the IAS
       | 
       | I don't think that being private necessarily means that it is
       | showing his true views. In private, we often feel more relaxed
       | and express ourselves differently than in public. But in private
       | conversations, you can express a point of view in one
       | conversation and a different one in another. We often tend to
       | accommodate our audience.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_accommodation_th...
        
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