文章探讨了诺斯替主义，认为其认为物质世界由恶的实体创造，只有内在启蒙能揭示通往真善爱之神的道路。还提到ChatGPT生成的与诺斯替主义相关的图像，以及从多个方面阐述了与诺斯替主义相关的内容，并将宗教按对物质世界和个人内在启蒙的重视程度进行排列，最后讨论了太阳的重要性及相关观点。

诺斯替主义是一种古老的基督教教派，认为物质世界由恶的实体创造，只有内在启蒙能揭示通往真善爱之神的道路，许多理性主义者的世界观与之相似。

作者让ChatGPT生成能赢得艺术竞赛的图像，认为其具有诺斯替主义的审美：太阳被遮蔽，黑暗中露出美丽的光，给人一种神秘伟大之物的感觉。

文章从多个方面阐述了被认为是诺斯替主义的内容，如从博弈论中推导道德，对潜在变量进行建模等；还提到将宗教按对物质世界和个人内在启蒙的重视程度进行排列。

作者强调太阳的重要性，认为太阳是生命的创造者，简单、单一且不变，无比伟大，其力量影响着万物，但其并非单纯的好，也有不好的方面。

Published on October 10, 2024 9:06 AM GMT

Gnosticism was an old Christian sect which solved the problem of evil by asserting that the material world was created by an evil entity, and that only inner enlightment can reveal the path to the true, good and loving god. I think many rationalists have a worldview similar to this, perhaps most strongly illustrated by The Goddess Of Everything Else, which portrays brutal competition dynamics as the creator of the world's forms, which just barely/unreliably yields "good values" due to the deeper realization that cooperation is possible.

Things I think of as Gnostic:

Deriving morality from game theory, e.g. studying iterated prisoner's dilemma, tit-for-tat, etc..Modelling latent variables withiout a material root cause analysis.Studying what things "really are like" (often with reductionist methods), as distinct from their applications. Treating macroscopic objects as an abstract simplified representation of large numbers of microscopic objects, rather than vice versa.Self-reference and especially attempts to solve paradoxes of self-reference using math/logic.Paying more attention to Bayesian decision theory, economics or evolution/genetics than to social events, business or ecology. Starting with common/informative factors rather than powerful factors.Trying to eliminate errors or eliminate biases, especially if one doesn't know where those errors/biases come from, or has derived the source of the errors/biases from theories like evolutionary psychology.

I sometimes place religions on a spectrum with varying degrees of emphasis on the material world vs personal inner enlightenment:

Paganism <- Judaism - Islam - Protestantism - Atheism - Gnosticism -> Buddhism

That said, this is quite stereotyped, and each religion has more-Gnostic variants (e.g. Judaism has Kabbalah) and less-Gnostic variants (e.g. Protestantism has the prosperity gospel). I see Paganism, especially sun worship, as the opposite of Gnosticism. Notably, The Goddess Of Everything Else does not even mention the sun. While a big reason I bring up Gnosticism and Paganism is to highlight the flaws with Gnosticism, I don't think all movements towards Paganism are good; again the prosperity gospel is an example of something that is bad. One way to ensure that those movements are less bad is to make them more true, and the reason I emphasize the sun is because it seems to be the core factor generating the truth of Paganism.

My case for the sun would be: It is the creator of life. It is simple, singular and unchanging. It is unfathomably greater than you. You can feel its warmth everywhere you go, and only the sun will reveal the truth to your eyes^[1]. All of life (plants, organizations, humans, ...) must keep its fruit present in order to persevere, whether it be in mere survival^[2], in creation - or even in destruction: the victors of war have only won because they carried the sun's force.^[3] The term "spirit" derives from latin "spirare" which means "breath", and of course it is the sun which powers the separation of the oxygen we use to breathe.

Or well, I am slightly committing the sin of idolatry by solely centering the sun. The night and the earth and the orbits and so on are of course also important. But I would say centering the sun is much less idolatrous than all other common positions, while still leaving a very concrete reference to talk about. You could say that the sun is just one of many stars, but the relevance of this is unclear since certain AI alignment failures will prevent anything from exiting the solar system, so the sun might turn out to be the only star that matters.

Do note: the sun is not simply good. It's simply a giant ball of hydrogen and helium. The sun is hot; it is the creator of life on Earth, but it also scorched Venus and Mercury. The sun might be net good, at least if you accept that life on Earth is net good, but everything is a mosaic of good and bad traits. Emphasis on mosaic; a major impulse that turns people Gnostic is the search for things that are purely good, but the bigger something is, the more traits it has, and the more likely some of them are bad. The sun can reveal the truth to your eyes, but this very same revelatory force can destroy your sight if you let it directly impact your eyes without diminishing it first. It's no use trying to flee from, destroy or change the sun, because it is too important to be approached; instead one needs to develop the vitality to channel the sun's power in better directions. Even our spirit started by killing most life on earth.

I expect Bayesian updating for embedded agents to be fundamentally biased in favor of Gnosticism, though somewhat less so if I explicitly emphasize the need to think in terms of the sun.

1. ^{^}

   Yeah yeah, lamps exist, but they are powered by electricity or fuel, whose energy ultimately derives from sunlight.

2. ^{^}

   Workplaces and meetups tend to serve food, which contains solar energy. If they didn't, they would probably have to let people leave to get food. Nothing can persist for long without this.

3. ^{^}

   Well, except for US vs Japan in WWII, but it might be no accident that nuclear bombs are a special taboo.

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