Gaslighting, where someone causes another person to doubt their sanity or senses, can cause psychological damage.

There’s an opposite thing, though, that can also be damaging. As far as I know, it has no name. I call it “lightgassing” (or “light gassing”). Here, I explain how lightgassing works.

Lightgassing is when one person agrees with or validates another person’s false beliefs or misconceptions in order to be supportive. 

Unlike gaslighting, a tactic of jerks and abusers, lightgassing is an (unintentionally harmful) tactic of friends and supporters.

Here are common examples I’ve seen that are sometimes, but obviously not always, lightgassing:

• “Since they did X, they don’t deserve to be with you.”

• “It was reasonable for you to do Y because they made you feel bad.”

• “You did nothing wrong. It was 100% their fault.”

Ideally, when you’re upset, friends should validate your feelings and help you feel heard and understood, but they should do so without agreeing with statements they themselves know to be false.

We do a disservice to people when we encourage their false beliefs. Most people have a value of truth-telling (and knowing the truth), and by avoiding lightgassing, we stay truer to these values.

But how does one listen with openness and empathy to an upset friend and still validate *feelings*, without validating *false beliefs*? This can be a tricky maneuver, which I think is one reason people feel tempted to lightgas.

If you want to avoid lightgassing, the key is to validate those elements of a person’s *beliefs* that you know to be true while empathizing with them and validating that their *emotions* are understandable and okay to feel. But the key is to do this without reinforcing beliefs in false things.

I think it’s usually not helpful to challenge what another person believes is true right in the heat of emotion when that person is sad or upset. So avoiding lightgassing will often initially involve simply not validating/agreeing with what you believe is false. Later, when the person is feeling better, if they ask for your opinion on the facts (or you feel it’s important for them to hear your opinion), you can tell them what you believe to be true at that point.

A caveat that I think is worth mentioning is that sometimes, the only thing we know about a situation is what our upset friend or loved one has told us. In such cases, I think we should start with the assumption that what they have described is an accurate representation of what they experienced (unless any reason to doubt it emerges).

Lightgassing (or light gassing) typically happens in ordinary situations where someone feels hurt or upset. But it can also happen in more extreme situations, such as when you’re trying to help someone who is feeling upset due to severe delusions caused by psychosis. 

In the case of someone with psychosis, the path of least resistance is to lightgas them by agreeing with their delusions, but this is not in their own interest. On the other hand, if you invalidate their emotions, you will likely make them more upset and may lose their trust. The tightrope to walk is to help them feel cared about, listened to, empathized with, and understood, without saying that their delusions are reality. In other words, to avoid lightgassing them while also not causing them to feel gaslit.

Does lightgassing really deserve its own term? Why not just call it “enabling”? Well, lightgassing can be a type of enabling, similar to how gaslighting is typically a form of manipulation. But lightgassing is much more specific than enabling, and enabling can include lots of things that are not lightgassing (e.g., buying an alcoholic some alcohol is a form of enabling but not lightgassing). Having a more specific term (lightgassing) makes it easier to spot and communicate about this specific pattern of behavior.

This piece was first written on October 1, 2023, and first appeared on my website on May 13, 2024.

A. our theoretical understanding of what things are “really” like (physics, atoms, etc.)

with

B. our direct, first-hand experiences as humans.

Examples:

(1) Ethics – most people experience a visceral feeling that some things are inherently and universally morally wrong (e.g., murdering children). Yet it’s unclear what, in the universe of atoms (or in physics), could make (or explain) something being “wrong.”

(2) Free will – we feel as though we constantly make choices (e.g., picking options that we didn’t have to pick). Yet the possibility of choices is hard to square with the existence of laws of physics as we know them. Where could a choice possibly fit into those laws?

(3) Consciousness – we each know we are conscious (in the sense of having experiences / there being something it is like to be us) because we directly witness our own experiences. Yet it’s unclear how or why configurations of atoms could ever give rise to internal experiences.

(4) Identity – we feel like we have a unique, persistent, indivisible identity. Yet, if we imagine thought experiments involving splitting, copying, or rebuilding brains in the physical world, it’s hard to see how a unitary identity could be maintained in those circumstances.

(5) Knowledge – there seem to be many things we each intuitively know to be true (our own names, what orange juice tastes like, how to tie our shoelaces), yet it’s hard to explain what the state of “knowing” these things corresponds to in the world, or to define what “knowing” is.

(6) Mathematics – we all know it’s true that 1+1 = 2 and that the number 2 “exists” in some sense. But it’s hard to say in what sense this is true/existent because numbers and addition don’t seem to exist in the physical realm the way that, say, a particular sandwich does.

This piece was first written on December 23, 2020, and first appeared on this site on April 17, 2023.

It’s when someone has a persistent belief that’s both highly inaccurate and substantially harmful. Here are some examples:

• A false belief that you are unlovable
• Being convinced that God punishes pre-marital with death
• Believing that “no usually means yes” in sexual encounters

Whereas a psychological disorder consists of emotions, thoughts, and personality traits creating distress or impairment, many WITHOUT psychological challenges have “Philosophical Disorders.” All it takes is being infected by false ideas that either harm the believer or lead them to harm others.

Since people will naturally disagree regarding which ideas are false or harmful, I think the term “Philosophical Disorder” is best reserved just for the extreme cases, where it’s easy for an outside observer to see both the falsity and harm of a belief.

Furthermore, much like it would rarely be a good idea to tell someone (outside of a therapeutic relationship or very trusting friendship) that you think they have a “psychological disorder,” telling someone you think they have a “philosophical disorder” is not advisable.

A true belief that causes harm at least has the virtue of being accurate, and trying to change it would imply some form of deception. Some people would rather believe a difficult truth than a comforting falsehood. On the other hand, a false belief that causes no problems can at least be said to be harmless, and one could argue that it’s not worth taking the time to correct it. Philosophical disorders, on the other hand, must (by definition) be both highly inaccurate and substantially harmful – they are the category of beliefs we can unequivocally say are worth correcting.

I require a belief to be “persistent” to meet the definition of philosophical disorder because if it is going to go away on its own anyway (e.g., a temporary harmful, false belief while someone is having a drug trip), it feels like it’s in a fundamentally different category (and action to change the belief is usually not as important since it is time-limited).

— A Better Understanding of “Evil” —

Pretty often, when large groups do what seems to be extreme evil, they are led by either a low-empathy narcissist or a sociopath. But chances are that most of the rank-and-file members of that group have philosophical disorders, not psychological disorders. Pretty often, even the leader has a philosophical disorder.

As an example, consider the case of religious zealots who are truly convinced that blowing up civilians is a holy act. Or the many groups whose members have become convinced they are inherently superior to other groups, whom they then kill or subjugate.

It’s understandable that people call those who commit atrocious acts “evil” regardless of their motivations, but there is a big difference between doing something highly harmful that you’re truly convinced is a good deed and doing a highly harmful act selfishly or with indifference towards the suffering of others.

While plenty of harm is caused by people due to their having some psychological traits, like sociopathy or low empathy narcissism, it may well be that as much or even more is caused by people who are pretty typical psychologically but who have philosophical disorders.

— Philosophical Disorders vs. Psychological Disorders —

Philosophical disorders can cause very bizarre behavior that is easily confused with a psychological disorder. As an example, some school shooters are well-characterized as having psychological disorders (e.g., showing signs of psychosis or sociopathy – like being convinced monsters lived in their basement at home or torturing animals for fun), whereas other school shooters may have been infected with harmful false belief systems (e.g., that others deserve death), hence, they might be better understood to have philosophical disorders. But without a careful inspection, the behavior (a “school shooting”) looks the same. The same outcome is coming from a different cause. I think it can be a clarifying question to ask: is this particular case best explained by a psychological disorder or philosophical disorder (or both simultaneously).

The link between psychological and philosophical disorders is complex. Philosophical disorders can both cause and be caused by psychological ones. For instance, falsely believing that nobody likes you could make you depressed. And schizophrenia can cause false, harmful beliefs (such as paranoid beliefs that others are out to get you).

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, “negative core beliefs” are sometimes uncovered as being a major factor causing a person’s depression or anxiety. That being said, typically, other factors are at play as well, such as patterns of behavior, reactivity to negative stimuli, disruptive thoughts, and so on.

But occasionally, a psychological disorder can be said to very directly result from a philosophical disorder (e.g., constant anxiety because of being convinced that lustful urges imply eternity in hell). In other cases, philosophical disorders are really not the right level of explanation for a psychological challenge (since emotional reactions, behavioral patterns, disruptive thoughts, etc., may better characterize what’s happening). Additionally, it’s possible to have a severe philosophical disorder without having a psychological disorder.

— Categorizing Philosophical Disorders —

As with psychological disorders, we might attempt to organize philosophical disorders. To do so, we might consider different aspects along which they can vary. Here’s a first attempt:

(1) Who is substantially harmed?

A. Self harmed (e.g., “I will fail at everything I try”)

B. Others harmed (e.g., “people of group X are inferior”)

C. Both harmed, meaning the belief harms both self and others (e.g., a man believing that “no men are trustworthy”)

(2) What is the false belief about?

A. Self (e.g., “My angry thoughts prove I am evil, even if I don’t act on them”)

B. Humanity (e.g., “Pretty much everyone is a bad person”)

C. People of importance in your life (e.g., a false belief that “my wife is cheating on me”)

D. Future events (e.g., “It is inevitable that the world ends in a nuclear holocaust sometime in the near future”)

E. Past events (e.g., “Mistakes my parents made when raising me have forever doomed me to being miserable”)

F. God (e.g., “God hates group X”)

G. Reality (e.g., “What if the whole world is just my imagination, and nobody else is real? I can’t prove that anyone else other than me exists.”)

(3) How was this belief acquired?

A. Caregivers who raised you (e.g., “you’re a bad child, nobody is ever going to love you”)

B. Culture of your region (e.g., “female circumcision is an important right of passage”)

C. Religion (e.g., “you will be rewarded in heaven if you die as a martyr killing the enemy”)

D. Group membership (e.g., falling into a social circle that has a shared philosophical disorder, for instance, a cult or movement)

E. Argumentation (e.g., reading an essay that convinces you that humanity should be wiped out)

F. Personality (e.g., narcissists tending to believe they are inherently superior to others)

G. Drugs (e.g., when someone forms an upsetting false belief while on drugs that persists afterward, such as that nothing is real)

H. Psychosis (e.g., the paranoid beliefs that schizophrenia sometimes causes)

I. Previously accurate but now resolved (e.g., you have a belief that people are not trustworthy because when you were young, the people around you really weren’t trustworthy, but you haven’t updated your belief even now that you are around mainly trustworthy people)

Of course, there are a lot of overlaps between the categories above.

When you hear of someone engaging in really a harmful behavior, it may be worth asking whether it better fits the hypothesis of a psychological disorder or of a philosophical one.

This essay was first written on July 20, 2020, and first appeared on this site on November 19, 2021.

Below is my list of what I see as the deepest mysteries. 

What would you add to the list?

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LIST OF DEEP MYSTERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF REALITY

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1. THE UNIVERSE

1.1 Eternity – Will our universe last forever? If it won’t, what will the end of the universe be like (e.g., a new big bang, a big crunch, time simply ending, something else)?

1.2 Genesis – Did our universe have a “starting point” (in a pre-existing expanse of time) or has it existed forever, or did time begin when the universe began?

1.3 Geometry – Does the universe extend infinitely in all directions, or is it finite? (To get a feel for how it might be finite without requiring a boundary, consider that the universe could be like the game Pac-Man, topologically – in the sense that, traveling long enough in any direction, you eventually get back to where you started). Is empty space perfectly flat (e.g., like an infinite plane but in multiple dimensions), or does the universe have implicit curvature (e.g., like the surface of a universe-sized orange)?

1.4 Constraints – Could the laws of physics be any different than they are, or is there some reason they have to be this way? Why are there the particular elementary particle types that we find (e.g. electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc.) with the particular properties they have? Why are there the particular forces we find (e.g. electromagnetism, gravity, the strong nuclear force, etc.) with the particular properties they have?

1.5 Entropy – Why was our universe in a low entropy state in the distant past (with the matter fairly uniformly spread out, rather than, for example, all condensed into black holes)?

1.6 Reason – What’s the right explanation for WHY our universe came to exist? If it was not created by any form of intelligence, is the question even coherent to ask? If it was created by some form of intelligence, was it God, or some other form of intelligent beings (e.g. aliens creating a universe simulation in some vast computer)? If there was an intelligent creator, what is the nature of that creator (e.g. what is that creator like, what does that creator care about, etc.)?

1.7 Uniqueness – Are there other universes besides our own?

1.8 Travel – Are wormholes (connecting different parts of spacetime) actually possible? Is time travel forbidden by the laws of physics? Is instant teleportation impossible?

1.9 Dimensionality – How many dimensions of spacetime are there? (e.g., the standard view is four dimensions, which come from three spatial dimensions and a single time dimension, whereas ‘string theory’ suggests more, though most of those extra dimensions are believed to be really tiny/compact)

1.10 Computability – Can the universe be simulated to arbitrary accuracy on a normal computer (given sufficiently large amounts of memory and time), or is there something “incomputable” about the universe?

1.11 Expansion – Why does the universe seem to be expanding at an accelerating rate? If dark energy exists (the hypothesized element that is believed to make up most of the energy of the universe, not to be confused with dark matter), then what is it and why is it there?

1.12 Dark Matter – Does dark matter actually exist (i.e., the hard to detect element that appears to make up most of the mass in the universe)? If so, what is it made of?

1.13 Unification – How can general relativity and quantum mechanics be combined into a consistent theory that generalizes both (e.g., to model what happens when extremely tiny things are in strong gravitational fields)? Is ‘string theory’ the right path towards unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics (as many physicists believe), or is it a misguided approach (as a few physicists argue)?

1.14 Energy – Is there a positive, zero, or negative total amount of energy in the universe?

1.15 Divisibility – Are space and time infinitely divisible, or are there truly minimum lengths and durations?

1.16 Aliens – Does intelligent life (or even non-intelligent life) exist elsewhere in the universe? If intelligent life does exist elsewhere in the universe, why does it appear not to have reached us yet? Will we ever encounter life that has non-earth origins?

1.17 Life – Why does our universe have a set of physical laws and physical constants that allow for life (and consciousness) to exist at all? Some people argue that if the strengths of the basic forces of physics (like gravity) had been more than a certain increment stronger, or more than a certain increment weaker, life could not have formed in our universe.

—

2. HUMANITY

2.1 Origin – What were the first “replicating entities” that all the humans today eventually developed from? Many religions say that God placed the first humans here, who eventually gave birth to all the others. But as for non-religious (evolutionary) explanations, there are various theories about what these replicating entities might have been (e.g., crystals, or special molecules that can make other molecules they bump into look like themselves)

2.2 Extinction – When will humanity go extinct? And what will cause humanity’s extinction?

2.3 Governance – Given the flaws and limitations of our species, and our current state of technology, what systems of governance, laws, and institutions would maximize human flourishing?

2.4 Happiness – Given the current state of the world, and the nature of and resources of one particular person, if that person wants to maximize their happiness, what should they do? What would a supremely intelligent being tell a human about how to become happier?

2.5 Qualia – Do humans have different internal experiences in cases where we typically assume them to have the same experience? For example, do there exist non-visually impaired people whose internal experiences of red (e.g., when looking at a red apple) are totally different than each other? For instance, could it be that one person’s experience of red is what another person experiences as blue? Or even that one person experiences reds as being somewhat more like what someone else experiences for blue things?

2.6 Humor – Why do humans have humor? There are many theories (e.g., “benign violation theory” and “superiority theory”) but none of them seem complete/comprehensive.

2.7 Music – Why do humans love music so much? It’s hard to understand this from an evolutionary perspective.

2.8 Yawning – Why do we yawn? And why are yawns contagious (i.e., seeing someone yawning tends to make others yawn)? There are various theories (e.g., to cool down the brain, or to get more oxygen). My preferred highly speculative explanation is that it’s a mechanism for groups to sync their sleeping, but it’s really hard to know if that’s right.

2.9 Nutrition – What should we do to not merely stave off malnutrition, but to thrive and be as healthy as possible? There seems to be a disturbing lack of consensus on this question (and it may turn out to depend a lot on individual people’s genetic and behavioral differences).

—

3. KNOWLEDGE

3.1 Induction – is there a sound argument in favor of using induction that is non-circular (i.e., that doesn’t implicitly rely on using induction to make the argument)?

3.2 Occam’s Razor – Is there a sound justification for Occam’s razor (by which I mean the claim that “simpler” explanations are more likely to be true). If so, what’s the right notion of simpleness for a hypothesis that doesn’t require making arbitrary choices (e.g., avoiding the issue Kolmogorov complexity has where it introduces an arbitrary choice of representation language)?

3.3 Cognition – What algorithms are human brains running that allow humans to learn, remember, model the future, model other minds, reason, plan, theorize, and make inferences? Is it possible to build something broadly as smart as (or much smarter than) a human using just incremental improvements on top of today’s deep learning algorithms (combined with larger data sets and faster computation)?

3.4 Infinities – How should we think about maximizing the expected value of an action in contexts where we can’t assign strictly zero probability to outcomes of infinite value? The mere possibility (i.e. non-zero probability) of an infinite value seems to mess up the calculations completely. If we’re trying to maximize expected value, how do we resolve “pascal’s wager” and “pascal’s mugging” type situations?

3.5 Priors – How can we assign prior probabilities to hypotheses in a principled, computable way (that is, how do we decide what probabilities to assign to hypotheses BEFORE we are given evidence to use to update those prior probabilities)?

3.6 Anthropics – How do we perform reasoning and probabilistic estimation in “anthropic” scenarios where we are forced to consider the probability of even being the sort of mind that could end up in that scenario? What’s the right way to think about questions like “what’s the probability that I would end up being me rather than someone else?” or “what’s the probability that I would end up being a human rather than another species?” or “what’s the probability that I would end up being one of the last 1 billion people to be born before humanity goes extinct?”

3.7 Reference Classes – If we have multiple categories something falls into (each implying that we make different predictions about that things), how do we combine this information into a final prediction? For instance, if ALL we know is that X is a flying car, and flying machines rarely have property Y, yet cars usually have property Y, how do we make a principled “best” estimate of the chance that X has property Y? In other words, what’s the right way to think about combining the information Prob( Y, given A ) with Prob( Y, given B ) when what we really need to know is Prob ( Y, given A and B )?

3.8 Black swans – How do we probabilistically model situations (or do expected value calculations) when we know that “black swan” events (that are unlike any we have seen in the past) are possible, even though we don’t (by definition) know what these events will actually be like and how likely they are to occur?

3.9 Consciousness – Can we be 100% certain that some form of consciousness exists (because we have direct perception of conscious experiences), or should we be less than totally certain even about this?

—

4. EXISTENCE

4.1 Many Worlds – Are the “many worlds” of quantum mechanics actually all literally existing (i.e., are they as real as what we all are experiencing right now)? Or does the mathematics just make it seem that way? If they are not really there, what’s the resolution to the “measurement problem” in quantum mechanics (e.g., how do we define what a measurement is and is not such that we have a complete description of when quantum wave functions collapse)?

4.2 Anything – Why does “something” exist, rather than there being nothing at all? Or does this question not even make sense to ask?

4.3 Time – Is there a meaningful sense in which all times that have and will happen exist at once, or do some times only come into existence (as time passes)? Note that the theory of relativity seems to undermine the possibility of a single-speed of time that is the same for all observers.

4.4 Morality – Is there any form of morality that is “objectively” correct? For instance, can moral statements like “murder is always wrong” be true or false in the way that “I once purchased a fedora” is either true or false? If any sort of objective moral truth is possible, what then is objectively true about morality (e.g., utilitarianism, the categorical imperative, virtue ethics, theological ethics, etc.)?

4.5 Non-physical – does anything exist that is not merely made of atoms / not bound by our laws of physics, that can directly cause changes in our world (e.g. souls, ghosts, gods, spirits, the devil, etc.)?

4.6 Time travel – is time travel prevented by the laws of the universe? If it is not prevented by the laws of the universe, has it or will it ever happen? Potentially related: is it possible to exceed the speed of light, or is that literally impossible (as our current theories seem to tell us)?

—

5. CONSCIOUSNESS

[Note that, by “consciousness,” I mean the state of having “internal experiences.” A being has consciousness if there is “something that it’s like” to be that being. For instance, there is something that it’s like to be you, but not something that it’s like to be a chair. You have internal experiences, like experiencing the taste of a pineapple or the color of a red apple, but a chair has no experiences. You have consciousness, in the way I’m using the term, but a chair (almost certainly) doesn’t.]

5.1 Justification – Why is there consciousness at all? Couldn’t the universe be just the same as it is now except without any internal experiences at all (i.e., with no consciousness)?

5.2 Requirements – What sort of configurations of matter are necessary to give rise to consciousness? Would it be possible to build a physical device to measure consciousness? If so, what would such a device need to be like?

5.3 Physics – How do we unify the existence of consciousness with the currently known laws of physics (since examining our known laws of physics would not allow you to infer that consciousness experiences even occur)?

5.4 Quantum – Does the human brain exploit quantum physics in a meaningful way, such that it is hard to understand what the brain is doing without using a quantum mechanical explanation?

5.5 Free Will – Why do we have the persistent sense of having free will, even though (given our current understanding of physics) our actions are fully and completely determined by whatever happened a moment before (plus quantum uncertainty)?

5.6 Minimal – Which beings have consciousness? Do atoms? Viruses? Bacteria? Blood cells? Lice? Ladybugs? Spiders? Snails? Frogs? Mice? Beavers? Toucans? What’s the “simplest” possible brain or system or algorithm that can experience consciousness?

5.7 Evolution – Did consciousness come about as a result of evolution (i.e., was it created by selection pressures), and if so, what is its survival function exactly?

5.8 Algorithmic – Is it possible for an algorithm run on a digital computer to experience consciousness?

5.9 Intelligence – Can something be much more intelligent than human beings (broadly speaking) and not have consciousness? Can something behave just like a human in all ways relevant to intelligence and yet not experience consciousness (i.e., can “philosophical zombies” exist?)

5.10 Teleportation – If a teleportation device existed that could make an essentially perfectly accurate copy of you out of new atoms, with all your memories and personality intact, but it destroyed your original self just before assembling the new copy of you, would the copy be you, in the same sense that you one second from now is still you?

5.11 Macro – Is it possible (even if extraordinary difficult) for a large-scale, purely mechanical system to have consciousness, for instance, a massive machine made out of gears and pulleys? Could a very large number of people, if they were all carrying out coordinated movements that were designed to match the algorithmic information processing of a brain, temporarily create a large-scale consciousness?

5.12 Agent – What’s the right definition to use for a single “being” or “agent” that properly distinguishes it from all other beings, while still handling even weird thought experiments. (For instance, where a person’s brain is split into two but continues to operate, or where a brain is slowly replaced with pieces of another brain over a long period of time, without ever ceasing operation)?

5.13 Finality – Does all experience cease after death, as atheists typically believe and as spiritual and religious people typically deny?

Thinking along these lines, each of us can divide all things that exist or seem to exist into a few categories:

1. Those things that exist in physical reality that also have a representation in my simulation. An example of this would be some particular car that I see on the street. There are atoms (or quantum wave functions at least) in the universe that correspond to this car, and there is a visual experience in my simulation that represents this car. After I look at this car and walk away, my simulation continues to have the concept of this car, at least until I have forgotten about it. So the car exists in my simulation, but it also exists in physical reality as a bunch of atoms (though there is no dividing line in physical reality between where the car atoms end and not-car atoms begin, that dividing line too is a property of the simulation). Color is another thing in our simulation that corresponds to physical reality, but is of course only a representation of it. There is no “redness” in space, redness is something that we experience. What there is in space is electromagnetic radiation, some of which produces an experience of redness in our simulations after it hits the simulation/reality interface that we call our eyes.
2. Those things that exist in physical reality but have no representation in my simulation. This would include a particular planet in another galaxy that I’ve never heard of. Although I have the concept of planets existing, this particular planet has no representation in my simulation of reality.
3. Those things that exist in our simulation but are not representations of specific things in physical reality. An example of this would be a hallucination (sure, there are bunnies in physical reality, but that particular bunny that you think is laughing at you now and doing head stands doesn’t actually correspond to any set of atoms). Perhaps a more interesting example from this category though would be impurity. A dish is unclean, Jewish custom says, if it has touched both milk and meat. This contamination property continues to hold even after the plate is scrubbed completely clean, even if every atom of milk and meat are removed. Suppose that a man who lives by this system of thought is given a plate, and then he is told that it was recently used to eat both meat and milk. Regardless of whether that claim is true, so long as he believes it the plate will suddenly gain the property of uncleanness in his simulation. He may experience the sense of this uncleanness quite strongly, and the thought of eating from that plate may even cause him to feel disgust.

One thing that is odd about living inside a simulation (as we each are), is that aspects of the simulation that don’t correspond to anything in physical reality can feel just as real as those that do correspond. For instance, someone I know once had a schizophrenic period where they became convinced that certain objects in their kitchen were, in fact, quite evil. This evilness was completely convincing and quite overwhelming. But what does it mean for an object to be evil? Evilness surely is not a property of atoms, quantum wave functions, or physical objects, but a property of representations of things inside our simulations. Normally we only associate this property with intelligent beings, but when the simulation goes haywire it can get associated with inanimate things. Just as we think some particular clown nose is red (i.e. our simulation contains the experience of redness which our brain links to its concept of that clown nose), we could end up thinking that some particular bar of soap is evil (i.e. our simulation contains the experience of evilness which our brain links to its concept of that soap).

Influences: Michael Vassar