A long time ago someone asked me to explain to them what it is exactly that I believe in. Well, what started as a simple question has turned into a much larger situation somewhere at the intersection of epistemology, religion, computers, and game theory.
Below is a series of related, but independent essays, tugging at all of the various and sundry strings that make up my own mind. Hopefully, at the end, I’ll come to a conclusion, but chances are we will just bumble our way into more questions instead.
Note: Blog posts for me aren’t really ever done. I update formatting, titles, and clarify arguments frequently. So things are subject to change.
- Chapter 1: Atheism vs Religion
I’ve always wanted to learn everything there is to know about the universe, but how does one even learn when their own beliefs are suspect. Worse, the alternatives don’t really feel all that better. - Chapter 2: A Mathematical UniverseThe thing that got me addicted to knowledge is the idea that fundamentally the world makes sense. Turns out, that concept alone is had to unpack.
- Chapter 3: Second TruthThe difficulty with discussing truth is that there are two things we could be referring to. Here I talk about magicians, tables, human souls, and their relationship truth.
- Chapter 4: A Eulogy for EvangelicalsWhat started as an attempt to answer the question, “What exactly do I believe?” turned into an in depth examination of what actually caused me to leave evangelicalism.
- Chapter 5: A Theory Of GamesThe hardest part about talking about games is simply agreeing on what it is that we are talking about.
- Chapter 5: Orbiting JupiterWhy does the pursuit of technological progress so frequently lead to disaster? Here we explore the concepts around optimization in order understand better why technological utopias can’t last.
