Thank you for writing this, I now finally feel like I sort of understand what you’ve been going on about in recent months (though there are gaps too large for me to judge whether you are right). Please consider translating versions of your arguments refined and worked out enough that you would find comfortable defending.
Unless that would cause you to risk eternal damnation (^_^)
I wrote all that stuff back when I was still new to a lot of the ideas and hadn’t really organized them well in my head. I also included a lot of needless metaphysical stuff just to troll people. The general argument for academic theism that I would make these days would be phrased entirely in terms of decision theory and theoretical computer science, and would look significantly more credible than my embarrassingly amateurish arguments from a year or so ago. Separately, I know of better soteriological arguments these days, but I don’t take them as seriously and there’s no obvious way to make them look credible to LessWrong. If I was setting forth my arguments for real then I would also take a lot more care to separate my theological and eschatological arguments.
Anyway, I’d like to set forth those arguments at some point, but I’m not sure when. I’m afraid that if I put forth an argument then it will be assumed that I supported that argument to the best of my ability, when in reality writing for a diverse audience stresses me out way too much for me to put sustained effort into writing out justifications for any argument.
The “least restrictive, obviously acceptable thing” might be to collect a list of prerequisites in decision theory and CT that would be necessary to understand the main argument. You made a list of this kind (though for different purposes) several years ago, but I still haven’t been able to trace from then how you ended up here.
Thank you for writing this, I now finally feel like I sort of understand what you’ve been going on about in recent months (though there are gaps too large for me to judge whether you are right). Please consider translating versions of your arguments refined and worked out enough that you would find comfortable defending.
Unless that would cause you to risk eternal damnation (^_^)
I wrote all that stuff back when I was still new to a lot of the ideas and hadn’t really organized them well in my head. I also included a lot of needless metaphysical stuff just to troll people. The general argument for academic theism that I would make these days would be phrased entirely in terms of decision theory and theoretical computer science, and would look significantly more credible than my embarrassingly amateurish arguments from a year or so ago. Separately, I know of better soteriological arguments these days, but I don’t take them as seriously and there’s no obvious way to make them look credible to LessWrong. If I was setting forth my arguments for real then I would also take a lot more care to separate my theological and eschatological arguments.
Anyway, I’d like to set forth those arguments at some point, but I’m not sure when. I’m afraid that if I put forth an argument then it will be assumed that I supported that argument to the best of my ability, when in reality writing for a diverse audience stresses me out way too much for me to put sustained effort into writing out justifications for any argument.
The “least restrictive, obviously acceptable thing” might be to collect a list of prerequisites in decision theory and CT that would be necessary to understand the main argument. You made a list of this kind (though for different purposes) several years ago, but I still haven’t been able to trace from then how you ended up here.