Conversation

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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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”
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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
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