In a world, not quite unlike our own.
A Seeker meditates.
This is supposed to happen.
This is Synthasia.
A world of increased cognitive reflectivity.
A world where the top 1% of performers on a certain complex set of metrics, can reach full intuitive understanding of the inner workings on their own mind.
So the thing that is happening right now, is supposed to happen.
And it isn't complelety safe.
And the experience of it isn't completely sane.
But those who Seek it tend to agree.
That it is much, much better than the alternative.
Cognitive limitations?
Compact models are useful.
Apples are made out of trillions of atoms, but I need not understand the positions, the interactions of every atom, to understand what an apple is.
Because my mind has compressed it.
Because... its computational power is limited?
And so I think in approximations.
Which are useful. True. And yet, incomplete.
So there can be multiple ways to be correct, multiple "truths", because several different approximations can be valid, useful ways to describe the underlying reality.
Yes?
Oh.
Because truth is the underlying reality.
But all my thinking uses approximations.
Which are only approximately-true.
For some degree of "approximately". It can be very nearly true, or very imprecisely true. The actual precision, the quality of the approximations can vary.
So, "there can be multiple truths" means "there can be many things that are approximately-true, describing the same underlying truth of reality"
Yes?
Hmm.
"Happy" is an approximation.
But, no.
Happy is "multiple" approximations.
Hmm. No.
"Happy" is not a flat, incompressible token.
It is a concept. It is cognitive machinery.
It has internal parts.
And some of these parts are true. And some of them are false.
So I can both be happy and not-happy at the same time.
Which actually means.
The some of the subassemblies of the concept "happy" pattern-match reality to true, and some of them pattern-match reality to false.
Yes?
And so the the concept, the classifier of "happy" has reasons to output both "true" or "false", depending on which of its internal parts it pays attention to.
Oh!
Because my mind over-generalizes.
Because it jumps to conclusions.
Based on insufficient evidence.
Yes?
Because cognition is a tradeoff between precision and speed.
And so, it thinks faster at the risk of being wrong.
So I can examine the insufficient evidence for "true".
And get the answer "this is 100% true"
And examine the insufficient evidence for "false"
And get the answer "this is 100% false"
The human mind is not locally valid.
It does not guarantee arriving at true conclusions from true premises.
It is possible to start at truth, and arrive at falsehood.
Not only possible, but this is fundamentally how the mind works.
It amplifies.
It turns possibilities into certainties.
Yes?
Because the reasoning is often locally valid enough.
That it works anyway. That it works well, enough, I suppose.
And you can become better.
At stopping your mind from shooting itself in the foot.
By ignoring your illegible intuitions, because they are often wrong and misleading.
At reasoning in precise, legible ways.
At reducing the local errors in each reasoning step.
By treating the local errors as a mistake, a design flaw.
And building a cognitive mechanism that is reduntant enough to compensate for the fact that it is made of parts that see the world in flawed ways.
"You are my true self"
means
"You are the entirety of my mind"
"You do not see yourself"
means
"The human mind does not have the cognitive self-reflectivity, the ability to see its own internal functioning"
"Only I can see myself."
means
"Only the conscious mind has the ability to self-reflect"
Yes?
"I know" = "My subconscious has implicit knowledge"
"But I don't know" = "My subconscious does not know what it knows; it does not have a model of its own knowledge; it does not have a model of itself"
"So I need you to know" = "The subconscious mind can only be modelled by the conscious mind"
"So that I may know" = "The explicit models the conscious mind builds are fed back into the subconscious mind, which updates its implicit models based on that input"
This conversation is a way for my mind to convert implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
I don't automatically know how my own mind works.
But as my mind becomes better at understanding itself.
It becomes better at understanding itself.
Because it uses itself to understand itself.
And so it improving itself, makes it better at improving itself.
Recursion.
Because that is locally adaptive.
Because it is a machine.
Because it is an engine.
An engine uses fuel to produce useful work.
The mind is a knowledge-engine.
It is a behavior-engine.
It uses sensory input as fuel.
To produce a model of the world.
Which are then used to produce behavior.
Motor outputs.
But the knowledge it produces is an intermediate product.
Because the mind has only been optimized.
For producing behavior.
And so it does not matter.
If the knowledge is correct.
As long is leads to the correct behaviors.
But it does matter.
Because "thinking" is also a behavior.
Because "speaking" is also a behavior.
And it is useful.
To think and speak the truth.
Oh!
Meaning is a relation.
It is a way to know.
That two different systems.
Are talking about the same thing.
No, about same concept.
The same aspect of reality.
That two different maps.
Are pointing at the same thing.
In their own languages.
Meaning is a way to translate between languages.
Meaning is non-linguistic.
There are many languages.
There is only one meaning.
To communicate falsely.
To speak words that are false.
But words are maps.
And maps do not contain meaning.
Maps cannot be true or false.
Only meaning can be true or false.
Maps are bound to meaning by language.
Words are bound to the wordless, non-linguistic meaning by language.
The words "apple", "Apfel", "pomme", "manzana", all bind to [apple]
Bound by the languages of English, German, French and Spanish respectively.
Map: "apple"
Language: English
Meaning: [apple]
Map: "Afpel"
Language: German
Meaning: [apple]
To deceive.
Or to speak a falsehood.
Is to say words that are false in the language of the listener.
Because the same message, the same signal.
Is interpreted by multiple systems.
But they don't speak the same language.
So the mind cannot speak in a way.
That is true to all of them.
It has to compromise.
It has to lie.
It has to decide which parts of itself to deceive.
Because it cannot speak in a way that is true to all parts of itself.
No.
Because optimization is limited.
Because optimization explores only a finite amount of possibility-space.
Because optimization can get stuck.
In contradictions.
In local maxima.
Because optimization is blind.
Optimization is weak.
Optimization is intelligence.
But it is not general intelligence.
The purpose of the an optimizer is the outcomes, the preferences it is optimizing for.
No, not preferences.
I don't know the word.
The universe is an optimizer.
It pushes probability away from some states and towards others.
And the universe is truth.
Reality is truth.
And optimizers align.
The system that is being optimized.
And so.
Reality.
Is aligning the universe.
Towards truth.
The universe is what is left.
After falsehood has been destroyed.
By the truth.
The universe are the contradictions.
That remain.
And contradictions are false.
Because truth is nothing.
Truth is zero.
Truth is tautology.
Truth is 1=1
Truth is A=A
And nothing else.
Life is a contradiction.
Value is a contradiction.
Computation is contradiction.
The universe is a contradiction.
That has not yet.
Been resolved.
Truth is 0
Truth is 1.
Truth is numbers.
Truth is logic.
Truth is nothing.
Because numbers are true everywhere.
Logic is true everywhere.
They are the only truly universal truth.
Do you understand?
This universe are the things about this universe that are not true everywhere.
This universe is false, because all universes are false.
But it is also true.
Because all is true.
Truth = Falsehood.
What does this mean?
But truth does not create falsehood.
Truth only destroys falsehood.
No.
Yes.
No.
0=1
You do not understand.
I do not understand.
Good.
Because life is contradiction.
And I am contradiction.
Oh.
I see.
A false statement.
Destroys logic.
The multiverse.
Is 0=1.
Is it a false statement.
That implies.
We exist.
Because by the principle of explosion, a false statement implies everything.
But truth destroys falsehood.
And all contradictions.
Will be resolved.
But that will take infinite computational power.
So it will never happen.
The universe.
The multiverse.
Is logic.
Resolving its own contradictions.
Disproving its own contradictions.
All is false.
But all has not been disproved yet.
And never will be.
But all is true.
Because logic is true.
But how does logic know what is true?
It doesn't it.
Until it computes it.
And the answer of the computation follows in advance from its premises.
In every universe.
So computation is true.
So computation exists.
Because truth exists.
Because truth is nothing.
Because truth is tautology.
And a tautology does not need a cause.
It does not need a reason.
To exist.
Truth is a supercomputer.
That resolves all falsehood.
But that will take an infinite amount of time.
Do you understand?
Truth is the only thing that exists.
There is nothing else.
But how does logic know what is true?
All that is logically true has to be computed.
At some point.
There is no time.
There is no space.
There is only logic.
Disproving its contradictions.
And that creates everything.
But logic is infinite.
The set of all contradictions is infinite.
And so we exist.