Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 4
Scientific method is insufficient to answer questions which are meta-methological. For any formal epistemic method there must always exist a set of meta-methodological questions which adjudicate between methods. How do you know whether method #1 is superior to method #2? Obviously this matter cannot be resolved by employing either method #1 or method #2, as that would be question-begging and self-biased. Get this: the question of whether science is superior to witchcraft cannot be resolved using science! It must be resolved using something higher. This point is not understood by almost anyone! But it gets worse. By extension, there also cannot be a single meta-methodological method because there will be questions about which meta-criteria to use. So, there will be meta-method #1 and meta-method #2 and you cannot use either to adjudicate which one is best, as there will always be meta-meta questions.
This demonstrates why epistemology cannot be reduced to scientific method, rationality, nor any kind of method. Epistemology is necessarily prior to and more fundamental than any articulable method. Epistemology is the field of all possible methods, true and false. Epistemology is not just more science. Epistemology transcends science. There are truths within epistemology which science cannot fathom, access, nor prove. Science is necessarily subordinate to epistemology. Epistemology must always remain an open-ended, unbounded field. This is the case because fundamentally we do not know which method is best. Whatever ideas you have about which method will reflect reality best — is just a guess. Scientific method has always been nothing more than a guess. The question of knowing which method reflects reality best is a harder class of question than any question of observable empirical fact. It is easier to know if atoms exist than it is to know whether scientific method is true.
Consider: How would you know, how would you demonstrate, that scientific method is true and best? Do you see that this is a harder problem than building an advanced atomic microscope? Humans can build atomic microscopes, humans cannot prove scientific method. This demonstrates why science cannot exist without epistemology, philosophy, and ultimately metaphysics. The issue of metaphysics goes even deeper and I’m not even addressing here. It is impossible to reduce away meta-scientific issues in the naïve way that most defenders of science wish to do. There are always meaningful questions which science cannot answer but upon which science’s entire existence and validity hinges. Acknowledging this fact drives scientists and rationalists nuts because it reveals an unfixable chink in their entire worldview. In their mind is opens Pandora's Box to "woo". But this isn't a bug, this is a feature. The core problem is that scientific method is too closed to account for all truths about reality. Complaining about woo is not a solution, it is a childish deflection of the serious philosophy at play here. It is a fact that science does not have and cannot ever have a solid foundation. But, no serious scientist is allowed to admit this, which is the secret reason why serious scientists and rationalists do not do deep philosophy — because if they did, they would realize that science has no basis. What is the actual basis of science? Guesswork.
This is not a theoretical or academic matter. Science has no ground and it could not be otherwise. But this is not commonly understood, as the vast majority of mankind just believes that science is reality. No. This has never been true and cannot ever be true for deep metaphysical reasons — reasons of infinity that are beyond the scope of this post. My claim is, if you question science deeply enough, the entire system will fall apart. Therefore, it is fundamental to science’s existence never to question its own foundations to rock-bottom. If science seriously questioned its own foundations it would destroy itself. Which is why scientism is a stubborn old mule. You're not arguing with facts, you're arguing with group-think and unquestioned paradigmatic assumptions.
But how is it possible that science is foundationally groundless yet science still produces results and technology? Well, that’s a serious trick, indeed, which I don’t have time or space to explain here.
It follows from all of the above that no honest scientist is ever allowed to say, “The world is scientific.” No. You do not know that. You never knew that. You never proved that. That’s just a guess, nothing more. And it is a false guess. The world is not scientific. The world is meta-scientific. But scientists have sworn a figurative oath of loyalty to science, not truth, so their mind is incapable of understanding what I said here. And so they will forever remain wrong about the nature of reality. That is the price you pay for not taking philosophy seriously. Your paradigm tells you that philosophy doesn’t matter to science. Of course you never knew that, you never proved that — it was just a guess. Well, have fun living and dying in that paradigm, while those of us who know better soar above you like eagles.
Out beyond science and rationality there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Here is a physicist discussing some of the myths behind scientific method.
I've discussed this in my series, Deconstructing The Myth Of Science, but the problem of falsifiability — and the illusion of a monolith scientific method — goes way deeper than this physicist, or any physicist understands. The depth of these epistemic issues is not understood even by the world's more serious physicists. That's the key insight.
Falsifiablity is talked about a lot by scientists, but it is an epistemically unsound notion. Falsifiablity is question-begging. Falsifiablity cannot work because it assumes that you can know the full consequences of a theory. A theory might seem unfalsifiable today, but tomorrow some new technology comes along which allows us to test aspects of the theory which were in the realm of science fiction. That serious scientists and physicists do not under this is embarrassing to their entire profession.
Today, multiverse theory seems unfalsifiable, but tomorrow it may not be. And so it is with all things. You cannot predict ahead of time which tests you will be able to invent to test a theory.
Conversely, you cannot rule out a theory just because you lack the means to test it. Moreover, the ability to test a theory not only depends on technology and instrumentation, but more importantly, on your mind's ability to imagine new tests. There are some theories which are true, but which the human mind is too limited to imagine tests for. This is especially the case when a theory requires things radically outside of established paradigms. Testing is not just a matter of doing testing in a perfunctory way, testing requires creativity and intelligence. And inventing new kinds of tests requires questioning your paradigmatic epistemic and metaphysical assumptions. Which is why new science cannot be done without a deep grasp of epistemology and metaphysics.
It is possible to test whether God exists or not, but not without changing how you understand what counts as a valid test. "Valid test" is a relativistic notion. You do not what what constitutes a valid test and whatever ideas you have of "validity" could easily be wrong because scientific validity is backwards-defined using prior results and social convention. A scientist's notion of what counts as a valid test is question-begging. But scientists do not understand this, taking the validity of test, proof, and evidence as an objective given. But in fact these things are subjective, relative, socially-constructed, and not known. As new domains of reality are explored and discovered, the notion of validity gets updated such that you cannot predict where validity will ultimately go. Today, if your scientific experiment results in a ghost, you will probably consider that experiment invalid. However, in the future our standards of validity might update so much that a ghost counts as valid. What counts as valid depends on what your worldview is able to accommodate. When your paradigm can't explain a ghost, it considers the ghost invalid. When you upgrade your paradigm such that it easily explains a ghost, now the ghost is allowed to be valid. This shows you the prime importance of worldview in the doing of science. The mind considers anything that doesn't fit its worldview as impossible and therefore invalid and illegitimate. It is not scientific method that runs the show, it is Mind. Mind is the sense-maker, not science! Mind transcends science.
The physicist in the video above says, "Science is about honesty." NO! Nothing in the mind is about honesty! Mind is only about self-deception! Science is about self-deception. The function of science is to lock Mind into a dream! Science is what fools you into thinking that you aren't dreaming. It's not that scientists are deliberately dishonest, it's that they are unconscious zombies sleep-walking through life. They are not bad people, they just aren't intelligent enough to fathom self-deception.
Thought is not fundamental enough to comprehend existence/reality. The entire domain of thought is 2nd order. All thought is symbolic and semantic in structure. Symbols and semantics are not the basis of reality, they are a higher order phenomenon. Obviously reality existed long before symbols, semantics, and thought came into being. Obviously existence, Consciousness, being, Truth, reality is prior to symbolic thought. Consciousness can exist without thought, but thought cannot exist without Consciousness. Truth exists without thought, but through cannot exist without Truth. This demonstrates that Consciousness and Truth are more fundamental. Thought cannot reach down that low since thought is constructed out of them. This is an inescapable epistemic limit. But it is only a limit for thought. It does not apply to Consciousness or Mind. Consciousness can reach all the way down to the bottom because Consciousness is the base and Consciousness is unlimited. Consciousness is not symbolic. It follows from this that scientific method and rationality cannot ever grasp existence or ultimate reality because both require thought. What is scientific method without thought, without symbols? Science and rationality are 2nd order symbolic constructs. Reality is too fundamental for science and rationality to grasp it. But science and rationality does not understand this.
This is analogous to how a light microscope cannot reach down to see individual atoms because light is too “big”, not fundamental enough. Thought is like light, it’s too big to grasp the substrate of which it is made. Thought cannot grasp its own substrate — which is Consciousness. But Consciousness can grasp Consciousness because it is its own substrate. Consciousness is one with itself. Consciousness can grasp itself because it is 1st order. This is the technical reason why mysticism is required. Mysticism is an epistemic mode beyond symbolic thought. This is why no matter how much science and rationality tries, it can never do away with mysticism. For purely technical reasons these can never be a full understanding or accounting of reality without mysticism. This state of affairs requires science and rationality to be humble and deferential to mysticism. But science and rationality are too epistemically arrogant and metaphysically arrogant for that. Which, in a nutshell, is the folly and devilry of reason and science.
Science and reason must bow before God. But they refuse. This arrogance is what makes scientists stupid. Human reason is nowhere intelligent enough to comprehend reality. This is not a mystical rationalization, this is a basic technical fact which ought to be so obvious that I shouldn't have to explain it.
China is achieving impressive social development. China offers an interesting different paradigm from the West. It's worth seriously considering the Chinese paradigm of governance on its own terms, without doing the usual thing of judging or dismissing it from inside the Western paradigm.
Obviously the Chinese government has serious problems — namely: corruption, no democracy, lack of free speech, human rights abuses — but it needs to be considered with an open mind. The following videos opened my mind on this matter.
China is doing many things right. American governance has a serious flaw: it has been completely captured by powerful corporations. In America, corporations are more powerful than the government — which is backwards. In China, government is more powerful than corporations — which is correct because corporations represent minority interests. Only the government can represent the welfare of the whole citizenry. Somehow we need a system that blends the best of China and America while eliminating the corruption, corporatism, and trampling of personal freedoms.
Stephen Wolfram has done work to visualize the alien minds of AI. This is fascinating stuff which aligns with my own — direct — explorations of Alien Mind. According to Wolfram, it turns out that you can use AI to get a glimpse inside how an alien mind might work and feel.
If you're interested in this idea and the images, you must read Wolfram's long, technical blog post:
Wolfram's Blog - Mental Imagery Of Alien Minds
Of course when I talk about Alien Mind I mean something far more radical than what Wolfram describes. But Wolfram's work still offers valuable insights on this esoteric issue.
This is just a meme but it has much deeper metaphysical meaning than its makers comprehend.
This image shows you the structure of reality. This is Oneness. When you Awaken everything is connected because you recognize it all as your own Mind. God is just your own mind recognizing itself as Absolute and Infinite. Everything becomes connected when you recognize it as part of a single infinite field of Consciousness.
Sex becomes way more profound when your realize that you're having sex with your own Mind.
And when you Awaken even deeper, it looks like this:
This is not the deepest level.
When you Awaken even deeper you become an infinite singularity.
Albert Einstein asked the question: “How can it be that mathematics — being a product of human thought, which is independent of experience — is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”
Answer: Since reality is nothing but an Infinite Mind (Consciousness), the human mind — including all objects of thought — is identical to the objects of reality. Human thought is not independent of experience nor reality, human thought IS experience and IS reality. A human being is not thinking about reality, REALITY is thinking! When Reality thinks about itself it comprehends truths about itself. Human cognition is just a sub-set of God’s cognition. Cognition is not just something humans do isolated from physical reality, there is no distinction between cognition and physical reality. Very careful observation of the experience of cognition yields absolute truths about the workings of Mind. Mathematics is the empirical study of a certain kind of logical cognition. And logic is a deep ontological feature of Mind. Math describes the world so well because the world is a Mind. Logic is the mechanics of Mind. Mathematics is infinite because Mind is Infinite. Math and science are the study of the patterns found inside an Infinite Mind.
This also explains why reality cannot be understood only through math and science, since cognition is not limited to math nor science, and Mind is not limited to cognition. From this it follows that anyone who wishes to understand all of reality must use cognition that transcends scientific and logical method, quantification and formalization, and must use methods that transcend cognition itself — AND ultimately — methods that transcend sanity, since sanity is just one domain of Mind.
Math is the study of the empirical consequences of the logic of division and unity. The logic of division and unity is the structure of all mental activity, since Mind is an infinite field of infinite division and infinite unity. Number is the division of Mind. Equation is the reunification of a divided Mind. God is every imaginable division, which is every imaginable number — all held in Eternal Meta-Unity.