I’m pegged as Unconventional Skeptic:Open Skeptic. Fine as far as it goes, which ain’t far, and I balk at the focus on “skeptic.” Cause everybody’s skeptical of things they don’t believe.
For me it’s much more focused on being completely comfortable knowing that I don’t know and don’t think I’ll ever or can know a lot, especially the big stuff. (There’s this guy Socrates who said something like this, I think, right…?) Puts the focus on fascinated curiosity. And hence having a good dose of impatience with people claiming they can/do know that kinda stuff.
And of course especially when their stated beliefs are patent nonsense based on centuries of work by vastly-more-grounded, (experimentally-)researched knowers. (God bless 'em.) Science can't tell us *nearly* everything, and never will. But the scientific method is the best, maybe only, antidote we've got to our seemingly innate and ubiquitous desire to fool ourselves. I am in no way immune, but I do really hate it when I catch myself fooling myself. It's the antithesis of true curiosity, which I genuinely love. I dunno, maybe I was born that way.
Got me in one. Fascinating to learn about so many other cosmologies. Great tool for prompting conversation and hopefully understanding, tolerance, humility.
The questionnaire process got my Neo-animist / panpsychic position right away. I also overlap with many others (taoism, pantheism, emergent and poetic materialism, indigenous worldview...). It would be amazing to do a large mapping diagram of this along two axis to show contiguities, overlaps. I teach a regenerative architecture design studio and each year we ask students to follow a student specific ecological worldview; I will probably use this to start discussions this coming years. Thank you for this great tool!
I have now discovered that I am a pragmatic instrumentalist. I didn’t knew such a category exists. I used to be an emergent materialist, but reading a little about quantum theory, I feel that the former may be a more appropriate position. If you care for a nuance to that, I have lately been awarded the opportunity to witness a couple of “paranormal” situations, both involving communication between two people beyond our usual five senses. My view is that simply science hasn’t yet got into realms that look to us as paranormal but could very well be natural interactions via “senses” we still don’t understand.
your quiz first ed me to Neo-Animism, but reading through I believe scientific pantheism is a better fit. Thanks for the whole article and quiz, very helpful in understanding others.
I ended as a scientific deist, which I feel misses something about my sense of mystery and radical skepticism. Also my religious impulse to want to connect to this being- even if it is an impersonal one.
Nice work, Buster! I came out as believing in "Pragmatic Instrumentalism," the description for which seems entirely consistent with my worldview:
"Pragmatic Instrumentalism — You see scientific theories as powerful tools for prediction and control rather than literal descriptions of an ultimate reality. The value of materialism lies in its extraordinary practical utility and predictive success, not in metaphysical claims about what “really” exists. This pragmatic approach sidesteps unresolvable metaphysical debates while maintaining the full practical power of scientific methodology."
Context: I've studied Philosophy, and used American Pragmatism (e.g. "truth is what's good in the way of belief") as the methodology for my doctoral thesis.
I’m still working on improving some areas… and definitely agree that in many cases the options are not mutually exclusive and we are able to be open to multiple possibilities at once.
c. Pragmatic Instrumentalism — You see scientific theories as powerful tools for prediction and control rather than literal descriptions of an ultimate reality. The value of materialism lies in its extraordinary practical utility and predictive success, not in metaphysical claims about what “really” exists. This pragmatic approach sidesteps unresolvable metaphysical debates while maintaining the full practical power of scientific methodology.
In a regular choose-your-own-adventure book, the world stays fixed - literally written down unchanging in black and white - and you the reader make choices and experience consequences as you navigate through the world.
In Buster's choose-your-own-adventure you the reader remain an unchanging fixed-point and the ENTIRE COSMOS rotates in front of you until you have it in an orientation that you happen to like.
(Philosophical Spirituality, by the way. Not terrible - but I do also happen to be a materialist and to view philosophy as mostly a tool for thinking about questions that we haven't [yet?] figured out a way to address scientifically (including the question of whether there's any higher power(s)), so I would have liked to have had some sort of link to Pragmatic Instrumentalism, maybe also Reductionism, too.
Some other ideas (inc. Technological Simulation, Scientific Deism) don't seem incompatible with my "main" categories; I suspect these ideas aren't true, but wouldn't be so presumptuous as to rule them out on the strength of what little we know about the universe. Probably many of Buster's Cosmos Rotators encountered ideas we haven't ruled-out in our own thought but which we needed to rule-out within the quiz in order to progress. I'm not sure how to solve this - I suspect the more accurate solutions might tend towards some sort of overengineered proportional-representation voting system..
Arriving at agnostic thought by asking "Does your view include ANY higher power" (taking "any" to mean "even a hypothetical and uncertain one" and then systematically ruling-out all the branches of deist thought: I really liked this path through the quiz. I found it a very elegant solution to the problem of capturing the necessarily vague and disparate forms of agnostic thought without offering an initial category so open-ended that most people would be obliged to choose it.)
The factor left out is agnosticism. In various ways. I can't reduce my world view to one cosmology b/c there are questions to which I don't have the answer. Such as, do I believe in the multiverse. I don't know. That is a question of fact to which we may have an answer someday but we don't now. So I cannot further refine my answer until I know.
This was so fun! I would love to see a version where the question answers systematically created exclusions of certain cosmologies and when you're done you get the cosmologies that have not been excluded (thereby allowing multiple results to come to the foreground). This would help reflect the compatibility of multiple beliefs that I think you call out in the intro.
Fun and interesting. This has helped me put words to some of my beliefs. Scientific Pantherism with a bit of Plac-Based Knowledge and Philisophical Dualism. Thanks.
I’m pegged as Unconventional Skeptic:Open Skeptic. Fine as far as it goes, which ain’t far, and I balk at the focus on “skeptic.” Cause everybody’s skeptical of things they don’t believe.
For me it’s much more focused on being completely comfortable knowing that I don’t know and don’t think I’ll ever or can know a lot, especially the big stuff. (There’s this guy Socrates who said something like this, I think, right…?) Puts the focus on fascinated curiosity. And hence having a good dose of impatience with people claiming they can/do know that kinda stuff.
And of course especially when their stated beliefs are patent nonsense based on centuries of work by vastly-more-grounded, (experimentally-)researched knowers. (God bless 'em.) Science can't tell us *nearly* everything, and never will. But the scientific method is the best, maybe only, antidote we've got to our seemingly innate and ubiquitous desire to fool ourselves. I am in no way immune, but I do really hate it when I catch myself fooling myself. It's the antithesis of true curiosity, which I genuinely love. I dunno, maybe I was born that way.
Got me in one. Fascinating to learn about so many other cosmologies. Great tool for prompting conversation and hopefully understanding, tolerance, humility.
The questionnaire process got my Neo-animist / panpsychic position right away. I also overlap with many others (taoism, pantheism, emergent and poetic materialism, indigenous worldview...). It would be amazing to do a large mapping diagram of this along two axis to show contiguities, overlaps. I teach a regenerative architecture design studio and each year we ask students to follow a student specific ecological worldview; I will probably use this to start discussions this coming years. Thank you for this great tool!
I have now discovered that I am a pragmatic instrumentalist. I didn’t knew such a category exists. I used to be an emergent materialist, but reading a little about quantum theory, I feel that the former may be a more appropriate position. If you care for a nuance to that, I have lately been awarded the opportunity to witness a couple of “paranormal” situations, both involving communication between two people beyond our usual five senses. My view is that simply science hasn’t yet got into realms that look to us as paranormal but could very well be natural interactions via “senses” we still don’t understand.
your quiz first ed me to Neo-Animism, but reading through I believe scientific pantheism is a better fit. Thanks for the whole article and quiz, very helpful in understanding others.
I ended as a scientific deist, which I feel misses something about my sense of mystery and radical skepticism. Also my religious impulse to want to connect to this being- even if it is an impersonal one.
But I like this idea and the delivery.
Nice work, Buster! I came out as believing in "Pragmatic Instrumentalism," the description for which seems entirely consistent with my worldview:
"Pragmatic Instrumentalism — You see scientific theories as powerful tools for prediction and control rather than literal descriptions of an ultimate reality. The value of materialism lies in its extraordinary practical utility and predictive success, not in metaphysical claims about what “really” exists. This pragmatic approach sidesteps unresolvable metaphysical debates while maintaining the full practical power of scientific methodology."
Context: I've studied Philosophy, and used American Pragmatism (e.g. "truth is what's good in the way of belief") as the methodology for my doctoral thesis.
Intriguing and clarifying , until I got to queries where I can accept possibilities without wanting to force myself into a particular direction..
I’m still working on improving some areas… and definitely agree that in many cases the options are not mutually exclusive and we are able to be open to multiple possibilities at once.
c. Pragmatic Instrumentalism — You see scientific theories as powerful tools for prediction and control rather than literal descriptions of an ultimate reality. The value of materialism lies in its extraordinary practical utility and predictive success, not in metaphysical claims about what “really” exists. This pragmatic approach sidesteps unresolvable metaphysical debates while maintaining the full practical power of scientific methodology.
In a regular choose-your-own-adventure book, the world stays fixed - literally written down unchanging in black and white - and you the reader make choices and experience consequences as you navigate through the world.
In Buster's choose-your-own-adventure you the reader remain an unchanging fixed-point and the ENTIRE COSMOS rotates in front of you until you have it in an orientation that you happen to like.
(Philosophical Spirituality, by the way. Not terrible - but I do also happen to be a materialist and to view philosophy as mostly a tool for thinking about questions that we haven't [yet?] figured out a way to address scientifically (including the question of whether there's any higher power(s)), so I would have liked to have had some sort of link to Pragmatic Instrumentalism, maybe also Reductionism, too.
Some other ideas (inc. Technological Simulation, Scientific Deism) don't seem incompatible with my "main" categories; I suspect these ideas aren't true, but wouldn't be so presumptuous as to rule them out on the strength of what little we know about the universe. Probably many of Buster's Cosmos Rotators encountered ideas we haven't ruled-out in our own thought but which we needed to rule-out within the quiz in order to progress. I'm not sure how to solve this - I suspect the more accurate solutions might tend towards some sort of overengineered proportional-representation voting system..
Arriving at agnostic thought by asking "Does your view include ANY higher power" (taking "any" to mean "even a hypothetical and uncertain one" and then systematically ruling-out all the branches of deist thought: I really liked this path through the quiz. I found it a very elegant solution to the problem of capturing the necessarily vague and disparate forms of agnostic thought without offering an initial category so open-ended that most people would be obliged to choose it.)
The factor left out is agnosticism. In various ways. I can't reduce my world view to one cosmology b/c there are questions to which I don't have the answer. Such as, do I believe in the multiverse. I don't know. That is a question of fact to which we may have an answer someday but we don't now. So I cannot further refine my answer until I know.
Evolutionary creationist. Cool quiz!
This was so fun! I would love to see a version where the question answers systematically created exclusions of certain cosmologies and when you're done you get the cosmologies that have not been excluded (thereby allowing multiple results to come to the foreground). This would help reflect the compatibility of multiple beliefs that I think you call out in the intro.
Transcendental idealism here
Fun and interesting. This has helped me put words to some of my beliefs. Scientific Pantherism with a bit of Plac-Based Knowledge and Philisophical Dualism. Thanks.
Very cool, thanks. I'm bookmarking this site, if you don't mind.