Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism
post by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-01T02:19:18.764Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 187 commentsOne occasionally sees such remarks as, "What good does it do to go around being angry about the nonexistence of God?" (on the one hand) or "Babies are natural atheists" (on the other). It seems to me that such remarks, and the rather silly discussions that get started around them, show that the concept "Atheism" is really made up of two distinct components, which one might call "untheism" and "antitheism".
A pure "untheist" would be someone who grew up in a society where the concept of God had simply never been invented - where writing was invented before agriculture, say, and the first plants and animals were domesticated by early scientists. In this world, superstition never got past the hunter-gatherer stage - a world seemingly haunted by mostly amoral spirits - before coming into conflict with Science and getting slapped down.
Hunter-gatherer superstition isn't much like what we think of as "religion". Early Westerners often derided it as not really being religion at all, and they were right, in my opinion. In the hunter-gatherer stage the supernatural agents aren't particularly moral, or charged with enforcing any rules; they may be placated with ceremonies, but not worshipped. But above all - they haven't yet split their epistemology. Hunter-gatherer cultures don't have special rules for reasoning about "supernatural" entities, or indeed an explicit distinction between supernatural entities and natural ones; the thunder spirits are just out there in the world, as evidenced by lightning, and the rain dance is supposed to manipulate them - it may not be perfect but it's the best rain dance developed so far, there was that famous time when it worked...
If you could show hunter-gatherers a raindance that called on a different spirit and worked with perfect reliability, or, equivalently, a desalination plant, they'd probably chuck the old spirit right out the window. Because there are no special rules for reasoning about it - nothing that denies the validity of the Elijah Test that the previous rain-dance just failed. Faith is a post-agricultural concept. Before you have chiefdoms where the priests are a branch of government, the gods aren't good, they don't enforce the chiefdom's rules, and there's no penalty for questioning them.
And so the Untheist culture, when it invents science, simply concludes in a very ordinary way that rain turns out to be caused by condensation in clouds rather than rain spirits; and at once they say "Oops" and chuck the old superstitions out the window; because they only got as far as superstitions, and not as far as anti-epistemology.
The Untheists don't know they're "atheists" because no one has ever told them what they're supposed to not believe in - nobody has invented a "high god" to be chief of the pantheon, let alone monolatry or monotheism.
However, the Untheists do know that they don't believe in tree spirits. And we shall even suppose that the Untheists don't believe in tree spirits, because they have a sophisticated and good epistemology - they understand why it is in general a bad idea to postulate ontologically basic mental entities.
So if you come up to the Untheists and say:
"The universe was created by God -"
"By what?"
"By a, ah, um, God is the Creator - the Mind that chose to make the universe -"
"So the universe was created by an intelligent agent. Well, that's the standard Simulation Hypothesis, but do you have actual evidence confirming this? You sounded very certain -"
"No, not like the Matrix! God isn't in another universe simulating this one, God just... is. He's indescribable. He's the First Cause, the Creator of everything -"
"Okay, that sounds like you just postulated an ontologically basic mental entity. And you offered a mysterious answer to a mysterious question. Besides, where are you getting all this stuff? Could you maybe start by telling us about your evidence - the new observation you're trying to interpret?"
"I don't need any evidence! I have faith!"
"You have what?"
And at this very moment the Untheists have become, for the first time, Atheists. And what they just acquired, between the two points, was Antitheism - explicit arguments against explicit theism. You can be an Untheist without ever having heard of God, but you can't be an Antitheist.
Of course the Untheists are not inventing new rules to refute God, just applying their standard epistemological guidelines that their civilization developed in the course of rejecting, say, vitalism. But then that's just what we rationalist folk claim antitheism is supposed to be, in our own world: a strictly standard analysis of religion which turns out to issue a strong rejection - both epistemically and morally, and not after too much time. Every antitheist argument is supposed to be a special case of general rules of epistemology and morality which ought to have applications beyond religion - visible in the encounters of science with vitalism, say.
With this distinction in hand, you can make a bit more sense of some modern debates - for example, "Why care so much about God not existing?" could become "What is the public benefit from publicizing antitheism?" Or "What good is it to just be against something? Where is the positive agenda?" becomes "Less antitheism and more untheism in our atheism, please!" And "Babies are born atheists", which sounds a bit odd, is now understood to sound odd because babies have no grasp of antitheism.
And as for the claim that religion is compatible with Reason - well, is there a single religious claim that a well-developed, sophisticated Untheist culture would not reject? When they have no reason to suspend judgment, and no anti-epistemology of separate magisteria, and no established religions in their society to avoid upsetting?
There's nothing inherently fulfilling about arguing against Goddism - in a society of Untheists, no one would ever give the issue a second thought. But in this world, at least, insanity is not a good thing, and sanity is worth defending, and explicit antitheism by the likes of Richard Dawkins would surely be a public service conditioning on the proposition of it actually working. (Which it may in fact be doing; the next generation is growing up increasingly atheist.) Yet in the long run, the goal is an Untheistic society, not an Atheistic one - one in which the question "What's left, when God is gone?" is greeted by a puzzled look and "What exactly is missing?"
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comment by mathemajician · 2009-07-01T09:58:14.664Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
One of my favourite posts here in a while. When talking with theists I find it helpful to clarify that I'm not so much against their God, rather my core problem is that I have different epistemological standards to them. Not only does this take some of the emotive heat out of the conversation, but I also think it's the point where science/rationalism/atheism etc. is at its strongest and their system is very weak.
With respect to untheistic society, I remember when a guy I knew shifted to New Zealand from the US and was disappointed to find that relatively few people were interested in talking to him about atheism. The reason, I explained, is that most people simply aren't sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism. This is a society where the leaders of both major parties in the last election publicly stated that they were not believers and... almost nobody cared.
Replies from: curiousgeorge↑ comment by curiousgeorge · 2013-01-14T00:01:44.487Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I enjoyed this post very much as well as I am interested in this topic. I am not a mathmatician and only had entry level college philosophy, so 80% of the discussion is over my head. I wanted to say that your comment that "most people aren't sufficiently interested in religion to be bothered with atheism" in New Zeland was very helpful.
This may make no logical sense, but the meaning I took away is that if that if an individual is not sufficiently interested in religion (or feel he has sufficient reason to disbelieve Christianity in my case) then that individual should not be bothered that he is an atheist. I know the point of these discussions is to discuss and not compliment, but I wanted to say that your comment helped me tremendously.
comment by Wei Dai (Wei_Dai) · 2009-07-01T12:38:23.926Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
So the universe was created by an intelligent agent. Well, that's the standard Simulation Hypothesis [...]
I've been thinking about a slightly different question: is base-level reality physics-like, or optimization-like, and if it's optimization-like, did it start out that way?
Here's an example that illustrates what my terms mean. Suppose we are living in base-level reality which started with the Big Bang and evolution, and we eventually develop an AI that takes over the entire universe. Then I would say that base-level reality started off physics-like, then becomes optimization-like.
But it's surely conceivable that a universe could start off being optimization-like, and this hypothesis doesn't seem to violate Occam's Razor in any obvious way. Consider this related question: what is the shortest program that outputs a human mind? Is it an optimization program, or a physics simulation?
An optimization procedure can be very simple, if computing time isn't an issue, but we don't know whether there is a concisely describable objective function that we are the optimum of. On the other hand, the mathematical laws of physics are also simple, but we don't know how rare intelligent life is, so we don't know how many bits of coordinates are needed to locate a human brain in the universe.
Does anyone have an argument that settles these questions, in either direction?
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, AllanCrossman, Peterdjones, Vladimir_Nesov, Drahflow, Sideways↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-01T16:21:16.860Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Can something be optimization-like without being ontologically mental? In other words, if a higher level is a universal Turing machine that devotes more computing resources to other Turing machines depending on how many 1s they've written so far as opposed to 0s, is that the sort of optimization-like thing we're talking about? I'm assuming you don't mean anything intrinsically teleological.
Replies from: Wei_Dai, Leon↑ comment by Wei Dai (Wei_Dai) · 2009-07-01T18:25:55.873Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, I think if base-level reality started out optimization-like, it's not mind-like, or at least not any kind of mind that we'd be familiar with. It might be something like Schmidhuber's Goedel Machine with a relatively simple objective function.
↑ comment by AllanCrossman · 2009-07-01T13:08:24.555Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Suppose we are living in base-level reality which started with the Big Bang and evolution, and we eventually develop an AI that takes over the entire universe. Then I would say that base-level reality started off physics-like, then becomes optimization-like.
Hmm? The base-level that the AI is running on is still physics, right?
[ETA the word "on", which I missed out]
Replies from: MichaelVassar↑ comment by MichaelVassar · 2009-07-01T15:36:10.968Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
No. That's the point of the question.
↑ comment by Peterdjones · 2011-04-21T14:27:21.448Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The universe presumably isn't optimised for intelligence, since most organisms are baceria, etc, and isn't optimised for life, since most of it is barren. See Penrose's argument against the Anthropic Principle in Road to Reality.
Replies from: samineru↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T18:16:16.472Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm confused by your comment, but I'll try to answer anyway.
As an agent in environment, you can consider the environment in behavioral semantics: environment is an equivalence class of all the things that behave the same as what you see. Instead of minimal model, this gives a maximal model. Everything about territory remains black box, except the structure imposed by the way you see the territory, by the way you observe things, perform actions, and value strategies. This dissolves the question about what the territory "really is".
Replies from: cousin_it, Wei_Dai↑ comment by cousin_it · 2009-07-02T09:12:47.515Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Your answer strikes me as unsatisfactory: if we apply it to humans, we lose interest in electricity, atoms, quarks etc. An agent can opt to dig deeper into reality to find the base-level stuff, or it can "dissolve the question" and walk away satisfied. Why would you want to do the latter?
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-02T10:04:41.434Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The agent has preferences over these black boxes (or strategies that instantiate them), and digging deeper may be a good idea. To get rid of the (unobservable) structure in environment, the preferences for the elements of environment have to be translated in terms of preferences over the whole situations. The structure of environment becomes the structure of preferences over the black boxes.
↑ comment by Wei Dai (Wei_Dai) · 2009-07-01T18:58:54.638Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Two models can behave the same as what you've seen so far, but diverge in future predictions. Which model should you give greater weight to? That's the question I'm asking.
Replies from: robzahra, Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by robzahra · 2009-07-02T00:23:58.197Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The current best answer we know seems to be to write each consistent hypothesis in a formal language, and weight longer explanations inverse exponentially, renormalizing such that your total probability sums to 1. Look up aixi, universal prior
↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T20:18:15.237Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In behavioral interpretation, you weight observations, or effects of possible strategies (on observations/actions), not the way territory is. The base level is the agent, and rules of its game with environment. Everything else describes the form of this interaction, and answers the questions not about the underlying reality, but about how the agent sees it. If the distinction you are making doesn't reach the level of influencing what the agent experiences, it's absent from this semantics: no weighting, no moving parts, no distinction at all.
For a salient example: if the agent in the same fixed internal state is instantiated multiple times both in the same environment at the same time, and at different times, or even in different environments, with different probabilities for some notion of that, all of these instances and possibilities together go under one atomic black-box symbol for the territory corresponding to that state of the agent, with no internal structure. The structure however can be represented in preferences for strategies or sets of strategies for the agent.
Replies from: Wei_Dai↑ comment by Wei Dai (Wei_Dai) · 2009-07-02T08:52:47.785Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Vladimir, are you proposing this "behavioral interpretation" for an AI design, or for us too? Is this an original idea of yours? Can you provide a link to a paper describing it in more detail?
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-02T09:53:37.942Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm generalizing/analogizing from the stuff I read on coalgebras, and in this case I'm pretty sure the idea makes sense, it's probably explored elsewhere. You can start here, or directly from Introduction to Coalgebra: Towards Mathematics of States and Observations (PDF).
There are many similarities (or dualities) between algebras and coalgebras which are often useful as guiding principles. But one should keep in mind that there are also significant differences between algebra and coalgebra. For example, in a computer science setting, algebra is mainly of interest for dealing with finite data elements – such as finite lists or trees – using induction as main definition and proof principle. A key feature of coalgebra is that it deals with potentially infinite data elements, and with appropriate state-based notions and techniques for handling these objects. Thus, algebra is about construction, whereas coalgebra is about deconstruction – understood as observation and modification.
A rule of thumb is: data types are algebras, and state-based systems are coalgebras. But this does not always give a clear-cut distinction. For instance, is a stack a data type or does it have a state? In many cases however, this rule of thumb works: natural numbers are algebras (as we are about to see), and machines are coalgebras. Indeed, the latter have a state that can be observed and modified.
[...]
Initial algebras (in Sets) can be built as so-called term models: they contain everything that can be built from the operations themselves, and nothing more. Similarly, we saw that final coalgebras consist of observations only.
↑ comment by Drahflow · 2009-07-02T13:19:35.540Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The physical universe seems to optimize for low-energy / high-entropy states, via some kind of local decision process.
So I think your two options actually coincide.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-02T18:06:15.666Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The universe doesn't optimize entropy, it is people who make strong inferences coming out this way. See e.g. E. T. Jaynes (1988). `The Evolution of Carnot's Principle'. Maximum-Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Science and Engineering 1:267+ (PDF)
On the other hand, you can always look at how something is, and formulate an optimization problem for which the way things are is a solution, saying that "so, the system optimizes this property". This is called variational method, and it isn't terribly ontologically enlightening.
↑ comment by Sideways · 2009-07-01T17:07:28.003Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How about both?
If I understand your terms correctly, it may be possible for realities that are not base-level to be optimization-like without being physics-like, e.g. the reality generated by playing a game of Nomic, a game in which players change the rules of the game. But this is only possible because of interference by optimization processes from a lower-level reality, whose goals ("win", "have fun") refer to states of physics-like processes. I suspect that base-level reality be physics-like. To paraphrase John Donne, no optimization process is an island--otherwise how could one tell the difference between an optimization process and purely random modification?
On the other hand, the "evolution" optimization process arose in our universe without a requirement for lower-level interference. Not that I assume our universe is base-level reality, but it seems like evolution or analogous optimizations could arise at any level. So perhaps physics-like realities are also intrinsically optimization-like.
comment by Sideways · 2009-07-01T04:49:13.772Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If you could show hunter-gatherers a raindance that called on a different spirit and worked with perfect reliability, or, equivalently, a desalination plant, they'd probably chuck the old spirit right out the window.
There's no need to speculate--this has actually happened. From what I know of the current state of Native American culture (which is admittedly limited), modern science is fully accepted for practical purposes, and traditional beliefs guide when to party, how to mourn, how to celebrate rites of passage, etc.
The only people who seem to think science conflicts with Native American belief systems, are New Age converts coming from a Western religious background. From the linked article:
A Minnesota couple who refused chemotherapy for their 13-year-old son was ordered Friday to have the boy re-evaluated... Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found Daniel Hauser has been "medically neglected" by his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, who belong to a religious group that believes in using only natural healing methods practiced by some American Indians.
comment by Jack · 2009-07-02T00:16:31.804Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Two points.
First, I've also heard antitheism defined as the position that religious belief is harmful (think Hitchens book). So that one could without logical contradiction be an antitheist and a theist.
Second, my understanding of the current experimental data is that humans have hardwired religious tendencies that would make an Untheistic society very unlikely to appear. Obviously it works for a thought experiment but but saying "Babies are natural atheists/untheists" is problematic because while that might be true strictly speaking babies are likely natural animists and possibly immortalists.
Replies from: ciphergoth, Eliezer_Yudkowsky, ragnarok↑ comment by Paul Crowley (ciphergoth) · 2009-07-03T07:37:46.216Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
humans have hardwired religious tendencies
Remember, religion is adapted to the wiring, not the other way around. As I've said elsewhere, it's not a God-shaped hole, it's a hole-shaped God.
Do you live in the USA? Few people from Sweden conclude that religion is an unshakeably deep part of the human psyche.
Replies from: Jack↑ comment by Jack · 2009-07-03T22:22:17.645Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I didn't say it was unshakable. Just innate. I'm not convinced religion didn't spring from the wiring... where else could it spring from? The only option is the external world and I think we agree there is nothing there to generate religion.
Sweden, as I understand it, is a civilized land with a scientific mindset. The fact that they've overcome a bias says nothing about the existence of that bias.
↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-02T05:13:15.546Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
hardwired religious tendencies
Hardwired anthropomorphic tendencies. Hunter-gatherer superstitions don't much resemble what we think of as religions. The gods are often stupid.
↑ comment by ragnarok · 2012-07-24T10:48:34.812Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Jack, there's a difference between knowledge and belief which your post doesn't address. I've sometimes seen it argued that antitheism is a faith in the same way as theism is, but where there is evidence we do not speak of belief. I don't think you can be an antitheist and a theist without contradiction because antitheism doesn't contradict the knowable.
comment by Lavender (Kevin92) · 2016-02-16T02:07:49.293Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I've always thought saying that babies are atheists is like saying rocks are atheists.
comment by MendelSchmiedekamp · 2009-07-01T23:27:01.165Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Could you be more precise than ontologically basic mental entities, I've read over the Carrier article on the subject and more and more the concept appears like a subtle rhetorical trick - where the term (especially what qualifies as mental) takes on slightly different meanings at different times.
As it is, I'm tempted to treat the whole idea as dangerously shaky - especially as depending on your ideas of "mental" and "basic" you could consider thermodynamics to be unambiguously supernatural and the medieval Christian God as natural.
I apologize, though, as I realize is somewhat off topic. But it might be important to note that it is unlikely for pure Untheist to develop rhetorical strategies based on Theism without having encountered them before.
Replies from: None↑ comment by [deleted] · 2015-04-21T21:49:49.357Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Mental entities can be modeled as Agents — with a utility function.
Thermodynamics can't. It's an entropic process, all it does is uniformly increase entropy in the universe. It does not do work in order to shape reality into a set of desirable states.
In fact all basic laws of (continuous, Hamiltonian (if I got that one right)) physics are entropy increasing and are only poorly modeled as agents.
Humans are much better modeled as agents. As are fictional deities and spirits.
An ontologically fundamental mental entity is 1) inherently indivisible (like an electron or a photon) and 2) an agent.
comment by buybuydandavis · 2011-10-31T06:28:47.302Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"I don't need any evidence! I have faith!"
"You have what?"
And at this very moment the Untheists have become, for the first time, Atheists.
In another thread, someone called himself an "Afaithist". I think it's rather catchy, and much more to the point than atheist.
comment by Paamayim · 2009-09-08T02:08:10.992Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I changed my official religious status, funnily enough, from "atheist" to "antitheist" about a week after this was posted without reading it. What's more odd is I was attempting to spare the Goddists of the same ambiguity you're discussing. How about that?
comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T03:40:52.309Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
comment by thomblake · 2009-07-01T02:37:13.129Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"Atheism" is really made up of two distinct components, which one might call "untheism" and "antitheism".
This distinction is isomorphic to the traditional distinction between negative and positive atheism, respectively. Of course, the Catholics would use "positive atheism" in a slightly different sense, referring to those who believe in God but reject him anyway, so perhaps newer jargon is in order (not that this field of inquiry has any lack of distinctions)
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, Alicorn↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-01T04:00:53.387Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To make the distinction clear, if "weak atheism" aka "negative atheism" is lack of belief in God, and strong atheism is belief in lack of God, then:
Weak Untheism would be having never heard of God, but having already invented such epistemic rules that, faced with the proposition of God / religion, you will fail to accept it.
Strong Untheism would be having never heard of God, but having already developed epistemic rules of sufficient strength that, first faced with the proposition of God / religion, you will pass definite negative judgment on it.
Replies from: swestrup, prase↑ comment by swestrup · 2009-07-01T09:45:59.434Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To echo scientists who say that something is "Not Even Wrong" if its untestable and/or non-scientific to the point of being incomprehensible, my position on the whole religion question is one that I tend to call Ignosticism in which I say that religions definitions of God are so self-contradictory that I don't even know what they mean by God.
Generally, when some asks if I believe in God, I tell them to define it. When they ask me why, I ask them if they believe in Frub. If so, why? If not, why? Without me giving them a definition, how can they possibly give a rational answer.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-01T16:18:46.167Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, sure. By the time the Untheists had talked with any theist from our world for a short period of time, they would deduce that "God" could not be cashed out as a consistent model of anything but rather consisted of the conversational rule "Agree with extreme positive statements".
↑ comment by prase · 2009-07-01T08:52:13.952Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have never understood the difference between weak and strong atheism. Either I think God probably exists or that he probably doesn't, but what's the difference between lack of belief in a proposition and a belief in its converse? Is it that, say, who thinks that God doesn't exist with p=0.8 is a weak atheist while with p=1-10^(-9) he would be a strong one? Or is a weak atheist only who has suspended judgement (what's the difference from an agnostic, then)?
Replies from: Z_M_Davis, eirenicon, AlexU, tut↑ comment by Z_M_Davis · 2009-07-02T17:09:18.510Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Is it that, say, who thinks that God doesn't exist with p=0.8 is a weak atheist while with p=1-10^(-9) he would be a strong one?
A hypothesis: the people who coined the terminology didn't have this concept that you have, of probability theory as normative reasoning.
↑ comment by eirenicon · 2009-07-01T14:15:29.726Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A weak atheist thinks there is no reason to believe God exists. A strong atheist thinks there is reason to believe God does not exist. The practical difference is that the strong atheist defends his position while the weak atheist doesn't think he needs to.
In a way, it's the difference between not wanting to eat spinach and thinking spinach should not be eaten. The former position does not require an epistemological defence.
Replies from: prase↑ comment by prase · 2009-07-01T16:15:30.824Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Liking spinach (or a spinach-free society) is a statement about one's values. Belief in God is a statement about external world.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-01T16:22:18.927Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Wouldn't it be nice if that were the way it actually worked.
Replies from: prase↑ comment by AlexU · 2009-07-01T13:54:37.309Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Quick: is there an 85 year old former plumber by the name of Saul Morgan eating a breakfast of steak and eggs in a diner in North Side of Chicago right now? Who knows, right? You certainly don't have an affirmative belief that there is, but it's also true that, perhaps up until this moment, you didn't affirmatively believe that there wasn't such a man either. Lacking a belief in something is not the same as believing in its converse. To affirmatively believe in the non-existence of every conceivable entity or the falsity of ever proposition would require an infinite number of beliefs.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov, prase↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T14:00:06.129Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Beliefs are procedural, you don't need them all written out explicitly. This allows to hold infinite number of beliefs, each of them equipped with a specific level of certainty. I never before thought about the question of what the value of 385+23 is, but I still have a belief that 385+23=408 and also that 385+23 is not 409.
Replies from: MBlume, thomblake↑ comment by MBlume · 2009-07-01T18:41:51.176Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I reservedly agree. Taken to extremes your position implies logical omniscience -- that I already have a belief one way or the other about the truth of the Riemann hypothesis because I know the basic axioms of complex mathematics, for example.
On the other hand, if I have a random number generator about to spit out a number between 1 and 10^12 I do assign an implicit probability 10^-12 to each number in that range, even though I (couldn't possibly) explicitly list them out.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T20:11:29.846Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The way beliefs are "procedural" includes the requirement that you must be able to instantiate them, but permitting this bounded step vastly increases the number of possible beliefs. Beliefs are answers to questions, and epistemic mind is a question-answering engine. Without logical omniscience, the process of computation increases information about statements over time (even without learning new facts from environment). When first confronted with a question of what 385+23 is, the one-second reply is "about 400", and only then "408".
↑ comment by prase · 2009-07-01T16:09:06.606Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As V. Nesov said, not having thought about it isn't important. I have no evidence about plumbers in Chicago, but if I am presented with the question, I can think for a while and assign some probability to the proposition. I assume population of cca. 1 million, out of which former or present plumbers are, say, 1%, from what the age group select another 1%, the name and surname make another factor... so I am almost sure that there isn't such a man. Affirmatively, if you want.
Another point is that even if I accept that I hadn't had an affirmative belief about Saul Morgan before you have presented the question, I find the analogy misleading, because practically all atheists have heard about the hypothesis of God.
Of course you can meet a claim and decide to not care about it. But it seems to me that it's almost always case of very unimportant questions. I can't imagine a person who wilfully suspends judgement about eternal damnation and torture in hell, meaning of life, basis for morality and all other important subjects traditionally associated with religion. You can quickly conclude that religion is bogus and then go thinking about something else. But to leave the question genuinely open?
↑ comment by tut · 2009-07-02T12:42:24.137Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The difference is what would happen if they were to encounter evidence for the existence of a deity. A weak atheist would start to believe no matter how weak the evidence, wheras the strong atheist would only start to believe if the evidence was stronger than his prior evidence against god. And the strong atheist would probably be much more dilligent in trying to defeat arguments for god.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov, prase↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-02T17:55:26.208Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The difference is what would happen if they were to encounter evidence for the existence of a deity.
But then it won't be God, it'll be the specific thing which this is evidence of. "God" is a word gone wrong.
↑ comment by prase · 2009-07-03T09:38:43.421Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Assuming that "believe" in your usage means "p(God exists)>0.5" in my usage, and similarly "disbelieve"="p<0.5", this would mean that weak atheists are at exact p=0.5, which is a zero measure set. Such people don't exist.
Seriously, it is difficult to imagine an opinion which can be reversed by literally any evidence against, no matter how weak.
↑ comment by Alicorn · 2009-07-01T02:52:08.520Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm wary of calling any use of this region of vocabulary "traditional". There might well be some unbroken progress from etymological origin to well-defined current use of those terms, but if there is, it's lost in a sea of neologism, and arbitrary new definitions of old words, and rampant use or misuse by the completely or partially ignorant.
comment by MichaelVassar · 2009-07-01T05:24:51.292Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"is there a single religious claim that a well-developed, sophisticated Untheist culture would not reject?"
I propose "suffering requires attachment" as a VERY well developed VERY non-obvious example. "Don't murder" is a very poorly developed and very obvious example. "It's bad to hate" is probably the most important idea that appears to me to have originated with Christianity, but its a pretty important idea. Another pretty important Christian idea, I think, is "literal truth is underrated", ironically, but then again, I'm not entirely joking when, building upon Hume, I call those who call themselves Atheists "Christians" and those who most emphatically call themselves "Christians" "Pagans" (Roman for Hicks).
Replies from: Psychohistorian↑ comment by Psychohistorian · 2009-07-01T05:58:22.747Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I propose "suffering requires attachment" as a VERY well developed VERY non-obvious example.
That doesn't seem like a religious claim so much as a claim originally (if so) made in a religious context. It's an (admittedly fuzzy) empirical claim about suffering, once you define your terms.
More generally, claims made within religions seem to break down into three categories: claims about God, claims about the world, and claims about God's relation/action within the world. It seems clear that Untheists would find nothing useful in the first or last of those, and it seems improper to call claims about the world "religious." Claiming the Earth is six thousand years old is not a religious claim; it's an empirical claim that some religious people believe irrespective of evidence. Similarly, true empirical claims made by religion are hardly religious by nature; if you disproved the religion to a believer, it seems unlikely he would give up those empirical beliefs, too.
Moral statements like "It's bad to hate," are a bit more complex. If they're categorical (like, "Don't murder"), they have no truth content ; I doubt Untheists would have categorical imperatives. If they're hypothetical (don't murder, or else people will murder you/society will collapse/baby Jesus will cry), then they can be evaluated empirically, and should be accepted or rejected based on supporting evidence.
More succinctly, EY's claim seems right. I doubt any strictly religious claim would be accepted by Untheists.
Replies from: prase, Zubon, MBlume, MichaelVassar↑ comment by prase · 2009-07-01T08:43:44.519Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It is worth to clarify what exactly counts as a religious claim. Else we are in a risk of arguing along the lines "whatever claim unreligious society accepts is by definition not religious". Then clearly the question whether there is a single religious claim that Untheist culture would not reject would be empty.
↑ comment by Zubon · 2009-07-04T06:21:16.886Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
To give a concrete example of non-theistically coming to "suffering requires attachment," see Epicurus' ethics. I don't know if you would describe the ancient Greeks as untheists, but their view was certainly something other than modern monotheism. Epicurus was an atheist against a pantheon; I presume that monotheists were occasionally killed as ~atheists in that kind of environment.
↑ comment by MBlume · 2009-07-01T18:35:37.739Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I actually took "It's bad to hate" as an empirical statement, cashed out as "It is a fact of human psychology that dwelling constantly on negative feelings toward others will generally make you miserable, and lead to outcomes which you would not currently rate highly". This is an insight which I think is strongly implied by some of the Greek dramatic literature, though.
↑ comment by MichaelVassar · 2009-07-01T15:37:58.130Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I doubt you have spoken to many untheists if you don't expect them to have categorical imperatives.
Replies from: Psychohistorian↑ comment by Psychohistorian · 2009-07-01T19:45:33.055Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I doubt you have spoken to many untheists if you don't expect them to have categorical imperatives.
An example would be nifty.
I tend to read "categorical imperative" in the strongest, Kantian sense, an imperative statement that is a priori valid irrespective of context or reasoning - i.e. murder isn't wrong because people don't like it, or because it reduces happiness, or because it makes baby Jesus cry; murder is just wrong and you just shouldn't do it period. Perhaps I should not have raised that distinction without defining what I meant more rigorously. Unless there's some counterexample I'm overlooking, of course.
Replies from: greim↑ comment by greim · 2009-07-02T19:11:12.150Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I tend to read "categorical imperative" in the strongest, Kantian sense, an imperative statement that is a priori valid irrespective of context or reasoning - i.e. murder is just wrong and you just shouldn't do it period.
If "murder"=="the wrong kind of killing" then "the wrong kind of killing is just wrong and you just shouldn't do it period" is a tautology. It would seem you can get cheap categorical imperatives by jumping to tautologies, but they're mostly useless since you still have to establish whether it's murder in the first place (presumably by resorting to context and/or reasoning).
I suspect non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives are rare, and furthermore hotly disputed among ethicists. For example some groups hold that "killing is categorically wrong," but that view is under heavy debate.
Edit: I retract my statement about non-tautological categorical ethical imperatives being rare, at least in per capita terms. Anecdotally, premarital sex and disobeying your parents would seem to be examples of things that are widely held to be categorically wrong, but certainly not universally agreed-upon.
Replies from: Psychohistorian↑ comment by Psychohistorian · 2009-07-02T23:56:16.319Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Plenty of people hold essentially categorical imperatives to be true. I sincerely doubt any of these people are untheists. The essence of a categorical imperative is that it is completely divorced from evidence; categorical imperatives are by nature a priori. I believe they have no place in a rational mind, though I would love to see contrary evidence if it exists.
comment by Tyrrell_McAllister · 2014-03-18T19:18:53.292Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Xia: It should be relatively easy to give AIXI(tl) evidence that its selected actions are useless when its motor is dead. If nothing else AIXI(tl) should be able to learn that it's bad to let its body be destroyed, because then its motor will be destroyed, which experience tells it causes its actions to have less of an impact on its reward inputs.
Rob B: [...] Even if we get AIXI(tl) to value continuing to affect the world, it's not clear that it would preserve itself. It might well believe that it can continue to have a causal impact on our world (or on some afterlife world) by a different route after its body is destroyed. Perhaps it will be able to lift heavier objects telepathically, since its clumsy robot body is no longer getting in the way of its output sequence.
Compare human immortalists who think that partial brain damage impairs mental functioning, but complete brain damage allows the mind to escape to a better place. Humans don't find it inconceivable that there's a light at the end of the low-reward tunnel, and we have death in our hypothesis space!
I’d like to see this rebuttal spelled out in more detail. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that “we get AIXI(tl) to value continuing to affect the world”. Why would it then be so hard to convince AIXI(tl) that it will be better able to affect the world if no anvils fall on a certain head? (I mean, hard compared to any reasonably-hoped-for alternative to AIXI(tl)?)
If the AIXI(tl) robot has been kept from killing itself for long enough for it to observe the basics of how the world works, why wouldn’t AIXI(tl) have noticed that it is better able to affect the world when a certain brain and body are in good working order and free of obstructions? We can’t give AIXI(tl) the experience of dying, but can’t we can give AIXI(tl) experiences supporting the hypothesis that damage to a particular body causes AIXI(tl) to be unable to affect the world as well as it would like?
I can see that AIXI(tl) would entertain hypotheses like, “Maybe dropping this anvil on this brain will make things better.” But AIXI(tl) would also entertain the contrary hypothesis, that dropping the anvil will make things worse, not because it will turn the perceptual stream into an unending sequence of NULLs, but rather because smashing the brain might make it harder for AIXI(tl) to steer the future.
Humans did invent hypotheses like, “complete brain damage allows the mind to escape to a better place”, but there seems to be a strong case for the claim that humans are far more confident in such hypotheses than they should be, given the evidence. Shouldn’t a Solomonoff inductor do a much better job at weighing this evidence than humans do? Why wouldn’t AIXI(tl)’s enthusiasm for the “better place” hypothesis be outweighed by a fear of becoming a disembodied Cartesian spirit cut off from all influence over the only world that it cares about influencing?
comment by Catherineiam · 2012-08-12T18:14:12.823Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"What's left, when God is gone?" I'd assert that it might be pretty anti-climactic and people and societies might be very similar to how they would be without a God concept. I doubt that people would be any more motivated to understand their environment than they wouldve been and probably as irrational as ever, however without the excuse of religiosity. I see wars as being men's sexual frustrations in part and societies evolution happening in stages however the world is becoming less violent and induvidual rights becoming more universally accepted. Im with AC Grayling when he says words to the effect of religions are dying out, like a cornered animal they are becoming louder and more frantic however religion is in decline. As for "whats missing?" More ways to love and be creative, more ways to enjoy living, better treatments for diseases, cures for depression and the common cold, cancer etcetera, longevity, meaning, fulfilment, ethics...
Replies from: jchristimd↑ comment by jchristimd · 2012-08-29T22:03:33.877Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hi: Did anyone read the recent Science paper looking at adherence to religious endorsements among two groups one faithful and the second athesist who first had to perform tasks ? The study did baseline endorsement assessments and found that religious people endorsed concepts like 'my life could be influenced by supernatural forces' and atheists did not. The two groups then had to do two sets of tasks before being reassessed on religious endorsements. The first set of tasks was mathmatical calculation. They had to multiply and divide, calculate speeds, do puzzles etc. The second set of tasks was to listen to music, chant and meditate, hear a motivtional speaker etc. Turns out that ALL subjects decreased their 'supernatural' endorsements after performing calculations and they ALL increased endorsements after listening to music, meditation etc. Turns out activating the frontal lobes inhibits our more cognitively 'creative' hindbrain. Thus we can explain the music, incense, chanting, preaching found in most religious settings. You guys will never agree because both functions are legitimate, spatially separated in brain and to a certain extent they appear to be mutually exclusive. Likely some individuals release more dopamine in their nucleus acumbens than others when they chant or like me when they solve a math puzzle. That is why we have Mother Teresa and Steven Hawkings. God will never be gone because that valuable hindbrain cerebral real estate will be occupied with something in some people and little in others. Importantly the data imply that however we self identify, we are all susceptible to faith as well as reason under the right conditions.
comment by IcyDragon · 2011-09-15T20:42:54.705Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't remember whose comment that I read, but I can say I grew up without hearing about religion until the end of middle. And with saying that I didn't have a religion or even think about anything close to that. I was told to join different religions by different kinds of people when thay learned of that and I took the ideas as a childrens story and think of it like that. I don't really have a point, but just wanted to put out there that growing up without hearing about religion doesn't mean we don't believe they're just unaware and if it weren't told from generation to generation religion wouldn't last long. Newly developed ones over the times are taken from past ones and are just personalized versions of pasted ones. I have quite a few opinions on these, but for now this is it.
comment by zaph · 2009-07-02T12:39:09.670Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"What's left, when God is gone?" is greeted by a puzzled look and "What exactly is >missing?"
I think that this is a very important question to ask, and to really seek answers on, if this discussion is to advance any. Obviously, there are believers of all stripes who are in some sense getting a reward for their beliefs, be it socially rewarding for the culture or subculture they are in, psychologically rewarding by allowing them to be more hopeful about the future, etc. Saying their metaphysical beliefs are unlikely doesn't get at the heart of what their belief is based on, in my opinion. As has been pointed out, they don't have a robust logical structure to their beliefs to start with. So, what's "missing" from the rationalist worldview in the eyes of a believer in the supernatural is not necessarily the gods, fairies, etc., as much as the sense of safety, community, what have you, that their particular faith grants them. So, in addition to EY's equation, I'd like to suggest that atheism != anti-community or anti-loyalty or anti-love, though in the current political structures and fights we're having in the US, it almost definitely does equal anti-religion (see the teaching evolution in schools and the gay marriage debates). Untheism, by disregarding the supernatural, can still claim a lot from the territory that supernaturalists refer to as "spiritual".
Replies from: thomblake, Mitchell_Porter↑ comment by thomblake · 2009-07-02T14:02:06.711Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Untheism, by disregarding the supernatural, can still claim a lot from the territory that supernaturalists refer to as "spiritual".
It should be noted that not all "untheists" disregard the supernatural. Many buddhists are atheistic but accept the supernatural, for instance. And I'm sure there are atheists out there who believe in various flavors of magic or the paranormal.
Replies from: zaph↑ comment by zaph · 2009-07-02T14:37:58.321Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Point taken, Thom. In my eyes, those positions (atheist magicians or supernaturally minded Buddhists) are still seeking the same things as a single-deity theist, such as, a sense of control of their destiny or the possibility of being reunited with lost loved one. In saying "we can speak about those things you want when you look for God (or magic, or the paranormal)", I believe rationalists open up a better avenue of dialog than by saying "you aren't talking about anything important". This might help people to improve their lives not by looking into the arcana of the faith they were raised in, but the possibilities held in the world around them.
↑ comment by Mitchell_Porter · 2009-07-03T02:01:09.716Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
"I think that this is a very important question to ask, and to really seek answers on, if this discussion is to advance any."
The thing which is missing, "when God is gone", is any explanation as to why the universe exists. And the thing which is missing, when nothing is felt to be missing in the absence of a God-concept, is any awareness that the existence of the universe is even an intellectual problem. The world is merely perceived as consisting of already existing things, and the cause of their being is to be found in other things that used to exist, and the question as to why the whole big causal network exists - why there is anything at all in the first place, not just this or that particular thing right now - is not noticed or is shrugged off in various ways.
Replies from: Furcas, pjeby↑ comment by Furcas · 2009-07-04T02:00:02.673Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Uh, even if that were a valid problem, isn't it obvious that God isn't a good explanation? If the universe exists because God caused it or sustains it, why does God exist?
Replies from: Mitchell_Porter↑ comment by Mitchell_Porter · 2009-07-04T03:52:12.162Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
And the original gods weren't even supposed to be causes of the world-as-a-whole - they were just anthropomorphic hypotheses to explain aspects of the world.
However, that sort of thinking eventually got us to the point of asking about where existence as such, the world as a whole, came from.
Which in turn - thanks to basic questions like the one you just asked - led to concepts such as "first cause" and "necessary being" and so forth.
So, the human race already has had a few ideas regarding why existence exists. You may not find any of them persuasive. But my real point is to warn against complacency. Rationalist materialists such as congregate on this site have a deplorable tendency to regard some combination of mathematical physics and quantitative epistemology as a closed and complete philosophical system, and they need a periodic prod in the third eye to remind them that there are questions which are not addressed even in principle by that particular synthesis - and that it is possible to think about them, rather than just rationalize them away.
↑ comment by pjeby · 2009-07-03T03:19:36.859Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The world is merely perceived as consisting of already existing things, and the cause of their being is to be found in other things that used to exist, and the question as to why the whole big causal network exists - why there is anything at all in the first place, not just this or that particular thing right now - is not noticed or is shrugged off in various ways.
But the question itself only arises from the nature of human mental models, which have to contain "why's". The universe itself doesn't have things labeled "causes" and "effects"; these are labels that human brains attach.
Or to put it more pointedly - the universe doesn't need a why. That's just something (some) humans want.
Replies from: Mitchell_Porter↑ comment by Mitchell_Porter · 2009-07-04T01:16:00.561Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Focusing on names, and on the contingency of the names we give things, or whether we even notice them for long enough to give them a name, is a great way to shrug off "metaphysical" problems like this.
P.J. Eby, are you really saying there's no such thing as cause and effect? That the smashing of the glass on the floor has nothing to do with the dropping of it the moment before?
Replies from: Cyan, pjeby↑ comment by Cyan · 2009-07-04T04:18:15.684Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Judea Pearl's perspective on this question is that causality is best viewed as an intervention originating from outside the system in question, and not as a mode of behavior within that system. In this view, causality is related to counterfactual queries we might ask about the system, e.g., if an intervention had forced situation X, would Y have occurred? Because the intervening agent always stands outside the system, causality is always relative to where we draw the boundary around the system, and thus is not a property of reality.
↑ comment by pjeby · 2009-07-04T02:04:47.057Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
are you really saying there's no such thing as cause and effect? That the smashing of the glass on the floor has nothing to do with the dropping of it the moment before?
"Smashing", "glass", and "floor" also only exist as labels, because reality only has one level.
(See also Timeless Physics for why "cause and effect" aren't what we think they are, either.)
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov, orthonormal↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-04T10:20:59.741Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That territory has only one level (a thesis of reductionism) means that it doesn't compute in terms of high-level concepts, but the high-level concepts still refer to the real clusters of configurations of territory.
↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-04T02:31:37.089Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
We know that "the glass smashed on the floor" is a high-level interpretation, a genuinely complicated cluster in thingspace. In the vast majority of cases we encounter, it's a pretty useful and well-delineated cluster, which is why it all adds up to normality. So too with cause and effect in timeless physics.
Replies from: pjeby↑ comment by pjeby · 2009-07-04T04:05:28.561Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You're drifting off topic. My original post in this thread was saying that "the universe doesn't need a why". Are you actually disagreeing with that conclusion?
(Heck, I can't even tell if you're disagreeing with what I just said.)
Replies from: orthonormal↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-04T20:33:16.348Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I do agree that the universe as a whole may not have what we would consider a "why"; however, I think it's quite ridiculous to argue for that conclusion by attempting to discard talk of causality within the universe.
comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T18:28:39.555Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
the goal is an Untheistic society, not an Atheistic one - one in which the question "What's left, when God is gone?" is greeted by a puzzled look and "What exactly is missing?"
People will still ask, why do things work the way they do? Why should I (and why do I?) have faith in various things? And it is human nature to give a name to this mystery. The God that theists believe in is a mystery, not an "entity". (The "He" pronoun is just a convenient analogy, something that both theists and atheists misinterpret.)
In a science context: saying that the universe was created by God is basically saying, "the universe was created by Mystery". So obviously the unatheist would be unsatisfied by that answer. But outside the science context, I believe that the unatheist wouldn't protest for evidence -- he would already understand that scientific empiricism is incomplete for understanding his world. He would be clamoring for answers that extend it -- while he would rightly doubt whether anything can be said that is as reliably trustworthy in the same way as empiricial truths, he would still be curious about such things and will find that some meaningful things can be said by people who have thought deeply about them.
comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T17:45:37.854Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Regarding the "anti-epistemology" of theism:
There is a difference between beliefs that are contradicted by good epistemology and those that are independent of it. And then, what criteria can you use, as rationalists, to differentiate between the epistemological soundness of epistemologically independent beliefs? If you accept some independent beliefs (and I believe that you must), doesn't this require that you cannot reject any epistemological independent beliefs on the grounds that they are not epistemologically dependent?
comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T19:12:50.279Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The God you are debating is a God that many theists believe in. However, this God has nothing to do with the God that I believe in. The God that I believe in, as a scientist, is necessary and never anti-epistemological.
A quotation from this book review of "Those ignorant atheists":
Aquinas would tell you that God is not an entity of any classifiable or verifiable kind and most certainly is not a mega-manufacturer who plotted out the universe on some celestial computer screen. Rather, "God is what sustains all things in being by his love, and ... is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever."
While "good epistemology" is valid, its not complete. A human being -- even an untheist -- will be curious about things that science will never answer and must ever accept on faith the important things that are independent of it.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, MBlume, Jack, Vladimir_Nesov, Richard_Kennaway, JGWeissman, byrnema↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-02T05:15:21.157Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
God is what sustains all things in being by his love
As I said above:
By the time the Untheists had talked with any theist from our world for a short period of time, they would deduce that "God" could not be cashed out as a consistent model of anything but rather consisted of the conversational rule "Agree with extreme positive statements".
↑ comment by MBlume · 2009-07-05T01:37:34.360Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't think Byrnema deserves to be bleeding karma with every comment she makes. Her arguments do not hold water, but she is arguing honestly and in good faith. Burying the initial comment is plenty -- that's all the karma system is really supposed to do. Beyond that, there's no reason to continue to disincentivize further posting when she's arguing honestly and might actually learn something
Replies from: Alicorn↑ comment by Alicorn · 2009-07-05T02:15:29.887Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree, have no idea why you were downvoted for saying this, and further observe that byrnema's karma is now 0 and can't descend further, so it doesn't even serve a punitive purpose (if anyone has such a petty motivation in mind).
Replies from: byrnema, Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-05T03:48:31.518Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks. It's interesting that by beginning and pursuing this thread, I've dropped 175 karma points over 3 days. Most of the points were lost immediately after posting the top comment when someone down-voted every comment I've made. (It's OK, someone once up-voted all my comments.) I'm now at -21, so the system is still keeping track of down votes.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, wedrifid↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-05T05:15:16.403Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most of the points were lost immediately after posting the top comment when someone down-voted every comment I've made.
OK, that's not good. I'll ping the LW people again for tools to prevent and reverse this.
Replies from: JulianMorrison, pjeby↑ comment by JulianMorrison · 2009-07-05T13:49:45.536Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems like that's the Reddit-clone way of expressing "this person is a permanent bozo, their opinions are worse than noise and even their valid posts serve a dumb agenda". Reddit has software that fights mass downvoting, but IMO it's not evidence-free behavior, it ought to be taken into account - I suggest LW forbid it with the threat of a ban, but add a bozo button instead (something Reddit has long resisted). The action of this button could be as simple as knocking off a measured amount of karma.
Replies from: Psy-Kosh↑ comment by Psy-Kosh · 2009-07-06T23:32:04.767Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Either that or instead have it increment a separate "N people have hit the Bozo Button for this user" counter.
Or, if you want it to also (or just) include it having a karma hit... make it actually carry a karma price for the user hitting the button too? ie, "I'm so sure that this user's a bozo that I am willing to sacrifice karma to say so, confident that I can earn it back far more easily than they can" or something like that? Since IF we wanted a "bozo button", we'd probably want it to count as something more extreme than simply hitting the downvote arrow. So we might also want to have a price attached to using it. At least, that's my initial thought here.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-07T00:19:01.871Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
<< Byrnema Bozo Button >>
(downvote if you think Byrnema is a Bozo)
(no upvotes, thanks)
Replies from: Psy-Kosh, orthonormal↑ comment by Psy-Kosh · 2009-07-07T01:13:42.116Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Huh? I wasn't at this point talking about you specifically. I was imagining a general functionality. ie, EVERY user account having a "bozo button" attached.
It didn't even occur to me that we were considering the possibility of only having such a thing for one specific user. Anyways, to clarify, my comment about it at least was simply some thoughts on how, if we really wanted that sort of functionality, how it ought be done.
Or did I misunderstand the intended meaning of your comment?
↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-07T00:57:11.669Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You may also want to post a Byrnema Non-Bozo Button for upvoting, to keep upvotes and downvotes from canceling on the above.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-07T03:01:35.745Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Instead, I'll request that people not upvote the Bozo button, as I am looking for a quorum number of "is a bozo" votes.
Psy-kosh: It's OK, I just thought I should have one.
Replies from: orthonormal↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-07T07:11:45.207Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Instead, I'll request that people not upvote the Bozo button, as I am looking for a quorum number of "is a bozo" votes.
I suspected as much, but again I reiterate that a large majority of us want you to stay around; although you disagree with us on some points we find uncontroversial among rationalists, you're nonetheless intelligent and arguing in good faith, and these things happen. I submit that a Non-Bozo button would get many more votes (including mine) than the above Bozo Button.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-07T18:40:21.818Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks for the Non-Bozo button, which your comment effectively is. Counting yourself, since you couldn't up-vote your own button, the Non-Bozo and Bozo buttons cancel out with 4 votes each. (At the time of this comment.)
Replies from: jimrandomh↑ comment by jimrandomh · 2009-07-07T19:10:02.806Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
At least one person has voted down orthonormal's post. I don't think using the moderation system to measure this sort of thing is going to work; instead, it will attract trolls who don't really care but want to screw with the system for the hell of it.
(I say stay. Intelligent dissenters are vital to this community, even if their positions turn out to be incorrect, provided they're argued in good faith.)
↑ comment by pjeby · 2009-07-07T16:30:50.282Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Just as a data point, someone's doing it to me right now... on two page clicks, my karma dropped 3 points each time, from 948 to 942... 941... seems to have stabilized now. That probably means the person doing it had already done it through about 14 of my comments ago, since I saw 955 when I logged in, and that's still showing on the top-10 list... which means the culprit's last logon would be between 01 July 2009 04:05:22PM and 02 July 2009 05:38:46AM. (And all 14 appear to be down a point.)
(Edit to add: this is just to provide a data point for helping to match the behavior programmatically, not further advocacy for the feature or promoting a witch-hunt for the party in question.)
Replies from: thomblake↑ comment by wedrifid · 2009-07-05T14:37:05.915Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That is surprising. As of this post I'm at a karma of zero, having been downvoted 3 times and upvoted once. I was under the impression that zero was a limit.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-05T05:13:15.004Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
(Not one of the downvoters.)
Byrnema needs to take a hint - at least that's why I downvote each time. I wouldn't be surprised if respondents also start getting downvoted - someone who replies to a comment already at -5 with a long, thought-out response, should not be surprised, IMO, if they get downvoted themselves.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov, Alicorn↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-05T11:28:26.611Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I wouldn't be surprised if respondents also start getting downvoted - someone who replies to a comment already at -5 with a long, thought-out response, should not be surprised, IMO, if they get downvoted themselves.
How about a bit of tolerating tolerance?
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, steven0461↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-05T16:07:01.168Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good point, I didn't think of that.
↑ comment by steven0461 · 2009-07-05T20:08:31.478Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
One, that post gives a position statement but no real argument. Two, actively encouraging fools can be worth punishing even if "failing to castigate" them is not. Three, replies to fools can be worth downvoting for being valueless even when they are not worth downvoting for the sake of incentives. (The reason stupid ideas get replies is not because replies to stupid ideas have the most value. The reason stupid ideas get replies is because people have things to say about them, and people feel an urge to reply when they have things to say. But we don't want this site to focus around stupid ideas. We want it to focus around smart ideas.)
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-05T20:29:32.446Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's easy when it's obvious. But what do you do with more murky cases, like PJ Eby's as-I-see-it woo? People who criticize do a public service by disambiguating whether an idea is stupid or not for those to whom it's not obvious, and you'd do well to encourage those people even if you yourself are certain enough.
↑ comment by Alicorn · 2009-07-05T05:46:24.542Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
someone who replies to a comment already at -5 with a long, thought-out response, should not be surprised, IMO, if they get downvoted themselves.
The fact that an outcome is not, or should not be, surprising does not reliably correlate with the fact that the outcome is consistent with what we should like to see. Particularly given that people sometimes downvote for disagreement in the same way that they upvote for agreement, it doesn't seem at all appropriate to me that people responding to downvoted comments with replies that are themselves decently written and thoughtful should be downvoted too.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-05T05:50:13.811Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Unless it crosses over the line into feeding trolls. There are whole posts originally on OB that were taken over by Caledonian, because people just couldn't let him sink into the void. The point of voting something down to -5 is that it vanishes from the default eye - to put interesting discussions underneath it makes LW harder to filter well, as well as derailing the conversation.
Replies from: MBlume, AdeleneDawner↑ comment by MBlume · 2009-07-05T05:53:55.812Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The thing is, byrnema hasn't acted like a troll in this thread. She made a single comment and since then has been responding to comments specifically directed towards her
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-05T06:39:27.249Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My policy has been to mainly only respond to comments with questions since my views in this thread are unpopular. If someone does ask me a question, I perceive this as some interest in continuing the thread and I'll answer in good faith. But I do observe the karma of the comment asking the question. If its karma is positive, then this is evidence that continuing the thread is not generally unwelcome, and that the negative karma I'm receiving indicates disagreement with me rather than a desire for the thread to vanish. On the other hand, if we're both earning negative karma, this would be evidence that we're producing noise and I would try to end the discussion.
↑ comment by AdeleneDawner · 2009-07-05T06:00:52.557Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Would it be hard to make something vanish based on an algorithm like this?
(original_post_points + sum_of_responding_post_points/2)/total_number_of_posts_in_thread
Would that be preferable? (Maybe disregard posts that have not been voted on?)
↑ comment by Jack · 2009-07-02T00:01:38.577Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You've said a couple things in this thread, all of which I want to respond to. Rather than split my comment into individual replies, I'm going to do it all here.
I'm convinced that atheists (especially New Atheists) have a distorted, narrow idea about what the word God means. Problematically, many theists also have unsophisticated or inconsistent ideas about God. Often they confuse concrete analogies of God with actual descriptions of God. This is a serious theological error (idolatry).
This is more than just problematic. It means the theological establishment has completely failed to explain the most basic facts about "God". Its as if, in learing propositional logic, undergrads came away believing Logic was a person they could talk to. Atheists get justifiably frustrated when theists come to us saying we don't understand what God is-- we're really not the audience this needs to be explained to first. In any case, it is hardly the fault of the New Atheists.
My belief in science (trustworthy observation, logic, epistemology, etc.) is equivalent with my belief in God, which is why I find belief in God to be necessary.
In what sense is your belief in science equivalent to your belief in God? Semantically equivalent? As in science=God. Or justifiably equivalent? As in: we have as many reasons to not trust the truth-giving power of science as we do the existence of God. Or something else?
Rather, I believe that science and reason could (in theory) explain everything that physically exists. This is an unjustified belief that can never be validated (or invalidated) by empirical observation.
Really? Is this just because of classic Cartesian skepticism... i.e. everything could be a demon tricking us? Because it seems likely that in the future there could be good evidence that a) there is nothing left in the universe to discover and b) we understand how everything works starting from the big bang. I would probably never trust such a finding beyond all doubt, but then there is no finding I would trust beyond all doubt. In any case, it seems a much weaker claim than "God exists" though I'm admittedly not clear what you mean by God yet.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T04:04:04.344Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Describing my own theistic beliefs only, I do believe that beliefs in whatever is necessary for things to make sense would be equivalent with beliefs about God. Surely, beliefs about God would include all the things required for things to make sense. (For example, if I believe that an external morality is required for things to ‘make sense’, then I would believe God asserts an external morality...possibly in a scientific way.) Also, beliefs about God should not include anything more than what is necessary. (If external morality is not necessary for things to make sense, then it is most reasonable to believe that God doesn’t assert one.) My main argument for this is that if something is not required to make sense, it’s not necessarily true, so how could we know it? So I recover the rationalist idea that you can’t just believe things because you want them to be true.
The reason why I write in the conditional tense is because I am not at all clear about what is necessary, and I don’t expect to be anytime soon. The reason I argue so persistently for pro-theism (even though when presented this way it seems so weak) is because I disagree with the New Atheist idea that science is enough (i.e., the set of things that are needed to make sense = Science). I tried it out and it was ridiculously weak – there were all sorts of beliefs that are intuitively obvious that I suddenly had no defense of. Even the concept of truth was a fluttery, uncertain thing. ... It was the post debating mathematical truth that finally convinced me, the absurdity of not necessarily believing in the universality of mathematical logic. (The post didn’t get a lot of points, but I was disappointed by the rationalist response.)
Replies from: Jack↑ comment by Jack · 2009-07-08T03:49:23.516Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I disagree with the New Atheist idea that science is enough (i.e., the set of things that are needed to make sense = Science). I tried it out and it was ridiculously weak – there were all sorts of beliefs that are intuitively obvious that I suddenly had no defense of. Even the concept of truth was a fluttery, uncertain thing.
So I haven't myself decided where science ends and philosophy begins. But certainly there are some questions that can't yet be answered by experiment and I think there are probably questions that cannot in principle be answered by experiment.
But there is space between experimental science and leaps of faith. If a proposition seems intuitively true that can be a reason for believing that proposition. Intuition (by which I mean this) ) isn't a good reason for believing a proposition but often it is all we have. Reasons can come in other forms too. Parsimony, generality... there are all sorts of criteria by which some theories can be preferred to others. I wrote about this here and here. Anyway, there are definitely good reasons for preferring a theory that the world is comprehensible over a theory that it isn't. For one we routinely come up with theories about the world that don't get us killed when we act according to them. For another, we might find a theory that held that the world was incomprehensible to be self-contradictory (given that such a theory would be an attempt to explain the world).
I don't think you can ever run a test that will prove you've made sense of the world. But that doesn't mean there aren't reasons for thinking you're doing a good job. And having such reasons doesn't mean you have to have faith or call anything God.
↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T20:24:17.026Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
While "good epistemology" is valid, its not complete. A human being -- even an untheist -- will be curious about things that science will never answer and must ever accept on faith things the important things that are independent of it.
Good epistemology is complete. Anti-epistemology would insist otherwise, to carve a cavity for itself.
Replies from: Nick_Tarleton, Nick_Tarleton↑ comment by Nick_Tarleton · 2009-07-01T20:44:44.027Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good epistemology is complete.
On what basis do you say this?
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-01T21:01:30.555Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Even with the gaps, you have a procedure for filling those gaps, or a procedure for constructing that procedure, with intuition at base level. Good epistemology doesn't outsource the meaning of life to a third party.
Replies from: Eliezer_Yudkowsky↑ comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Eliezer_Yudkowsky) · 2009-07-02T05:18:00.559Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think the idea here is that good epistemology gives you betting odds on anything, since you have to bet at some odds. (I don't necessarily claim to implement a good epistemology but an FAI would need one.)
↑ comment by Nick_Tarleton · 2009-07-01T20:37:11.642Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Good epistemology is complete.
On what basis do you say this?
↑ comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2009-07-02T10:55:32.048Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
byrnema, how does your theism cash out in your purposes or your behaviour (leaving aside the part that consists of talking about theism)?
What do you do, or seek to achieve, that you would do or strive for differently if you were persuaded of Untheism?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T04:18:32.149Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
how does your theism cash out in your purposes or your behaviour ?
I feel more confidant and optimistic about the purpose of what I'm doing, so I'm more motivated and persistent. When making big decisions, I spend some time thinking about what "God" would like me to do and if I feel like there is some guidance, I'm more at peace with that decision, compared with making the decision based on other factors.
What do you do, or seek to achieve, that you would do or strive for differently if you were persuaded of Untheism?
Behavior-wise, I might act more randomly, haphazardly and hedonistically. This answer is based on a brief period in my early twenties when I lost faith in the objective existence of reality.
↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-01T19:28:19.972Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It sounds like you are talking about the ever retreating God of the Gaps. That we do not currently understand something is not reason to invoke a God we also do not understand as an explanation, it is reason to seek real understanding.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T19:39:29.579Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm not talking about God of the Gaps (the God that exists because of the natural/physical things which haven't been explained by science). Rather, I believe in God because science explains. This belief in the ability of science to explain things that haven't been explained yet is an unjustified belief that can never be validated (or invalidated) by empirical observation. This is why science is incomplete. My belief in science (trustworthy observation, logic, epistemology, etc.) is equivalent with my belief in God, which is why I find belief in God to be necessary.
Replies from: orthonormal, Psy-Kosh↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-02T00:34:44.502Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But you don't need an absolute "faith in science" to learn and apply it; you just need to keep finding evidence that it works, and correspondingly diminish your probability that the world contains massive ineffable elements.
I submit that you seize onto the concept of absolute faith in science because it seems to allow you to believe in God (which is very reassuring and makes many social interactions better if you can affirm it), and not because you'd really be in danger of total nihilism without it.
Replies from: byrnema, byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T05:08:26.318Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What massive ineffable elements? God could be a concept, or a principle, determining the consistency of the universe.
I actually have little attachment to belief in God. Tthere are no social interactions that depend upon it -- my father and I are very close and he is a boisterous atheist -- and belief in God is not reassuring at all, because apparently bad things nevertheless happen.
Confessionally, my real attachment is to a belief in external value of the human person or purpose, or any subset of the physical universe, which seems much more difficult to justify than belief in God. I don't know if it exists, but I know that I want it to.
↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T17:11:26.562Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You are in danger of nihilism without it. Belief in the meaning of anything is not justified in a particular (restricted) set of "good epistemology" that I'm talking about.
But, extending the epistemology to include meaning of any kind immediately allows room for something strong enough to be God. I’m not sure whether, to support this, I would next need to argue that the existence of any meaning is strong enough to be equivalent to God, or whether I need to argue that meaning exists.
Replies from: orthonormal↑ comment by orthonormal · 2009-07-02T18:50:58.411Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Again, your stated reason for resorting to faith just doesn't hold water. Think of it in terms of Untheism. If you were a rationalist of a species that had never had world religions, and you suddenly realized that there was a problem with the epistemological foundations of even your best-supported empirical principles (not to mention your moral intuitions), this might indeed cause you some worry. You might explore some different ways to remedy this (or learn to live with it without sacrificing the things you care about).
But would you really, if it weren't otherwise really desirable to do so, come up with the idea: "Hey! I can recover my confidence in the reasonability of the universe if I, with no other support for this hypothesis, suppose that the entire universe is the creation of some infinite mind-like thing with an unconditional respect for reason! If I just use an incredibly dubious principle to undergird everything else, I'll be fine!"
I seriously doubt that. I think you might look for an alternative solution, were it not for those social and psychological pressures you feel in the direction of affirming something like the deity your friends and family believe in.
So, have you sat down and thought for five minutes about whether there's some other way to avoid total nihilism?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T19:56:16.160Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm willing to think about it for another 5 minutes.
I am not so attached to the existence of God -- no social pressures to speak of (my father, one of my closest friends, is a boisterous atheist) and the only thing I am attached to is the value and meaning of life, not God. So I'm open to a Third Alternative.
Suppose, indeed, I were a rationalist of an Untheist society. As I observed the world around me, I would eventually, inevitably ask, how come the patterns are so consistent and dovetail with one another? Physical reality works, evolution works, mathematics works. Would it be very long before I asked if there was some kind of meta-organization?
Possible responses:
A pragmatic one: I wouldn't mind, perhaps, if someone told me, "apparently this is the limit of our knowledge". Like a fish that has evolved no ability to comprehend that the ocean is on a planet inside a solar system, you've simply not evolved an ability to understand or conclude anything at this level of abstraction. Anything you imagine might happen at the higher levels will only ever be imagination. So this would lead to agnosticism. And anti-philosophy.
A hopeful one: Things makes sense and have order on all lower levels, thus by induction (or by taking some kind of limit) they will as well on the higher levels. There is purpose and meaning, even on the meta-levels. So this would lead to faith, and actually theism since you expect a single connecting weave.
A depressing one: It is most justified to believe there is no meta-organization. You notice the patterns that exist and ignore the non-patterns. The occurrence of patterns is random, arbitrary, meaningless. Some patterns are more common than others (see, circles are everywhere, they have a high probability) but there's no pattern for the collection of the patterns.This would depress me, that I assume meaning on all these smaller scales of pattern but there isn't one at the higher level. It would at least negate my confidence in the value of the lower level patterns, and possibly even negate my belief in the perception of the patterns. (The same way an interesting pattern of numbers in a phone book column is not really a pattern, or the way a set of random dots will always appear to have some dots arranged in lines.)
I wonder if I take "B" but lean towards the first solution, which is why I feel rather equanimous about arguments for the "existence" of God. Then, I would feel very strongly that this go-nowhere philosophizing isn't exploited to project the superiority of the C group over the B group.
Replies from: Sideways↑ comment by Sideways · 2009-07-02T21:04:17.298Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Is there anything supernatural about meta-organization?
Take your hypothetical a step further: suppose that not only were you born into an Untheist society, but also a universe where physical reality, evolution, and mathematics did not "work." In universe-prime, the laws of physics do not permit stars to form, yet the Earth orbits the Sun; evolution cannot produce life, but humans exist; physicists and mathematicians prove that math can't describe reality, yet people know where the outfielder should stand to catch the fly ball.
byrnema-prime would have an open-and-shut case that some supernatural agency was tampering with the forces of nature. The "miraculous" violations of its meta-organization would be powerful evidence for the existence of God.
"Imagine," byrnema-prime might argue to an untheist, "a universe very different from ours, where every known phenomenon arose predictably from other known phenomena. In such a universe, your rejection of the supernatural would be proper; supernatural causes would not be required to produce what people observe. But in our universe, where miracles occur, atheism just can't be justified."
Which byrnema has the stronger argument? Which is evidence for God's existence, A or ~A?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T21:44:23.060Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Is there anything supernatural about meta-organization?
No. The meta-organization is a property of the natural world.
Which is evidence for God's existence, A or ~A?
The God you are talking about in ~A -- the one causing the miraculous violations -- sounds like some kind of creature. It would be a subset of a larger universe U that includes ~A and includes the creature. Does this universe U have any rules?
Or suppose you really insist that the creature is God. This creature is not imposing logic, so logic is not one of the rules of ~A. Perhaps it doesn't impose any consistent rules. Then it is not endowing ~A with any consistent value or meaning. So you would have a situation where the humans in ~A have evidence of God, but the notion of God provides nothing.
Replies from: Sideways↑ comment by Sideways · 2009-07-02T22:21:33.709Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You wrote:
My belief in science (trustworthy observation, logic, epistemology, etc.) is equivalent with my belief in God, which is why I find belief in God to be necessary.
Suppose, indeed, I were a rationalist of an Untheist society... Would it be very long before I asked if there was some kind of meta-organization?
The meta-organization is a property of the natural world.
It sounds like you're saying that your "God" is not supernatural. This isn't just a problem of proper usage. A theist who believes in a deity (which, given proper usage, is redundant) is at least being internally consistent when using ineffable language like "God," "belief," and "faith," because she's imagining something ineffable. Using ineffable language to describe natural phenomena just generates mysterious answers to mysterious questions.
The God you are talking about in ~A -- the one causing the miraculous violations -- sounds like some kind of creature.
The argument, "your puny God is a creature and mine isn't" sounds like one more retreat to mystery. A God that causes miracles is only required to be a creature insofar as a God that causes patterns to be "consistent and dovetail with one another" (in other words, prevents miracles) is also required to be a creature.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T14:31:28.529Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, I believe that God is natural -- not supernatural.
I think what you're saying is that if I claim that the meta-pattern is natural, then it's part of the physical world – thus inside science, and thus not anything we mean by God.
But what I’ve been saying all along is that there are some things – patterns/meanings/interpretations – that are not within science but that are within the natural world. Theists believe (I think most fundamentally it is just this that they believe) that meanings and patterns exist in some real, meaningful way. Religions consist of describing these patterns in great detail, and they have all kinds of disagreements about what the patterns are and what parts are most relevant. And there’s a disagreement about whether the pattern is natural (and, usually, impersonal) or supernatural (usually, then, also personal and interactive).
Thus, there are theists that are ideologically scientists (e.g., Einstein) and those that are non-scientists (e.g., Creationists). What they have in common is the belief that the universe is organized (meaningful). There are rationalists that believe the universe is random (a chilling and impersonal place) and those that believe there is meaning. What rationalists have in common is the scientific ideology. IMO, rationalists that believe in meaning but call themselves atheists are a group of people who think it is more important to distinguish themselves from non-scientist theists than nihilist rationalists. If it isn’t clear, my long term goal would be to see this group pulled from anti-atheism. (But untheism, a matter of definition, is fine.) I think non-scientific theists need guidance to more greatly value science, not cultural annihilation of "theism" because it is so immutably antithetical to science. Theism is antithetical only to nihilism. Explaining that a scientific ideology doesn’t eradicate meaning is the first step to guiding theists, but this isn't done very well. And finally my argument that if you do not adequately (clearly, definitively) distinguish yourselves from nihilism when you try to convert theists with “science”, you won't succeed.
Replies from: AllanCrossman↑ comment by AllanCrossman · 2009-07-03T14:49:25.739Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Religions consist of describing these patterns in great detail
Could you give me an example of such a description, preferably from one of the big two religions. Because I don't recognise this feature of religion at all.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T15:02:51.414Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think "love" is the most accessible example.
Love in a mundane sense is certainly part of the natural world: we observe it in a variety of organisms and there are sub-patterns (love between parents and their offspring, love between mates, love between an organism and its community.)
Religions take this and say that love is meaningful and that love is an important component of the meta-pattern. This is literally expressed as "God is love" or "God creates the world with his love" or "God loves you". When I hear these phrases, while I am also annoyed, I find that I can agree, after the translation that love is indeed an important pattern.
Certainly important to me, on a personal level. So suddenly it's about the personal aspect of a pattern existing in the physical world. Main religions, in practice, tend to focus on personal aspects so the inferential distance between the scientific observation of pattern and the personal experience of pattern starts getting really, extremely large. But science knows it can't yet explain the personal very well...
Replies from: cousin_it↑ comment by cousin_it · 2009-07-03T15:16:11.112Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Wait a minute, byrnema. You're seriously saying that science can't explain why you love your kids? In a forum filled with evolutionary psychology wannabes?
Or do you simply say that science can't explain why the qualia of love feel this way instead of some other way? Then you don't need to bring love into the discussion, the mysterious redness of the color red would suffice. Is red mystery enough for you to posit a God? Me, I'd rather lament about the nascent state of brain science.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T15:54:03.025Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Wait a minute, byrnema. You're seriously saying that science can't explain why you love your kids? In a forum filled with evolutionary psychology wannabes?
Interesting comment. I'll leave debating the development of the field to the evolutionary psychologists. For the record, it is clear that society at large usually calls on science for practical help in caring for their children, not the Bible. Science gives us all the information about the pattern, religion just tells us it matters (or how it matters; moral judgements). Religion sometimes says more, but I don't think it should.
Or do you simply say that science can't explain why the qualia of love feel this way instead of some other way? Then you don't need to bring love into the discussion, the mysterious redness of the color red would suffice. Is red mystery enough for you to posit a God?
Replace 'red' with 'beauty', and I would say 'yes'. Red is a fact and beauty is an interpretation.
Replies from: JGWeissman↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-03T17:05:21.345Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Beauty is an interpretation assigned by physical systems such as human brains. An explanation would be in the realm of science, even though it may be complex enough that we haven't figured it out yet.
Beauty most definitely is not a fundamental property of the universe that is protected by some mysterious God or "meta-pattern". What we call beauty is not even likely to be considered beautiful by other intelligences, such as an AGI not specifically designed to share our notion of beauty, which would happily disassemble the Mona Lisa for paperclip parts.
Scientific rationalism not opposed to us having a concept of beauty, and assigning value to the concept and objects that embody it, but we cannot depend on the universe to protect these values for us, we have to do it ourselves. Note, this is not nihilism, scientific rationalism accepts that we have values, seeks to explain why we have those values, and enables us to protect those values.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T17:51:50.028Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with every sentence you've written except for this one:
Beauty most definitely is not a fundamental property of the universe
Beauty may be context dependent (I don't know what it is actually) but if we have a concept of beauty, then it has evolved naturally within the physical universe. The concept is a property of some minds (human minds), thus its a property of the natural world. I would predict that perhaps not every kind of sapient being, but certainly some subset of all sapient beings, would also develop a concept of beauty. If beauty is an actual property of the natural world, then it has a pattern. It would be easier to understand this pattern if there were other sentient beings with concepts of beauty to compare with. A sentient being could use the meta-patterning of beauty, once identified, to perceive and measure beauty outside its own specific context. I have "faith" that meta-beauty would be beautiful to all sentient beings that appreciate beauty -- this is identical to saying that there is a meaningful pattern.
Replies from: loqi, JGWeissman↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-03T19:06:04.132Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The concept is a property of some minds (human minds), thus its a property of the natural world.
This doesn't make it a fundamental property of the natural world. I suspect it's just a label we use for a certain fuzzy class of emotional responses. I'm skeptical that it's all that different from other emotional responses. Consider that humans also share a concept of "creepiness". Do you also have faith that "meta-creepiness" would be creepy to all sentient beings capable of being "creeped out"? It may be tempting to ascribe your reaction to something like a house centipede to a fundamental property of the critter, but "creepy", like "beautiful", seems firmly situated in the class of 2-place words.
↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-03T19:10:30.132Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I could conceivably have a theory of the baby-eaters' concept of beauty, that lets me accurately predict how beautiful they will find the act of ruthlessly eating their sentient young, but I will not find beauty in it, I will not see it as some universal meta pattern of beauty that I can appreciate like my own native concept of beauty. I simply do not find it beautiful that an adaption that evolved in harsh conditions to be cruel to sentient beings would persist beyond those harsh conditions and even become the centerpiece of a moral system. But that is a fact that must be included in any universally beautiful meta-beauty.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T19:48:03.664Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Something that is made up isn't part of the natural world and doesn't have to fit any pattern.
Replies from: JGWeissman↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-03T19:55:15.057Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Then part of your faith is that nothing like the baby-eaters could possibly exist?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-03T20:12:15.149Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Not that, but that you can't deduce anything about the pattern from things that are made up. The patterns result from having to follow physical laws.. things you imagine don't have to.
Replies from: Alicorn↑ comment by Alicorn · 2009-07-03T20:31:02.277Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Could your view be falsified if baby-eaters or a similar species turned out to be real?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T03:39:36.327Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
No.
Replies from: JGWeissman↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-04T04:28:26.695Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
At least one of the following statements has to be true:
- Your view of meta-patterns is wrong.
- Nothing like the baby-eaters can exist.
- A meta-pattern of beauty that I can find beautiful validates the baby-eaters' concept of beauty.
Which one do you think is true?
Replies from: byrnema, byrnema, byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T06:32:06.611Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think (3) is true.
It works like this. I have faith that human beauty isn't completely arbitrary. While some aspects may be arbitrary, there are some rules to it that would be shared by other species that have a concept of beauty. The only reason why there wouldn’t be a common rule is if beauty is completely arbitrary, in which case we wouldn’t expect other species to have the concept anyway. The common rule would validate beauty in different contexts (if the rule applies in a context, then beauty is validated in that context) and would provide the possibility of a common universal beauty (if it is possible to satisfy the rule in a way that is context independent).
(edit: a hypothetical description of this applied to baby-eaters with a pretend meta-rule was taken out because I thought it was inane)
Replies from: loqi, Vladimir_Nesov, JGWeissman, Alicorn↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-04T18:45:44.038Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have faith that human beauty isn't completely arbitrary.
It may be worth asking yourself which fear is driving this faith. If you woke up tomorrow without faith in the universal significance of your concept of beauty, what would change? Are you avoiding some disastrous change in world-view that would alter your behavior, or are you simply addicted to the positive affect you get from contemplating beauty?
↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-04T10:30:35.826Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
These concepts can't be communicated this way. Taboo "faith" and "God" and "metapattern", and see what happens.
Replies from: loqi↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-04T18:47:08.211Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Surely the meaning of "faith" is straightforward enough: Belief without evidence.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-04T20:45:21.397Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A priori beliefs are beliefs without evidence. If a belief doesn't respond to further evidence, this is also a property of a priori beliefs. Normal beliefs can behave like this, and be generally accepted. The concept of "faith", to make it non-vacuous, needs to be opposed to normal human cognition (preferences). But this makes it similar to "insanity", which is unlikely what the people who advocate the practice mean. Their concept of "faith" isn't obvious.
Replies from: loqi↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-04T20:52:36.086Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A priori beliefs are beliefs without evidence. If a belief doesn't respond to further evidence, this is also a property of a priori beliefs. Normal beliefs can behave like this, and be generally accepted.
I think the terms "a priori belief" and "faith" refer to the same concept. Can you provide an example of a "normal, generally accepted" a priori belief?
The concept of "faith", to make it non-vacuous, needs to be opposed to normal human cognition (preferences).
I don't see how this follows. What do preferences have to do with it?
Replies from: Furcas, Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Furcas · 2009-07-04T21:16:50.770Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Well, take the statement that there are green-skinned, blue-eyed, humanoid aliens living on a planet orbiting Betelgeuse. Since this is a very specific statement, it's a priori very unlikely to be true, so that the belief that there are no such aliens is rational despite the lack of evidence for it; it's not a faith-based belief.
Perhaps a better definition of faith would be, "intentionally self-deceiving belief".
Replies from: loqi↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-05T02:42:57.949Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's certainly a more condescending definition, at least.
Has Occam's Razor been semantically cleaved from the notion of "faith" in a convincing way here or elsewhere? How does your a priori reasoning differ from "faith in simpler explanations"?
Replies from: Furcas↑ comment by Furcas · 2009-07-05T03:09:34.465Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The greater the specificity of a concept is, the less plausible it must be. For example, if I make two guesses, first that you have a sibling, and second that this hypothetical sibling is female, the second, more specific guess is necessarily less likely to be true than the first one.
Eliezer has written some stuff about this, but if you're interested in a really rigorous argument, I recommend Paul Almond's Occam's Razor series (nine articles in total):
Replies from: loqi↑ comment by loqi · 2009-07-06T23:14:08.266Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thanks for the link. Some of Almond's other stuff was already on my "to read" list, it looks like I'll be sinking a weekend on his site some time soon.
I think I see the distinction you're making... the things inherent in the structure and relationships of a set of concepts (like specificity) effectively function as a priori truths, even though the concepts may be "about" empirical matters. This is clearly different from "faith", which has a more speculative nature. My vague intuition that Occam's Razor is somehow "like faith" still isn't discharged, but perhaps Almond will bludgeon that out of me with his series.
↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-04T21:16:46.366Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think the terms "a priori belief" and "faith" refer to the same concept. Can you provide an example of a "normal, generally accepted" a priori belief?
I hope you mean "belief that doesn't change in response to evidence", because a priori beliefs is exactly what determines what you do with evidence and what you can come to believe later. For an example of unchanging belief: if you toss a normal coin 10 times and it lands "heads" each time, your belief about the probability of it coming "heads" should remain almost the same.
Epistemic beliefs are one side of the preference specification, the other in this formalism being utility function. If the behavior of "faith" beliefs is different from normal beliefs, it follows that they act contrary to the framework that expresses human preferences as probability+utility, breaking human preference as a result and leading to behavior that is insane (i.e. incorrect) according to human preferences (ethics/morality).
↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-04T18:10:00.992Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A possible common rule of beauty would be that a thing is beautiful if it is appreciated by some sentient being that finds it beautiful. However, this is completely vacuous, defining no constraint on what a sentient being might find beautiful. It does not prohibit arbitrary concepts of beauty. It is also far from fundamental, as the sentient beings are made of complicated physical systems.
Do you have a concept of a common rule that actually implies that some concept of beauty is impossible?
↑ comment by Alicorn · 2009-07-04T06:38:55.494Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Are you talking about some of the real things that the human concept of beauty has a tendency to latch onto, like symmetry?
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T23:57:09.350Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, but not exactly. First, symmetry is a property of an object, whereas beauty isn’t. You can consider an object beautiful one day and not beautiful the next even though it hasn’t changed. Rather, if a creature observes something, “beauty” seems to be a perception the creature has about his perception of the object. But even though it's second-order or whatever the correct terminology is, yes, I am talking about beauty as a “real” thing. I don’t know much about neuroscience, but I suppose you could conceivably observe “beauty” with an MRI (?), trained to recognize the signature of that experience.
To the extent which beauty is a real thing, that’s science. What science doesn’t give us is that the experience of beauty is significant in and of itself. By significant ‘in and of itself’ I mean that it’s not just significant because it is useful in helping us select a healthy mate, but in some way inherently awesome. I'll use awesome here as possessing some significance additional to the significance that can be scientifically demonstrated. Of course the perception of awe could be recognized by the MRI. Theists describe this as feeling that the uinverse is purposeful and connected, but I will give a non-magical definition. If beauty is an inherently awesome thing, my thesis is that this awesomeness stems from its pattern in the natural world. Or rather, that the experience of awe comes from the perception of significant pattern but I'm afraid I'm being too meta already.
The following won't make sense unless you actually consider beauty some type of real thing. Beauty has resulted from the natural laws of the universe: these laws resulted in atoms, that resulted in molecules, that resulted in life, that resulted in sapient humans that resulted in the experience of beauty, observed by an MRI when a person observes something they consider beautiful. Consider the relationship of the real existing thing “beauty” with the laws of the universe – it’s analogous to some kind of mathematical structure because the laws of the universe are analogous to mathematical structures/equations. It's like some kind of sub-manifold in the phase space. This is what I’m calling “pattern”. Problematically, for us, everything that exists, including random noise, is a pattern and whether a pattern is awesome or not is interpretative, so it’s not verifiable of falsifiable. Nevertheless, humans are very good at identifying whether a pattern is awesome or not. Perhaps someone else could say more, but I just call this awesome-perception an aspect of “intuition” and know it must be contained within “good epistemology” because its what scientists and mathematicians use.
Finally, lets suppose that upon inspection, the pattern “Beauty” turns out to be just one of an infinite number of ways of solving the problem “P=motivate a creature to choose the healthiest mate”. I would then consider “beauty” real but arbitrary. On the other hand, suppose that “beauty” is a pattern that self-organizes in an infinite number of different contexts. Maybe, for example, it is present even among sapient creatures that are so unlike us they have no concept of evolution. Creating mammals and creating human minds was just one way that the universe was able to create the pattern “beauty”. And, therefore, “wow” – beauty is awesome. But this is just an illustrative example, I don’t claim to spell out what makes one pattern arbitrary and another pattern meaningful. My preference would be that significance doesn't come from the prevalence or persistence of the pattern, but in the properties of the solutions, things like critical points, asymptotes, etc. I don't care whether beauty is such a pattern, but I'd be very surprised though if "perception of truth" wasn't such a pattern among sapient creatures.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov, AllanCrossman↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-05T00:46:10.702Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Mush. Reread the metaethics sequence. The disagreement seems to be illusory, you just need to reconnect the terminology.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-05T00:49:42.642Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree; it's mushy and pseudo-sciency. But all I'm trying to say is that it would be logical to think that if there's order at the lowest levels (Shroedinger, etc) then there's order on the higher levels. But I don't seem to be understood with that. What is the disconnect?
↑ comment by AllanCrossman · 2009-07-05T00:23:41.934Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
-1 Theology
↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T06:20:40.696Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think (3) is true.
I suppose I have to argue why, I apologize for this being long and IMO inane.
It works like this. I have faith that human beauty isn't completely arbitrary. While some aspects may be arbitrary, there are some rules to it that would be shared by other species that have a concept of beauty. The only reason why there wouldn’t be a common rule is if beauty is completely arbitrary, in which case we wouldn’t expect other species to have the concept anyway. The common rule would validate beauty in different contexts and would provide the possibility of a common universal beauty.
For the sake of argument: Let’s suppose a meta-property of beauty is the following rule: Something is beautiful if it physically manifests a value that you have. (This is the best I can come up with.)
The baby-eaters think that ruthlessly eating their young is beautiful. Applying the meta-rule, ruthlessly eating babies must represent some value X they have. (For example, X could be the thrill of power, exerting their will in defiance of what is good.). Thus the beauty of ruthlessness (context: baby-eaters) is validated by the fact that it is a physical manifestation of the value X.
It doesn't matter if you value X. By logical application of the meta-rule, if you value X, you will be able to see some beauty in the physical manifestation of X. If you don't value X, then it won't be beautiful to you. This does not present any problem.
There's mostly nothing meaningful here: I just got out what I put in with this silly example. But just one thing: even though your ideas of beauty are quite different from the baby-eaters, it is possible to find something beautiful in common. Namely, if there’s a common value. The beauty of the manifestation of a common value would have an external, objective beauty. This objective beauty evolved from whatever rules evolved sapience and the concept of beauty in the first place (quantum mechanics, somehow).
↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-04T05:51:24.346Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think (3) is true.
It works like this. I have faith that human beauty isn't completely arbitrary. There are some rules to it that would be shared by other species that have a concept of beauty. This common rule would define a common beauty. For example, let's suppose a meta-property of beauty is the following rule: Something will be beautiful if it physically manifests a value that you have. (This is the best I can come up with.)
From what you've written above, we assume these baby-eaters think that ruthlessly eating their young is beautiful. Applying the meta-rule, ruthlessness must represent some value X they have. (For example, X could be the thrill of power, exerting their will in defiance of what is good.). Thus the beauty of ruthlessness is validated by the fact that it is a physical manifestation of the value X. (If you find yourself dissatisfied with this it is likely because I didn't pick a good enough meta-rule.)
It doesn't matter if you value X . By logical application of the meta-rule, if you value X, you will be able to see some beauty in the physical manifestation of X. If you don't value X, then it won't be beautiful to you. You said you can't see beauty in ruthlessly eating babies, so actually you don't value X. This does not present any problem.
Because this is what's promised: you will both find a common application of the meta-rule beautiful. This would mean finding a common value, and physically manifesting it as Y. It is clear you would both find this thing Y beautiful.
There's mostly nothing meaningful here: I just got out what I put in with this silly example. But just one thing: even though your ideas of beauty are different, you find something beautiful in common. This common beauty is external, objective beauty.
↑ comment by Psy-Kosh · 2009-07-01T19:47:30.362Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's not so much "with rationality we can figure out everything, we can know everything" so much as "there's nothing else that works"
ie, it's not "rational empiricism will eventually reveal EVERY last fact, every last detail about, well, everything" but "what we can't figure out with that, we simply can't figure out."
I'm not entirely clear how you get to the belief in god bit though. ie, I'm reading what you're saying as "I'm not sure that science will be able to figure out everything, or at least I can't prove that. therefore I believe in god".
If that's not what you meant, mind clarifying? Thanks.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T20:30:34.371Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
ie, it's not "rational empiricism will eventually reveal EVERY last fact, every last detail about, well, everything" but "what we can't figure out with that, we simply can't figure out."
I agree with this, and prefer it to what I wrote. What I would write instead, then, is "I believe that science and reason could (in theory) make sense of everything that is empirically observed". There would never be any reason to resort to contradictions, to "miracles" or the metaphysical in general, and I would be extremely reluctant to consider that any aspect of reality is a "trick" or simulated.
I'm not entirely clear how you get to the belief in god bit though. ie, I'm reading what you're saying as "I'm not sure that science will be able to figure out everything, or at least I can't prove that. therefore I believe in god".
I believe we agree that belief in God is unjustified belief (at least empirically unjustified). I think that unjustified beliefs in general -- beliefs in truth, goodness, logic -- are the source of belief in God. I see no reason why they can't be the same thing. God's certainly not an omnipotent person or thing -- faith in God is just faith that the world makes sense, foremost, and, then, if you must believe more, roll that in as well. So God is the universe and the set of rules that are true about it; the Theory of Everything.
Do you believe that a 'Theory of Everything' exists? I think that some rationalists do and some don't. I think scientists do, at least they behave operatively as though there is one. And a theist would agree in a Unified Theory (God), but they don't all agree that it is necessarily logical or consistent with observation. So in the end, I think we should strive to make theists more logical and empiricist (for the sake of science), but arguing that there is no God is pointless. In the sense that you're never going to convince me there's no Theory of Everything, and why should you care, unless there's some logic or evidence that it's not good epistemology? (In which case, it wouldn't be so difficult to convince me.)
Replies from: JGWeissman↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-01T21:02:06.765Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
God's certainly not an omnipotent person or thing -- faith in God is just faith that the world makes sense
This is like if someone claimed that 2 + 2 = 5, and when I said they were wrong, replied, "When I say '5' I really mean '4'."
The idea that the world makes sense is expressible without any reference to God, and the word "God" is commonly used to mean something else.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-01T22:30:09.657Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The idea that the world makes sense is expressible without any reference to God,
I'm saying that the belief that the world makes sense is equivalent to belief in God. When you think about it, the idea that the world makes sense is just a strong a statement as the existence of God, and just as unsupported.
and the word "God" is commonly used to mean something else.
I don't think so. I'm convinced that atheists (especially New Atheists) have a distorted, narrow idea about what the word God means. Problematically, many theists also have unsophisticated or inconsistent ideas about God. Often they confuse concrete analogies of God with actual descriptions of God. This is a serious theological error (idolatry).
To argue that God exists, you don't need to argue that every conceived idea of God is true. At its fundamental theological roots, the Judeo-Christian religions assert that God is indescribable and not anything you can think of ... so Dawkin's God or whatever you're thinking of isn't the right description either. I'm sure this sounds very much like defending God behind refusing to define God but, personally, I wouldn't expect the theory of everything to be a concrete, describable thing. I would expect that it is highly interpretable and vast in some sense. For a religion, it is enough to have faith in the possibility of a theory and try and sort out (through intuition, experience and 'good epistemology') what kinds of things you can know about it.
Replies from: JGWeissman, knb↑ comment by JGWeissman · 2009-07-01T23:10:41.781Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm saying that the belief that the world makes sense is equivalent to belief in God.
That still is not right. I can have a theory that the world makes sense, and is describable by general laws. This theory can be supported by the evidence that I am able to generalize my experiences into physical laws that successfully predict future experiences. Faith is not needed for this, in an unlawful universe that doesn't make sense, scientific rationalism would defeat itself.
To argue that God exists, you don't need to argue that every conceived idea of God is true.
But you do have explain some observable difference between God existing and not existing that does not contradict our actual observations.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-09T16:59:20.888Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I can have a theory that the world makes sense, and is describable by general laws.
Perhaps, for you, it is a theory. For me, I simply, honestly admit that I believe it even though there are alternatives I can’t eliminate.
But you do have to explain some observable difference between God existing and not existing that does not contradict our actual observations.
When you wrote this comment, I imagined that any scientific evidence that science isn’t absolute would be self-refuting so there couldn't be any "evidence" of such. But after reading recently about reductionism here and here and thinking about what the assumptions of reductionism are, I now see that there could be a middle ground, where science is valid almost everywhere, but there are specific places where science doesn’t hold. And there could be rules about where science holds and doesn’t hold so that science isn’t entirely negated. For example, the idea that science could hold everywhere except when it comes to mental entities. So finally, my answer is that any evidence of non-reductionism would be evidence that my God {God=natural world} isn’t absolute. This is because, as I argue elsewhere, reductionism is equivalent to the natural world being self-contained and self-consistent. Non-reductionism would imply that there is something beyond the natural world (something metaphysical).
So I'm a reductionist, but I experience this theistically. I think it is time to move on from the dichotomy that atheism/theism is justified/unjustified belief and consider what makes a belief theistic or not. (On the inside.)
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-09T18:55:27.969Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I now see that there could be a middle ground, where science is valid almost everywhere, but there are specific places where science doesn’t hold.
"Science" can't "hold" somewhere and "not hold" somewhere else. Science is a process by which we reliably figure out stuff, build tools for figuring out stuff, and establish what is known and what isn't, what is more certain and what is less certain. It's not phlogiston that fills territory with knowability essence, it's a set of human activities, in which anything that works is welcome.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-09T19:25:24.049Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Replace "science" with "the hypothesis that everything is governed by physical laws that are never violated and explain everything"
I agree this hypothesis is not synonymous with science as a process, so I was not being precise.
However, is the hypothesis asserting what you accused me of believing? Is believing in this hypothesis believing in some kind of phlogiston that fills territory with knowability essence?
I'm afraid so. And I'm open to being critical of this.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-09T20:38:49.709Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Replace "science" with "the hypothesis that everything is governed by physical laws that are never violated and explain everything"
It's also an empty statement. "Physical laws", at least fundamental ones, is by definition the description of that which governs everything, and at any point you have uncertainty about what's going to happen. If whatever concept of "physical laws" you have doesn't explain what happens, then those laws are falsified, so that they have to be modified to accommodate the new info, and probably include newfound uncertainty. If there turns out to be an intelligent tinkerer or goal-driven whatever behind the scenes, it gets included in the fundamental rules of the game, and studied scientifically.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-09T21:12:54.847Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's not an empty statement. You gave the definition of physical laws, but the hypothesis is that the physical laws exist.
Is the belief in the existence of governing laws some type of false belief, like believing in a phlogiston of knowability or believing in God?
I'm beginning to think the whole difference between the LW perspective and the theist perspective might (just!) be the difference between a frequentist and Bayesian perspective. Is it possible that our brains are just hard-wired differently and we're all making some kind of mind projection fallacy? Oops, I meant typical mind fallacy. I can understand both points of view, but I find the frequentist view more natural. And when I understand the Bayesian point of view, it is through some kind of mental acrobatics, like I'm just pushing the frequentist perspective to a higher level of abstraction than the one I'm evaluating.
Replies from: Vladimir_Nesov↑ comment by Vladimir_Nesov · 2009-07-09T21:19:11.608Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You gave the definition of physical laws, but the hypothesis is that the physical laws exist.
No, there is no such "hypothesis". You just study the world, and the more fundamental of the rules you learn are dubbed "physical laws".
Replies from: arundelo↑ comment by knb · 2009-07-02T02:56:04.100Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Judeo-Christian religions assert that God is indescribable and not anything you can think of ...
This is certainly not my understanding of the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and I spent 12 years in Christian education (believe me, I am not bragging when I say this).
God was supposed to be something ''mere humans'' could reach by the proper application of logic. Your description sounds much more like the purely transcendent Muslim concept of God, according to which God didn't even have to obey the laws of logic, causality, or his own commands.
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-02T04:24:13.097Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with Jack that this is problematic. However, I suppose beliefs in God are heavily skewed by interpretation, and different emphases may explain a lot of theistic differences.
In response to Jack, above, it is the fault of New Atheists that they argue about the existence of God by arguing with unsophisticated, undeveloped theist arguments. When they argue about the existence of God, they should certainly address the theological arguments explained by modern theologians. (For references regarding the inconsistency of their assertions about God with those of theologians, I recommend responses to New Atheism by Chris Hedges and Keith Ward).
Replies from: Jack↑ comment by Jack · 2009-07-08T02:46:12.738Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
When they argue about the existence of God, they should certainly address the theological arguments explained by modern theologians.
Why? If they are objecting to the religious beliefs of average believers then they should be responding to arguments made in defense of those beliefs. Do theologists have arguments in favor of traditional beliefs of your average American Christian that the New Atheists haven't answered? This would be interesting. But proving theologists wrong wouldn't do anything to change the minds of the average believer since the average believer isn't motivated by those arguments-- the average believer doesn't even believe the same thing the theologist believes! Its like the New Atheists are having this one argument with run-of-the-mill theists and the theologists are saying: "Hey! Wait! Have this other, totally different argument with us instead!"
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-08T05:50:08.689Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
An atheist can't argue against the most unreasonable belief in God (even if it is the most common one) to demonstrate that belief in God is unreasonable. While you can make progress by showing the majority of theists that important aspects of their concept of God is incompatible with reason, it's disingenuous to say that belief in God is unreasonable just because there are unreasonable aspects to their belief. We must press, is it the case that belief in God is necessarily unreasonable?
Online, I see some atheists scoffing about how ridiculous it would be to expect atheists to provide arguments against every possible version of God. There are hundreds of religions! Well, with this problem of so many gods, it seems necessary to identify the most reasonable concept of God and provide arguments against that one. Theologians, the ones working on the details of belief in God, have developed better arguments about what sort of God is most reasonable.
Replies from: Jack↑ comment by Jack · 2009-07-08T13:28:16.499Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In that case atheists should have to argue against my version of God. I define God as the Empire State Building. Surely that is the most reasonable version of God since lots of people see it every day, there are tons of pictures and videos of it. We have historical documents showing when it was built and how. The Empire State Building definitely exists. I would say that my God is the most likely to exist out of all the theologists Gods except that some theologists have defined God in even more inane ways. If God is merely "existence" then the likelihood there is a God is very very high. Indeed, in that case, saying "There is a God" is likely performatively redundant.
So yes atheists have to respond to the best arguments in favor of the existence of God-- but only so long as the God being debated is a) not tautologous and b) somewhat similar to the God most people believe in. Even given all the religions there are still striking commonalities between them... until one gets to the theologists. I actually have nothing against theologists. I think that flexibility in their understanding of God (particularly of the theological non-realists) can lead to really inventive and insightful ideas about humanity's relation to itself and the universe. But I'd rather not pretend what they say has much of any relation to the beliefs of real practitioners.
Btw, your view of what God is is still on the radical end of theologists. If a Catholic priest published your view, for example, he'd be excommunicated. If an evangelical said it he'd lose his church members and if an Imam said it there'd be a fatwa.
↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-07-05T15:03:35.935Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
[Byrnema] might actually learn something
Unfortunately, I haven't. (I submit that this is my fault for still not communicating effectively.)
My main argument is that God is the natural world together with an opinion about the natural world (that it is ordered). If you think this is unjustified, what property must God have that this doesn't have?
For some time, theists have described God as a mind because that was the limit of what we could think for what could result in order. We now understand, through science, that order (and purpose) can self-organize from a complex impersonal system.
I think we should teach theists about complex systems first, before insisting there's no God at all.
Replies from: DBseeker↑ comment by DBseeker · 2009-08-10T20:18:51.044Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My main argument is that God is the natural world together with an opinion about the natural world (that it is ordered). If you think this is unjustified, what property must God have that this doesn't have?
It seems like this is a problem with semantics. What you are calling "God" is in no way related to the Christian or Muslim concept of God. Instead, you are applying the word "God" onto what a non-theist would call "Nature" or "The Universe". In reality, it is not a belief in God at all, but simply a label you have applied (or perhaps misapplied) to something else entirely.
Now, I have only read about the first 25, and last 60 or so comments on this topic, so if I missed something that pushes your belief into a more theistic direction, please correct me. So far however, I have read very little that leads me to assume you are holding a theistic belief in "God".
Replies from: byrnema↑ comment by byrnema · 2009-08-11T20:19:30.638Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems like this is a problem with semantics. [...] you are applying the word "God" onto what a non-theist would call "Nature" or "The Universe". In reality, it is not a belief in God at all, but simply a label you have applied (or perhaps misapplied) to something else entirely.
What I've been asserting when I say that God exists is that the universe is ordered. Thus saying that God=the universe is more than semantics because believing that the universe is ordered does require faith. Typical theists believe that the universe is ordered by a personal God, and theists like me believe that the universe is self-ordered.
What you are calling "God" is in no way related to the Christian or Muslim concept of God.
I'm sure most organized religions would object to my description of God. Yet I am not dissuaded that at their deepest theological roots, the Christian and Muslim descriptions of God are vague enough (and complex enough) to accomodate this kind of description.
So far however, I have read very little that leads me to assume you are holding a theistic belief in "God".
I agree, and I just wanted to do some research before I formally conceded. The problem, as has been pointed out in several places, is that it doesn't matter if a small handful of theologians see the equivalence of many descriptions of God or if I think what I believe in is "God". If what is meant by "theism" is what most theists believe (and this is reasonable) then arguing for "theism" would require arguing for what they actually believe in.
I began three months ago asking myself what was most fundamental about belief in God, and I decided it was the belief in meaning, which I decided is the belief in things being ordered and patterned rather than arbitrary and random. However, I failed to check this with real people...
Over the past two weeks, I've asked as many theists as I could get ahold of if they would consider my views as a belief in God.
The results:
3 thought my beliefs overlapped with theirs sufficiently well to conclude we believed in the same God (my closest friends are scientists, so I suspect this view was over-represented in my survey)
2 could relate to my belief as a belief in God but said they believed in a personal God, and considered this an important difference
approximately 6 asserted that I am an atheist (they didn't think my belief was sufficient and, to my surprise, they didn't necessarily believe that the universe was organized)
In conclusion, the majority of theists I questioned didn't accept my beliefs as theistic, and so I pretty much give up on arguing for theism. (Words mean what people say they mean.)
I asked some of the questions in writing, and this was the best response (from an atheist obviously):
I can't say it any better than Carl Sagan:
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."
(Later edit.) Recently, I found this comment here:
The reason you guys can't conceive of religion contributing to science is that religion, a.k.a Christianity, has already contributed her major part to science, namely, holding firmly to the position that the universe is intelligible and operates by consistent natural laws that are discoverable by a reason that is somehow able to understand the true nature of that universe.
Apparently someone thinks along the same lines that I do.