Why You Need a Body, Part 974
humans like AI hallucinate all the time, but have (sometimes rapid) iterative correxion by contact with reality
-an LDS friend
Its why you need trials. Trials = contact with reality. They are painful in themselves, naturally, but they are also painful because they expose your models as false. You discover you weren’t doing as well as you ought.
Prosperity is known to be spiritually dangerous. Why? Because it shields you from immediate contact with reality. Power is known to be dangerous. Why? ditto. Prosperity and power (and status and fame) allow you to shape your local reality according to your models.
Humility is when you cease to believe that reality owes it to you to correspond to your models. (A surprisingly hard belief to get rid of).
The level of commandments small and large that we have seems unworkable. It is! Do you read your scriptures 30 minutes a day, write in your journal, garden, daily seek learning out of the best books, do family history, call and visit your assigned brothers and sisters, correspond with distant family and friends, get involved with community service and local politics, counsel together as a family, do your PPIs, have daily periods of quiet reflection, keep your home and garage and shed clean and orderly, do regular maintenance on your cars, save for retirement, pay a full tithe and a generous offering, attend the temple regularly, have fun and play like a little child, let the things of tomorrow take thought unto themselves, care for the poor and the needy, read to your kids, visit the elderly, create family memories, mourn with those that mourn, exercise, stretch, be romantic with your spouse, have a cheerful attitude, ponder, socialize, witness about the gospel, etc? I could go on. Sometimes its helpful to think of all this not as a practical list of daily and weekly activities because wow good luck with that but as a way of ensuring that you never delude yourself that your model comfortably fits reality. When you think you’ve arrived you are sure to discover some missing piece which forces you to jumble everything back up like a kaleidoscope and re-engage with reality all over again.
Too much digital bad. It’s like an AI training itself on other AI. Same with mass media. Even if they weren’t deliberately poisoned, which they sometimes are. Having models is good, so getting models is good, but only as a jumping off point. Too much learning makes you think you are wise? Its because learning stuffs you full of models. Even learning that you think isn’t about models at all. Formal, conscious models about how the world works is only the tip of the iceberg of your models.
WJT
October 29, 2023
The title threw me off there. I need a body part?
E.C.
October 29, 2023
@ WJT,
Perhaps an oxford comma might be in order?
@ G,
I’ve been (more than) a little overwhelmed by ‘the list’ of things I ought to be doing lately. It’s impossible to do all of those things and also follow King Benjamin’s injunction not to run faster or labor more than we have strength. Christ makes all the difference.
In C.S. Lewis’s conception of the afterlife, the closer you are to Christ, the more real you are. I think that’s a very good way of looking at the Atonement – a return to the ultimate Truth of the universe.
Zen
October 29, 2023
Speaking of hallucinations interrupted by reality, I used to think we merely needed the Savior as a cleanser from sin.
Then I realized we need his help to do what is right.
Then I began to understand, we depend on his help to even point us in the right direction. Many of my prayers are simply coming to know his will better and accepting it.
Now, in the vein of G’s original post, what should worry us, is the line in Matthew 24, where we are warned that even the very elect shall be deceived. We need the Spirit’s guidance.
G.
October 30, 2023
Body Part 974 — never leave home without it
Zen
October 30, 2023
How well do we comprehend reality and our own bodies? I have always been fascinated by Traditional Chinese Medicine and their point of view. They recognize an additional internal organ and multiple layers between body and spirit.
Of course, all this in addition to chi and pressure points.
There is something to it. I can feel chi just a bit – I don’t know what it is or what it means. But there is more there than we understand.
Robert S.
October 31, 2023
It’s models all the way down.
Zen
October 31, 2023
I was pondering a trial that my wife was going through, and I realized that this ‘reality updates our models’, isn’t just for our own experiences and problems. But also for others problems.
I remembered back to when I was a single and depressed. The best way of dealing with depression isn’t to focus on ourselves. But to serve others. We aren’t going to really serve them without seeing their issues and problems.
The World is full of terrible solutions for problems, partly because the self-appointed authorities have no experience with the people they are trying to save. They don’t really understand, because the experience of learning to understand would be too much work and/or low class.
On a mission, you meet all kinds of people. As a parent, you deal with all kinds of problems and situations. As a spouse, you learn about the insanities of the opposite sex. As a home teacher, or any other calling in the church, you see people’s problems great and small.
Our inclination is to focus on ourselves. But so much of the gospel is to redirect our focus on others. We can learn much, much faster that way.
In a similar vein, I just read a great article on Goodhart’s Law. I thought that was just some good advice. Now I view it with a kind of horror that we can not simply avoid.