Posted inBooks Miracles

A Bayesian argument against miracles

For quite a while I've been interested in Bayesian reasoning/statistics, even though I've never understood this subject very well. Now I'm reading Steven Pinker's new book, "Rationality." It has a chapter on Beliefs and Evidence that focuses on Bayesian reasoning. Which is, basically (this is an introduction to an online tutorial): Bayes' rule or Bayes' theorem is the law of probability governing the strength of evidence -- the rule saying how much to revise our probabilities (change our minds) when we learn a new fact or observe new evidence. "Prior probability" in the Bayesian perspective is our credence in an…
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Posted inBooks Delusions Reality

Presumptions are necessary for reasoning to work

Almost everybody who has had a child -- that includes me -- knows how annoying it can be when they learn how to make "Why?" into a way to drive a parent crazy. You need to turn the TV off and go to bed.Why?Because it's late and you need to go to school tomorrow.Why do I need to go to school?So you can learn things.Why should I learn things? And so it goes, until the parent gets fed up and ends the discussion with "Because I said so! Go brush your teeth!" Andy Norman uses this sort of Why? reasoning…
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Posted inBooks Religions

How religions disable our reasoning practices

Here's a marvelous excerpt from Andy Norman's book, "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think."  I read it this morning and realized it's a terrific way to explain what's wrong with the irrationality of religion. Norman imagines that someone wants to figure out how to best undermine human reasoning that enables us to distinguish truth from falsehoods, what's real from what's illusory.  As you'll read below, what results is... (no big surprise) religion.  Imagine yourself part of a team charged with stress-testing civilization's all-important reasoning practices. The team has an initial meeting, and the…
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Posted inBooks Religions

Religious beliefs can be false, yet useful

My wife turned me on to Andy Norman's book, "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think." She's listening to it via the audiobook. I'm reading the print edition. The Covid pandemic has taught us all a lot about immunity against viruses. Vaccines help us fight off a Covid infection by strengthening our defenses against the viral invader. Likewise, Norman argues, minds are prone to being infected by bad ideas.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get a shot that wards off bad ideas. Instead, his book describes ways we can protect our mind…
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Posted inBooks Science

Metacognition is key to knowing yourself

I'm about halfway through reading Stephen Fleming's Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness. Basic concepts of the book are mind reading, in the sense of inferring what is in someone else's mind, and metacognition, literally thinking about our thinking, or more broadly, being aware of ourself.  Since Fleming, a British neuroscientist, cites many research studies in his book, reading it can take some effort. However, Fleming is a good writer, and frequently uses examples from everyday life, so on the whole I'm liking it a lot.  The title, Know Thyself, points toward a fact I've marveled at for a long…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

“The Web of Meaning” — great book about finding our place in the universe

I've finished The Web of Meaning, by Jeremy Lent, a book with the subtitle, "Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe." It's a lengthy book, 382 pages, that I enjoyed. My first post about it was "Marvelous mystery lies in the complexity of the world." Lent wrote a related previous book, The Patterning Instinct. Both books discuss Eastern and Western religions in a well-informed manner. In 2017 I talked about The Patterning Instinct in "Indian and Greek thought are both dualistic. Chinese thought isn't." In these passages Lent explains how ancient India embraced a form…
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Posted inBooks Science

What could be better than contemplating the inner and outer worlds?

Today I finished physicist Anthony Aguirre's book, "Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality." Rather than describing how the book ends, you can read the ending yourself. I liked what Aguirre says here. To me, one clarion message comes through: when you are tempted to think or say "the Universe is fundamentally like this," then go and sit and think some more. So why do we like to divide things into opposing camps? Probably no small part of it is a rather strong drive, bestowed upon us by our evolution as surviving beings, to identify some certain…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Here’s an elusive cosmological koan to beguile you

When I saw a book called Cosmological Koans mentioned in another book I was reading, there was little doubt in my mind that it would be delivered to me by Amazon before too long. And so it came to pass. Anthony Aguirre is a Professor of Physics at University of California - Santa Cruz. That is so perfect! I can't imagine a more appropriate place for a koan loving, Buddhism inspired, creative writing physicist than UC Santa Cruz.  (I went to college at San Jose State in the 1960s; Santa Cruz beaches were a favorite spot for LSD trips, along…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Meaning of life

Marvelous mystery lies in the complexity of the world

Most of us want to believe in something greater than ourself. That's a worthy ambition. Problem is, religious believers head off in a misguided direction when they imagine that the something greater lies in a vertical direction. Meaning, they fantasize that a heaven awaits above; or that higher supernatural regions of reality exist; or that their consciousness needs to be elevated beyond worldly concerns. What these devotees of verticality fail to understand is this: the world right here and right now possesses all the majesty, mystery, and meaning that anyone could desire. It just takes eyes to see, which, sadly,…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Truth isn’t personal, but institutional

This morning I finished reading The Constitution of Knowledge, a book by Jonathan Rauch whose subtitle is "In Defense of Truth."  As noted in a previous blog post about this book, Rauch persuasively argues that truth isn't personal, but institutional. Or social, if you have a dislike of institutions and prefer another word. Here's a quote from the second to last page of the book that ends with a reflection of this point: "...and outsource reality to a global network of strangers." As I wrote in chapter 1, the Constitution of Knowledge is the most successful social design in human…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Objective reality is validated by the reality-based community

I figured that I needed to share another excerpt from Jonathan Rauch's book, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth," that comes just before the passages I included in a previous post about this intriguing book. Those Rules for Reality in the previous post have to be implemented by someone. That someone is the reality-based community. In another post I'll share what Rausch considers that community to be.  Basically its people who are willing to act in accord with the Constitution of Knowledge, in much the same way patriotic Americans are willing to abide by the United States Constitution. Of…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

I love the natural concreteness of Daoism

Abstractions are fine. We humans have evolved to be able to conceive of abstract ideas such as love, justice, infinity, God, and so much else. But it's possible to get lost in a maze of abstractions where each idea leads to another idea, and then another... no exit in sight.  Daoism (or Taoism) is my favorite philosophy, along with non-religious Buddhism, because it's wonderfully concrete. I've practiced Tai Chi for seventeen years, which can be viewed as Daoism made physical.  Yin and yang aren't abstractions in Tai Chi. They are directly experienced realities as a yin move flows into a…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Bruce Lee’s daughter writes about her father’s philosophy

A fellow Tai Chi student and friend mentioned "Be Water, My Friend" a while back. This is a book by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter. I'm enjoying it.  My favorite Tai Chi form is called in English, Water Boxing. It's very long, difficult to learn, not known by very many, and involves a lot of subtleties.  I probably should call it a Tai Chi'ish form, because few of the hundreds of moves look like traditional Tai Chi. But that's the way of water. It can take on an infinity of forms, because water is fluid, flexible, formless. Which is the…
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Posted inBooks Science

Each of us isn’t a thing, but a web of connections

Before moving on to subjects other than quantum theory, which I've written about here and here recently, I want to talk in my own words regarding what I like about Carlo Rovelli's book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The previous posts consisted mostly of excerpts from the book. So here's my attempt to describe what appealed to me the most about Helgoland. (That's an island in the North Sea where Heisenberg came up with his key concepts about the quantum world.) Rovelli is an exceptionally clear writer. He also has a poetic sense that isn't unique among physicists, but…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

Mind and consciousness through the eye of quantum physics

Here's additional excerpts from physicist Carlo Rovelli's wonderful new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution." (See here for my first post about the book.) The passages below are from final chapters where Rovelli focuses on the nature of mind and consciousness in light of quantum physics.  Rovelli's take on this subject is very much in line with a post I wrote in 2018, "Awareness is a process, not a thing."  Consciousness isn't a thing. It is a process. Thinking of it as a thing makes us wonder what kind of a thing it is, whereas we should be…
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Posted inBooks Science

Relational view of quantum theory reeks of truth

If you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. Well, whether or not you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. At least a little bit. Because below I've shared an excerpt from physicist Carlo Rovelli's amazing new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The excerpt doesn't do justice to the entire book, but it will give you a feel for Rovelli's relational take on quantum physics -- which makes so much sense, it's hard to understand how anyone could disagree with it (though I'm sure many do). I'll have more to say about…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Be born again through science

Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, has written a compelling book about the universe: Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Here's a passage from his Afterword chapter that I like a lot. It is indeed strange that we make such a division between internal and external worlds, when in truth there is only one thing going on. The child of our introduction, now an adult, may come to understand the fundamental conclusions that science, following its radically conservative method, reaches about the physical world.  Then she is prepared to revisit the starting point of her adventure…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Wear your identity lightly if you value truth

This morning I finished reading Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of three previous posts (here, here, and here). Her final chapters were great. Two had to do with how we sometimes hold on to beliefs so tightly, they become part of our identity. This is especially true of religious and political beliefs. Here's an excerpt  from the "How Beliefs Become Identities" chapter. The problem with our tendency to turn beliefs into identities isn't that it pits us against each other. At least, that's not the problem I'm concerned with here.…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Update your beliefs often as new information comes in

Every morning I read another chapter of Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of two previous posts (here and here). I really liked her "How to Be Wrong" chapter. Along with most people, I don't enjoy finding out I was wrong about something. But it's a heck of a lot better than continuing on in my wrongness, which keeps me from learning a more complete truth about that thing. Below you can read excerpts from that chapter. They're in three sections, dealing with changing your mind frequently, the ease of…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Equanimity is like a 360 degree openness

Most mornings I listen to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app. Fairly frequently Warren talks about equanimity. One way he describes equanimity is as a 360 degree openness.  I like that image. I picture myself sitting in a chair that rotates in a full circle so I can see everything through the panoramic window of my mind. The stuff I like. The stuff I don't like. Worries. Problems. Joys. Challenges. Pleasantness. Irritations. Whatever.  To alter the metaphor a bit, I picture my mind's panoramic 360 degree window as not being made of glass, but having…
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