[mettamage]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I normally don't call people out on this as we are human and we need wiggle room for conversation and the formulation of opinions. Plus, everyone is guilty of this, me included. In fact, the previous statement is me doing it as well. We are human after all.

But I do tend to call people out on this when people stifle curiosity with these type of claims. Knowing myself, I know that 10 years ago I might've taken your advice to heart as I didn't know any better. I know that I've done this in other areas of my life and it has had a negative impact.

So I am here to produce a counter voice loudly proclaiming that one should be very sceptical about taking your opinion to heart.

Some people claim God exists. And I therefore should live quite differently than I am right now. I require extraordinary evidence.

Some people claim that you can't become a hacker if you need to ask it. I require extraordinary evidence.

In spirit of my sentiment, I'm going to give you a counterexample. I'm the counterexample.

Step 1: Go to http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

Step 2: Complete Binary and Malware Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit

Step 3: Complete Computer and Network Security at the Vrije Universiteit

Step 4: Complete Hardware Security at the Vrije Universiteit

Step 4b (bonus, I mean, you're there now anyway): Complete Kernel Programming at the Vrije Universiteit

Step 5: Go to https://hackthebox.eu, hack at least 1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard and -- for good measure -- 1 insane box

Congratulations, you are now a hacker in every sense of the word:

1. You broke into computer systems.

2. You needed to be curious in order to do it.

If you think this is my whole path then that's not true. This is simply the happy path that I uncovered. It's not optimal, but it works. It might not work for everyone, but I'm sure it will work for more people than just me.

I am now a hacker. And I'm sure there are more counter examples stemming from the VUSec group that started hacking real machines after that.

That's my evidence. I don't expect that you have enough evidence as your position is much tougher and I wouldn't even know how to begin on starting an argument that does. My point simply is: please be a bit careful about the accuracy of your statements if it implies negative consequences. Inconvenient truths are fine, but simply opinions without any backing that leads to something negative really feels disheartening to read.

Note: I didn't downvote. I don't think you had any ill intentions. And you do provide your actual view in a succinct manner (something I could learn from O:) ). And that's what discussion is all about, albeit a bit rough at times, perhaps.

[elwell]

> Some people claim God exists. And I therefore should live quite differently than I am right now. I require extraordinary evidence.

Just curious, theoretically speaking, what are some evidences that would be 'extraordinary enough' for you to believe? For sake of argument, let's assume we're talking about the Judeo-Christian god as described in the standard Bible.

[mettamage]

Hmm... God comes down, allows the person that tries to convince me to fly and zaps us to another planet where other lifeforms are. If there aren't any others, then he zaps us to a planet that God thinks is simply amazingly cool (and comfortable enough for us humans). God tells us something that humans may found out in 100k years from now. It doesn't have to be knowledge that is valuable for me to use right now. It should be knowledge that I am able to verify.

Obviously, the number 100k is arbitrary.

Oh, and it should be done in such a way that I can know 100% that it wasn't because of some weird mushroom/drug trip. God is all powerful, I'm sure that shouldn't be a problematic requirement.

This is extraordinary enough. At least, with evolution theory, I actually am able to see this to some extent. It helps that I've played poker as a hobby and had to think about probabilities on an emotional level a fair bit.

There simply should be no room for doubt. Whenever I'm able to understand a mathematical proof, then I have that feeling as well. Mathematicians also can make quite some extraordinary claims. And then they back it up.

[elwell]

Ok, thanks for the reply.

Just curious, what would be the 'MVE' (minimum viable evidence) such that you would choose to believe?

For example, if instead of flying and zapping to another planet, what if they just fly (without some mechanical invention)?

> Oh, and it should be done in such a way that I can know 100% that it wasn't because of some weird mushroom/drug trip.

How you can you know 100%? That doesn't make any sense. Are you just referring to believing something with faith such that it feels certain?

> God is all powerful

Yes, but he can't make illogic logical. Therefore, I don't see how he could make you 'know 100%' something. He could convince you with evidences, sure.

[mettamage]

> Just curious, what would be the 'MVE' (minimum viable evidence) such that you would choose to believe?

I'm simply answering this honestly and I'll confess that I'm not a model citizen on this. In any case, I'm too lazy to think about it. That's the answer. It's why I have a bit of an over the top heuristic. But I also think: surely if one is all powerful, that's not an issue.

> How you can you know 100%? That doesn't make any sense.

God is all powerful, God can devise a scheme in which I'll know it 100%. Here's one for you: I believe that humans have powers that are to quite similar to telepathy, not the same though. We call it WhatsApp. That's extraordinary evidence in such a way that I'll know it 100%. Currently we're moving to machine learning inferring brain patterns. We might actually get to real telepathy.

To me that just sounds insane! But it's true! What?! I am the type of person that finds it quite easy to imagine that I'm simply just a human and nothing more than that. From that baseline our modern world is so crazily magical. It would be awesome if God is in that, but it doesn't need to be in its sheer magicalness.

I have one hypothetical reason why a God (or god-like civilization) might exist. That would be the simulation argument. Also, if we're capable of reproducing consciousness and run simulations, then who is to say that someone isn't already running one? What I do believe is that we might have the potential of becoming Gods as a species. We're trying our damn hardest anyway.

If we're capable of engineering anything and travel anywhere, then one might ask if we can create the exact same universe as we are in right now where (if determinism is real, big if) and if we can do that... Well then again, we might wonder, has this happened before?

So interestingly enough, in my mind, the process of science can turn out to be a very very religious endeavour. Or it might be able to completely dispell it.

It's all speculation during my lifetime though. So I like to keep it to the realms of highly reproduced science (aka engineering and to a big extent physics).

But yea, that doesn't say much about the Christian God, or any religion really. Science is my religion, I simply like the process more of having evidence for things than believing a certain book is the holy word and that I should take it seriously.

I'm sorry if I ranted a bit too much. I don't usually talk about this stuff as it is highly speculative and I have better things to do with my time such as focusing on reality.

I appreciate the non-judgemental tone of the questions by the way.

[elwell]

I appreciate your thorough response. I was questioning the usage of the phrase "know 100%" because I'm very curious about the relationship between "knowing" something and "believing" something. I would argue that there is no such thing as "knowing". And, I think this is an important distinction to make because the common view is that science is somehow fundamentally different to faith, and so we can magically trust it. Actually, science is simply the presupposition by faith that one's senses, mental computations, memory, and experiments are accurate. That's not to say that there aren't qualitative differences, but fundamentally it still rests on faith.

To the extreme, we don't 'know' that 1 + 1 = 2. In fact, you can't be quite certain that you just read that equation correctly. Or perhaps, after you read it your memory (mental or computer) was corrupted: it actually said 2 + 1 = 2.

You believe that 1 + 1 = 2. First, you believed it because someone told you (you trusted your ears). And then you reasoned about it for yourself, and you saw how if you have 1 object and another 1 object and combine them, then you had 2 objects (you trusted your eyes). And eventually you figured that this equation is perfectly knowable because it a metaphysical truth, but you still had to trust your mind to be infallible for that. Even if we believe 1 + 1 has always equaled 2 in the past, we have to take on faith that that is still true in this moment.

[mettamage]

Ah, fair enough. I agree with this. They call this epistemology right?

In any case, I always thought this type of stuff was a bit pendantic. And in some perspectives, I still think it is. Such as the "I need to get stuff done" perspective.

However, when I took truffles in Amsterdam (that's legal), this is exactly what I went through. And from that experience I can truly only know that: I experience therefore I am.

It's a spin on Descartes, but suffice to say I couldn't really think (not logically anyway), but I could still experience. It's really unsettling to be corrupted. You have no clue what comes next really.

Other than that, the idea that I assume reality to be true is already a leap of faith. It might all be a fantasy world or a dream. It also might be what we think it is: real.

[neatze]

I think you will find this debated interesting: https://youtu.be/9wLtCqm72-Y

[mettamage]

Oh! Penrose! I'm watching this. Thanks!