> 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 Gödel, 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 Gödel 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.
I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel 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 Gödel’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.
> I think, particularly with the advent of AI and modern computer technology as a whole, Gödel would today be a simulationist of Bostrom’s cut
One of my favourite parts of Bostrom’s seminal paper is an aside, but one I feel would have appealed to Gödel had he lived to read it:
> Reality may thus contain many levels. Even if it is necessary for the hierarchy to bottom out at some stage – the metaphysical status of this claim is somewhat obscure
Bostrom’s argument, although it starts from materialist premises, contains within it an anti-materialist potential: What if there is no basement universe? What if it is software all the way down? Given Gödel’s anti-materialism, I think that potential would have appealed to him
Yes. Belief is grounded in nothing - hence it is belief. One could believe in moon Nazis, or Bigfoot, or god - without a shred of evidence for any of them.
Knowledge is based upon rationale and testable hypotheses.
That’s not belief. Either your wife loves you (good for you) or she does not (hooray for me). She’ll let you know, either way, so there’s no need for belief here.
> I wonder what Gödel 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.
Systems that can reproduce themselves are way more likely to endure than systems that need to be held together from the outside. In 5000 years I think it's more likely that there will be people than that there will be machines.
While the only currently known Von Neumann replicator is organic life, my bet is that a robotic one will be made at the latest by the end of century unless some major global catastrophe happens first.
Might turn out that organic life is pretty optimal already and we still dominate in numbers, or not, that kind of specific is really difficult to guess at even once the first example gets made (look at all the people looking at each version of GenAI, or even video game graphics 30 years before GenAI, and arguing that no further improvements are possible; or in the other direction, Concorde was both the first and the last supersonic passenger liner).
You got me thinking, could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life? I mean, I at look those animations of proteins in the cell and... it looks pretty robotic to me. Maybe it's projection in terms of how we interpret the data.
But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"...
> could we distinguish engineered vs emergent life?
I think we can tell the difference between engineered and evolved (but note that simulated evolution is still evolution) — oddities like the path of the recurrent laryngeal nerve are cited as evidence against an intelligent designer, and I expect it isn't the only such oddity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
> But I really like that the answer to a most ancient question such as "what is life" is building up to something like "it's all nanobots controlled by molecular computers"...
Flaws are not proof of non intentional emergence vs intentional design. We design flawed systems all the time.
Besides, it would be a very naïve stance to think the universe as it is today was drawn complete and definitively. There are a lot more nuanced and intricate creationist worldviews and they have been espoused in a clear headed way by some of the most fundamental characters in the history of science.
It's more the type of pattern in the errors rather than the mere existence of them.
On the other topic, although the mere existence of errors would count against a supposedly all knowing and all powerful designer, that combination is not found in most religions, and not even all versions of Christianity.
> First of all, the world being rational is a property humans ascribe to it.
Why believe in mainstream science, instead of believing in “creation science”, astrology, crystal woo, whatever? Because there is much stronger evidence for the former than the latter? But what are our standards for judging the strength of evidence? And why should we let those standards have control of our beliefs? Rationality is what gives us those standards, and tells us we are obliged to follow them. Is rationality objective or subjective? Well, if it is subjective, then proponents of those “alternative sciences” can just pick an alternative rationality which supports their own views instead of the mainstream ones, and if rationality is subjective, it ultimately makes the decision between mainstream and “alternative” science subjective too. But, if it is objective, how is it objectively grounded? If we ground its objectivity in empirical science - that is circular, we are grounding it in something which itself depends on it. So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind. Hence, Gödel‘s premise, that rationality is (in some sense) an objective feature of reality, not just some subjective creation of the human mind, must be true.
> So, I argue, the objectivity of mainstream empirical science requires the existence of objective rationality external to it. But, for that rationality to truly be objective, it must be an innate feature of reality, not something simply arbitrarily ascribed to it by the human mind.
I partly agree with that. The universe has a specific set of rules humans have observed, on which we base our understanding of it. What I disagree with is that these observations are proof that the universe itself is rational. There are many aspects of the universe of which we're still completely oblivious, and where our understanding breaks down. The fact we can observe some degree of logic in our observations points to survivorship bias, i.e. the anthropic principle. Simply, we wouldn't be able to make sense of the universe if the conditions didn't exist for us to observe it.
But even if I could concede this rational universe premise, my main objection is the leap of logic to then assert that humans are somehow special, and that our existence wouldn't have a meaning unless we can fulfill some sort of purpose, for which a human lifetime is not sufficient, and therefore, immortality. It's completely absurd. Gödel wraps this in pseudological premises, but it reads to me like he started with the conclusion that God exists, and is trying to arrive to that conclusion with philosophical mumbo jumbo. This is the complete opposite of the scientific method, and is therefore no different than "creation science", and all the other ontological arguments throughout history. I don't see why any _rational_ human being would give it more than the bare minimum of attention it deserves.
> What I disagree with is that these observations are proof that the universe itself is rational. There are many aspects of the universe of which we're still completely oblivious, and where our understanding breaks down. The fact we can observe some degree of logic in our observations points to survivorship bias, i.e. the anthropic principle. Simply, we wouldn't be able to make sense of the universe if the conditions didn't exist for us to observe it.
Part of the problem here, is what exactly does "rational" mean in this context? Gödel never published this argument of his in a paper, only in a letter to his mother–I expect if he had ever decided to publish it, he would have expressed it more precisely. It is difficult to judge the correctness of an argument when it is an open question what exactly key terms in it mean.
> But even if I could concede this rational universe premise, my main objection is the leap of logic to then assert that humans are somehow special, and that our existence wouldn't have a meaning unless we can fulfill some sort of purpose, for which a human lifetime is not sufficient, and therefore, immortality. It's completely absurd.
That "humans are somehow special" seems to be a near-universal belief found in humanity, across time and across cultures; it is only very recently in human history that any significant proportion of people have doubted or denied it, and even today its doubters and deniers are likely a rather small percentage of the total population, especially on a global level. I don't think we should rush to dismiss as "absurd" a belief which is (arguably) a product of human evolution – doing so calls into question the reliability of our evolved belief-forming machinery, but that questioning risks becoming self-refuting, since the belief in evolution is itself a product of that machinery.
> Gödel wraps this in pseudological premises, but it reads to me like he started with the conclusion that God exists, and is trying to arrive to that conclusion with philosophical mumbo jumbo.
Although Gödel did believe in God, I don't think this particular argument of his depends on belief in God in any way. This in itself is just an argument for an afterlife, and it is entirely possible to believe in an afterlife without believing in God–that's the position of many Buddhists, and also the late 19th / early 20th century British philosopher John McTaggart (who is probably most famous for being the mentor of both Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore).
> This is the complete opposite of the scientific method, and is therefore no different than "creation science", and all the other ontological arguments throughout history. I don't see why any _rational_ human being would give it more than the bare minimum of attention it deserves.
The scientific method deals in empirical arguments. This is not an empirical argument, so is outside the scope of the scientific method. There are many questions the scientific method, based on repeatable experiment and observation, cannot answer. For instance, it cannot answer many mathematical questions–Gödel‘s famous incompleteness theorems are not the product of the scientific method, since empirical experiments and observation are incapable of revealing to us the truth of mathematical theorems.
>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"
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.
The choice of axioms presented is in fact part of the argument. It's very easy to pick a set of axioms from which your desired conclusion will logically follow. Gödel was not discussing a hypothetical; he was arguing that an afterlife actually did exist, which relies on the axioms he presented applying to the real world. If you disagree with those, everything that comes after that step in the argument is irrelevant.
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.
If you believe logic and rationality exist, and you believe that you are part of the universe, then the universe is rational, because you are the universe being rational.
> Oh, and some of them (either nearly or exactly half) are negative.
Well, it doesn't quite work that way. Yes, you can put the negative integers in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers, but you can also put them in 1:1 correspondence with the positive integers that are divisible by 2, or 3, or 3,000... or, for that matter, the negative integers that are divisible by three thousand. All of those sets have the same cardinality (often called "countably infinite").
There are, however, provably more real numbers than there are integers.
It is unknown whether there are any sets whose cardinality lies between the cardinality of the set of integers and the cardinality of the set of real numbers.
"Counting stuff" can be generalised to infinite sets in different ways: cardinality is one (arguably the most common) of them, but natural density or measure are others.
Though comparing GPT4 and people taking the LSAT, GPT4 has a purpose - it was built to answer questions, whereas the people - I don't know. Also GPT beats 90% of the humans on the test. To say the humans are intelligent and GPT not seems a bit speciesist;)
You also seem to be rationalizing an assumption that there were no atheists thousands of years ago, and yet there were.
There's no reason to believe that our critical thinking powers are any stronger today than they were in the past few thousand years, certainly when it comes to metaphysics. To me, at least, the relative prevalence of various beliefs through recored history suggests something very different about how people of any period, including our own, find and adopt knowledge.
Gödel 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.
Reflecting deeply on Gödel'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.
Gödel'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.
"A system encompasses all facts derivable within its framework" is a very vague sentence, but the way it's written I would consider it false. Second order logic is incomplete, for example.
The fact that different set of axioms lead to different conclusions is... kind of obvious? And not at all what logicians (or probably anybody) mean by "contradiction". Moreover, incompleteness doesn't at all prevent that. You can take ZFC + CH and ZFC + not(CH), both are incomplete, but they obviously entail different conclusions.
In more standard terminology, there are systems that are free of contradictions, such as Presburger arithmetic or propositional calculus.
Gödel's completeness and incompleteness theorems are really about entirely different things, completeness is about first-order logic as a system, incompleteness is about consistent, effectively axiomatisable theories of sufficient strength.
You are partly right, I made a mistake, I meant to say that contradiction is when we can derive both a statement and its negation, indicative of inconsistency. You are correct to point out that incompleteness is not a flaw, but a natural property of sufficiently complex systems and does not detract from their validity or usefulness. I must admit, I don't know enough about ZFC and the Continuum Hypothesis, but I did not mean to imply that all systems were incompatible.
> This ultimate truth transcends individual systems, offering a broader, more holistic understanding.
But the unknowability of that so-called "ultimate truth" implies that it's not offering anything, much less any understanding.
The article says Gödel thought that escape hatch for these contradictions is death, because all the local consistency and rationality hints at some greater consistency that must be there. However, that sounds a lot like wishful thinking.
Your insights on the inherent contradictions in rational frameworks, especially in the context of Gödel's Completeness and Incompleteness Theorems, bring us to an intriguing crossroads. Initially, Gödel’s Completeness Theorem suggests that within a certain logical system, all truths can be proven. However, his subsequent Incompleteness Theorem introduces a profound paradox: there are truths which, though existent within the system, cannot be proven by it. This contradiction between completeness and incompleteness in logic itself leads us to question: can these contradictions be reconciled to provide clarity?
Here, we might consider shifting our perspective from a purely rational approach to one that embraces intentionality and clarity. The journey from understanding Gödel’s theorems to grappling with the notion of contradictions could be seen as a metaphor for our search for truth. It’s not merely about accumulating information or solving logical puzzles; it's about the intentional pursuit of clarity. This pursuit often takes us beyond the realm of intellectual reasoning into a space where understanding becomes more about intuition and less about calculation.
As we delve deeper into this journey, we arrive at a crucial realization: perhaps the reconciliation of these contradictions and the understanding of 'ultimate truth' is less about logical resolution and more about experiential realization. In this light, truth is not something to be dissected in the confines of rational thought alone but to be lived and experienced. The clarity we seek may not lie in the resolution of logical paradoxes but in embracing the experiential wisdom that comes from directly engaging with these truths.
Thus, while Gödel’s work brilliantly navigates the complexities of logical systems, it also inadvertently points us toward a different kind of resolution - one that is realized not through further analysis but through personal experience. In essence, the journey from completeness to incompleteness, from information to intentionality, leads us to a profound experiential understanding, an ultimate truth that is realized rather than deduced.
You're constructing a paradox where none exists. The completeness and the incompleteness theorems don't contradict each other, they are about fundamentally different things (and it's really a shame we use the same terminology, because so many people are confused by it).
> there are truths which, though existent within the system, cannot be proven by it
This isn't what the first incompleteness theorem shows - rather, it shows that such "truths" don't exist within the system in the first place (in other words, there are some models in which a certain statement is true and others in which it is false - at least for first-order logic). Otherwise, this would indeed contradict the completeness theorem, but it doesn't.
I don't want to stop you from making your own metaphysical conclusions, but I'm not sure they're actually supported by the theorems themselves.
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.
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.
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.
I've heard this before, of course [1]. And it may be. But it doesn't really matter because far-flung parts of the universe cannot interact with each other. Which assumes universality of some physical laws, like relativity. An assumption which cannot really be tested. Even if aliens have FTL, it will, by hypothesis, only function in their part of the universe, and so cease working in ours.
In truth, I'm quite happy with the physical laws we have. It means that we are protected by a strong natural barrier. It gives us time to figure out how to become a great civilization without interference of a conqueror. Odds are against us[2], of course, but that need not stop us from giving it the old college try!
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).
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.
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.
But this really just kicks the can down the road doesn't it? It's still an attempt to resolve a "why" question with a "how" answer. a fancier way of saying it's turtles all the way down.
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?
>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.
The "Big Bang" theory was literally created by a Catholic priest, the name was coined by an atheist physicist mocking it because it aligned too much with the Bible for his taste
> 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?
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?
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?
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 like 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.
> You tell them they are special, and definitely not like animals, and you hold them to a higher standard.
And the important part comes right after this. What happens when you hold them to a higher standard? People then choose to accept or reject the standard, and they live according to their (personal) choice.
If some people accept the higher standard and live by it, they prove that they are special, definitely not like animals. That is free will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
> ...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.
My take is the opposite. Math is so perfect that it doesn't need a creator, it just is. Like pi just is what it is, it didn't need a committee or a god to choose the value. Sloppy software however was probably created by some idiot.
Anyone interested in this subject may be interested in a recently published book:
"Notes on Complexity" by Neil Theise
A good chunk of the book goes into details on Gödel's interests in metaphysics (including this topic).
The book is generally a rational exploration of ideas that cross-cut metaphysics, spirituality, and science, and it goes into dialog and correspondence among some deep thinkers in science and philosophy in the past century or so.
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.
> Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this?
The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have Gödel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are those thoughts valued?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> Gopi Krishna is the canonical case illustrating the dangers, which is likely one reason the meditation was kept secret.
Curious to learn more, kept secret by who? And why was he the lucky one to receive that information?
Just spent the last hour reading his work here: https://www.ecomall.com/gopikrishna/. Sounds like any other charlatan and guru. From his last interview, seems like a lot of his foundation comes from the same principle that Godel invokes: "Now, please tell me, can such a vast creation be purposeless? Can such a vast creation come out of nothing? Can such a vast creation ruled by laws be all composed of dead, insensitive matter? The very idea of being - existence - - comes from the mind. A rock or a mountain or an ocean has no idea of existence, this existence comes from intelligence, and the author of the universe must be intelligent. If we didn't have an intelligent creator, there would be no purpose to this existence. There must be a purpose".
Additionally, the site's claims are frankly funny:
"All of these books are scientific wonders—miracles! Each is packed with new information not available to scientists and scholars. It was easier to sequence the human genome than it would be for any person to write the books Gopi Krishna wrote.What do you think will happen as soon as thousands of men and women begin to manipulate human DNA for the “fun of it?” It will easy to do. Wait just two more decades, less than 20 years, and hundreds, if not thousands of bright, young boys and girls will be able to clone just about any animal (including humans). Who will stop this from being done? The reason why Gopi Krishna’s miraculous writings are not known by more than a few is because they are beyond the grasp, or comprehension, of our many of our present-day intellectuals."
Are non-believers are too stupid to comprehend his great works?
Ah sorry I was referring to his experiences in his book [1]. He awoke kundalini without proper preparation and it nearly killed him.
I don't care for anyone's beliefs tbh since it's direct experience that matters. But in aggregate there are sufficient similar reports to convince me kundalini is a real, universally accessible experience (and now my own experiences are enough to keep me moving forward).
And I meant the techniques to awaken it were kept secret. Possible reasons were that it was viewed as too powerful for the masses, but also that without proper preparation it can make people think they're going mad (hallucinations, etc).
BTW if you do want to learn more, the best resources I've found are [2] (lessons) and [3] (for anatomical locations).
>"We are looking for backers to help produce a feature film about the life of Gopi Krishna similar to Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi or Einstein. It will tell the complete story of Gopi Krishna from birth to death and describe his own personal awakening and all of its ramifications - it will be an instant classic."
I read the Wikipedia article on this and it seems to suggest meditation can lead miracles like telekinesis:
"Hearing this, I mentally repeated the mantra, I noticed that my breathing was getting heavier. Suddenly, I felt a great impact of a rising force within me. The intensity of this rising kundalini force was so tremendous that my body lifted up a little and fell flat into the aisle; my eyeglasses flew off. As I lay there with my eyes closed, I could see a continuous fountain of dazzling white lights erupting within me"
Although I respect meditation and the religious beliefs of all, I don't believe any of this is possible. I don't know if an afterlife exists, but find it telling that nothing paranormal has ever been recorded in a verifiable manner.
I think the only way to know is to have the experience. I'm with you - it sounds too farfetched. It can't possibly be true... on the other hand, almost every single book I've read on the subject, including by people I've met, talk about such things.
In Indian yoga these abilities are known as siddhis. But as they seem impossible the only way I could be convinced is if they happened to me.
Healthy scepticism is the point though. If we were content just with belief, we'd never need these practices.
Psychologists have accepted the experience as real. The American Psychiatric Association added a diagnostic category for religious or spiritual problems some time ago.
Yeah I realised after I posted that that I'm biased from studying and practicing this for several decades.
The warnings section about possible death chimes with Krishna's experience, but also browsing the posts is interesting. People talk of intense heat, strange sensitivities etc, but I can see how someone new to this would probably just write them off as a load of weirdos.
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.
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.
YouTube likes to pre-add videos to other recently-added-to playlists before I've even checked one off. I still haven't figured out a way to have it stop doing this. Frustrating. I have to constantly comb my playlists to fix these. I've now removed the non-NDE-related ones.
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.
You very clearly haven't seen a single one, much less a bunch of them as I have. There's no generative AI going on with people on video telling their stories going back years ago. I'm a skeptic and I am pretty convinced at this point that something real is going on, here. They also actually are mostly ANTI-religion (in fact, the ones that seem very religion-slanted also seem false or fail to maintain internal consistency, so I've easily dismissed the vast majority of those). The testimonies in the playlist I put together almost entirely push the notion that most if not all religions are false in small or large part.
> but know enough about our brain to be fairly certain that there is nothing even close to any afterlife
You can't say that for sure. The brain might be a consciousness conduit and not a consciousness generator (which is pretty much what these testimonies are saying). If I step on a garden hose (assuming I can't see beyond it) and the water stops, and I stop stepping on it and the water resumes, you're basically saying the garden hose must be the source of the water, when we know that isn't true (but only because we can see beyond the garden hose). A naïve individual from, say, 10,000 years ago who has never seen seemingly unlimited pressurized water on tap who encounters a garden hose might initially conclude that the hose produces the water...
> it makes humans feel good
There's a large set of things that are broadly agreed to be true which do not make people feel good and a large set of things that are broadly agreed to be true that do. "Feeling good" is therefore orthogonal to veracity so this is a non-argument.
I'm disappointed that you're responding as a person who literally hasn't watched a single one of the videos (because the very things you said prove that). You're just yet another human who prefers to bury their head in the sand than confront evidence against their pre-existing worldviews, like most people. And "with all due respect," that's not rational at all.
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”.
That's interesting to me because they showed up in mine but I'd already expressed interest. I don't know why they're being tossed at you.
I honestly don't believe there's much money in the "NDE space". Certainly less than "hegetsus". Which is funny because the vast majority of NDE accounts really make all of the most popular world religions look pretty wrong (including Christianity, although its message of love over all remains... Not that its adherents follow that much or anything).
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?
The most accurate thing we can say is that no one knows what happens to consciousness after death. The evidence we have, like NDEs, doesn't support a continuation of consciousness beyond bodily disintegration.
Is there an amount of concordant eyewitness testimony that should count as evidence?
If your answer to that is "no", you're not being reasonable. The courts of most countries would also disagree with you. This even takes into account the fact that "eyewitness testimony is bad"... Like sure, maybe if it's 10, but if it's 100 people all making extremely similar claims? 1000? 10,000?
The NDE people often use language like "realer than what I thought was real". While some drugs can induce this too, drugs also give quite random experiences, while the NDE thing seems fairly well-structured with few exceptions.
It also seems internally-consistent (as in, within the realm of itself and its claims about reality, it doesn't seem to violate its own rules).
If I was anorgasmic and thousands of people told me that orgasms are real and "you know it when you have one," why should (or shouldn't) I believe them?
Consider that every eyewitness can be mathematically treated as a "noisy sensor" (who might also be a bad actor via lying). What if we applied a Kalman filter to quantized claims made across thousands of self-claimed NDE experiencers? Might this be a way to quantify (and therefore bring into the realm of rationality) eyewitness testimony of this nature?
There are many things we consider "real" that we can't directly measure, btw. Why (from a science or mathematical perspective) is Taylor Swift so popular? How would we determine this without asking people (which puts us right back into "eyewitness testimony" again)?
I don't dispute that people have NDEs and that they sincerely believe what they say. The problem is that that kind of evidence cannot in principle support the continuity of consciousness after bodily disintegration because 1) the body is still intact and 2) they don't test the difference between experiences near death and those after death. There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during a time that an outside observer could see no brain activity.
To take another example, many people report the experience of waking up with a demon, visible or invisible, sitting on their chest. I've had this experience. Should we accept this eyewitness testimony at face value? Isn't the simpler, more naturalistic explanation of sleep paralysis more fitted to the evidence?
> There is no way for a person to know if what they experienced happened during a time that an outside observer could see no brain activity.
Exactly...so, when a human on planet earth, 2023, encounters such a scenario (indeterminateness), they project an illusion upon it, declare that illusion to be true, and most other humans will agree with them, depending on the metaphysical framework (aka:culture - currently, we are in the age of "science", before that it was "religion") they have been trained upon (like an LLM....if there are differences, I'd very much like to know).
You can literally see this in action as people talk, relatively highly rational people will literally make things up, utilize very well known (by science) cultural/psychological exists, etc etc etc.
For fun, try this: point out where they claim something (in general, or specifically), and then ask them for proof/evidence - then, do this 1000+ times - you will see a normal distribution of stories emerge, reliably.
There is something very weird about humans in 2024.
I think it is an excellent approach, I expect that we could benefit from applying it to all claims, including all the not actually/necessarily factual "facts" that inevitable emerge when these sorts of topics are discussed. But applying it in epistemically inconclusive areas like this seems like something worth trying, for more reasons than one (there is a lot of harmful social disharmony in such areas).
Part of the point I'm completely unsuccessful in making here, or a way to look at it, is: different ideologies have different methodologies and standards for practicing epistemology (belief, "reality", etc) - the "NDE type" (religion, woo woo, etc) of thinkers have their form and quality, and "scientific"[1] thinkers have theirs. To me, the scientific folks have an objectively and vastly superior methodology to the others....however, it is far from the best - the best genuinely wonders what is true, which in my experience is always(!) considered a literally unacceptable approach (as can be seen in such conversations: I have been told that asking such question is not allowed here on HN).
I propose that if even our very best "intellectual hangouts" culturally insist on suboptimal thinking, if not denying that it is even possible (~trying to cover it up), it increases risk within the system (I always like to use climate change to substantiate the claim).
[1] to some degree - like the religious, science practitioners are also unable to follow their scriptures to a T, like remembering that their theories are theories (that is just one example).
I do believe most demon experiences are sleep paralysis. (I can't assert that all of them are, no more than I can assert with certainty without existing in every female body ever that reports of "female ejaculation" are just urine.)
Regarding brain activity or lack thereof during an NDE, here's a perspective:
“In cardiac arrest, even neuronal action-potentials, the ultimate physical basis for coordination of neural activity between widely separated brain regions, are rapidly abolished (Kelly et al., 2007). Moreover, cells in the hippocampus, the region thought to be essential for memory formation, are especially vulnerable to the effects of anoxia (Vriens et al., 1996). In short, it is not credible to suppose that NDEs occurring under conditions of general anesthesia, let alone cardiac arrest, can be accounted for in terms of some hypothetical residual capacity of the brain to process and store complex information under those conditions.”
“Michael Sabom, MD, a cardiologist in Atlanta, Georgia, monitored the brain waves of his patients using an electroencephalograph (EEG) and was able to show that some who had reported NDEs had been clinically dead, meaning they registered no electrical activity in their brain.”
Most NDE's are associated with heart stoppages. And in fact, NDE's started to begin to be reported more after working resuscitation techniques became more fleshed-out.
My thought is that NDEs might occur before or after the cessation of neural activity. From a first person perspective, there would be no way to distinguish whether it happened when there was no neural activity. From an outside perspective, it would need to be a rigorous, carefully designed test to distinguish. If not properly designed, it would be easy to bias the results through unblinded participants, etc. I'm not aware of such a test being conducted?
> If I was anorgasmic and thousands of people told me that orgasms are real and "you know it when you have one," why should (or shouldn't) I believe them?
This is pure gold analogy, if you don't mind I am going to borrow it.
> There are many things we consider "real" that we can't directly measure, btw. Why (from a science or mathematical perspective) is Taylor Swift so popular? How would we determine this without asking people (which puts us right back into "eyewitness testimony" again)?
I believe Taylor Swift is a substantial glitch in the matrix, I wish I had something more insightful to say on the matter.
If this was not actually the case, would you necessarily be able to know? If so, can you describe the novel, literally foolproof epistemic methodology you are using?
Would you please stop posting these cross-examination comments? You've been doing it endlessly, it seems, and perpetuating flamewars in the process. This is not what HN is for.
Should the HN guidelines perhaps be modified to reflect that pursuit of truth has an undocumented upper bound that shall not be breached? That way it would be more transparent what HN is about, though it would give up the powerful flexibility and illusory nature of ambiguity. Tough call!
I'm curious why you never (or rarely) seem to scold people for practicing soothsaying and other forms of pseudoscience under the guise of science & rationality.
I'm also curious if you ever wonder what good the substantial cognitive power concentrated on HN could bring to the world if we were to play our cards mildly differently.
I'll answer, but as your comment here is doing exactly what I just asked you to stop doing, I need first to tell you that these interminable cross-examination barrages are not what HN is for, and if it keeps up we're going to have to ban you. We've already had to ask you this many times. I don't want to ban you, but slack isn't infinite here either.
The answer is that HN is for curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. Does that involve being wrong sometimes? Of course it does. It would be absurd to ban people simply for being wrong. Moreover, even if we wanted to, we couldn't, because we don't know what the truth is on every question. (Some internet commenters appear to believe they know the truth about everything, but we are very far from feeling that way, and don't have a truth meter* to tell us.) Moreover, even if we did know the truth about everything, others would disagree, and trying to impose the truth on people who disagree would create a firestorm that would easily destroy the community.
The idea is in fact so obviously absurd that when people make this complaint, they can't mean it literally, and so must really be complaining about something else. Since I don't have a mind reader (or a truth meter), I don't know what the real issue is, but based on observable behaviors, it seems most likely that they want the mods to boost everything they agree with and ban everything they disagree with. Since each person has a different set of what they would like to see boosted and banned, this is impossible; we'd end up having to boost and ban everything.
Do you know that banning me is necessary, or even an improvement? Do you even care?
You happen to have landed in a position where you hold substantial power on this planet Dang, I recommend you wield that power wisely and with humility.
If you can't or won't stop posting in ways that break HN's rules and the intended spirit of the site, we're not going to have much choice. I'm happy to be patient, but 7 years is a long time.
I'm not trying to be difficult Dang, but there is more than one very legitimate issue with "as intended".
While I acknowledge my comments are upsetting to many, I do not think you are substantially taking into consideration that it takes two to tango when it comes to getting upset. And while it is often good policy to please the majority over the minority, sometimes the majority is actually incorrect.
Further, is it not also true that many others are doing, and repeatedly so (though not ~solely), things that are also upsetting, and at least arguably worse (telling untruths)? I do not deny you or others their right to their opinion, I am saying that it is often wise to realize that what one is dealing with is an opinion.
Look at all the "serious" conversations we have on this site, day after day. I do not deny that it is enjoyable, but I think it is worth considering whether maximizing enjoyment to the detriment of everything else (risk management, for example) is the way to go. You are welcome to disagree, but can we at least mutually admit that we are comparing opinions on the matter?
It's not a tough call that you can't have a conversation about truth, pseudoscience or anything else in the form of a harangue and it's supposed to be a site for conversation.
It might be a subjective opinion but if enough people have the subjective opinion you are writing harangues (which, as you can read, is the case), you get the effect of harangue-writing whether you think you are or don't. So you have to stop the harangue-like writing in order to meaningfully participate. There are a bunch of guidelines and endless moderator commentary about that.
harangue. / (həˈræŋ) / verb. to address (a person or crowd) in an angry, vehement, or forcefully persuasive way.
I don't see how this applies, especially since if anything it is other people who are engaged in persuasion, and experiencing anger or other negative emotions. I am sincere in that I believe that truth matters, and should at least be taken into consideration.
Seriously, what is the big issue with disagreeing with the crowd, without applying speculative subjective framing to the situation?
You've been here plenty long to know it's not how HN works, everyone is responsible for their own commentary.
I am sincere in that I believe that truth matters, and should at least be taken into consideration.
I'm sure most people share that sincere belief, it's just that few enjoy, well, being harangued.
Seriously, what is the big issue with disagreeing with the crowd, without applying speculative subjective framing to the situation?
"I don't understand what I'm supposedly doing wrong" is conversation. The above is haranguey, especially since no one is asking you to eschew speculative or subjective framing.
Do you write software for a living, or at least write scripts, deal with complexity, ambiguity, and humans?
I think both the moderator and I are trying to explain to you that you can't talk to people on HN like this because because it's not what the forum is for. That's all.
If all comments that technically violated one or more guidelines, objectively or subjectively, there wouldn't be much content left here. Luckily, we have heuristics and culture (containing norms such as do not acknowledge the existence of heuristics, at certain times) to smooth over such complexities, making everything appear logical.
Most people believe one way or the other. We don't however know what is true (meaning in this case having a reasonably justified belief based on looking at the evidence as a whole and weighing alternate explanations). The evidence doesn't rise to the level that anyone can reasonably claim to know one way or the other. People just feel like they know which isn't the same thing as knowing.
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.
Arguing for an afterlife is probably a wrong turn. Better to see it for yourself (in a way that doesn't involve dying of course.)
The far reaches of meditation (dhyana, yogic self-cultivation) can provide such. But that requires a lot of work and a deviant lifestyle. Something a rare few are prepared to invest in.
> 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.
I wonder what Gödel would have thought of Wolfram's opinion on physics. According to that the reality is a kind of superposition of all possible combinations among all possible abstract mathematical concepts to which we have only very restricted, macroscopic insight. That makes mathematics objective and primary structure of the Universe and feeds right in the rationality canon.
What if all our existence, it has a meaning, but it's not what we hope it is. We exist to develop as evolution becoming more complex, is also evidently more energy 'consuming', or actually to hint the following question, dispersing.
What if the only reason we exist is... what if we are just a tool for... entropy?
> 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.’ Gödel – 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 Gödel took his incompleteness theorems as an indication that materialism (or naturalism) can’t be the truth, while still thinking that the world is rational.
> 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.
I agree with you. If anything, saying everything having a reason seem to me like applying human interpretation to Determinism.
I mean, such an epic proof would bias one to think that the world is rational. Spending that much time in logic-land would do that to anyone.
I think that his assumption that: 'meaning' and 'causation' are the same thing, is similarly tied to his works. For someone like Godel, I'd imagine that he has no conception that they could be different.
> I don't think it's news that clever people can believe utter nonsense
Not that I necessarily agree with Godel’s specific views on the topic, but why do you get to determine what is “utter nonsense”? There’s clearly no consensus on the matter nor has there been for most of human existence. We’re not talking about some fringe belief like “brushing teeth is bad” that Feynman held.
Because its one of hundreds of equally convoluted notions with no preferential evidence and fairly obvious flaws despite being supposedly divinely from an immaculate being and because it transcribes magical specialness to something that's frankly mundane.
What happens to the stream of outputs of this physical process when the physical process stops? I have a good guess.
I happen to disagree with the statements as presented but what he wrote is well reasoned in many aspects and he can bring to bear an incredible amount of intelligence to the matter. Like using the incompleteness theorem to argue that materialism (the belief that the only things true in this universe are what we can observe which is actually a core tenet underpinning the science philosophy since the enlightenment) must be false since incompleteness suggests there must be true things in the universe that can’t be proven through the laws within the universe. It’s a clever argument. The underpinning idea that the universe is rational seems like a leap and I’m sad his reasoning behind that isn’t articulated better. To me chaos theory suggests there’s probably no rationality and entropy suggest that order and rationality is a temporary ephemeral local phenomenon that degrades over time. While I disagree with Gödel on this, I wouldn’t be so bold as to discount his thoughts on the topic out of hand because they are sincerely argued by a person of great intelligence and intellect from their genuine exploration of the idea rather than appeals to authority or coming at it from a place of ignorance. If he’s wrong, his reasoning could still yield insights in how to approach the world.
> ...but why do you get to determine what is “utter nonsense”?
With respect, I've always found the "why do you get to decide" retort unfair. First, it actually isn't a counter-argument: it's an appeal to shame. Secondly, everyone is entitled to come to their own conclusions and form their own judgements.
I do think the "utter nonsense" was a bald statement in that there wasn't much of a warrant given for it, but people tend to do that when something seems self-evident. Better to just ask for the warrant in that case.
BTW, why in the world did someone flag that comment?
> With respect, I've always found the "why do you get to decide" retort unfair. First, it actually isn't a counter-argument: it's an appeal to shame. Secondly, everyone is entitled to come to their own conclusions and form their own judgements.
It is possible to explicitly state if one's statement is intended as an expression of fact or opinion, although having the presence of mind to remember that the distinction exists (wrt to one's own "reality") is typically required.
> I do think the "utter nonsense" was a bald statement in that there wasn't much of a warrant given for it, but people tend to do that when something seems self-evident.
Is the irony of technically delusional atheists criticizing theists for delusions not a bit too rich for your tastes though?
I am fascinated by what religion and religious ideas do to the minds of both believers and non-believers, it makes it very hard for me to believe that there isn't something supernatural ("beyond scientific understanding") going on here.
What do we really know (most of us) besides that we exist? Nothing.
It's funny that a lot of people believe things they don't know about and most of them are judged perfectly sane :o)
The only real thing I personally believe is existence because it is impredicative. That's true logic.
The rest is hogwash until proven otherwise.
(I do believe in some fringe stuff from personal experience but that probably has a perfectly normal explanation, I just miss the data to explain it for now)
If so, let's start with the former (god) and point us not only to the proof, but also to the theorem and the underlying definitions. There are many logicians with a scientific interest in god, religion, and related concepts. Why not be open minded, after all? But we should expect more rigor in this case.
Because you cannot yet explain something, it must be God?
Usually when something appears to violate causality, that doesn't end up being the case. The unexpectedness of the result is caused by our own incomplete understanding of the physics at play. So far none of these have ended up pointing to some supernatural entity secretly judging us.
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."
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.
> 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.
my apologies, you came in late, i'm on the other side (your side) of this debate, I was debating a rationalist, using the subterfuge of pointing out the religion that is materialism. some material that was getting downvoted was removed
> 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
Schrödinger: "Consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the singular. I would like to say: the total number of all 'consciousnesses' is always just 'one'." https://de.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erwin_Schrödinger
> 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 Gödel, 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 Gödel 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.