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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 16
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      It is obvious that all religion is escapism but it’s not so obvious that all escapism is religion religion: belief in the net benevolence of things you cannot control if you commit to not observing them as well if you don’t look at it, it will be nice to you

      13 replies 12 retweets 82 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 16
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      Interestingly (at least to me), this is almost identical to finessing the frame problem in AI with a closed world assumption.

      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 16
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      Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

      Bugbatter Axiom of religiosityhttps://twitter.com/vgr/status/1229310079058370561?s=21 …

      Venkatesh Rao added,

      Venkatesh Rao @vgr
      Replying to @visakanv
      Reality is a bugbatter beast in the religious imagination https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Ravenous_Bugblatter_Beast_of_Traal …
      11:47 PM - 16 Feb 2020
      • 3 Likes
      • Rusa Kaki Enam Captain Meowmori Internet Person
      2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 16
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          3 monkey principle 🙈🙉🙊

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 16
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          Leibnizean optimism was invented to retain a “job” for god in a deterministic universe

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Your religion is defined by things you consciously avoid looking at, despite views being readily available, justifying it to yourself as “I already know and have correctly factored in what’s going on there.” Ie you think you know something that you think bounds tail risks for you

          2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          From before. I seem to be doing these random scattered late night tweets on this. Basically trying to apply my escaped reality model to religious cognition (mostly the undeclared kind, not the formal stuff) https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1228953159017480193?s=21 …https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1228953159017480193 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Territory - Map - Direct Exploration* = Religion * Unmediated by symbols
          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          By my generalization, everybody has a religion and there are no atheists. To map yours, take an inventory of your anti-matrices/matrixes. Worlds others seem able to entirely lose themselves in that you’ve convinced yourself don’t matter, and can safely skip participating in.

          1 reply 3 retweets 20 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Mine, based on my inventory of ignorables, has something to do with: sports, music, high finance, and deep tradition. They are my anti-matrixes.There’s probably a few more but they are the big ones that I assume I can ignore and skip participating in without serious consequences.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          It has to be an anti-matrix. Totalizing worlds others live inside that you’re on the outside of. Non-totalizing ignorables are a different sort of deal. So though I know nothing about quantum computing and mostly ignore it, it’s part of “science” world that I do pay attention to.

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Interesting to identify core counterfactual embedded in things you’re ignoring from within a religion. To take a traditional religion, Hinduism, I recall first skeptical thought I had: fine, world isn’t fair because karma, but how does karma math work for increasing population?

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          There’s actually a decent answer (balance across yugas) but the point isn’t to go down that bunnytrail but to use the question to see a new aspect in things you’re ignoring, and then go down the bunnytrail of not ignoring them, which rapidly sucks you into very different concerns

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          One reason I’m still religious about {sports, music, high finance, deep tradition} is that I haven’t yet nailed a lurking counterfactual that would allow me to stop ignoring them and start paying attention.

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Of course the main thing traditional religions try to ignore is “science”, which is why science-vs-religion is the classic cliche debate. Identifying the core counterfactual represented by science (nihilism, not specific disproofs of literalist beliefs) tends to drive abandonment

          2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Militant atheists tend to be terrified of the basic counterfactual to science: the possibility that life and existence might be meaningful.

          3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Yet another line of thought where I can tell I’m on the right track and it’s just a matter of getting the words right to efficiently get past all the predictable objections to the potentially interesting conversations.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          All my more serious writing challenges tend to evolve through that valley of the shadow of death by a 1000 semantic quibbles, because the words aren’t yet right enough to sneak past normalcy fields. Hacking through the OODA loops of well-rehearsed derp-defenses, one at a time.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          One of my Everests is writing a thing that makes interesting theists and atheists go “huh?” but derp-theists and derp-atheists don’t even recognize as salient to their concerns. Stealth kidnapping project, where you steal away core of a debate from people who think they own it.

          2 replies 0 retweets 7 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Heh, the primary example I had in mind for the original tweet was “market” and zero of the free marketers I usually argue with noticed

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          A basic error many people seem to make is assuming everybody’s escapism is the same. Or more cautiously, that 2 people who nominally subscribe to the same religion must be escaping from the same thing. I have yet to encounter 2 people with even approximately similar escapisms.

          1 reply 2 retweets 8 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          People who get closest are ones who have opted into, and paid a similar cost to enter, similar lifestyles. For eg, 2 people who broke into Silicon Valley at roughly same personal cost, to earn a similar lifestyle as reward, have similar escapisms, and therefore similar religions.

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          I’ve been digging this damn tunnel out of Shawshank since 2015, and finally starting to get somewhere https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/01/16/on-the-design-of-escaped-realities/ … https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/12/01/can-you-hear-me-now/ …

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          Curiously, and uncharacteristically, Buddhism adopts the strongest, most reified “all escapisms are equal” stance (dukkha) at an intellectual level if not at a praxis level. This is possibly a better definition of monotheism than “one god”... “one escapism”

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 17
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          In this framework, procrastination is failed religiosity. Things you’ve failed to stop ignoring despite wanting and trying to. For example I have a failed religiosity around paperwork. Even as we speak, I procrastinating on some expense reports, tax prep, and a few other things

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
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        23. End of conversation

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