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Thanks. I'm reframing that as god playing 5D chess. The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intelle

by robocat 2mo ago

Thanks. I'm reframing that as god playing 5D chess. The same issue seems to occur with "deep" thinkers in other areas (e.g. trying to understand French intellectuals). The trouble is that it can be worthwhile thinking about something without depth, or paying attention to a smart persons' thoughts on something shallow. And a priori we can't always know what is worthwhile. E.g. I liked the blog, because here's a smart guy who has explained a little of what he gets out of a few divergent works.

aaroninsf 2mo ago
In all seriousness, the "god playing 5D chess" framing, is exactly at the core of the last few thousand years of religious scholarship including everything from the Talmud to Aquinas and by extension most thoughtful sermons in most religious traditions today. To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale. The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle. A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so! That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.

by robocat 2mo ago

aaroninsf 2mo ago

In all seriousness, the "god playing 5D chess" framing, is exactly at the core of the last few thousand years of religious scholarship including everything from the Talmud to Aquinas and by extension most thoughtful sermons in most religious traditions today. To an atheist, it seems very obvious that there is a intellectual whirlpool and cognitive error meta-pattern at work, which crudely summarized would be, "close attention to any subject and its context provides a fractal landscape within which infinite complexity and subtle relationships may be discerned" (the universe is reflected in a grain of sand; or, if you practice breath meditation, in the focus of breathing): this is interpreted as the signature of the divine. Because nothing we can produce with our human agency has such complexity. We are simple, serial, things; the world is parallel and multidimensional at every scale. The world IMO is worthy of wondrous regard. But it's not because of design, not in any sense usually meant, bar those that Wolfram is pointing at with his "Rudliad" and the anthropic principle. A deist is liable to say, ah ha, well, that is where the divine shows itself. But this is IMO the last of the gaps into which it might flee. Or, more charitably and ecumenically, one might say, this is where definitions of the divine converge for the atheist and the deist; what we mean when each say "the divine" is this, that the universe is wondrous and has deep orders and it betrays fractal similarity and order; and what a thing it is to be not just alive within it but aware of being so! That is a cause for humility reflection and gratitude, for sure.