44 Comments

keep on trashing such stupidity ,any idiot old enough knows intuitively of that type of rationalisation.keep your energy to understand the really mysterious.the nature of mystery for a start.and stop thinking that the universe is waiting for you to know where it stands.

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Think of a hologram here, and consider that it can have various 'resolutions' - you can keep cutting up a hologram into pieces and still see the whole picture but the resolution degrades , the picture becomes more and more coarse grained and fuzzy. I think that (past a certain minimum threshold), intelligence (and rationality) is just like that hologram - the higher IQers can't in principle see any concepts the lower IQers can't, they just see the concepts in more and more fine-grained detail.

Suppose reasoning through categorization starts with a very few coarse grained concepts. Any probabilities derived from those will obviously also be very coarse-binned and imprecise. But now, consider, the fan of categorization can start introducing more and more fine-grained distinctions (more and more 'multi-choice questions' or more and more analogies) which have the effect of 'perturbing' the original probability estimates to a more and more fine-grained level.

Consider the hologram analogy again: truth is equivalent to the entire picture and Bayes deals in precise detail with any small area of it. Categorization is a way of adjusting the 'resolution' of the whole picture to any desired level of magnification. By making enough fine grained distinctions ('perturbations' of original prototype concepts), categorization can duplicate Bayesian Induction to any desired degree of accuracy. Ergo, Bayes is really just a special of categorization where the resolution of the picture is turned up to 100%.

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I see. I did read critique of mysticism by Ayn Rand and it seems that she at least partially misunderstands the concept. Yet she is right about the fact that mysticism is esoteric to some degree - I can hardly comprehend the concept without some form of experience first. Kind of like quantum mechanics :).

I also have noticed that the word *myth* has been mostly used in the sense of "untrue story" rather than it's original meaning.

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Woah, wait just a minute here. Am I supposed to be "getting laid from travel and conferences?" Evidently, I've been missing out on all the fun.

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Truth-seeking seems pretty strange as a moral system.

On thing it has going for it is that it is relatively non-egocentric. Truth seekers are not *particularly* out for themselves. Such a trait is useful when wanting to signal non-selfishness in interactions with others - which is something people fairly often want to do.

However, you would think that classical utilitarianism did this more effectively. Perhaps that is something to do with why self-professed truth-seekers seem uncommon.

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I like the other mysticism that is not all about souls and other intangible things. It could still be nonsense of course.

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It is a common sceptical thought that mysticism is all about souls and other intangible things - and is therefore nonsense. There really is some mysticism which is like that - so this is at least understandable.

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Beware of any of the following baser urges of intellectuals:

*getting money from seeming impressive*getting titles and perks from affiliations with prestigious organizations*getting laid from travel and conferences*getting enjoyable feelings of superiority from knowing hidden truth*getting a chance to leverage technical know-how for some radical breakthrough enabling them to secure a decisive political, economic or social advantage.

Hilarious really.

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I know this is probably going to be dismissed but: 9-11 anyone?

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More recently, some of the Beats were mystical and pretty violent.

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Many monastic orders have historically been aggressive, whether in Japan, China or Tibet. They weren't trying to force others to accept the authority of their memes, but they still may have followed the violent precepts of their societies. This probably applies to some mystical Stoics too.

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How does the unconscious bind into the conscious? Are they not simply different attributes of the same thing.

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Good question. :)

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I've noticed many of the OB / LW crowd, as well as the Ayn Rand circle, use this same, odd pejorative interpretation of "mystic" and "mysticism". Perhaps the former have picked up this term from the latter through some kind of memetic transfer.

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Also, I would disagree with all concepts like the "universal mystic way, the actual process by which the mystic arrives at union with the absolute".

"You" do not "arrive at union with the absolute". Rather it is seen (by no one!) that there never was a "you" after all. Like Einstein wrote, the apparent "you" is nothing more than "an optical delusion of consciousness". There is nothing "you" can do to reach "union with the absolute" because what you actually are was and could never be separate from the absolute, except as a concept.

But for a Wikipedia article, it's not too bad.

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content should read context.

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