Since both are undoubtedly created by hoaxes and frauds, that's an interesting observation. I guess all artwork really is derivative.
It would be neat to trace that artistic lineage back to its sources.
Then again, there is a commenter on here claiming they look like circuit diagrams (whereas I look at schematics on a daily basis and see no resemblance). So stupid.
Research demonology: have computers casting summons over fractal fragments looking for any whose phone numbers we don't already know. cf the works of Charlie Stross
Perhaps that pokemon game had more in it than we thought...
Charlie Stross is an author (and occasional poster here) who has a series collectively known as “The Laundry Files” in which magic can be performed by computers as well as by humans, by having the computers perform specific calculations.
if you mean these folks [1], then no; I think that falls under divination. I was thinking more about the graphical sigils; but there's surely other attractive signatures that could be found computationally, right?
More practical: synthesize sounds and play them in a garden, with some cameras and vision software to count insects attracted, perhaps classify by type. Add some seeking function and you might make a mechanical pied piper for pests.
Surely thats only an analogy. Cicadas are not actually demons.
Then again they did manage to get, e.g. google and Lockheed Martin(?) To actually purchase some of their wishful thinking hardware. There might have been a deal with minor/slightly demonic imp to get that far.
2nd part - you could find the song of the mosquito. They suck blood at least, and seem to be good for nothing except feeding bats. So there’s that.
You might like Scott Alexander's Unsong, freely available online. On the grounds of Yudkowsky's HPMOR, you could be excused for expecting fiction by rationalists to be generally terrible, and it is; Unsong is the exception, and proves if nothing else that Alexander missed his calling.
Please please please for God's sake stay away from this stuff. It will steal your mind and your soul. This isn't something one can innocently dabble with. Turn to God instead, He will hear you.
I thought I sold my soul to Satan for unfathomable worldly power, but accidently sold it to Stan, Certified Public Accountant[0] and then had to make so many calls to CityCorp to my soul back[1].
This article did not go over much of the problems with this stuff.
Demons are notoriously child like creatures. Once summoned they will have the human try to put themselves in some position that they believe to be humiliating for the human. They hate the human for being naturally innately better than them even if less powerful.
The article does not go over some of the acts humans are made to do. It’s quite disgusting and vile. It does not go over the nature of demons. It’s quite pathetic. There is zero point in trying to dabble in this. Unless you believe your life cannot get any worse than it is. Occult will help you realize how bad it can really get.
Haha. But this is no joke. Normally demons live in a separate universe and stay to themselves. Interaction with animals can occur. But unprovoked interaction with human is rare.
Hey deadalus, quick question here: how does all of this compare to Luciferianism and left-hand path kind of stuff? I started reading some of the latter, but I found them to be so ridden with grammar errors that I wish Satan were an English teacher. Perhaps the most decent book I found was Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible, but so far I am finding it too down-to-earth to quench my thirst for the exotic.
By the way, do you have an English translation for the Liber Azerate? I have the original in Swedish, but I have not learned Swedish yet.
Despite the name, LaVeyan Satanism has nothing to do with summoning occult beings as in GP's post. The latter (as with worship of the devil more generally) would instead be comprised under "Diabolism" which is very much a niche pursuit. It's even hard to tell if what looks like Diabolist practice isn't something subtly different, and more like the Voudun practice of summoning some "negative, dark, powerful" archetypal beings who are however quite recognizably different from any "devil". Heck, occasionally even something as basic as worship of the god Cernunnos (a very recognizable archetype of nature and the "male" principle) gets conflated by some with Diabolism.
Most of the authors I linked here are not linked with Luciferianism. They deal with occult 'rituals' in order to gain a certain result - wealth, love, happiness, destruction of enemies, getting more opportunities. So you can expect to find a lot of rituals that aid you in getting those results. The work is not philosophical or analytical - but result oriented.
> wealth, love, happiness, destruction of enemies, getting more opportunities
One should be aware of the fact that
these things can be pursued quite effectively with no need for seeking out or confronting any malevolent beings or forces, and this will generally be an easier and more fruitful approach, at least for the novice practitioner. It's very rare that even one's outwardly "selfish" goals are not far more amenable to a positive approach which can implicitly leverage the "loving kindness" that's inherent to the universe according to many practitioners of magick and similar pursuits-- relying on it as a key regulating, stabilizing and harmonizing principle.
Further suggestions (from my Youtube subscription) :
Behemoth-X, Black Witch Coven, Anewbiz, Ashera Goddess, Chthonia, Clandestine Lodge, D.H. Thorne, Damon Dark, Dark Sorcery, Enoch Petrucelly, From the Light of the Darkness, Go Virtual Lucifera, Groovy Psycho, Jenny Constantine, Kali Tribune, Mark Henry, Martin Faulks, Michael Hyson, Michael W. Ford, Mimir's Brunnr, mindandmagick, Mona Magick, Nexus Void, Occult Hive, OFSAdrianna, Orlee Stewart, Reality Files, Robert Sepehr, Satan and Sons, Saurious 7, ShanGO Rei TV, Slayden Sorcery, Sorsha Runarius, SQS, Taliesin McKnight, Tata Lucero, Taylor Ellwood, Teala Petrova, Temple of Ascending Flame, The Black Tower, The Eternal Black Flame 666, The House of Magick, The Infernal Obelisk, The Magick Couple, The Nemeton, The Serpent's Key, The Symposium, Thomas LeRoy, Thomas Sheridan, traditional church of satan, Travis Magus, Vidian, XELASOMA, Xag Darklight
My question is why would anyone want to deal with this stuff. If you're relying on this silly material, you clearly don't have the faintest idea what you're doing - in all likelihood, you'll just end up "summoning" lots of random mischievous spirits who'll be trying to have fun at your expense in weird and surprising ways until you finally learn how to banish them properly. There are plenty of other ways to get started with occult and magick that don't have this particular pitfall!
Well, you had me at the first sentence but lost me at the second.
Bertrand Russell said it's all "the random collocation of atoms." As far as anyone can tell, the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything is quantum physics. It explains all of the concepts currently attributed to both the physical and "spiritual" worlds.
Many religions acknowledge that there is no dichotomy between the physical and spiritual forms of experience. There is only one thing. If that's the case, the one thing's name is quantum physics. We can puts lots of other names on it from chance to déjà vu, from "bad behavior" to Beelzebub, but it's demonstrably the random collocation of atoms and probably not much more. Unless it's The Matrix, lol.
You’re mistaken about something - the only thing hacker news denizens have in common is that they could potentially feature in posts on /r/iamverysmart.
You probably thought it was tech or something about startups…think again.
Funny how the pretentious dorks that spam this never seem to apply the quote to itself. I mean do educated people have to entertain thoughts of pedophilia without accepting it? Idiot.
I forget, is your quote attributable to Michael Scott or Wayne Gretsky?
You assume I've neither read the article or researched demonology. I have.
All of the neopagan bullshit and demonic sigils can be traced back to obvious frauds starting in the 19th century, when occultist grifting was in vogue.
This is a simplistic article on an already childish subject.
You seem pretty caught up in your own emotions on this topic and are missing my point entirely. These stories and ideas still came from human minds, and that's the part that interests me even if I think the claims are fraudulent.
One could argue that the mere existence of a concept or an idea in someone's mind makes it real, especially so if that concept or idea has real, observable side effects for others in the "real" world. Heck, isn't this why we read science fiction or play board games? They create a mental image, the image is real in our minds.
Neat but it's still a simplistic article and pretty much everything "comes from human minds."
My emotions are disdain and disbelief that people still gobble up this horseshit. Nothing wrong with that. Do you believe yourself to not have any emotions and are an arbiter of truth and perfect logic?
As technologists, we play in complicated contructed worlds, with rules and rituals, and obscure variations and debatably non-stochastic processes, created by other people all day long (and sometimes all night).
You don't have to believe in demons (or third normal form, or agile) for the body of knowledge to be interesting.
Some people take it pretty seriously, and some people do it for fun. Like LARPing.
Why all the anger? I may read on different philosophies and religions that I do not fully or partially agree with, practice or believe in, yet I may find useful life lessons in each, or drive pleasure just from the act of reading. I do not regard any of them as "bullshit" just because I do not understand or share their opinions.
There are many more demons to choose from than the ones listed in the article[0].
The interesting thing about demonology is that it was mostly being practiced in secret by Christians, even clergy (a lot of these spells and rituals use Christian liturgical elements.) They didn't believe what they were doing was "selling their soul to the devil," rather that Christ had given them dominion over angels and demons, so they had every right to summon demons and use them as they saw fit. Legend at the time was that King Solomon built the First Temple using demon slaves.
Of course the Church proper would have strenuously agreed with this way of thinking.
There was no such thing as "science" at the time - every aspect of human thought and philosophy had some religious dimension or spiritual connotation. The study of the stars and planets was tied to astrology, and the study of herbs and healing was associated with witchcraft and folk magic.
Notes for those planning to sell your soul online: eBay specifically prohibits such transactions. [1] Compared to some online bans, the reasoning is pleasingly coherent.
eBay does not allow the auctioning of human souls for the
following reasons: If the soul does not exist, eBay could
not allow the auctioning of the soul because there would be nothing
to sell. However, if the soul does exist then, in accordance with
eBay's policy on human parts and remains, we would not allow the
auctioning of human souls.
This is unfortunate. eBay seems perfect as souls are by definition somewhat used.
Not really. The axiom of excluded middle is false* because it's a universal quantification, and consequently includes pathalogical cases like "This proposition is false."; there are plenty of specific classes of proposions on which resticted versions of excluded middle are valid, just like there are plenty of classes of sets (eg all well-founded sets) that have well defined membership despite Russel's paradox.
I've seen the law of excluded middle used to deny the existence of platonic idealism. But I really don't get it. I'd love to understand your explanation better.
If soul=psyche (as in Plato) then it seems easy to sell access to the attention. But if soul is referring to an ideal noetic form, then it's hard to understand how immaterial ownership would work without a material intermediary.
The axiom of excluded middle is that for every proposition, either that proposion is true or it is false. That's a universal quantification, so any counterexample makes it false. "This proposition is false." is such a counterexample (it can't be true, because than it's false and your logic is inconsistent, and it can't be false, because than it's true and ditto). This reasoning applies to pretty much any recognizable system of propositional logic (including, per Godel nineteen-thirty-something, systems that explicitly prohibit the basic self-referential counter example, as long as they're expressive enough to describe arithmetic), so it's at least colloquially correct to simply dismiss it as false, even if the pedantic version is that it's a axiom that cannot be part of a consistent set of axioms.
The theorem of included middle doesn't prevent specific classes of propositions from being exclusively divided into true and false, though. As a simple example, any proposition of the form "natural number SSS...SS0 is prime" will be either true or false, and there's nothing inconsistent about (say) "for every proposion P matching regex /(S)*0 is prime/, either P is true or P is false". Just like there's nothing weird about a linter that can reliably tell you that "while(1) {...}" doesn't terminate, halting problem or not.
I understand what you're saying (in the first paragraph). I really do because I also went down this path. Self-reference is very tricky and it's way easier to trick yourself into proving things than to prove things.
You are referencing Godel and there is a reason why he only proved 'non-provability', namely Tarski's undefinability theorem[1]. In short, you cannot express the truthiness of a statement in the system within the system itself. This prohibits you to draw conclusions in a way you did above.
I'm of course no expert on the matter, and I might be wrong just as likely, but I'll encourage you not to make such strong, definitive statements. Maybe the reason for it is only that what you stated above would be a huge result in mathematics so one would think there is a mistake somewhere (especially since Liar's paradox is nothing new). And one would explore the subject further to find it rather than 'I post it on online forums because no one wants to accept my theory'
> you cannot express the truthiness of a statement in the system within the system itself.
Of course not; I'm not talking about truthiness; I'm talking about truth.
> that what you stated above would be a huge result in mathematics
Not really; it's the same sort of trivially-blatantly-obvious thing as "two-boxing on Newcomb's problem is irrational" or "quantum superpositions never actually collapse".
What about "this proposition is true"? Does it have a truth value?
If "this proposition is true" is true, then it's true. But if "this proposition is true" is false, then it's false.
It's self consistent whether it's true or false, but there's no way to determine if it is true or false.
I've been wondering what the formal name is for this kind of statement; surely it's not a paradox. Searching for "the opposite of a paradox" is apparently not the right query.
I feel like there's something questionable going on with the word "is" in either statement.
> What about "this proposition is true"? Does it have a truth value?
I think it'll probably end up being neither true nor false too in most 'nice' systems (since general rules that could be used to prove or disprove it tend to set off things like Curry's paradox[0]), but unlike the other one it's (I think) dependent on the details of how you're defining things.
You've just invented a new kind of "futures trading" and the mother of all kinds of innovative financial scams. Awesome! Someone should definitely start a business trading in "souls" and NFTs seem to be of the same ilk, so you guys are onto something.
Not necessarily. It is speculated that the Devil can solve any mathematical problem and thus human crypto is useless to him, as he can just reverse all hashes, compute the discrete logarithms and factor arbitrarily large numbers.
So an NFT (or any other cryptographic artifact) is rather something that Satan can offer you for your soul.
That's not the way math works. G-d himself can't reverse a hash.
Before you go invoking the "miracle" loophole, consider that miracles are logically impossible. If an impossible thing happens, then it was not in fact impossible. We just didn't understand the rules.
If two different x can produce the same y information is lost on the hash transformation. Finding _an x_ for your y is not the same as finding _the x_. That said, Laplace's Demon is, well, a demon. Presumably the devil can get the demon to unspool time to see what the input was and the math doesn't matter, collisions or not.
In cryptography either you only need 'an x', in cases that the original x does not matter, or if it does, then you can just as easily find all x of size less than large enough N and find 'the x', it is still solely restricted by time.
Laplace's demon, information loss, Landauer's principle etc. are at most tangentially related to the problem discussed
You understand that isn't the same mathematically as reversing the hash? If you farm the set of all possible x and try them to see what works you do not have an inverse function in your hands.
> Finding _an x_ for your y is not the same as finding _the x_.
Not in all cases, but in the case of NFTs and other cryptocurrencies, it is. If a second private key fulfills all constraints of the original one (like size and all computed results so far), it is functionally equivalent to the original one.
God himself is omniscient, so He by definition knows all the reverses of all hashes.
Also, to know the reverse of any hash you don't even need full omniscience, just "merely" the knowledge of anything that ever happened. Rewind the history of the universe, read the reverse from RAM when the hash was computed, done.
Yes, the conflict of omniscience and free will is known in theology. I think they try to solve it by redefining omniscience to "being able to know everything but also being able to exclude stuff from one's knowledge".
Back when I studied theology, the way we used to describe omniscience was to indicate that entities that exist outside of our universe can trivially see all points of our time stream.
Thus the hypothetical devil need not reverse the hash, they just have to view its creation to know what it was created from.
Anything existing outside out universe would have no access to anything happening inside it by definition. If the could access it, they would have to be part of the universe system. How else could information be transferred.
For a god to have value to humans, however, that god would have to interact in some way with the natural world. Those things can be detected by science.
That's a running thing in my mind for years. The devil can do math. So It's an incredible lost opportunity when people are being possessed and we dont go and ask them some clever questions.
As a total atheist I'd still say don't do it. It's not farfetched to interpret the word 'soul' as a future high-res brain scan runnable in emulation on future hardware. There may be other pitfalls.
My argument against this is as follows: would you sell your dignity for $10?
Now, my dignity doesn't exist in any sense which makes selling it meaningful. So it's kind of like free money.
But really it isn't. There's someone out there who can say "I own samatman's dignity, and I got it for cheap". I'm a guy who sold his dignity, and everyone knows it. I feel like people would judge me for that.
There are definitely people out there who will judge you for selling your soul. It doesn't have to exist for that to be real. Is it actually worth ten bucks? I expect there aren't many people who would see that and say "oh cool, you sold your soul for less than a sandwich in SF! You must be an interesting person, I think better of you now that I heard that".
Instagram and YouTube are two known sites for doing just that. You loan out your dignity when you become an influencer, and have it come back when everyone forgot about that chapter of your life.
Counterpoint: I have serious doubt that many people (even those religious) believe you can sell your soul using a contract from the legal system in this mortal world. Thus, almost everyone should see it as the joke/fun that it is, and not you actually valuing your soul at $10. "I sold my soul for $10" is a lot better icebreaker than I've ever used.
Religious people who believe in the existence and sanctity of the human soul would probably see such a transaction as something similar to spitting on a holy object - it doesn't hurt the object itself, but as a symbolic gesture it shows your lack of respect for it.
>After proclaiming there is no such thing as a soul, Bart agrees to sell his to Milhouse for $5 on a piece of paper which reads "Bart Simpson's soul". Lisa warns Bart that he will regret selling his soul, but he dismisses her fears.
What if you sell it to many people? Dignity, as an abstract concept, is self-replenishing and infinite. In fact, all of our dignities should be given for free, as they're infinitely less scarce than any currency that uses finite resources.
Unfortunately one does not need to be religious to realize that it’s foolish to assume there is no “god” when we have no way of proving that with science since we can only deduct reliably.
No. These questions have been well explained by a couple of old French philosophers, but they're usually presented in such a weak form ("weak man") that their answers aren't appreciated.
Pascal's infamous wager, for instance. It's usually rendered in the form of salvation and probability, but it's better for modern people to think of it in terms of meaning rather than salvation, and the probabilistic part of it can be simplified away.
Instead of asking, "Is there a God", ask first, "Does anything matter in any meaningful sense?".
If the answer is no, then one of the things which doesn't matter, is what you answer to that question. So you might as well answer yes. But if the answer is yes, then you should definitively answer yes, no matter what thing matters (because clearly, it also matters that it matters).
A better version of the argument in Pascal's wager is thus that "nihilism isn't more reasonable than the alternatives, even on its own terms". So you might as well have positive beliefs (though which ones, this argument can't answer). Bringing in probabilities is not necessary.
The classic argument against Pascal's wager is "but what if there's a God who will punish you from following the logic of this argument?". You can make that argument in a non-probabilistic way too, and suggest that maybe the positive meaning of existence is to not buy into arguments about the positive meaning of existence.
But that is rejected by another much misunderstood French philosopher's argument, Descartes' demon. The argument is that if there's some demon messing with my thoughts and perceptions to make me come to exactly the wrong solutions, then I am screwed anyway. Outsmarting it by definition won't work. So obviously, we might as well reject this assumption too.
To sum up, we reject the assumption that we have no meaning in the universe, because if that is true, we might as well. And we reject the assumption that the universe is out to get us, because if that is true, it makes no difference what we think.
Precisely. If atheists are correct and there is not a god, you gain/lose nothing. However if the other side is correct and God does exist, the risk of existential woe is unfathomable. (None of this describes a personal perspective, merely things I’ve read)
The refutation that occurs to me (and has been raised before) is thus: if your belief in a god is wholly predicated on self preservation (avoiding eternal damnation/suffering/etc), and not motivated by the moral tenets of the religion, does that not defeat the purpose of being a believer? More to the point, if a god is all-powerful and all-knowing (or at the very least has some supernatural insight into human drives and motivations), there is little chance of deceiving the deity into accepting you as a true believer.
I would say a better reading of pascal's wager is to live your life morally and compassionately (relative to social norms), and accept that any god that may exist will judge you based on the character of your actions and decisions, and not on adherance to strict dogma.
Gnosticism/Agnosticism are, for all practical purposes, useless terms.
Gnosticism is what you know.
Theism is what you believe.
The two words are splitting hairs, the difference is just the level of certainty. You don't wait for absolute knowledge to act. You act on your beliefs.
A-gnosticism is a lack of total knowledge
A-theism is a lack in a belief in a god.
The definition of atheism is a lack in a belief in a god, not a claim that gods don't exist. There are some atheists who believe that no god's exist, but that is something extra beyond atheism.
That is exactly the "straw" interpretation I tried to argue against. It's not about God, at least not on this point.
It's about existential nihilism being pointless on its own terms. If you ask the question, "why does this matter" (and "this" can be absolutely anything) you've already assumed some things matter more than others. We absolutely won't get anywhere talking about God if we don't talk about this first.
They brought up Death Note, but not Jigoku Shoujo ("Hell Girl"), presumably because one is vastly more popular and well-known than the other.
Going by Jigoku Shoujo you can actually sell your soul online, though it is a bit closer to a "contact me" form, you only really get to buy "revenge" and only on one person. Definitely a far cry from what you'd expect of modern online commerce.
No of course not. However, changing a definition away from what billions of people believe doesn't seem productive. If you want to talk about attention, cool, but call it attention. Most religious people don't consider the soul to be a synonym for attention.
It's similar to how some people want to redefine god as the universe. Ok, then just call it the universe, doing otherwise drags all kinds of assumptions and presuppositions that muddy the waters.
I'm not saying that's what i believe. I don't believe a soul exists, or could exist. But I'm saying that's what billions of people believe. It doesn't help to redefine away a problem.
You're really better off selling it to a demon anyway. If you get nothing out of it then when you get to the afterlife you can convincingly claim that the demon reneged on the deal.
I worked with someone that went on vacation, and never returned. Instead, he called in and said that the job was stealing his soul and would not be returning. Sadly, we all understood 100%
It's worth a read, but the ending is what brings it home, since (in my opinion) "selling your soul" has always been a metaphor, like many other religious ideas:
>That being said, while you can’t sell your soul to the devil in a real transaction, you can do so at metaphorical level. This happens every time someone is willing to overlook their humanity and decency in exchange for external temptations: power, money, fame etc. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be external pleasures. Ignoring basic human principles in order to obtain revenge, satisfy pride or envy can lead down the same path.
Hasty reader seems to have skipped the parts about circles to constrain the summoned demon in their haste to get through their grimoires. Well. Good luck with that.
I will never get a more relevant chance to bring this up, so has anyone heard of Napoleon Hill’s(Think and Grow Rich) other book?
It’s called Outwitting the Devil, where he interviews the devil. He refused to publish it during his lifetime, and his estate also put off publishing it for decades because it contains strongs critiques of the educational system, the government, and the church as being tools of the ‘devil’ to keep the population confused, ignorant, and demoralized from a young age. It was considered too controversial for its time and I found it to be a thought-provoking book, very different from the “here’s a secret to success/power within/what they dont want you to know” genre. Instead of “think positive” it’s “here are all the tricks the ‘Devil’ is using to try to sabotage you.” If you like self-help books its a fun read/listen.
http://outwittingthedevil.com/
As much as people love Napoleon Hill and his book, he may have been one of the first and biggest fake gurus of the 20th century, having never actually interviewed Carnegie and other rich people for his beloved book: https://youtu.be/iEDzb9ZplX0
"The Screwtape Letters" by CS Lewis is another book written from the similar point of view. Here the tricks are presented by an older demon to a younger one.
The actual interview text keeps hammering down on the same talking points so repetitively and unimaginatively, that it quickly becomes hard to get past first couple of pages. If a bit of information can be briefly, just for the sake of argument, defined as a difference that makes a difference, the book you mention makes a few starting laps and then halts at making a difference in its over-arching narrative with a remarkable braking force.
In other words, aside from “think for yourself” message, (sadly) it’s a classic example of a bad “business” book, annotations included. Mystery and woo-woo are also present, so yeah, there’s that.
I think they even play the same role. At least the prominent occult authors say that all these effects are nothing but electricity and magnetism (snake is a typical occult symbol for electricity). Levitating a frog by a magnet is legit magick, NMRI is high-end sorcery. Things that are considered magical are various magnetic effects that haven't been discovered (by science) yet, but are known to people who don't quite understand the underlying mechanism. But in each and every case it's the good old magnetism. I'd guess that these sigils are meants to shape a magnetic stream produced by something else, and when properly shaped it tends to capture a "fish" of some kind. As for why the low type occultists use blood to fill these sigils, it's because of its magnetic properties (if you live in medieval ages, getting access to a lab with ferrofluids and 100 Amp generators is pretty difficult).
Everytime I hear something about this topic I think about one of the oldest unchanged websites I know of: https://beyondweird.com/
Many downloadable books there containing occultism.
Wow. Been nearly 20 years since I stumbled on this site. Unfortunately, I still am not psychic according to the test on there.
Also, I did find it fascinating, just the first essay I clicked “The Body of God” from 1922, seems astonishingly similar to Scott Adams’ novella God’s Debris. As well, the preface is shockingly similar to Adam’s antisemetic views, views on women’s rolls in society/ child-rearing, and views on male “self determination”/ self-actualization.
Wonder how foundational that was to a young Scott Adams, assuming he read it.
In Catholicism and some Protestant traditions, you will enter into a state of Purgatory, (or purgatory-like phase) after death where you are cleansed of sins. This could potentially take a while.
This should be written in the devil contract, like how long do I need to stay in purgatory...
Depends on your sins, wouldn't it? Murder would be one term, but working for an digital ads company, developing dark pattern UI, or social media companies would be at least half of eternity.
Is eternity countable? I really want to know what I am in for, ya know. Plus, depending on the properties of the eternal manifold, maybe I can perform some useful closed timelike computation while there and use that to get rich when/if I return.
They have no control over how long your purgation will last, that depends on your own sins. Anyway, if you make a deal with devils, you will go straight to Hell if you are unrepentant of the act.
For me, becoming famous is similar to selling your soul, in the sense that you trade in your privacy in return for being famous and also presumably being rich too. It's like Cypher in the Matrix who wants to be reborn as an important actor in exchange for handing over keys to the Zion mainframe.
Sidenote: The problem with fame is that you can't reverse it. If people know your face, then they know your face. There's no getting away from it.
There's a movie about that [1]; well, not exactly "selling" it to the devil but upgrading to a better one. Paul Giamatti plays an actor named "Paul Giamatti" who feels he can't properly do Uncle Vanya without a Russian soul. Hilarity ensues.
Thinking about how this plays with Gurdjieff's[0] idea that I've been partial to lately that one is not born with, but instead must develop a soul through effort.
That's an interesting concept which aligns well with our vernacular use of the expressions "soulless" and "selling your soul." If a soul is sensitivity to others then that certainly has to be developed. The fact that it's poorly developed in many people (and even less so down the line of animals) is a good indicator that it might be learned or built-up evolutionarily in the species and the individual.
I want to know how to sell the soul of someone who has aggrieved me with his holier than thou attitude.
I want to see the look on his face when he confronts Old Nick and has a WTF moment...
Since we are on a metaphorical plane today. Let me put my comment along similar lines on a youtube video [1]
You see in Zombie movies, the zombie is always trying to turn an individual capable of moral decisions, empathy, insight into just another zombie out of his own self interest. Our society is actually far closer to the truth shown in those movies. Just because people are not biting each other does not mean those movies are far from reality.
Symbolically those movies are depicting the fact that there are people, groups, organizations, companies who are trying to rob a man from himself by trying to turn that individual into just another member of the herd who looks out for nothing more than self interest which are not even his own but of that group. Tell me this is any different than what is shown in those zombie movies.
Interesting, my take was always diametrically opposite, that if it has any meaning at all it's the allegory for getting converted to a collectivist religion or an ideology.
Zombies are not really selfish - I mean, if you were chasing one human in a horde and you were selfish, wouldn't you, for example, try to eliminate or exclude the competition? They are, rather, single-minded to the exclusion of any priorities other than one.
Very few people really devote their life to a corporation, at least as far as I can tell. It's either just a job to pay the bills (for most people), or an exciting project that you easily switch from when it suits you (if you are in tech or other such job).
To be fair, relatively few people really devote their life to religion or ideology, too, although I'd argue the average level of devotion is higher and lasts longer :)
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 310 ms ] threadEdit: If you're actually "interested" (definition to personal taste), plug for Stjepan Sejic's upcoming Fine Print series https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/fine-print-vol-1-ogn... (No relation to disclose, just a fan of his work)
Naturally, this must be read in the voice of the Dos XX guy
It would be neat to trace that artistic lineage back to its sources.
Then again, there is a commenter on here claiming they look like circuit diagrams (whereas I look at schematics on a daily basis and see no resemblance). So stupid.
Perhaps that pokemon game had more in it than we thought...
More practical: synthesize sounds and play them in a garden, with some cameras and vision software to count insects attracted, perhaps classify by type. Add some seeking function and you might make a mechanical pied piper for pests.
Surely thats only an analogy. Cicadas are not actually demons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems
Then again they did manage to get, e.g. google and Lockheed Martin(?) To actually purchase some of their wishful thinking hardware. There might have been a deal with minor/slightly demonic imp to get that far.
2nd part - you could find the song of the mosquito. They suck blood at least, and seem to be good for nothing except feeding bats. So there’s that.
Edit: somebody scooped me
EA Koetting (founder of BALG, 9 demonic gatekeepers)
Konstantinos (Nocturnal Witchcraft)
Somnus Dreadwood (Maergzjiran Cabal founder)
Kurtis Joseph (Black Magick of Ahriman)
Mark Alan Smith (Primal Craft books)
S. Connolly (The Complete Book of Demonolatry)
Asenath Mason (deals with Qliphotic magic)
NAA 218 (unknown author, created 'Liber Falxifer' and 'Book of Sitra Ahra')
Dragon Rouge (esoteric group that produces very detailed books)
Baron and Baronessa Araignee (magic dealing with the dead)
Frank White (knowledgeable YT channel - Grail of the Serpent)
S. Ben Qayin (Djinn Magick, The Book of Smokeless Fire)
International Guild of Occult Sciences - IGOS (group, produced a lot of books that are well respected)
VK Jehannum (https://vkjehannum.wordpress.com)
Temple of the Black Light (Liber Azerate)
// Catholic ex-occultist
[0]https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/Stan_Johnson
[1]https://youtu.be/ZebKhabJItE?t=5280
Im assuming that's how he gets his elves.
At least there will be hot cocoa.
This article did not go over much of the problems with this stuff.
Demons are notoriously child like creatures. Once summoned they will have the human try to put themselves in some position that they believe to be humiliating for the human. They hate the human for being naturally innately better than them even if less powerful.
The article does not go over some of the acts humans are made to do. It’s quite disgusting and vile. It does not go over the nature of demons. It’s quite pathetic. There is zero point in trying to dabble in this. Unless you believe your life cannot get any worse than it is. Occult will help you realize how bad it can really get.
Edit: unless I’m confusing this with the flying pot at night?
By the way, do you have an English translation for the Liber Azerate? I have the original in Swedish, but I have not learned Swedish yet.
Here is the link to 'Liber Azerate' in English : https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmUHcdL7U78k1FiQbh5aC4JKVf...
And here is the link to 'Liber Anaxeiraxz'(another good book) - https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmT7m33x9munihmnAXxqth5mWP...
One should be aware of the fact that these things can be pursued quite effectively with no need for seeking out or confronting any malevolent beings or forces, and this will generally be an easier and more fruitful approach, at least for the novice practitioner. It's very rare that even one's outwardly "selfish" goals are not far more amenable to a positive approach which can implicitly leverage the "loving kindness" that's inherent to the universe according to many practitioners of magick and similar pursuits-- relying on it as a key regulating, stabilizing and harmonizing principle.
A few less "dark" folks I try to follow:
Jason Miller (http://www.strategicsorcery.net/blog/)
Aidan Wachter (http://www.aidanwachter.com/)
Damien Echols (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnRyoC6Oww6FrYVc-BxKyDg/vid...)
Bluefluke (https://bluefluke.tumblr.com/)
Frater U.'. D.'.
Further suggestions of contemporary practitioners are much appreciated.
Behemoth-X, Black Witch Coven, Anewbiz, Ashera Goddess, Chthonia, Clandestine Lodge, D.H. Thorne, Damon Dark, Dark Sorcery, Enoch Petrucelly, From the Light of the Darkness, Go Virtual Lucifera, Groovy Psycho, Jenny Constantine, Kali Tribune, Mark Henry, Martin Faulks, Michael Hyson, Michael W. Ford, Mimir's Brunnr, mindandmagick, Mona Magick, Nexus Void, Occult Hive, OFSAdrianna, Orlee Stewart, Reality Files, Robert Sepehr, Satan and Sons, Saurious 7, ShanGO Rei TV, Slayden Sorcery, Sorsha Runarius, SQS, Taliesin McKnight, Tata Lucero, Taylor Ellwood, Teala Petrova, Temple of Ascending Flame, The Black Tower, The Eternal Black Flame 666, The House of Magick, The Infernal Obelisk, The Magick Couple, The Nemeton, The Serpent's Key, The Symposium, Thomas LeRoy, Thomas Sheridan, traditional church of satan, Travis Magus, Vidian, XELASOMA, Xag Darklight
Bertrand Russell said it's all "the random collocation of atoms." As far as anyone can tell, the meaning of Life, The Universe, and Everything is quantum physics. It explains all of the concepts currently attributed to both the physical and "spiritual" worlds.
Many religions acknowledge that there is no dichotomy between the physical and spiritual forms of experience. There is only one thing. If that's the case, the one thing's name is quantum physics. We can puts lots of other names on it from chance to déjà vu, from "bad behavior" to Beelzebub, but it's demonstrably the random collocation of atoms and probably not much more. Unless it's The Matrix, lol.
Dragon Rouge is a global, independent, graphic design, branding and packaging agency that ignites brands and propels them forward since 1984.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffcm&q=Dragon+Rouge&atb=v100-1&ia=...
https://para.wiki/w/Dragon_Rouge
http://dragonrouge.se/philosophy/
You probably thought it was tech or something about startups…think again.
Does anyone have any alternatives to hacker news? Preferably ones with more skeptics than there are occultist and "demonologist" morons?
Fucking bizarre.
You assume I've neither read the article or researched demonology. I have.
All of the neopagan bullshit and demonic sigils can be traced back to obvious frauds starting in the 19th century, when occultist grifting was in vogue.
This is a simplistic article on an already childish subject.
My emotions are disdain and disbelief that people still gobble up this horseshit. Nothing wrong with that. Do you believe yourself to not have any emotions and are an arbiter of truth and perfect logic?
Please.
You don't have to believe in demons (or third normal form, or agile) for the body of knowledge to be interesting.
Some people take it pretty seriously, and some people do it for fun. Like LARPing.
'What brand of sunglasses do you wear?'.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029206
or the, always popular bunch of themes falling in the pattern: 'do you take drugs?/ what drugs have you experienced?'
or 'what diseases do you had?' also very popular theme.
In resume, Don't talk with the police but, would you mind to answer this bunch of questions about your personality on internet instead, please?.
If you find a proof of P != NP or the Riemann hypothesis, why would that be as bad as using the Death Note book?
The interesting thing about demonology is that it was mostly being practiced in secret by Christians, even clergy (a lot of these spells and rituals use Christian liturgical elements.) They didn't believe what they were doing was "selling their soul to the devil," rather that Christ had given them dominion over angels and demons, so they had every right to summon demons and use them as they saw fit. Legend at the time was that King Solomon built the First Temple using demon slaves.
Of course the Church proper would have strenuously agreed with this way of thinking.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/soul-listing-policy-ebay-201...
*: Give or take technicalities.
If soul=psyche (as in Plato) then it seems easy to sell access to the attention. But if soul is referring to an ideal noetic form, then it's hard to understand how immaterial ownership would work without a material intermediary.
The theorem of included middle doesn't prevent specific classes of propositions from being exclusively divided into true and false, though. As a simple example, any proposition of the form "natural number SSS...SS0 is prime" will be either true or false, and there's nothing inconsistent about (say) "for every proposion P matching regex /(S)*0 is prime/, either P is true or P is false". Just like there's nothing weird about a linter that can reliably tell you that "while(1) {...}" doesn't terminate, halting problem or not.
You are referencing Godel and there is a reason why he only proved 'non-provability', namely Tarski's undefinability theorem[1]. In short, you cannot express the truthiness of a statement in the system within the system itself. This prohibits you to draw conclusions in a way you did above.
I'm of course no expert on the matter, and I might be wrong just as likely, but I'll encourage you not to make such strong, definitive statements. Maybe the reason for it is only that what you stated above would be a huge result in mathematics so one would think there is a mistake somewhere (especially since Liar's paradox is nothing new). And one would explore the subject further to find it rather than 'I post it on online forums because no one wants to accept my theory'
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_undefinability_theo...
Of course not; I'm not talking about truthiness; I'm talking about truth.
> that what you stated above would be a huge result in mathematics
Not really; it's the same sort of trivially-blatantly-obvious thing as "two-boxing on Newcomb's problem is irrational" or "quantum superpositions never actually collapse".
> "quantum superpositions never actually collapse"
Popsci is fun,
Never stop learning, even if it's obvious.
What about "this proposition is true"? Does it have a truth value?
If "this proposition is true" is true, then it's true. But if "this proposition is true" is false, then it's false.
It's self consistent whether it's true or false, but there's no way to determine if it is true or false.
I've been wondering what the formal name is for this kind of statement; surely it's not a paradox. Searching for "the opposite of a paradox" is apparently not the right query.
I feel like there's something questionable going on with the word "is" in either statement.
I think it'll probably end up being neither true nor false too in most 'nice' systems (since general rules that could be used to prove or disprove it tend to set off things like Curry's paradox[0]), but unlike the other one it's (I think) dependent on the details of how you're defining things.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry's_paradox
You know why it's so hot in Hell? Because that's where the exhaust ports of the AC units cooling the soulchain mining servers are.
So an NFT (or any other cryptographic artifact) is rather something that Satan can offer you for your soul.
Before you go invoking the "miracle" loophole, consider that miracles are logically impossible. If an impossible thing happens, then it was not in fact impossible. We just didn't understand the rules.
Oracles in complexity theory are a bread and butter concept
Laplace's demon, information loss, Landauer's principle etc. are at most tangentially related to the problem discussed
I'm not sure I follow, what do I have then? Could you give me an example?
Not in all cases, but in the case of NFTs and other cryptocurrencies, it is. If a second private key fulfills all constraints of the original one (like size and all computed results so far), it is functionally equivalent to the original one.
You're thinking of something like a rainbow table. Definitely not the same thing as rewinding a function that loses information.
Also, to know the reverse of any hash you don't even need full omniscience, just "merely" the knowledge of anything that ever happened. Rewind the history of the universe, read the reverse from RAM when the hash was computed, done.
Thus the hypothetical devil need not reverse the hash, they just have to view its creation to know what it was created from.
Sadly this is currently impossible as the NFT doesn't store the amount of value it was traded for within it. But it could.
For now, royalties only occur on third party platforms of NFTs.
Having said that, yes, I think building a concept of royalties in would have been a good idea.
E.g. https://twitter.com/liminal_warmth/status/142135011902313677...
Terms: https://liminalwarmth.com/contract-for-sale-of-soul/
Discussion: https://liminalwarmth.com/the-questionable-ethics-of-buying-...
As a total atheist I'd still say don't do it. It's not farfetched to interpret the word 'soul' as a future high-res brain scan runnable in emulation on future hardware. There may be other pitfalls.
Now, my dignity doesn't exist in any sense which makes selling it meaningful. So it's kind of like free money.
But really it isn't. There's someone out there who can say "I own samatman's dignity, and I got it for cheap". I'm a guy who sold his dignity, and everyone knows it. I feel like people would judge me for that.
There are definitely people out there who will judge you for selling your soul. It doesn't have to exist for that to be real. Is it actually worth ten bucks? I expect there aren't many people who would see that and say "oh cool, you sold your soul for less than a sandwich in SF! You must be an interesting person, I think better of you now that I heard that".
>After proclaiming there is no such thing as a soul, Bart agrees to sell his to Milhouse for $5 on a piece of paper which reads "Bart Simpson's soul". Lisa warns Bart that he will regret selling his soul, but he dismisses her fears.
Some people, simps for example, don't even get $10 for themselvs, but instead pay to have their dignity removed from them.
(this post is meant to be half humorous, and half not humorous.)
Pascal's infamous wager, for instance. It's usually rendered in the form of salvation and probability, but it's better for modern people to think of it in terms of meaning rather than salvation, and the probabilistic part of it can be simplified away.
Instead of asking, "Is there a God", ask first, "Does anything matter in any meaningful sense?".
If the answer is no, then one of the things which doesn't matter, is what you answer to that question. So you might as well answer yes. But if the answer is yes, then you should definitively answer yes, no matter what thing matters (because clearly, it also matters that it matters).
A better version of the argument in Pascal's wager is thus that "nihilism isn't more reasonable than the alternatives, even on its own terms". So you might as well have positive beliefs (though which ones, this argument can't answer). Bringing in probabilities is not necessary.
The classic argument against Pascal's wager is "but what if there's a God who will punish you from following the logic of this argument?". You can make that argument in a non-probabilistic way too, and suggest that maybe the positive meaning of existence is to not buy into arguments about the positive meaning of existence.
But that is rejected by another much misunderstood French philosopher's argument, Descartes' demon. The argument is that if there's some demon messing with my thoughts and perceptions to make me come to exactly the wrong solutions, then I am screwed anyway. Outsmarting it by definition won't work. So obviously, we might as well reject this assumption too.
To sum up, we reject the assumption that we have no meaning in the universe, because if that is true, we might as well. And we reject the assumption that the universe is out to get us, because if that is true, it makes no difference what we think.
That's moving the goalposts and completely avoiding GP's argument. Interesting viewpoint nonetheless.
I would say a better reading of pascal's wager is to live your life morally and compassionately (relative to social norms), and accept that any god that may exist will judge you based on the character of your actions and decisions, and not on adherance to strict dogma.
That would be agnosticism. Atheists claim there is definitely no god.
Gnosticism/Agnosticism are, for all practical purposes, useless terms.
Gnosticism is what you know.
Theism is what you believe.
The two words are splitting hairs, the difference is just the level of certainty. You don't wait for absolute knowledge to act. You act on your beliefs.
A-gnosticism is a lack of total knowledge
A-theism is a lack in a belief in a god.
The definition of atheism is a lack in a belief in a god, not a claim that gods don't exist. There are some atheists who believe that no god's exist, but that is something extra beyond atheism.
It's about existential nihilism being pointless on its own terms. If you ask the question, "why does this matter" (and "this" can be absolutely anything) you've already assumed some things matter more than others. We absolutely won't get anywhere talking about God if we don't talk about this first.
Going by Jigoku Shoujo you can actually sell your soul online, though it is a bit closer to a "contact me" form, you only really get to buy "revenge" and only on one person. Definitely a far cry from what you'd expect of modern online commerce.
That is : you direct it and concentrate it. And it is prone to distraction (temptation?).
Given that, we are all well familiar with our soul. And its manipulation is a common everyday occurrence.
We can observe attention.
Can we observe this alternative to which you refer?
It's similar to how some people want to redefine god as the universe. Ok, then just call it the universe, doing otherwise drags all kinds of assumptions and presuppositions that muddy the waters.
Billions are immersed in fantasy.
One might call that a classically religious debacle.
I think the general population waves its hands and calls it a unicorn. So fuck em.
And you might be surprised at how centrally attention figures into the human experience
At some of the big tech corps this number is 1 though - murderous regimes do use these companies directly.
>That being said, while you can’t sell your soul to the devil in a real transaction, you can do so at metaphorical level. This happens every time someone is willing to overlook their humanity and decency in exchange for external temptations: power, money, fame etc. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be external pleasures. Ignoring basic human principles in order to obtain revenge, satisfy pride or envy can lead down the same path.
It’s called Outwitting the Devil, where he interviews the devil. He refused to publish it during his lifetime, and his estate also put off publishing it for decades because it contains strongs critiques of the educational system, the government, and the church as being tools of the ‘devil’ to keep the population confused, ignorant, and demoralized from a young age. It was considered too controversial for its time and I found it to be a thought-provoking book, very different from the “here’s a secret to success/power within/what they dont want you to know” genre. Instead of “think positive” it’s “here are all the tricks the ‘Devil’ is using to try to sabotage you.” If you like self-help books its a fun read/listen. http://outwittingthedevil.com/
In other words, aside from “think for yourself” message, (sadly) it’s a classic example of a bad “business” book, annotations included. Mystery and woo-woo are also present, so yeah, there’s that.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wL7lEwD1uGI
Also, I did find it fascinating, just the first essay I clicked “The Body of God” from 1922, seems astonishingly similar to Scott Adams’ novella God’s Debris. As well, the preface is shockingly similar to Adam’s antisemetic views, views on women’s rolls in society/ child-rearing, and views on male “self determination”/ self-actualization.
Wonder how foundational that was to a young Scott Adams, assuming he read it.
https://www.engadget.com/2010-04-16-uk-game-retailer-claims-...
This should be written in the devil contract, like how long do I need to stay in purgatory...
Sidenote: The problem with fame is that you can't reverse it. If people know your face, then they know your face. There's no getting away from it.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127877/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
[0]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/George_Gurdjieff
You see in Zombie movies, the zombie is always trying to turn an individual capable of moral decisions, empathy, insight into just another zombie out of his own self interest. Our society is actually far closer to the truth shown in those movies. Just because people are not biting each other does not mean those movies are far from reality.
Symbolically those movies are depicting the fact that there are people, groups, organizations, companies who are trying to rob a man from himself by trying to turn that individual into just another member of the herd who looks out for nothing more than self interest which are not even his own but of that group. Tell me this is any different than what is shown in those zombie movies.
[1] Is a Mass Psychosis the Greatest Threat to Humanity? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPcF-oLABE
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[2] In Shadow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j800SVeiS5I
Zombies are not really selfish - I mean, if you were chasing one human in a horde and you were selfish, wouldn't you, for example, try to eliminate or exclude the competition? They are, rather, single-minded to the exclusion of any priorities other than one.
To be fair, relatively few people really devote their life to religion or ideology, too, although I'd argue the average level of devotion is higher and lasts longer :)