Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 3
Science wants to have it both ways. On the one hand science wants to claim that science, strictly-speaking, never proves anything. However, this is BS because every scientist treats scientific truths as proven and absolute. When debating the shape of the Earth, no scientist will accept the argument that the Earth might be flat because science never proves anything. In practice everyone treats scientific truths as proven, regardless of the technicalities of what proof is or isn’t. See, you can’t survive on the strict idealized scientific notion of proof, because in practice nothing of importance ever clears that bar. Have you logically proven that your spouse cheated on you? No. But you will react emotionally nonetheless. So there exists this profound disconnect in science between proof and sense-making. If you as a scientist want to take the position that science never proves anything, then why do you believe science so strongly? Notice that in practice you treat science as if it proves things. You treat science as having proven that the Earth is round. But that’s an interesting epistemic question, Has science proven that the Earth is round? What does it take to prove that the Earth is round? This is much more tricky than scientists want to admit. Scientists do not want a relativistic notion of proof because they want science to be objective, but proof is relativistic. No two people will agree on what counts a proof, which is why Flat Earthers exist.
The reason I say all this is because when arguing with a serious scientist, eventually they will pull this cheap trick on you: "But science doesn't really prove anything." That's what they love to say when you back them into a corner. But if science doesn't prove anything, then nothing in science is truly known. But the scientist cannot admit that. The scientist needs to have it both ways: the scientist wants science to be the highest source of sense-making, but also must technically deny that science really knows anything for sure. This is the chicanery of science.
"But Leo! Nothing can be known for sure!"
You don't know that.
See, if science doesn't prove anything, then science has not proven that science is true. Yet every scientist holds science as true. If science doesn't prove anything, then everyone is placing way too much authority in science. That is indeed the case, but scientists are in denial about it because they don't want to relinquish that authority.
What is the truth? The truth is that science is much more shaky than scientists like to admit to themselves. Science is a bunch of ideas held together with duct tape and bubblegum. But scientists do not portray it that way because that looks too embarrassing and invites doubt. But that doubt is not a bug, it's a feature. You should doubt science because it was never proven to be true. But here's the kicker: the reason it was never proven to be true is because it isn't.
AI companies have started to watermark their own AI output text. Why?
Not for the reasons you'd think, not so humans can identify deep fakes, but because these companies have a serious practical need to differentiate AI text from human text, because if the AI models train on AI text, they degrade and turn to shit.
If AI was truly intelligent, then it would not turn to shit from training on its own text. But these LLMs have a huge problem when trained on their own outputs. This demonstrates how limited these LLMs are and how parasitical they are on human intelligence and creativity.
If AI is so much better than humans, then why do all these AI companies steal every piece of human-generated data they can find? Surely the AI is intelligent enough to not need it. Or not.
If AI companies have built AGI, then why are they still stealing and scanning books? Why would you need obscure human books if you had an intelligence greater than human? Why are humans not busy reading every book on the planet? Because that isn't needed to be intelligent. In fact, memorizing every book on the planet does not make you intelligent, but allows you to fool many people into believing your are intelligent. Memorizing Wikipedia is not intelligence, but there is a lot of intelligence baked into Wikipedia.
Interesting new indie game that just came out that I am playing:
Too early to give a review, but it looks promising. I like the unique art style.
There is a free demo available on Steam.
The fundamental problem that makes rationalism untenable is that no matter how good your logic or reasoning is, your reasoning can be wrong in ways you cannot foresee or imagine. Rationalism fails at foreseeing all the sneaky ways in which reasoning can seem right but be wrong. Just because your logic is sound and coherent does not mean that it describes Reality truthfully. Whether your logic describes Reality truthfully is an empirical matter. Logic and reason can be wrong even when it seems perfectly rational and sound. That is because logic and reason are bounded by state of Consciousness. What seems rational, logical, and air-tight in one state of Consciousness will cease to be so in another. Logic and reason are not universal, they are local to one’s plane of Consciousness, and there are many different planes of Consciousness. These different planes of Consciousness is what all rationalists overlook, which ultimately dooms rationalism to epistemic foolishness. Rationality cannot anticipate what radically different planes of Consciousness exist. Understanding these different planes of Consciousness cannot be done by sitting in your armchair theorizing, but requires direct experience inhabiting those planes. The only way to know the planes exist is to break out of your current plane and enter a new one. But rationality is not sufficient to break out of your current plane. Rationality does not have enough imagination to foresee higher planes of Consciousness.
Rationalism fails simply because experience is more fundamental than rationality. Rationality cannot anticipate or replace experience. No matter how air-tight your logic is, experience can come along and demolish it, and there's nothing you can do about that. But the rationalist refuses to accept this. The rationalist's mistake is that he has made a god out of reason — which is a false idol. God includes reason but isn't limited to it. Reason is not the end-all-be-all. Reason is finite. Reason requires experience and its proper place is as a subordinate to experience. Notice that you had experience long before you knew how to reason. That's not coincidental. That's because experience is more fundamental that reason. Reason cannot solve for lack of experience. Many blunders happen when the mind assumes it can reason its way through domains in which it lacks raw experience. For example, atheism is the blunder of thinking you can reason through spirituality with no spiritual experience.
I am cancelling the Actualized.org Awakening Retreat that was planned for October.
Why?
Because I ran experiments with individuals over the summer and found the chemical to be too inconsistent to use it in a group retreat. The problem is that the effects and results vary so widely from individual to individual that I do not feel comfortable making promises about the retreat producing Awakenings for you. For some people it may work, but for most people it will be disappointing, and I don't feel comfortable charging people money for such an experience. The challenge with psychedelics is that people have such widely different reactions to them, making standardized, one-size-fits-all methods inappropriate. The attempt to make psychedelics one-side-fits-all is a mistake. They cannot be that due to wide genetic differences in brain types.
I am sorry for the cancellation, I know you guys were excited for it. I was too, but my technique just doesn't scale as well as I hoped. Testing was required to understand that, which now I understand. Overall, I am glad I tested it out, even if the result was not what I hoped for. But that's how science works. The problem is that governments love to ban precisely those chemicals which work the most consistently.
Great insights on how propaganda works:
The interesting and counter-intuitive point is that modern propaganda can be more dangerous than traditional forms of propaganda, because at least the traditional propaganda has stood the test of time. Propaganda such a Nazism or Communism did not pass the test of time, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism did. Propaganda is not all equal. Some propaganda is better at survival than others. It is not so easy to invent a form of propaganda that is not self-destructive. Many new worldviews end in self-destruction, which is why you should be skeptical and cautious about radial leftist views. Most of them will not survive the test of time.