Episode Details

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