Ian

Karma: −5

Ian Jun 23, 2025, 9:08 AM
8 points
0
on: How to use DMT without going insane: On navigating epistemic uncertainty in the DMT memeplex
The segment on epistemic hyenine is full of a lot of what I would consider “air quotes” for the steps. The increasing knowledge and skepticism could lead to the wrong conclusions especially when you’re using a drug, even a lot of what you say for attention and DMT seems more subjective than anything about the drug.
Also dangerous ideas seems more subjective then anything you could really watch out for. I mean everyone throughout history seems to have a different take on what is dangerous or the deep end.
I think like any drug DMT only gives you what you bring into it, I’ve known some folks who weren’t that different after it. That seems to be the general case for psychedelics. I see what other people have commented but the evidence doesn’t bear that out, and in my experience being in an altered state doesn’t really lead to things you’d miss.
It’s also ironic this is being posted on lesswrong given it’s reputation.
All that said the epistemic hygiene doesn’t seem valid as a system, number 2 for example is impossible to do because everything around you primes you for the experience. Buddhism calls it dependent arising. To be alive is to be affected by things around you.
The segment on memetic transfer is also sketchy as the cited articles don’t say what you think they do. They don’t know how people are affected by it and the methodology has come under fire for being unreliable. In short the field is too new to really say anything about what’s going on. The cited article on the constructive aspect of visual attention also doesn’t support what you draw from it or say anything about attention per se. You are still looking direct at the illusions, just different parts of them.
All in all this post seems short-sighted and making judgments that don’t really follow from the evidence.

Ian Jun 22, 2025, 3:29 AM
1 point
0
on: Estrogen: A trip report
This sounds like a lot of speculation about the effects of drugs and the like, from what little I know of such things everyone reacts differently so this mostly just tells me about what it feels like for you, not about the effects of estrogen as a whole. I’ve heard wildly different accounts from different trans people.
That said, I often used to wonder if I am trans myself, I don’t really know how to figure that one out though. I’ve had some strong experiences, but every time I’m terrified of exploring them further for fear of what they might mean. Other days I don’t have that compulsion.
I’ve asked lots of trans people but never really got a clear answer, most said they just knew or they felt different, and I...don’t really know. It changes all the time.

Ian May 25, 2025, 10:48 PM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“Explain why scientists conduct experiments. How can that be relevant to internal consistency?
Explain why it is impossible for human knowledge to correlate to reality, even by accident. Is it because there is no external reality , as you sometimes say?”
It’s how science is. Science itself admits that it doesn’t prove anything and that our knowledge might be more instrumental than about reality itself. It’s the first thing you learn and something each of them keeps in mind, that it could all be wrong, but it works.
As for external reality, I cannot say for sure, and there are plenty of arguments that show that skepticism about external reality cannot be refuted.
“https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(arts)″
Do I really have to spell out why that doesn’t meant much? It just reflects how humans perceive it, not that it corresponds to reality itself.
“Expand on that please?”
It’s mostly based on Kant’s idea that reality is only as it ever appears to us and there is no way to really know if you are at the ground level or if there is another one underneath it. Even if you get out of the simulation you only know that world wasn’t real, you can’t say that about the new one. It’s just turtles the whole way down.
“That’s a common fallacy. It’s still an experimental science.”
It’s actually not.
“That’s just contradiction. You need to argue your points.”
There is nothing to argue when you assert something without evidence. External reality is an axiom we hold, it cannot be proven.
“They obviously are. A map of Sweden represents sweden.”
Well no, it represents the idea of Sweden.

Ian May 24, 2025, 10:04 PM
−3 points
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“Again that’s ambiguous between “reality doesn’t exist” and “we don’t know reality”.
It happens to be the case that in English the word “reality” can be used both ways. You can use it in a territory sense, to mean an object of knowledge—this book is non-fiction, so it is about reality; and you can use it in a map sense, to label a successful representation—this portrait is highly realiastic.
But that’s only a quirk of English, not a deep insight!”
It’s only ambiguous if you don’t understand it. It’s pretty clear to me. It’s saying that knowledge doesn’t really correlate to some independent reality “out there” more like it just has to be internally consistent. It’s not what you’re saying.
But no, reality isn’t used that way in English, it usually refers to “what is” absent any limiting factors. It’s not used to mean a successful representation, that’s a different word. But of course the problem is that you can’t really know what “is”, as that question is just turtles all the way down.
I’d also call that a deep insight, not a quirk of English, especially since language is what we have to navigate and make sense of all this stuff (well I’d scratch the insight part since it’s not really accurate).
“So is realism. But anti realism needs to be supported somehow, because it’s not the default...the default is that theories are explicitly held to be about reality.”
Ironically no, it’s realism that has to be supported, but everyone just assumes it’s the case when really the burden is on it not anti-realism. Anti-realism isn’t making any additional claims while realism is.
“Whatever that means. It’s not a fact that QM has to be interpreted subjectively. QM describes a reality, but a non classical reality. You said so your self:”
You misread what I said, QM actually might suggest that there is no “objective and independent” reality. That means all reality.
“It’s an explanatory hypothesis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning
Explanatory hypotheses are justified by the work they do in explaining observations. The problem with instrumentalism and antirealism is that the same work is not done in another way...you have to settle for less.”
It’s not, it’s an axiom that you hold. Also “plausible” seems weak given the host of philosophical arguments made that undermined abductive reasoning. There is no real “problem” with instrumentalism and anti-realism, they’re honest in their claims about the world and the limits of human ability.
Again you’re asserting something without evidence, and what is plausible can very from person to person, it’s not really an objective standard for what is likely. Descartes pretty much blew a hole through that one too.
“I wouldnt, because its an error to suppose that no concept can refer, and no proposition can correspond. Its just missing the very basic fact that maps are intentional.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionality″
Or maybe they’re not, like I said it could refer to nothing outside, just that it has to be internally consistent, in which case anything could work.
“Yudkowsky? I don’t think he really means that , and I’m not defending him anyway. Just because his version of realism is broken—if it is—doesn’t mean mine is.”
Most folks here seem to, some even saying people are biased just because they want patterns of atoms to be people, whatever the hell that means.

Ian May 23, 2025, 9:39 PM
−7 points
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“Are you certain? Can you know things without being certain?”
Because I said so.

Ian May 23, 2025, 9:39 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“No , that’s not anti realism. Anti realism is the definitive , certain claim that there is no reality. As such, as an ontological claim, it cannot be based on a fallibilist epistemology.”
That isn’t anti-realism, anti-realism is against the claim that there is a definitive reality that our knowledge maps to and that knowledge is more instrumental rather than “About” anything. It’s quite compatible with fallibilism, not to mention recent findings in QM (allegedly).
“What you are saying isn’t necessarily true either. So we ether give up entirely, or procede by some probabilistic balance of explanation and evidence.”
Or just do what the Pyrrhonists do and go by appearances. But you are asserting that there is some reality with no evidence for it. It’s an axiom held, which is fine but admit that much at least.
You also avoided that bit I added about him saying people don’t exist, so by that logic I’m arguing with no one.
Heck if you really want to get down to it you could argue that we can learn/know nothing because it’s all just concepts we made up and not reality.

Ian May 22, 2025, 9:22 PM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“The claim that it’s all maps, ontologically, doesn’t follow from the claim that we have no knowledge or reality at all, epistemically..and that doesn’t follow from “might not describe reality at all”.
You have a sort of motte-and-bailey or slippery slope going on. It’s defensible to claim that our knowledge is uncertain, but it’s not the same as claiming there is no reality .. as an ontological entity.”
It is the same, in a sense. You could just say we have an expeirence at the most bare level, and that to posit a reality that exists beyond that is not justified. Claiming there is a reality as an ontological entity is similar to saying knowledge is uncertain because you are assuming the existence of a thing you can never truly know.
“It’s an explanatory hypothesis. We explain things as fitting into regular pattens. Every other planet we observe is a spheroid...so why would the moon be the only hemisphere?
Yes, it’s uncertain...no, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily false. Even random guesses can be true. Again, the strong claims you are making don’t actually follow from the weak ones.
Consider the alternative: refusing to make explanatory posits leaves you being unable to explain. What’s the advantage in that? Anti realism just leaves you being able to do less.
Note that science is based on making revisable explanatory hypotheses...not on certainty...nor on giving up and leaving everything unexplained.”
Why indeed, but it does not follow that just because every other planet appears to be such that the moon is as well.
Anti-realism doesn’t leave you being able to do less, it just means that what we take to be true might not correspond to reality itself but might just be internally consistent, and some findings recently in QM might support Anti-realism, including the recent discovery that the universe is not locally real. It’s closer to instrumentalism. Given how our experience of reality is affected by what we believe, realism is shaky in terms of evidence.
Science itself does not prove independent reality or describe reality.
“To repeat my previous arguments:-
i) maps require territories;
ii) the questioner has to exist somewhere;
iii) it’s a useful explanation to regard external reality as the source of our sensory input.”
Number 1 is not necessarily true, neither is number 2, and number 3 is also not really true as there is no need to posit a source for what you are experiencing (see several eastern philosophies arguing that point.
“How can something exist, but not be part of reality?”
How indeed.
“The Platonic Forms are not ideas in an individual’s mind, they are external. So he was a realist about them...and they are not material...so realism and materialism are not the same.”
They are the same, hence why he was more an idealist and not a realist. But realism and materialism are the same thing.
“He might be confused about reduction versus elimination. So what?”
That’s more or less the main issue I have with him. He seems to think there is only one fundamental level and that is of elementary particles (which is just a map not the “territory”) and that our notions of objects beyond that are just “multi-level models” and not real. Meaning there are no people or planes, just atoms. That there isn’t separate laws of physics applying to “Separate objects” (but...technically speaking there are, in a sense).

Ian May 21, 2025, 11:25 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
“Any map that isn’t explicitly fictional attempts to describe some sort of reality. The fact that they intend or purport to represent a reality outside of themselves is a feature they all have in common. They are all , at least, about reality , in general, aside from how exact they are
If we believe the map, we take it’s details to be a detailed description of reality. Otherwise not. The theories we disbelieve in, we regard as failed attempts to describe reality …but still attempts, unlike fiction.
You may be hung up on a “nothing avails except perfection” assumption...that a map cannot be said to be about reality at all unless it is in perfect correspondence therewith.”
No, I merely acknowledge that what I know might not describe reality at all, just what I observe and experience. Hence why I said it’s all maps and not really reality. Trying to describe reality leads to infinite regress.
“Reality is whatever exists. You and I exist. The bare fact of existence can be justified without offering a completely accurate description. The dark side of the moon existed before it was mapped...how could it not?”
Debatable, especially on the exist part. You say the dark side of the moon existed before being mapped but that is just an assumption you’re making. Everything you’ve said thus far is assumption, not fact. I know I exist, other people though I cannot prove (doesn’t mean they don’t). Also something doesn’t have to exist to be real.
“”Empirical data comes from external reality” in the sense that external reality is the ultimate cause of them. Our senses might not accurately reflect reality, but that’s a further issue...just as accurate representation is a further issue to attempted, purported representation.”
Again, another assumption you are making. You are assuming too many things in your replies to me.
“You need to justify an “either map or territory, not some third thing” premise.”
I don’t, you’re the one who needs to justify some territory that is making it.
“That’s a huge leap from the previous.
Reality is whatever exists. You exist....”
Well no, reality IS, that’s it. Anything else is your assumptions about it.
“I exist. Even if solipsism is true there is a reality. Even if there is nothing but maps, there is a reality.”
Not necessarily, again still more assumptions.
“Yes, he was a realist because he thought the Forms were real. It doesn’t matter that they are supposed to be immaterial, because realism is not a synonym for materialism.”
Realism is a synonym for materialism, that’s why he wasn’t one. He thought the ideas were more real than the material, so he was more of an idealist than anything else.
“Yes. He believed that a form of direct knowledge was available to the few. Unlike Kant, who rejected noumenal knowledge entirely.”
Then he was mistaken, which is unfortunate because he hit the mark with the Cave, just not how he thought.
“Yep. That’s what I’ve been calling the epistemological claim. He also thought that the posit of a (possibly unknowable) reality was needed … there’s a Refutation of Idealism in the first Critique.”
Then he was mistaken too, the only real honest person about it might have been Descartes who acknowledged he had no way of knowing if there is an external reality.
“You are just repeating your claims. I have argued to the contrary several times.”
You haven’t, you merely assert there is a territory but there is no reason to suggest that or evidence either. It’s pure belief.
“Who’s he? Kant?”
Eliezer argued that in the sequences, that humans aren’t real because they’re just a “higher level abstraction model” and not the territory, even though he’s just arbitrarily deciding what’s real and what isn’t.
But I digress, all you’ve made is assumptions about some external reality that is giving you this data, there is no evidence to suggest that. It’s merely an assumption being made, an axiom you have to hold. We all do, among many others.
There is only maps, no territory. Or rather the map is the territory I guess.

Ian May 21, 2025, 6:37 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
Those maps “Refer” to what we “assume” is reality, but like I said all we have is maps not reality. You say our “empirical data comes from reality” but it doesn’t, it comes from our senses, which don’t accurately reflect reality.
The “evidence” is still just a map, because we cannot be certain such a thing is reality itself. Science isn’t technically the study of reality, it’s more like just about making models that work. Even science itself cannot prove reality is real and is more concerned with explanations or what’s good enough rather than truth.
The “knowability” of reality is a big part of many people’s belief that drives them to engage with it, but every philosopher comes to the same realization that we cannot definitively know if it’s possible to know it, or if there even is one. Reminds me of the hard problem of solipsism.
“So what? I wasn’t making that claim. Only that it is. The ontological claim.”
But you don’t even have that, it’s an assumption you’re making.
“Plato was a realist. Ontologically. The Cave is about indirect knowledge.”
No he wasn’t, because he believed the “Forms” where the highest and most fundamental reality, not the material world. Also the cave is not about indirect knowledge but about the limits of our knowledge and how can we truly know reality.
“Kant made the exact argument, which I also made, that a non mental reality is the source of our sense data.”
Then he goes on to say that there is no way to know such a reality because it will only ever be as it appears to us and never as it is. Some philosophers go on to say that we might never know, and there is no way to check.
“If “it” means our knowledge, yes. But you keep stating it as an ontological claim.”
“It” refers to reality. Reality is always going to be a map, never the territory, no matter how hard you try there is nothing to support there being an actual territory. That’s a belief, an axiom we hold.
But like I said, he argues people don’t exist and are just “patterns of atoms” so it’s not like there is anyone to “know” this stuff anyway.

Ian May 21, 2025, 2:33 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
No. Those are maps too. We don’t have direct access or knowledge of reality, just maps. There is no “territory” as far as we know, that’s how science works.
To think you know what the territory is is hubris. But yeah, it’s all maps. It started with Plato’s allegory of the Cave and so far there is no way to get past that. Kant said the same.
It’s all maps, all we can do is just adjust them better.
Also EY says people don’t exist because they’re just “models” so by him no “one” “lives” anywhere.

Ian May 20, 2025, 10:49 PM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
Yeah but we don’t know that, and the evidence today is that QM is fundamentally indeterministic, and getting moreso each day.
EY thinks there is some territory to compare to but the fact is it’s all maps and we use different ones for different things. His “multi-level reality” that he uses to dismiss anything above the elementary particles as not real isn’t true, because what something “really is” is philosophy and not science.
He doesn’t seem to acknowledge that all of it is maps and we don’t have the territory and never will.

Ian May 19, 2025, 5:16 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Ian_C.’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
Not exactly. Even someone with perfect knowledge would still need probability, they’d just know the odds.

What Einstein meant by that was not literal god but the universe. He refused to accept some things could be random like QM.
The problem with QM is that it’s fundamentally indeterministic, perfect knowledge won’t change that (and that’s what he refused to accept). This is just Eliezer again speaking on things he has no knowledge about.

Ian May 19, 2025, 12:06 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
MWI is just one of many interpretations, I might not say it of actual physicists who believe it but if EY says it then one can ignore it.
The same way one can ignore him on AI and most things.
But in regards to what is correct on interpretation, no one knows for sure and we may never know.

Ian May 18, 2025, 7:12 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
It’s actually not, his commitment to MWI is more rooted in his ignorance of QM, not due to any metaphysical commitments. Plenty of people with actual degrees in the field all disagree on what the right interpretation is, even today we still don’t. Metaphysics doesn’t play into it, MWI is just one way to explain the math but it has it’s short comings.
Aumann’s agreement theorem doesn’t factor in here. The simpler explanation is that EY doesn’t understand QM, which is why he assumes Many Worlds it the only one. In fact he’s often extremely confident (and stubborn) about things he not only doesn’t understand but is provably wrong in.
The truth about QM is that no one really understands what’s going on there.

Ian May 8, 2025, 6:51 AM
1 point
−1
on: Reductionism
I feel like Elizer needs to realize that the ground level he’s talking about is in fact still just another model of reality. He’s talking about how physics “really works” when what he’s talking about isn’t maps and territories.
The fact is we don’t know the ground level of reality, we just have a model based on evidence so far. Also contrary to what he wants to be true physics does recognize “levels” to reality, because what applies at the quantum level doesn’t necessarily always translate to the macroscopic level.
You cannot understand psychology by studying quarks nor emergence either. Reductionism doesn’t really explain everything to reality because at certain points aspects of reality take on properties independent of it’s parts.
But then you’d need a degree to understand all that.

Ian May 8, 2025, 4:45 AM
1 point
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in reply to: bobthechef’s comment on: Mind Projection Fallacy
This doesn’t sound like a fallacy. I think the word Elizer going for with the monster was anthropomorphism (we already have a word for it), “mind projection fallacy” isn’t a real fallacy. We humans do have a tendency to assign human characteristics to non-human things.
If you want to make this a fallacy you’d have to throw out rationality because that’s our minds attempting to make sense of reality using everything we’ve developed.
As for wanting them to be a person...they are. If they weren’t I’d doubt you’d be talking to them.
There are “levels” to reality as well, roughly speaking (though even calling it “levelless” is itself another human view of reality, one of many). Reality is not levelless and TBH to think that one can step outside of everything to see the truth is hubris. All we really do is model reality to navigate it as best we can, any claim to capital T truth is unwarranted IMO.
Though you clearly attribute mind to them if you are not only describing them but also posting to people here. Language is an explicitly public sphere of communication after all, a private language would be incoherent.
Lastly, I think his media analysis is a bit shallow to assume we think the monster is taking it because the lady is attractive. One possible view is that it takes what we hold dear and value, to highlight how truly monstrous it is. I mean...it is a movie or comic someone made, so they can set whatever rules they want for what’s going on. It’s not really an example of any fallacy.
PS: The idea of “levelless” reality was already explored quite extensively in Eastern philosophy, though their view is extremely nuanced and difficult to explain without the actual experience. Suffice to say it’s something along the lines of “it both has levels and it doesn’t”.
In fact if you want an arguably better explained view of what Elizer is trying to say here, Buddhism beat him to it. The notion of “projecting mind onto reality” is thousands of years old, he’s literally just making a worse version of their argument.

Ian May 7, 2025, 7:36 PM
1 point
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Probability is in the Mind
Not really. The quantum weirdness isn’t due to measuring it with classical terms, it’s more like that’s just how it is at that level. Spooky action, non locality, and uncertainty.
In fact it’s fundamentally random at that level and by definition uncertain. Even mathematically that’s the case.
Eliezer is still wrong, though that wouldn’t surprise me because he doesn’t have a degree in this stuff. It’s also odd to argue something is in the mind when your other writings suggest you don’t believe in such things. I mean if you want to get technical...all of this is in the mind, even caring about being “rational” so such a statement sounds moot to me.