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

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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 Sep 4
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      I’d define belief as a mode of I-thou “seeing” or mutuality recognition.

      1 reply 2 retweets 15 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      Many people seem to think that their knowledge should induce other-belief if enough words, facts, and arguments flow. See recent @harmonylion1 post for what that basically never works. No, belief is not an internal state change triggered by sufficiently clever inputs.

      3 replies 3 retweets 18 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      You can create certain types of uncontrolled false consciousness state shifts (aka “red pill”) that way in people who are on some sort of cognitive brink, but you can’t create precise beliefs without impedance-matched relational evolution. You have to grow into belief together.

      1 reply 2 retweets 21 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      This, but generalized, is the syndromepic.twitter.com/Rd6zp3MqMK

      1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      A good way to think of it is: every belief is a micro-reality. A little universe or timeline. You live in the intersection of millions of such universes. You might share almost all with me, but if I can’t portal-gun into one, you can’t just go there and yell at me to come over.

      2 replies 7 retweets 25 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      One does not yell across universe boundaries. The multiverse doesn’t work that way.

      2 replies 2 retweets 12 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      I like multiverse metaphors because it makes it easier to practice systematic doubt. I like a version where there are only possible worlds no actual world. Considering actuality to be an unknowable belief intersection with others means you never quite know where you are.

      1 reply 2 retweets 18 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      When you are alone with your thoughts you are maximally doubtful, existing in all possible belief universes consistent with your senses. Like a wave function. Every person you entangle with collapses some shared ones into actual beliefs. The bigger the borg, the more you believe.

      1 reply 2 retweets 22 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      Getting to mutual belief states with >1 person gets progressively harder, but if you get there, the states are more powerfully belief-like. This is why cults are like gravity wells. You’re in an entangled deep belief collapse state with a lot of others. Extreme decoherence.

      1 reply 1 retweet 19 likes
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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      Doubt is the live state, belief is the dead state. The relief of belief is the relief of dying a little, with company. To create belief with another person is to destroy doubt with them, and trap a small part of each of you in the universe of that belief. Multisig horcrux.

      2 replies 2 retweets 20 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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      Gotta refine this metaphor a bit. A better picture might be: you cannot enter the belief multiverse alone at all. Only in company. Where you exist by yourself is just unfactored phenomenological ground. Any sense of belief you experience alone is either memory or anticipation.

      10:25 PM - 4 Sep 2020
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      • 𝕍𝕖𝕝𝕦𝕥𝕚 𝕤𝕚 𝔻𝕖𝕦𝕤 𝕕𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕥𝕦𝕣 🎄 Loren Fox Cadre The Giant ↙️↙️↙️ mikeelias.com 💡📈 Josh Thompson 🐢 SUNSHINE ☀️ REVIVAL bikeslutt visa is working on his ebook Dave Snodgrass
      1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          This is why seeing/being seen and “recognition” are such a big deal for humans. It’s shared entry into parts of the extended cinematic beliefverse. You see each other by recognizing that you’re each seeing the same thing. You’re now bound by universes you can only enter together.

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          Sidebar, this is my elaborate explanation for Trump’s weird inability to “see” martyrs and war veterans. I don’t think it’s a moral failing. It’s a mental disability. You don’t have to be patriotic or altruistic to grok why people might risk their lives in wars for fellow humans.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          Whether you’re doing it for your buddy in the foxhole or for a larger egregore of patriotic feeling, you’re risking life for beliefs. Which are things shared with others. Completely not mysterious for a normal human. Trump is like a blind man who can’t parse talk of sight.

          2 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          This is also why it seems like a Trump has no beliefs. That’s because he doesn’t. He’s never entered the beliefverse. Only pushed buttons without understanding what they mean, because meaning rests on mutuality and belief.

          1 reply 3 retweets 12 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          But you can’t say he exists in pure doubt like some idealized spherical philosopher in a vacuum, because to know doubt you have to have experienced, and recovered from, belief. As best as I can reconstruct what it is like to be in his head, it must be a sensory-aesthetic soup.

          2 replies 3 retweets 10 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Knowledge is far less satisfying than belief.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1302123436798435329?s=21 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Replying to @GeneLinetsky
          Yeah. Knowledge is very unsatisfying unless inflated into a belief with others. pic.twitter.com/DlDuM5tyAK
          2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          The mathematician in the joke still isn’t living with knowledge alone. He shares the belief-concepts “sheep” and “field” with the other two. It can unravel way more than that.

          2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Sep 4
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          Obligatorypic.twitter.com/6zZ4Jyldwj

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        10. End of conversation

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