This doesn't track for me. Lots of people forecast, rightly or wrongly, events much worse then we've ever experienced: catastrophic climate change, apocalyptic nuclear war, immentiment economic collapse, etc. So no, I don't think we are somehow limited in our imagination to events that we've already observed to happen.
Many people respond to arguments for AI extinction risk with "that's science fiction", "that's fear-mongering", "you should instead focus on bias & misinformation in the here and now", etc. These "counterarguments" seem to be often motivated by the inability to imagine such a big catastrophy as it exceeds the previous ones.
I think you are both in a semantic linguistic argument. If person a and b are in dispute about topic c, then definitionally they can both hold concept c in their head as a named concept.
When somebody says "that's inconceivable" they mean something figuratively not literally.
> nature, unlike Fragilista Greenspan, prepares for what has not happened before, assuming worse harm is possible
What utter tosh.
The random walk across trait combinations that underlies evolution means that when worse harm occurs there's often a decent chance that at least -some- members of any given species will manage to survive, true, but plenty of species just go extinct in a situation like that.
Plus 'prepares' implies an active application of agency that simply isn't part of the underlying process.
"Be aware that the next disaster could be worse and try to think clearly about to what extent it's going to be good ROI overall to have defences that will survive it" is good advice and no matter how obvious it might -feel- is probably something well worth explicitly pointing out to people every so often, but 'nature prepares' is still rubbish and Taleb would've had a more solid critique of Greenspan's choices had he stuck to arguments with a basis in reality.
(this sort of thing continues to restrict how much Taleb I can consume at once before needing to take a week or two for the annoyance to fade - I often feel like there's room in the world for a "Taleb: The Good Parts" where somebody else trudges through the stupid bits to extract the useful insights)
There's also such a thing as over-building. Robustness, per se, is good, but it comes at a price, including the opportunity cost. My city, Toronto, has never known a serious earthquake, though there is a fault zone in nearby Ottawa. Should we build all our skyscrapers to match the building code of, say, Seattle?
What's troubling at face value is that the setup nudges us towards the all too common deceit of "past observations beget future outcomes" without saying anything meaningful about forward-looking risk likelihood and consequence.
The architect may think it best to assume the risk; the engineer, control it; the city planner, avoid it; the business executive, transfer it. Perhaps the risk itself lacks specificity. Perhaps mitigation incorporates a bit from all major stakeholders.
Surely there are other options to consider that have yet to be dealt.
Taleb habitually oversimplifies things, creating strawmen to score easy points. He does generate discussion but probably not in the quarters he is targeting.
The deeper philosophical argumemts about the nature of knowledge have been debated endlessly [1]. The naive empiricism he criticises is never too far as a stance (see e.g the discussion about how much an LLM understands the knowledge embedded in the language corpus).
There are pragmatic reasons people use historical data in a direct rather than indirect "internalized" way to assess range of outcomes of a system.
One reason is the lack of understanding of such complex systems. I.e., the absence of usable and validated mathematical / logical constructs that would allow accurate answers to what-if type questions.
Another reason of sticking to historical data is simply the fact they are harder to game.
Ofcourse a practice might get established for more or less valid reasons but degenerate over time into a stylized bureaucratic convention.
The pathologies associated with incomplete understanding (in particular( of the human condition are many and they are quite dangerous if not existential.
"Angry men" railing at the "system" to sell books might not be the optimal path to get on top of them.
The other commenters have covered this pretty well. I came here to say that, for well over 90% of the time, the naive stess-testing heuristic not only works well, it is overkill for the true stresses which will occur in at least the medium term.
Note: I am not rate-limited, but will not reply in any manner whatsoever. No replies from my end will reference anything at all, because they won’t exist. Feel free to misunderstand whatever you please about this comment.
Do you present these as beliefs/predictions, or facts?
If facts, please present your proofs.
Alternatively, you can also engage in highly predictable rhetorical behavior, not unlike that of a LLM when prompted with certain ideas. I've presented these two ideas to thousands of human minds, I am interested in whether there is any(!) novelty in yours in this scenario.
> Note: I am not rate-limited, but will not reply in any manner whatsoever. No replies from my end will reference anything at all, because they won’t exist. Feel free to misunderstand whatever you please about this comment.
That’s not how this works, anywhere: the burden of proof, of presenting facts, is on those who say “yes”.
In the former case, we have only appeal to authority (some book says) and to personal belief, neither of which are facts. In the latter case, we have a proven medical fraud committed by a person with financial interest in rival treatments, said person having lost their medical license as a result of said fraud.
You misunderstood what the comment you replied to was saying, and you also seem to either misunderstand or simply not know about the burden of proof.
For my part, I find the original "no and no" reply perfectly adequate for the smug "I'm only asking questions" assertion-in-disguise that prompted it. Life is too short to debate trolls.
You seem like an actually reasonable person (and thanks for the support)....do you think it's possible that there might be more to what it is I'm doing than "trolling"?
A way to think about it: do you think it's possible that framing/perceiving those who are interested in accuracy as being "trolls" (as opposed to realizing that they are correct, and may actually have an important point) might cause long term harm to a culture?
Another way to think about it: mocking Trump supporters and religious fundamentalists is both easy and fun, and therefore popular - but how much value is there in it? Now, contrast this to finding questions that ~everyone will fail on, including highly educated and genuinely smart people. How much value might there be in this (keeping in mind the numerous seemingly intractable problems we have going on on this shitshow of a planet)?
I'm asking you rather than the other guy because I think you can likely actually consider the question.
An interesting followup question maybe: what do you think about people (particularly smart people) who are not able to consider certain things, but seem to be trapped in a cycle of only being able heuristically process certain ideas. I am very suspicious that this is not a 100% naturally emergent aspect of our culture - I speculate that people have been made this way. And if they've been made this way (or even if not), perhaps they can be improved.
> do you think it's possible that framing/perceiving those who are interested in accuracy as being "trolls"
I can't know for sure either way. I guessed that you were trolling since you brought up vaccines causing autism; if it was just the question about God, I might not have thought so much of the intent. It seems I misjudged you, though. Please accept my continuation of the discussion as...well, just that, actually.
> but how much value is there in it?
Mere mocking certainly isn't valuable. I think it's more that people believe they are definitely correct and they mock those who they view as definitely wrong because there's nothing to debate, but a lot of people seem too trigger-happy to conclude that they are definitely right and the other person is definitely wrong, without considering nuance. Then the questions they will field in actual debate are already selected by bias to be at least somewhat aligned in their views.
> what do you think about people (particularly smart people) who are not able to consider certain things, but seem to be trapped in a cycle of only being able heuristically process certain ideas.
I'm a proud person and I fancy myself a thinker; along these lines, I don't know if detest is quite the right word, but I don't view them positively in that aspect. I think I'd do fine (generally) not treating them differently because of that, but I do have strong feelings about critical thinking and its deficit in many people. I recognize that I'm not infallible either, yet I don't waver in typing this. I definitely have shown instances of being open-minded, but it's not like I know right now where I stand. Ha, I turned this into talking about me.
> I am very suspicious that this is not a 100% naturally emergent aspect of our culture - I speculate that people have been made this way.
Agree.
> And if they've been made this way (or even if not), perhaps they can be improved.
I wonder about that. I don't think there's necessarily an upper bound of critical thinking/understanding, but in its place there are gaps between every person where understanding can only be achieved by...understanding. It definitely happens at times, but there's no plane that can truly just airlift a person across such a gap.
> I can't know for sure either way. I guessed that you were trolling since you brought up vaccines causing autism; if it was just the question about God, I might not have thought so much of the intent. It seems I misjudged you, though.
I revealed my motive though: these two particular questions are guaranteed to invoke errors in normative cognition, and often especially in intelligent people.
>> I am very suspicious that this is not a 100% naturally emergent aspect of our culture - I speculate that people have been made this way.
> Agree.
Well now I'm curious...any theories (wild and speculative is fine by me) on some candidate causes?
> It definitely happens at times, but there's no plane that can truly just airlift a person across such a gap.
Which was more than we could say about actual planes, before a couple of weirdos got off their asses and actually built one.
But it seems there's something about this problem that's different, almost like it doesn't allow itself to be analyzed, or even noticed. "Some day" humanity will reach the oft-discussed but never pursued world of widespread critical thinking seems to be the plan, without having even taken the first step towards it.
Noteworthy: I am far from the first person who has noticed this phenomenon.
> Well now I'm curious...any theories (wild and speculative is fine by me) on some candidate causes?
Maybe we are an experiment by higher beings to see how well sparks of rationality can develop into an enlightened being or whatever. I wonder how they'd rate us so far.
> But it seems there's something about this problem that's different, almost like it doesn't allow itself to be analyzed, or even noticed. "Some day" humanity will reach the oft-discussed but never pursued world of widespread critical thinking seems to be the plan, without having even taken the first step towards it.
Put all elementary/middle children on Hacker News for fifteen minutes a day until they can demonstrate critical thinking in live debates. /s
Seriously though, I think fostering curiosity and critical thinking, as abstract as they are, is important to improving society as a whole. Parents probably need to be involved in this kind of education, and schools too. I think Hacker News has good examples of both great discussions with critical thinking and...suboptimal discussions. A lot easier said than done though.
> Maybe we are an experiment by higher beings to see how well sparks of rationality can develop into an enlightened being or whatever. I wonder how they'd rate us so far.
Another way to look at it: there is an experiment of sorts underway to see whether humanity can reach some sort of enlightenment before killing itself off - regardless of whether there is a higher power to help us along the way (which doesn't necessarily have to be supernatural btw, though it may appear that way, and thus "be" that way), this may indeed be the situation we are in, but cannot know (or maybe even true to know, so far away are we from the goal).
> Put all elementary/middle children on Hacker News for fifteen minutes a day until they can demonstrate critical thinking in live debates.
An alternative idea I've had: teach junior & high school kids certain skills, and then cherry pick culture war threads from Hacker News (a site well populated by genuinely intelligent adults, though only on a relative scale) and then have the children ruthlessly critique the literal delusions of the adults. I think this is a good idea for many different reasons, the main one being to demonstrate how easily kids could be upgraded to utterly dominate the thinking of smart adults, in specific types of thinking. Considering bad thinking and decisions are the roots of all our problems, and the adults seem utterly helpless to do anything about it, empowering those who can be demonstrated to perform better seems like a no brainer to me.
> Parents probably need to be involved in this kind of education, and schools too.
The parents and adults would first need to be trained in the necessary skills - as we can see here on HN, hardly anyone can do it at a high level, or realize that they cannot (the affliction renders the subject unable to accurately self-diagnose, a phenomenon which can also occur at the culture/species level).
> I think Hacker News has good examples of both great discussions with critical thinking and...suboptimal discussions.
Providing near endless material for running case studies of the limited quality of high level 21st century human cognition: even our best and brightest are dumb on an absolute scale.
The first misunderstanding lies in not recognizing that the comment that started this whole thread is, in fact, making two claims and disguising those claim as questions. The rest of the comment, i.e. the non-question parts, reveals the true nature of those "questions". Implying that "even the very best minds" are somehow unable to discuss these questions is a cheap rhetorical device. It's what the Internet clumsily, but accurately, calls "debate me, bro".
The second misunderstanding requires fewer words to describe: Russell's teapot.
> The first misunderstanding lies in not recognizing that the comment that started this whole thread is, in fact, making two claims and disguising those claim as questions.
I absolutely love this comment, because it is literally and necessarily an opinion, but it explicitly claims that it is a fact.
This is what I was anticipating when I said: "The effect these questions have on even the very best minds is amazing, I wonder what will happen here..."
> The rest of the comment, i.e. the non-question parts, reveals the true nature of those "questions".
This one's great too - let me guess, you believe that in "the non-question parts, reveals the true nature" it is solely the words themselves doing the "revealing", am I right? Or, would you prefer to maybe not discuss that topic in detail? :)
> Implying that "even the very best minds" are somehow unable to discuss these questions is a cheap rhetorical device.
It is also true, and some might even say mean.
> It's what the Internet clumsily, but accurately, calls "debate me, bro".
Yup, and this is what keeps your culture permanently locked into Maya: the world as dream (like above where you literally can't distinguish between the necessarily subjective and objective - and this is under asynchronous conditions, imagine how you'd perform in realtime).
> The second misunderstanding requires fewer words to describe: Russell's teapot.
lol, what does this even mean?
By the way: Russell's Teapot is not a proof, but it certainly may appear as such to those afflicted by Normative Cognition.
In general the burden of proof is upon the person who assert a claim not predicated on facts understood in common by all or at least most credible participants in a discussion.
If we all accept foo no proof is required for foo
If all reasonable (in the judgement of the particular discussion forum) parties in a discussion about foo would accept foo dissenters may be entertained or ignored.
> In general the burden of proof is upon the person who assert a claim not predicated on facts understood in common by all or at least most credible participants in a discussion.
If you look up the definition on Wikipedia, you may notice that your articulation of it here is slightly off. You may also not be able to notice it, which is what makes "reality" so tricky.
> If we all accept foo no proof is required for foo
And Mother Nature will reward you accordingly for the quality of your thinking/delusion/indoctrination.
> If all reasonable (in the judgement of the particular discussion forum) parties in a discussion about foo would accept foo dissenters may be entertained or ignored.
Yep, you can literally do pretty much whatever you like, but don't whine when unintended consequences show up later ("Ooooooh no, climate change, why doesn't some do something!!!!!).
Best of luck with guessing your way through life, humans!
// That’s not how this works, anywhere: the burden of proof, of presenting facts, is on those who say “yes”.
I used to think this way but lately recognize this isn't intellectually honest. Even w/o religion we have to acknowledge that our ability to perceive and understand is very limited compared to what must be the totality of truths in the universe.
This seems obvious - eg if you believe in evolution, you recognize that you evolved to be fit in your environment (eat and avoid being eaten) - why would you expect this process to grant you machinery to understand fundamental universal truths?
Once I recognized this limitation, I recognized the intellectual dishonestly of what I previously considered rigor: "I can't see/understand it so it doesn't exist" is as ridiculous an assertion as anything.
Insisting on fixing burden of proof according to reasonable and customary rules is how we bring information from honest and forthright discussion partners into scope where their thoughts can be fully considered and guard our time from unserious, dishonest, or ridiculous individuals who sap our time and will by insisting that unreasonable meritless ideas spun with a minimum of effort demand profound effort on our part to disprove what they never bothered to prove in the first place.
If you tell me the moon is made of cheese my rebuttal isn't going to be to launch a manned mission I'm going to tightly flip it on you.
This isn't intellectually dishonest. The fact for instance that our ability to understand the underlying reality if any may be limited doesn't mean that every proposition is equally valid. You entire life has been built on picking the most likely explanation for a set of inputs received. It's how your ancestors didn't get eaten by animals.
If you are wandering around an orchard and find what looks like a smelly pile of dung do feel free not to put it in your mouth to find out if it's actually an apple.
I agree with everything you wrote here (this is indeed how I live my life) but I think your examples have something in common - they are cases where you are capable of recognizing the truth. EG: you know what shit looks like and you know what apples look like, and you can be confident in your ability to tell them apart.
The upstream topic has to do with religion which deals with things that don't have that property (by definition, I would say.) One religious argument can go like this:
Religion: all things that we know about, have a creator. Why wouldn't the universe have a creator? Why would the most sophisticated thing of all be random? Atheism replies: I am unable to see the creator therefore he doesn't exist. It's random.
There's a difference between saying "I know what an apple is and I've seen thousands of apples, and this pile of shit isn't an apple" and saying "I assume I would be able to perceive and understand the creation/creator of the universe with my monkey meat-brain, so the fact that I don't see it means for sure there's not one"
I feel like the logical approach is to say "I am a limited monkey meat-brain, I have no reason to expect to recognize the creator. But I can chose to use probability to expect that there might be a creator of the universe - since all else has a creator, and not get too hung up on my own limitation"
Hope this elaboration makes sense, this is what I was trying to convey.
Properly atheism replies that we observe a multitude of things which according to our best understanding don't require supernatural intervention to come into being and literally thousands of examples of prospective gods which are all complete bullshit.
The fact that the concept is probably without merit is a probabilistic statement like most of the "facts" you know. There are no tigers in my house and there is no creator of the universe.
I'm an atheist not because I have absolute proof of a negative but because surety crossed a threshold from probably not to definitely not because that is how human beings work. Most statements that you "know" work exactly the same.
There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean. A star, a slime mold and you are a natural consequence of the configuration of matter that preceded the existence of matter we are labeling our sun, that ugly stain on the wall, and you. There is no reason to believe that your mom has conscious control over individual cells that became you for instance any more than the lose clump of dust consciously created the sun.
As we move to the moment where the inception of our universe this of course breaks down not because we need to paper over our lack of understanding with a symbol we invented but because as you noted reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand.
Thank you for responding. This is very crisp and well written -- it makes it very clear to see where we disagree. Which is of course totally fine and an age-old debate. But it gives me a chance to state my view in a crisp way as well as a reaction:
// There is nothing in the natural world that has a creator in the sense that you mean...
I believe you're expressing a faith here. As you and I both agreed "reality has no need to conform to our intuition or ability to understand" - the implications of this is that on questions like "where did the laws of physics come from" we have no hope of observation / understanding that can lead to an answer.
Perhaps the only honest answer would be "as a human being, I am too limited to engage with this topic at all."
But both religious people and atheists make a stronger assertion than that. An atheist says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about randomly." A religious person says "I can never understand this, but I believe it came about purposefully."
They are both equally (un)justified in their belief, but one or the other resonates with them deeply enough to operate as a matter of faith.
> The fact for instance that our ability to understand the underlying reality if any may be limited doesn't mean that every proposition is equally valid.
In the colloquial sense, for sure. However, if someone bothers to engage in a discussion by providing an answer to a question, I think it is perfectly fair to say that the burden of proof lies on the answerer. If someone responds in kind, then they should provide evidence and reasoning for their claim. A holier-than-thou attitude to the point of providing one word as an answer and refusing to elaborate isn't remotely conducive to discussion.
The question of whether vaccines cause autism isn't a question that can reasonably be dismissed immediately like "the moon is made of cheese" can. You probably put your trust in the scientists who say vaccines don't cause autism. You may very well be right. But if you choose to engage in a discussion, don't act like your argument is untouchable. That's a disservice to the spirit of scientific inquiry. Perhaps there's a new study that should be considered. If it's the same old debunked studies, feel free to end the discussion there. But you don't know that ahead of time. If you're going to continue a discussion, do so in good faith.
> You entire life has been built on picking the most likely explanation for a set of inputs received. It's how your ancestors didn't get eaten by animals.
That is...confident. I think animals are a lot easier to avoid dying to than trying to understand the universe and everything about it, whether that's physics, epidemiology, or philosophy. Natural selection isn't "survival of the perfect beings" but rather "survival of the fittest and then some mediocre ones who haven't died off".
The burden of proof is on the person who provides an answer. Whether that is "yes", "no", "yes in this case and no everywhere else", that is an answer that should be backed by some evidence and reasoning. If the questions and answers had been perfectly flipped, would you have said that the burden of proof is on those who say "no"?
> That’s not how this works, anywhere: the burden of proof, of presenting facts, is on those who say “yes”.
Can you cite any authoritative source on this, or are you able to only claim that it is correct (and perhaps, expect me to disprove)?
> In the former case, we have only appeal to authority (some book says)
You are incorrect - we also have epistemology, logic, ontology, neuroscience/psychology/anthropology and various other fields which contain discoveries that are relevant to the psychological phenomenon (~"reality") you are currently experiencing.
> and to personal belief, neither of which are facts.
If you and your epistemology-ignorant and denying crew can treat your beliefs as facts (as is regularly done in these conversations), why can religious people not do the same? I mean come on man, double standards are bad, no?
> In the latter case, we have a proven medical fraud committed by a person with financial interest in rival treatments, said person having lost their medical license as a result of said fraud.
Which proves nothing.
I am genuinely curious: do you believe that Wakefield being discovered to be a fraud PROVES there is ZERO causal association between vaccines and autism? Because there sure are a lot of people who believe that, including a lot of people right here on HN.
Parent and GP were talking about where the burden of proof lies. That's a matter of opinion, but one that should generally be considered settled on Hacker News. Apparently it isn't. Anyways, while parent made a somewhat snarky reply, yours isn't better. If parent was shown discussing "actual" points (for example, the vaccine question) with an absurdly high bar for proof from the other side, your reply would be relevant. As it is, there doesn't seem to be anything egregiously wrong about parent's reply about the vaccine question. Perhaps the evidence or reasoning is wrong, but you didn't address that.
> I am genuinely curious: do you believe that Wakefield being discovered to be a fraud PROVES there is ZERO causal association between vaccines and autism? Because there sure are a lot of people who believe that, including a lot of people right here on HN.
That's not a good argument. If someone believes in anything then it should either be a moral axiom or they should have some kind of reasoning for it. Now, is this reasoning based on Wakefield and co. or something else that hasn't been discussed much? There is overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines don't cause autism, so while that isn't a proof, it's the only reasonable starting point for a discussion. Science is the only tool for applying reason to reality. Not all scientists are correct, of course, but your own reasoning is flimsy if you don't acknowledge the corpus of studies which strongly favor the theory that vaccines don't cause autism. Epistemology is appropriate for your question about God but not really for this topic. If there was more reasonable division in the scientific consensus, then you would have a point.
Oh ya? Well whath this: it's an excellent argument.
Wow, that was easy, I guess that's why it's so popular??
> If someone believes in anything then it should either be a moral axiom or they should have some kind of reasoning for it.
Agreed - that's why it's so funny that science (and its fan base) which sells itself as being the paragon of reason has to resort to unture, misinformative rhetoric to "win" arguments where their proposition is not technically true. Reality is complicated, if they are so smart why can they not understand simple logic and epistemology?
Ironically, science itself has provided many answers to this sort of question, but like religious folk, they tend to not be able to extensively read &/or live up to their scriptures, or realize that they have that problem.
> Now, is this reasoning based on Wakefield and co. or something else that hasn't been discussed much? There is overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines don't cause autism, so while that isn't a proof, it's the only reasonable starting point for a discussion.
Sure, no problem. And I will simply point out it's not a proof, and then record the intuitive, meme-based reactions to store in my files. Scientists and scientific thinkers sure do love their memes when push comes to shove!
> Science is the only tool for applying reason to reality.
What's funny is you have no proof for this, making it a faith based belief, but you (presumably) perceive it as rational.
I'm curious: as the person who it is happening to, what's your take on this phenomenon?
> Not all scientists are correct, of course, but your own reasoning is flimsy if you don't acknowledge the corpus of studies which strongly favor the theory that vaccines don't cause autism.
Agreed - I fully acknowledge it. And thanks for explicitly noting that it is not known whether vaccines cause autism.
Do you think it is funny that so many otherwise intelligent people right here on HN are unable to realize this? I think it is hilarious.
> Epistemology is appropriate for your question about God but not really for this topic.
You are not able to objectively prove this subjective opinion - I predict you are unable to even try.
> If there was more reasonable division in the scientific consensus, then you would have a point.
That there is no division is a huge part of my point. Institutionalized delusion & deceit, which is then used as a basis of a propaganda campaign on the citizens of the entire planet, yielding what we see all around us.
What is introduced without evidence may be dismissed without evidence. The singular proof of a link between vaccines and autism is a study we now know was a fraud. More generally since no vaccination was undertaken worldwide in a day the correlation would be evident and spoiler alert it is not.
Please don't respond with a YouTube video "proving" your case.
> What is introduced without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
We do indeed seem to have substantial freedom of choice in the environment we all find ourselves in - place your bets, and Mother Nature will reward you according to the quality of your thinking, measured on an absolute scale.
> Please don't respond with a YouTube video "proving" your case.
Can we let the "flagged" stamp go, and make the parent comment visible to the community? This specific thread sparked some interesting follow ups, and not making it available feels like an Elon reaction.
As far as I'm concerned I'm fine with it remaining flagged/dead - if it minimizes the chances that any wisdom contained within can be used the next time you guys find yourself in the middle of yet another crisis you've mismanaged yourself into it may be best from a karma perspective.
Hiding from the fundamental problems our system is composed of may be polite and pleasant, but it may also ultimately be very harmful.
And that goes for the downvoters of the original question as well: you may not be interested in epistemology, but epistemology might be interested in you.
Best of luck on all the problems in your system, let's hope they all somehow magically resolve themselves to a good outcome!
My comment was directed at Uehreka's comment, not yours. I think yours is at least the start of a discussion, whereas Uehreka's was an attempt to dismiss it entirely.
TL;DR: One's reality is exactly that. "God", if He exists, is inherently beyond one's reality (for me and presumably everyone else on this planet). Otherwise "God" would be another being or a phenomenon or something that we could maybe percieve and even comprehend at some point, but that's not possible. Even the Standard Model is more real than "God" is. Whether or not "God" exists, we can't know as we are.
I'll bite for the first question, since you so kindly mentioned epistemology. Whether or not there is a God, I can't know. I would say "we" can't know, but I shouldn't presume that "we" are all at most around the same level of reality that I am. The concept of "God" inherently implies that a "non-God" (such as me) can't find out the truth about whether there is a "God", and if so, the surrounding truths and lies. If we (back to normal "we") never had spaceships, telescopes, or anything else of the sort (indulge me), how would we ever find out the truth about the structure Milky Way galaxy? It would just be beyond us, but only technologically.
This kind of epistemological investigation is in some ways utterly antithetical to mathematics. In maths, one can set axioms and prove a great many things (not necessarily all things, though). It's almost like creating things out of thin air. However, we can't even know "God" unless we can become "God", or else achieve a similar level of reality.
We can set axioms to describe things within our own level of reality, but if there are axioms of some higher level of reality, we can't reach them like we are. If there is a higher level of reality with "God", then "God" also may be contained within a higher level of reality. We simply can't know. There is nothing "beyond" to know. The entire study of how we come to know things, epistemology, is thus bounded by this principle. It's not even an axiom, which is something taken to be true and then used to reason about things. There is no denying it, because what you perceive as reality is proof that you exist in your reality. You maybe don't even need a concept of "I" at this level, because your reality can't be anything but your reality.
Your sense of reality may be constantly changing, but there is some reality you are within at a given point in time. All your beliefs, your memories, your experiences, what you think are your memories and experiences: anything and everything that you "know" is your reality. Your reality is that which can't be dispelled as an illusion. An illusion is a concept that you reject as reality. Babies hardly seem to know anything, but they generally have shifts in mindset, such as suddenly understanding object permanence. Suddenly the baby's reality is expanded. Something that wasn't even considered as a thought suddenly becomes routine. Of course, things aren't always so drastic. As more cognizant (than babies, certainly) beings conversing on Hacker News, one may have suspicions, conjectures, doubts, and whatnot as to one's sense of reality. All that is part of one's reality, really. There can be no reality one "knows" aside from the reality one already "knows". Perhaps one's reality at time 0 becomes illusion at time 1, superseded by a reality that may be very similar or noticeably different. To tie in a bit of psychological mischief, perhaps one's reality is altered in dreams; still, if there is any thought of anything, it exists within the context of one's reality.
Haha. That was a lot. I'm 100% not trolling. All that was my sincere thoughts. As usual, I figured some of it up on the fly. I've never followed any philosophers or anything, and hardly even know of philosophical works. I think I'm sane. Oh well. You did ask for it.
I think this was quite good....armchair philosophers are very often superior to "actual" philosophers in my experience.
Also: set theory is about the best methodology I've been able to come up with to get a handle on the complexity, counter-intuitiveness and sometimes paradoxes involved in this problem space....unfortunately, it does not seem to necessarily successful as a teaching tool (like, some people seem to simply not be able to handle the levels of indirection, etc required).
