The Technology Behind the Soul (Mysticism, Tech, & Witches)

In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the intersection of technology, mysticism, and philosophy. Is dualism (a separate spiritual world) meaningfully different from materialist monism? They argue that “technology is just magic that we understand” — and what that means for interpreting the Bible, God’s will, and reality itself.

Topics include: why mysticism often leads to mental corruption and societal risk, Warhammer 40K-style chaos realms, the dangers of subjective “wishy thinking” over empirical probing, Catholic history with science, and why Techno-Puritans must be strict about mysticism in closed environments like spaceships or colonies.

A deep, thought-provoking discussion blending philosophy, religion, futurism, and practical ethics.

Based Camp - Technology and Mysticism

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing a very interesting question, which is if a dualist reality exists. So if people are familiar with what dualism is dualism is the belief that reality consists of both a material world and a spiritual world, and that these are fundamentally different things.

[00:00:24] This is like, most Christians, most branches of Christianity are dualist. They believe in a soul, in spiritual stuff that is completely separate from our material reality. Then if you are a monist, as we generally are, are considered you believe that one type of thing exists, and that one type of thing can either be only the spiritual exists, or only the material exists.

[00:00:49] Octavian Collins: Right.

[00:00:50] Malcolm Collins: Okay? So we’re, we’re getting this out of the way. But if you are a dualist, one thing that I’ve been thinking about recently is what additional utility dualism grants an individual in terms of interpretation of reality and morality. And by this what I mean is it came from something that Leaflet said to me on stream, which I thought was just absolutely brilliant one of the smarter things in terms of changing my world perspective that I’ve heard in a long time.

[00:01:19] She was like, “Well, you believe that everything that God does,” because we’re monist materialists, “is essentially a super advanced technology that we simply don’t understand yet.” Mm-hmm. And the wording that Simone used around this that I found really changed my view of this, which is ma- technology is just magic that we understand.

[00:01:40] Instead of framing it the other way, like magic is just technology we don’t understand, let’s frame it technology... Because we don’t even under- I- I’m even gonna put it differently. Ma- technology is just magic that we presume somebody understands, because you don’t understand how the vast majority of technology in your life works.

[00:01:57] Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I can’t tell you how this does the things that it does. I mean, I can describe what I’ve been told.

[00:02:04] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s functionally magic to us, right? And this is where it gets interesting, because the thing that differentiates technology from something that’s not technology is whether there is presumably somebody in the world who understands how that thing works.

[00:02:21] Now, presumably, God would have full knowledge of both the spiritual world and its rules of interaction, and the material world and its rules of interaction. And through that knowledge, he would be enacting his will within each of those realms. Given that’s the case, in the same way that I can say this is technology because I am aware that somebody somewhere in the universe knows how this works.

[00:03:00] Any spiritual power that God is exercising is a technology from God’s And she’s like, “So given that’s the case, why are people so...” This is a, a tract by the way. Whenever Techno-Puritan tracts, but it’s going to be musings on, on this particular concept. Why are people so antagonistic to my belief in everything in the Bible being done with hyper advanced technology?

[00:03:27] ‘Cause functionally they believe the same thing that we believe, that it’s done with hyper advanced technology. They just don’t fully they, they think that part of that technology is spiritual in nature. And this is where it gets really, really interesting as a point to sort of pull apart. Because first, now we get to ask a number of really interesting questions.

[00:03:47] Okay, so this means a materialist monist ideology is actually not as dissimilar from a spiritualist monist ideology as many people would think. So these are [00:04:00] as a reminder here, the monists believe there is only one, either the material or the spiritual world.

[00:04:05] Right.

[00:04:05] And the monist spiritualist believes that actually the material world as we think we’re understanding it is an illusion.

[00:04:14] Mm. And what actually exists is the spiritual world. Whereas I- How

[00:04:17] Simone Collins: different are those from simulation theory people?

[00:04:21] Malcolm Collins: Extremely different.

[00:04:22] in no way are they connected at all. I, I can’t even think how they could... H- How, how did you get that, that, that was connected?

[00:04:29] Simone Collins: Because the simulation theory people believe that what we think of the, is the material world is not really a material world, but rather a technological simulation.

[00:04:39] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I guess in that respect they are similar. But yeah, they, they typically wouldn’t frame it that way. They think it’s, it’s, it’s more like we exist in some sort of spiritual ether that is projecting the forms that we believe the material world is made up of as

[00:04:55] Simone Collins: like- Simulation theory ...

[00:04:57] Malcolm Collins: a lower order existence.

[00:04:58] I, I, I suppose, yeah. But at the end of the day, a materialist monist and material spiritualist actually have the same worldview, just different hypotheses about the f- the physical rules of that worldview. Both of them believe that our world is fundamentally governed by laws that can be studied and eventually understood to some extent.

[00:05:22] Both of them believe that God has a perfect understanding of those laws. They just, the spiritualist believes that the laws that physics has uncovered are- completely downstream of some other more important set of laws. However, most materialists believe this as well. I believe that the laws that physics understands right now are not complete.

[00:05:51] Oh, yeah. And we will find layers of physics above the layers of physics that we currently have.

[00:05:56] Simone Collins: Totally.

[00:05:57] Malcolm Collins: The, the core difference... So we actually fundamentally up until now all believe the same thing. The, I think the real core difference between the spiritualist and the materialist monist is the materialist believes the laws that we find above the laws right now, or like I, I believe this, are going to be mathematical in nature.

[00:06:18] It’s going to be some form of like equation that basically reality is graphed upon. See our episode on the, the maths behind reality, and we talk about this in some of our tracks where we go into our beliefs on this, that, that reality is a self-graphing equation. Whereas the spiritualist believes no, no, no it’s actually like thoughts and gists and ideas and s- th- you know, wishy thinking that exists at the higher plane.

[00:06:47] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:06:49] And the- And is that not semantics? Because math is just a language tha