Professing and Cheering

We have all had a the experience of listening to somebody drone on about some outlandish belief/behaviour/experience/whatever where the speaker was actually attempting to goad the listener in rebutting them. Then the speaker could take on the mantle of bieng the attacked party. Once they are "forced" onto the defensive, you become guilty of calling her a "primordial cow" instead of her genesis story a, well, uh, a primordial cow. C.S. Lewis might have just as easily believed in a Primordial Cow instead of Christianity but I doubt he would have begged to be attacked for it.

I'm reminded of Emotivism.

"Belief in belief" sounds perfectly plausible here, where the second-level belief is different: not that believers are morally superior, or believers go to heaven, but that believers are cool.

Eliezer, first, really great topic. I think it will help move this blog to new and fertile ground. Secondly, in this particular case, I think Cole has a very plausible theory. If this person wanted to rise above being just one person on a panel, to a person in the key diaelectical exchange with the entire room, it might have been a good strategy for them to try to bait the room by professing, to the point of mass irritation, a contrarian stance.

It would be interesting to see she would adjust strategies in a room filled with pagan scientists. If she's completely flexible in external presentation of self, and attention-maximizing, she might then claim to be a fundamentalist christian?

"Belief" is a notion that isn't necessarily tied to literal truth. Aquinas once said that "all statements about God are metaphors," and Niebuhr (sp?) said something to the effect that "religious statements should be taken seriously, but not literally." For a more recent (and accessible) variation, consider Tony Hillerman's novels, in which one of his principal characters, Jim Chee, studies to be a Navaho shaman (not quite the right word, but I forget the Navaho one), taking myths very seriously without for a minute thinking that they are history. (Hillerman himself is Catholic, so he doesn't think the Navaho myths are literal truth either.) Discussions of religious belief on this blog seem to me to assume too readily that they are just like beliefs about science or history. To some people, no doubt, they are. But not to me, and not to a lot of other religious people, either. I think there's a bias about religion here, that needs to be overcome.

The cow thing does seem a stretch, though, even on the most sympathetic possible interpretation.

One of my largest frustrations in life, frustrations of the type produced where one determines that one is simply not understanding something fundamental that is understood at least implicitly by many other people, is that I have generally found "to satisfy your own self-image as an X - you would have to pretend to Y much more convincingly than this woman was doing" to be falsified, but I still cannot understand what it is generally falsified by. In school, in work, etc, I have found teachers, professors, students, co-workers and management to, a small but noticeable fraction of the time, do what I think cannot even charitably be described in any way other than "doing nothing" to a degree which Scott Adams has yet to adequately describe or demonstrate in Dilbert, yet I have found that when I try to imitate this "doing nothing", I have found myself to typically be rebuked (though not by the actual 'do-nothings'). My best guesses are that a) the do-nothings are amiable people who seem comfortable with their behavior while when trying to not do anything I seem uncomfortable and/or disagreeable, or b) the do-nothings have jobs (like teaching Statistics) which no-one really wants done. (the degree to which business-people and scientists alike don't even try to understand Statistics but simply mis-use it as a talisman against criticism (So long as they tow the line in their conclusions and methods. Iconoclasts will be punished for this, a-la Kinsey) without ever attempting to understand how or why or where their procedures work depresses me.) but I am very unsure of these conclusions. Can anyone do better?

Alan has a good point. His post reminds me of this

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/nerds-are-nuts.php

I will mention that I have only met one person who actually talked about religious history and secular history in conversation un-self-consciously in such a manner as to suggest that he wasn't using separate "religious history" and "secular history" categories but fairly honestly, e.g. without typical forms of self-deception, saw them as a single thing, history. He would talk about Indian politics, current events, and history in a manner which occasionally mentioned the activities of Indira Gandhi and occasionally those or Rama or Krishna. This person was not especially nerdy, but was of fairly modest socio-economic-status (had been a hair-dresser), high gullibility (involved in Multi-Level Marketing) and probably of only moderately above average intelligence as suggested by a BS in Math from an unknown university coupled with the inability to pass the first of the eight Actuarial exams after 4 years as an Actuarial "student" (the subject is basically a fairly but not terribly difficult mix of 1st and 2nd semester Statistics, Calculus, and Financial Economics. If you competed in the Math Olympiad, think the first round AHSME test from the Math Olympiad but requiring those subjects.) Actuarial Students are given free courses, materials, past exams which provide analogous questions, and 20-30 days per year of time off (in addition to normal vacation and sick-days) formally allocated to study)

I too am both a pagan and a scientist, and I will happily switch between tales of the Green Mother's handfasting to the Dying King and Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. I find it no more ridiculous than Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project and a man I respect greatly, publicly embracing evangelical Christianity.

Our brains are complex creations, with many levels and conflicting functions. The scientific method, with its falsifiable hypotheses and reductive materialism, is a stellar belief system for those systems responsible for predicting and understanding how the physical world works. Unfortunately, it provides little if any support for those pre-rational, emotional, and social systems all our brains share. Your amygdala needs something a bit different than physics.

Many of my fellow biologists share your confusion when confronted with the common person's dislike of Darwinian theory. What they fail to understand is that creation myths serve a critical function in people's lives that has nothing to do with what "really happened". Think about the function of belief from an evolutionary perspective for a moment. What survival benefit is there in understanding what "really happened" when the universe was formed billions of years ago -- especially to our ancestors on the savanna? Yet all cultures place a great importance in their creation myths, despite the fact that most can be easily disproved. It is a universal in human experience.

You may want to ask yourself what the evolutionary function of a creation myth is, and why they are a universal human conceit. With that knowledge in hand, you may have a better understanding of how a creation myth should be judged, and you may finally understand what your pagan panelist was trying to tell you.

People can bind themselves as a group by believing "crazy" things together. Then among outsiders they could show the same pride in their crazy belief as they would show wearing "crazy" group clothes among outsiders.

Zenkat: I will happily switch between tales of the Green Mother's handfasting to the Dying King and Gould's theory of Punctuated Equilibrium

They're about equally plausible. You do realize that serious evolutionary biologists regard Gould as a scientifically dishonest crackpot who has deliberately misrepresented the state of modern evolutionary biology to the public?

Gunn: The cow thing does seem a stretch, though, even on the most sympathetic possible interpretation.

It's a good thing you don't believe anything that would sound just as strange to someone who hadn't grown up believing it.

More and more, I get the sense that the metaphor-loving religious are promoting something like their right to willingly suspend disbelief, like gamer does when involved in a 'verse, like WoW. It has the same virtues: community, immersion, the thrill of exercising imagination and participating in grand narratives. Only, World of Warcraft buffs don't let their fantasy life impinge on the public sphere as often. I'm aware that I will likely receive flak for drawing this analogy, as it seems terribly dismissive.

An FYI that does not address the substance of Eliezer's post:

This woman was telling you the Norse creation myth, which is definitely one of the stranger ones I've heard: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/creation.html. As a story, it lacks the rudimentary narrative cohesiveness most of us expect, having been exposed since childhood to the Christian "first there was light" story, which proceeds in a rather more linear manner. On the other hand, Norse myth is the basis of Tolkien's Middle Earth, whereas the Christian myth has been responsible mainly for lots of paintings of Adam and Eve looking coyly at each other.

Robin, that was the intended topic of my next post :) but your clothing metaphor is a good one, and I shall borrow it.

Christianity, for instance, is somewhat less absurd than Norse creation myth only when it skips the actual mechanics of the creation, so it seems a tad harsh to single out that poor cow for a hard time. From the viewpoint of psychological bias, the main point of interest I can see is that of religionists being so forgiving about errors in what should explain the hows and whys of existence.

LP: ever hear of Paradise Lost? A lot of pictures. Really...

I'm also very happy to discuss Dawkin's theories on the selfish gene, if you wish. As a genomics researcher, I get to play with the transcriptional junk left behind by selfish DNA replicants (ALUs, transposons, endogenous retroviral DNA, gene duplication, and copy number variants) on a daily basis. Other fun topics for discussion might be the effects of Intralocus Competitive Evolution on species divergence, and/or the evidence for recent selective pressures on the human genome that have been uncovered by the HapMap project.

Anyways, I'm detecting an form of anti-Gould bias that appears to be a particular conceit among libertarian economists. Interestingly enough, I don't find that the controversy is shared by most biologists. Perhaps you should read the Wikipedia article on Gould's scientific career with an unbiased eye. It provides balanced and well documented review of Gould's accomplishments, and provides extensive references.

As far as I can tell, most of the knee-jerk reactions against Gould are a hangover from his feud with Dawkins and Wilson over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Personally, I side with Dawkins on this one (my comment did appeal to evolutionary psychology, after all), but I am always amazed at the vitriol spewed at Gould. Seems more akin to the furious debates between Pre- and Post-Millenialists than reasoned scientific discussion to me.

Zenkat, I suspect a great deal of the venom towards Gould is also due to his opposition to certain positions on human population / IQ test differences.

Zenkat, I said evolutionary biologists, not biologists. My grandfather is a statistical geneticist ( animal QTL), who also happens to be a believing Orthodox Jew, and whom I've debated briefly on evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, and the ability of evolutionary biology to account fully for human evolution. So I'm quite aware of the difference between someone who works with genes every day, and someone who has a deep understanding of, ahem, the structure of evolutionary theory. Now I'm sure that you can interpret linkage disequilibria statistics better than I can, but since you refer to selfish genes as "Dawkins's" theory, I do wonder how much you know about the history of mathematical evolutionary theory.

Gould has many respectable scientific accomplishments to his name, but in the field of evolutionary biology he lied to the public.

It sounds like this "pagan" was trying to show that religious beliefs were completely absurd. My guess is that she doesn't believe in the primordial cow any more than you do, but she was trying to convince people that "traditional" religions are no more believable.

This strategy has the advantage of being immune to any defenses mounted by the traditional religions.

Rejecting Punctuated Equilibrium theory on the grounds that Gould was a scientifically dishonest crackpot seems to require both fundamental attribution error and an ad hominem argument.

Sounds more to me like the pride of her own personal rebellion against what she perceives as the establishment.

Of course I wasn't there, but in the telling of the story, that is what initially occurred to me.

Perhaps we should check to see how many papers in respected journals cite "punctuated equilibrium" other than to attack it. In a previous thread in which Gould was discussed I linked to this, which used such evidence to argue against his theory on "spandrels".

It is interesting that Zenkat mentioned "libertarian economists" since Eliezer is not an economist, and I was unaware from his posts here that he was a libertarian. I note that Robin Hanson denied being a "libertarian economist" when accused of it, but it occurs to me that perhaps he thinks "libertarian economist" as something other than a person who is both an economist and a libertarian. Alan Greenspan, for example, was a libertarian who had advocated the gold standard as well as chairman of the federal reserve, but might not be characterized as "libertarian chairman of the federal reserve", because his actions as chairman were not any more libertarian than average. I am not saying I think Robin is a libertarian, but merely that I assign a probability higher than zero to his being one.

On the other hand Johnny, paganism doesn't cost £9 a month.

I think I can shed some light on her behavior. In the view of religious people in the mystical traditions which paganism tries to emulate (with varying degrees of success, but that's beside the point), the world is vast and beckoning, yet our faculties are barely adequate to scratch the surface.

A mystic, or even a skeptic, sees our thoughts and perceptions of the world as metaphors in themselves, which become more and more deeply abstracted. Our vision and sense of space has a "metaphorical" relationship to the actual, physical reality that we find ourselves in. In the same sense, language and mathematics (math is a subset of language, but I thought it was worth singling out) have a metaphorical relationship to the raw universe.

The point of mysticism is to snap one's consciousness out of the notion that what you experience in day to day living can be trusted, and it calls for the mystic to look more closely at what experience really is: a useful metaphor for what is actually taking place in the universe around us.

So it seems that what this woman was trying to do was at least two "layers" deep. The first, most obvious layer, is that she was emphasizing the ridiculousness of taking the story literally, to force the audience to consider it as a useful metaphor. The deeper message she was conveying by making it clear that what she was saying was not to be taken literally, was a wake up call. It was a call for the audience to think in a fundamentally different way: not only is this creation myth a metaphor representing psychological and physical phenomena, but those phenomena themselves must be examined as metaphors.

She was trying to train the audience members' brains to think mystically. And appropriately enough she did it in an abstract, almost metaphorical sort of way, that the concrete thinkers here totally missed. Biases abound!

I see it differently. This is what I suspect was going on. She's driven by a feeling of how cool that would be if it was the case -- revelling in it -- with a concomitant avoidance of evaluating the notion to closely. And she's keen to project this image "are't I awesome for being so /radical/ in my beliefs".

This is a year-and-a-half late, but did you ask the woman what the weird pride/satisfaction/flaunting thing was? Or whether she was cheering for paganism? She would likely answer, "No," but the emotional response would have been interesting and possibly telling of some other behavior just beneath the surface.

I find it strange how often I will ponder why specific people do things but never bother to walk up and ask them what their perspective on the subject happens to be.

That being said, the concept of cheering makes great sense. I find that the behavior is very similar to what you describe in Politics is the Mind-Killer. Cole Stage's comment is a good tie-in.

It should be noted that the myth in question wasn't a "believed myth"; Snorri was writing a handbook for poets more than a hundred years after the introduction of christianity and needed to provide a context for the traditional kennings. It makes no sense because it wasn't intended to make sense, only to make it easier to make sense of traditional poems.

The previous comment by Alan about these beliefs of religion not being the same as beliefs in science seems a little problematic. If one believes that ones religious beliefs are a non-literal, albeit serious metaphor, which one holds to be true, but not in the same way as scientific beliefs, what sort of belief is it, and how does one hold the religious accounts to be true? Belief, is very widely understood as the epistemic state of holding some proposition, or propositions to be true, in the actual or real world. Maybe it is not the sense of belief that differs, in Alan's account after all, but the proposition that is being believed. The belief in the religious account was stated as not being a proposition of literal truth, so in the common meaning not proposed as being true in the actual world, and so in the common understanding, not a belief. It was stated to be some sense of belief, just not in the common sense. It seems that there is a proposition which is being claimed as true, that is the proposition regarding very real and serious effect, and significant metaphorical meaning of the religious account on, or in, people's lives . That is to say that the belief is in the function of the metaphorical account, and not the account itself. The metaphor may be a way of coming to understand, or feel more connected to the scientific account, or any number of other very real, and very meaningful roles. Whatever the function may be in any instance, it is this function that Alan, and perhaps others actually believe in. The metaphorical religious account need not have its own special sense of belief, but simply function as any other metaphor, to help bring about a greater understanding or appreciation. Believing not in the religious account and the scientific account in two separate ways, but believing, in one concise, simple way in the scientific account and metaphorical function of the religious account.

I gotta add that the previous comments that refer to beliefs that a religious person may have that they in some sense don't believe seems a little odd, if you feel that way it seems your playing a bizarre game with yourself and everyone you meet

This is good. Great many people talk only in terms of what they think they should believe, but not what they behave -- this shows what they truly believe.

Rather, by launching into a five-minute diatribe about the primordial cow, she was cheering for paganism, like holding up a banner at a football game. A banner saying Go Blues isn’t a statement of fact, or an attempt to persuade; it doesn’t have to be convincing—it’s a cheer.

Tying back to my comment a couple posts ago - yes I think this is exactly right. She probably doesn't believe what she is saying. She knows full well it is crap. She has no interest in a good faith argument. She's just there to cheer on paganism. It's 'Science VS Paganism,' the 'new ways' vs the 'old ways.' Rah rah rah. I wonder if while she was speaking there wasn't someone in the back handing out pamphlets, and while 90-95% of the audience reacted with "what a load of crock" a few did think "yeah these scientists aren't as smart as they think they are..." This is one way in which propaganda functions - just to signal, attract followers, and throw up a smoke screen so most of the room doesn't even realize what is happening and just has a laugh. Maybe while you went home confused she ended up selling a few dozen books or whatever to similarly minded "rebels."

Are 'science' and 'religion' compatible? Define the terms I suppose but sure. Why not? 'Religion' just explains the unknown. I *believe* that one day science will be able to eliminate every last notion similar to "lightning exists because Zeus throws it" but until then I think there's nothing fundamentally incompatible with holding beliefs such as "god metaphorically snapped their fingers and *that's* what set off the Big Bang." Mind you all the organized religions I am aware of are ruled out... I'm just saying there can be a space for 'belief' in the areas where science is currently unable to investigate. Personally I think it's better to just say 'I/we don't know, yet' but humans will be humans.

(is anyone reading these anymore? Oh well it's more to help me process my own thoughts anyway I suppose!)

I got to know this idea recently also under the names of virtue signaling (to members of her community) or a loyalty badge (to her community or doctrine). The more outlandish the story, the stronger is the signal or badge.

I came to the comments for a statement in the older version: "Lesbianism is not something that truth can destroy." Even though it was just an aside in this post, there's a lot to it. 

It feels related in an important way to dispelling the misconceptions discussed in Feeling Rational [? · GW] (emotions aren't always irrational; sometimes becoming more rational/truth-seeking will in fact make your emotions feel stronger). More generally, there are plenty of aspects of human experience that do not get invalidated or destroyed by the truth. It is life-affirming to acknowledge and realize this, especially for the person studying Rationality. 

Also related: Eliezer's 2018 tweet about how being trans does not rest on falsehoods.