Linkpost March
People say reading these posts make young people read instead of comitting crime, thus reducing juvenile de-link-wency (har, har, har)
This might be my favorite poem that I’ve ever read—strangely haunting and quite beautiful:
She held my hand and blew my mind:
“Windowless monads all in sync!
Their unity complete in kind!
Their insides painted red and pink!”
I pointed out the ducks and geese.
I stuck to words that layman knew.
But she insisted that we lease
Ideas scientists eschew.
“Opaque appearances can be
Transcended—bypassed—got beyond;
Then, grounded in reality,
We’ll splash around the noumenal pond.”
Head fuzzy, I declared my love.
She drew me close but looked confused.
She skied the bleeding edge; but of
That alien notion, she refused.
Seems like there’s pretty massive lookism in favor of blond women (ht Marginal Revolution).
I’m on Goodreads! Follow my account if you want to see books I’m reading and what I think of them.
South Africa’s court case is worth reading in full if one wants to form an educated opinion about Israel’s war.
Olum has a good piece arguing for SIA—as does Carlsmith. In a future post, I’ll show that Carlsmith’s results can be shown to result from any view other than SIA.
Petra Kosonen has a Substack. There are only three posts, but they’re all very, very good.
So does Peter Singer!
Fun video about a huge number (Tree 3). I find big numbers cool, and this is the biggest one I can understand at any real level (I can’t figure ut the math behind, e.g. Rayo’s number). Graham’s number is cool too!
I’ve recently had a bunch of debates on YouTube about the anthropic argument—so check those out.
Fun article about the ridiculous Hendricks scandal by my friend Amos Wollen. He has another one that has convinced me that Hinduism is the most probably true religion.
One of the funniest stories I ever came across. Matthew Heimbach, an American white nationalist, was having an affair with his mother-in-law. David Parrott, another white nationalist, was married to Heimbach’s mother-in-law. Parrot stood on a box to try to catch Heimbach—his son-in-law—having sex with his wife, but the box broke under Parrot’s weight. Heimbach got mad and attacked Parrot, who called the police. This lead to the dissolution of some white nationalist party. It’s a good thing that people like Heimbach are here to stick up for tradition against immigrants undermining the cultural values of sleeping with one’s mother in law and being violent.
This video about Jehova’s Witnesses is similarly hilarious.
LOL.
This video was a crazy watch. It’s about a former child prodigy who went crazy along with her family.
Lots of LessWrongers like UDASSA as a theory of anthropics. Joe Carlsmith explains why it’s a pretty terrible view.
Richard explains why the most common argument for the asymmetry is super dumb! If you don’t read his Substack regularly, you are making a mistake!
Not a link, but I recently begun watching two shows and enjoyed both—Young Sheldon and After Life.
Scott says we shouldn’t think about race and lived experience in the weird way we do now. I agree!
The Italians carried out a genocide in Libya (I recently read the main book arguing for this position and it’s quite convincing).
Modern critical theorists act a lot like conspiracy theorists according to Joseph Heath. He’s right! Heath also laments the troubling dogmatic opposition to biological explanations of various events.
Speaking of Heath, he has another about why philosophers should be worried about cancel culture. Again, he’s right.
Meta link post: Ozy has a great links post. The most interesting link is this one about the horror of life in the Central African Republic. 6% of the population has died in the last year, and the situation is about as horrifying as one can imagine. Another good one is nicely summarized as the following:
People generally love animals and hate animal cruelty, and are generally complicit in animal cruelty through factory farming. The reason is that going vegan or vegetarian is difficult, so people rationalize their behavior. If an issue doesn’t affect you personally, it’s easy to ignore it.
Sam Enright has a good link post. I recently met Sam in person—very cool guy!
Thornley wrecks the person-affecting view.
One of my former professors, David Manley, has a paper about how to do anthropic reasoning and whether you should reason as if you’re a random sample. It’s really good, as is typical of Manley’s stuff.
Both Sides Brigade has a good piece about why meditation is good and how to start.
Dustin Crummett is one of my favorite living philosophers. He’s both a theist and an effective altruist, which is quite cool. He wrote a bunch of cool articles for Capturing Christianity that are worth reading, in particular this article on the high intrinsic probability of theism, this one about the fine-tuning argument and the argument from beauty, and this one about moral knowledge. He also has good pieces arguing for substance dualism.
Farmed crickets are treated badly. Poor crickets :(. And yet the widespread public response to this horrifying injustice is…crickets.
Brett Weinstein has gone thoroughly off the deep end.
Adam Elga is right about sleeping beauty
Yglesias hits the nail on the head when it comes to Israel. There are some deranged anti-Israel lunatics, but Israel’s current razing of Gaza is quite bad.
Scott explains again why it makes sense to have non-frequentist probabilities.
The song Hackensack is quite good. I especially like the first lines:
I used to know you when we were young
You were in all my dreams
Richard busts philosophical myths. If you like my blog, you’ll probably like Richard.
This case for the Episcopal Church is quite good. One particularly lovely bit:
8. You should be an Episcopalian if you believe frightening imperfect Christians with the fiery flames of hell or with crushing, unrelenting guilt is not only un-biblical, but it is foundationally un-Christian.
It is nothing less than theological malpractice.
This is a church where the grace of God trumps the wrath of God and this is a church where God’s love has the power to redeem any and every one.
A God who can forgive your deepest and most haunting sins may be a God who is loving and powerful enough to forgive mine.This is a hospital for sinners, not a haven for saints!
If you’re divorced, this is the church for you.
If you’re a single mother or father, this is the church for you.
If you struggle with addiction issues, this is the church for you.
If you’re wondering how you will find the energy to take just one more step… this is the church for you.
We believe Christ died on a cross to save us, not to mock us or belittle us.
The Episcopal Church seeks to find a place mid-way between “an acrid orthodoxy and an arid liberalism” and we try, although we don’t always succeed), to maintain the “via media,” this “middle way.”
Interesting articles by Pruss (I made a list going through some when I was bored in class)
Arguments for theism: here Pruss argues that how one enters a relationship permanently affects its features. Thus, God might have a reason for remaining hidden.
The evidential force of there being at least one gratuitous evil is low: we’re not in a position to know whether there is at least one gratuitous evil. We could be wrong about gratuitous-looking evils.
Trivial and horrendous evils: No one thinks the argument from trivial evils is any good. But why not? Probably because the great goods thoroughly outstrip trivial evils. But, if theism is true, the same is true of great evils.
An analogy for divine infinity: “God’s value is related to other infinities like (except with a reversal of order) zero is related other infinitesimals. Just as zero is infinitely many times smaller than any other infinitesimal (technically, zero is an infinitesimal—an infinitesimal being a quantity x such that |x| < 1/n for every natural number n), and in an important sense is radically different from them, so too the infinity of God’s value is infinitely many times greater than any other infinity, and in an important sense is radically different from them.”
I'm probably not a brain in a vat
If I were a brain in a vat, I'd expect my experiences to be simple or not very orderly (glitchy); but if I were an ordinary human being as I seem to be, the experiences I would expect would be like that.
My experiences are complex, continuous and very orderly.
So, probably, I am an ordinary human being rather than a brain in a vat.
Sceptical scenarios and theism: naturalism might lead to scepticism.
Reality is strange: God is strange but that’s not a reason to doubt his possibility.
Approximatable laws: Laws are approximatable which provides evidence that they are designed, similar to Collins fine-tuning for discoverability.
Balancing between theism and atheism: The problem of evil is a tie between theism and atheism. It has three parts: suffering, evil choices, and hiddenness. Atheism struggles to explain suffering because that needs consciousness, evil choices because they need free will, and how they come to have very abstract knowledge like that there is no God.
Sceptical theism and the infinity of God:
If God exists, there are infinitely many types of good at each level.
We only have concepts of a finite number of types of good at each level.
There are infinitely many types of good at each level that we have no concept of.
So therefore we should be skeptical theists.
Some people think it is absurd to say, as Cantorian mathematics does, that there are no more real numbers from 0 to 100 than from 0 to 1.
But there is a neat argument for this:
If the number of points on a line segment that is 100 cm long equals the number of points on a line segment that is 1 cm long, then the number of real numbers from 0 to 100 equals the number of real numbers from 0 to 1.
The number of points on a line that is 100 cm long equals the number of distances in centimeters between 0 and 100 cm.
The number of points on a line that is 1 meter long equals the number of distances in meters between 0 and 1 meter.
The number of distances in centimeters between 0 and 100 cm equals the number of real numbers between 0 and 100.
The number of distances in meters between 0 and 1 meters equals the number of real numbers between 0 and 1.
A line is 100 cm if and only if it is 1 meter long.
Equality in number is transitive.
So, the number of points on a line that is 100 cm is equals the number of points on a line that is 1 meter long.
So, the number of distances in centimeters between 0 and 100 cm equals the number of distances in meters between 0 and 1 meters.
So, the number of real numbers between 0 and 100 equals the number of real numbers between 0 and 1.
A quick route from mathematics to metaphysical necessity:
The Peano Axioms are consistent. If not, mathematics (and the science resting on it) is overthrown. Moreover, it is absurd to suppose that they are merely contingently consistent: that in some other possible world a contradiction follows logically from them, but in the actual world no contradiction follows from them. So the Peano Axioms are necessarily consistent. But they aren't logically necessarily consistent: the consistency of the Peano Axioms cannot be proved (according to Goedel's second incompleteness theorem, not even if one helps oneself to the Peano Axioms in the proof, at least assuming they really are consistent). So we must suppose a necessity that isn't logical necessity, but is nonetheless very, very strong. We call it metaphysical necessity.
The blink-of-an-eye response to the problem of evil: Our life is too short to confidently proclaim that evils are gratuitous.
Freedom and theodicy: manipulation is morally objectionable. So even if compatibilism is true there’s a free will defense.
If you're interested in videos about big numbers like Tree 3, I would recommend https://youtu.be/kmAc1nDizu0. It's about the Busy Beaver function, which grows faster than any other function that can be defined in a finite number of steps.
Hinduism link is to your response to Neil, not Amos's article