Marvin Minsky/on Religion

01 Jul 2022 02:29 - 23 Mar 2024 03:37
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    • Brains, Minds, AI, God: Marvin Minsky Thought Like No One Else | Space
      • It's no secret that Marvin was a strong atheist, and irrespective of one's beliefs, one can appreciate — dare I say "enjoy" — his bluntness. "If you want real meaning, and you can't find one, it's all very well to make one up," he told me. "But I don't see how that [God] solves any problems. Unless you say how God works, saying that God exists doesn't explain anything."
    • Do Science & Religion Conflict? - Marvin Minsky | Closer to Truth
      • Religion teaches you not to ask questions, so basically incompatible with science.
      • The great thing about humans is we can learn from others (mentions attachment theory aka imprimers. Religion is the slot in our brain for imprimers after the parents are gone...so we are built with an instict for someone to tell us what to do.
      • Person can be imaginary or literary, that works fine.
      • Religion as an intellectually conservative force (he doesn't use that term).
      • Religion can be a wonderful way to save people's time by not wasting time on hard questions. "Make stable societies except when they go crazy, which is often" – mostly they guarantee death and are very bad for us.
      • If you can't find any meanings, you can always make one up, and that holds society together for awhile.
      • Doesn't see much value in bringing religion and science together.
        • Here's where I think he goes wrong, frustratingly because he's so close – if religion is really the source of our cultural infrastructure, particularly ethics, then science can't displace it without taking over its functions. Everyone knows this, it's why these kind of discussions keep popping up.
    • There's some fierce old-school atheism in Society of Mind. On a whim, I've tracked down every mention of religion:
      • 4.3 The Soul
        • Fulminates against the idea of a soul in general, but based primarily on its changelessness.
        • People ask if machines can have souls – And I ask back whether souls can learn. It does not seem a fair exchange — if souls can live for endless time and yet not use that time to learn — to trade all change for changelessness. And that's exactly what we get with inborn souls that cannot grow: a destiny the same as death, an ending in a permanence incapable of any change and hence, devoid of intellect.
          • Huh that really resonates strongly with that Burroughs quote OGU vs MU. Minsky and Burroughs are pretty different minds (Burroughs hated scientists) but maybe they are on the same side in the larger spiritual war.
        • What are those old and fierce beliefs in spirits, souls, and essences? They're all insinuations that we're helpless to improve ourselves.
        • The immortality and changelessness of the soul I think can be traced back to Socrates. The body is temporal, changeable, but inert, while the soul is ideal, immortal, unchanging yet the source of action. Of course this split is at the root of everything wrong with Western civilization.
        • And Minsky rightly observes that if we care about learning or development of the individual, that can only be done in the realm of the body, the changeable.
      • 4.7 Long-range plans
        • (not really about religion, but it quotes the Buddha)
        • What are our slowest-changing agencies of all? Later we'll see that these must include the silent, hidden agencies that shape what we call character. These are the systems that are concerned not merely with the things we want, but with what we want ourselves to be — that is, the ideals we set for ourselves.
        • Suggests a version of pace layers for the self. Surely someone's done that...
      • 6.10 Worlds out of mind
        • When victims of these incidents [mystical experiences] become compelled to recapture them, their lives and personalities are sometimes permanently changed [but I thought change was good]. The others seeing the radiance in their eyes...are drawn to follow them. But to offer hospitality to paradox is like leaning towards a precipice. You can find out what it is like by falling in, but you may not be able to fall out again. Once contradiction finds a home, few minds can spurn the sense-destroying force of slogans such as "all is one".
        • Huh the disdain and fear of paradox does not seem characteristic.
        • The idea that "all is one" is mind-destroying is however very characteristic, that is pure Marvin, aware of the generative or suppressive power of ideas.
      • 12.9 The Exception Principle
        • Artificial realms like mathematics and theology are built from the start to be devoid of interesting inconsistency. But we must be careful not to mistake our own inventions for natural phenomena we have discovered.
        • Epistemological humility, OK