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Just a minor update. This thread has grown to big for me to follow easily. I am ready every post in it, but real life is taking up a lot of my time right now so I will be very slow to reply. I found the limit of multiple conversations I can hold at one time before I get a headache, and it appears to be less than I suspected.
Once again, sorry, didn't mean to drop out, but I stayed up way to late and even now I am recovering from sleep deprivation and still have an annoying headache. My body seems to want to wake up 2 hours before it should. I'll be back once I get my sleeping back to normal, and get some more time. Even then though I am going to try to limit myself to only a couple posts a day because while I enjoy discussions, it's very easy for me to forget everything else when I get drawn into them.
I'll be back later. JAKInBAndW
You test a large number of these against placebo rituals, where elements of the rituals are changed in ways that ought to invalidate them according to the traditional beliefs, in ways that the patients won't notice, and you find that all of the rituals you test perform no better than placebo.
But but what if you get inconsistent result? Let's say you try the ritual 5 times and the placebo 5 times and it works 2 times for the the ritual and twice for the ritual. Furthermore consider that nothing changed in any of these tests that you could measure. You said the ritual was spiritual, and there for asking for divine intervention. It could be that the ritual was unnecessary and that the divine being decides when it intervenes. If you can't figure out why it sometimes works, or sometimes doesn't than maybe it's because you are asking a sentient being to make a choice and you don't understand their reasoning.
You could say that there was no divine intervention at all, but then you are left trying to come up with more and more complex theories about why it sometimes works and sometimes does not. This might not be a bad thing, but one shouldn't discount the easy solution just because it doesn't match their expectations, nor should they stop looking for another solution just because any easy one that is hard to test is present.
On this site, we generally don't operate on a group norm that people shouldn't confront others' beliefs without explicit invitation.
Oooh! I like it! Yeah sure, I can get behind that. The reason that i am not trying to convince people here of Christianity is because I don't have proof that I feel should convince other people. If I did convince anyone here, with the proof that I have, then I would feel that I had made you inferior rationalists. On the other hand I cannot just ignore my own observations and tests and agree with you when I perceive that you are mistaken. I hope that one day I might find some way of proving that god exists to people without needing them to experience something supernatural themselves. But unfortunately as I believe that I am dealing with a sentient intelligence I feel that is unlikely.
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren't, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
Not that I remember. My memory could be faulty, but thinking long and hard about it I don't remember it happening.
Wait... she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn't sound like much of a prediction; I don't think I'm parsing your sentence correctly.
She predicted they were in trouble. I think the phrase she used was "I think XXXX is in trouble and needs help." I could be misremembering though.
Why did you end up picking "god" over "psionics", then ?
It's a close call honestly, but if god exists, which I believe he does from other evidence listed in this over-sized thread, then adding psionics on top would be added complexity for no gain. If you already know that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, why bother coming up with an alternate explanation for why Saturn goes around the sun? It might have another reason, but the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization
I did state that she predicted one in advance to me. Also when my mother called me the first thing she asked was "are you alright?"
You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
As far as my mother goes I have never once seen her mistake a prediction. Now 2 predictions (and 2 more that she told me about) sounds small, but consider the amount of times that she didn't mistakenly call the probability that something is going on is quite high. For example if you have a deck with 996 blue cards in it, and 4 red cards in it, and you call a red card before it flips once, but never call it before a blue card flips, the chances of you succeeding on are... Um... Do you guys want me to do the math? It's pretty small.
And just because some people think that they can do it and can't, doesn't mean that a person can't do it. Look at all the people who think they are wonderful singers.
Of course I could be misremembering. I could go ask my mother, and my father and see what they say if you like. (Yes I am close to my parents. We have a tight nit family even though I am 24). Of course we could all be misremembering, or lying. Again, you have no way to know, and you really shouldn't even consider taking my word for this.
Honestly mine really isn't any different than what you hear on the internet all the time. If you want to hear it go ahead. When my grandfather died all the people in the room said that they saw a light enter the room. It didn't say anything but they all agreed that they felt peace come over them. My grandfather was a Christian, as were the people in the room. I wasn't in the room, however I did check their stories individually and they matched. Also these were people who haven't lied to me before or since (well, other than stuff like april fools... though one of them never even does that). That, along with my foot, and my Mothers ability to know when her friends are in trouble and make phone calls that I have related in other posts give me reasonably strong belief in the supernatural* world
*(Supernatural yada yada, not understood by science yada yada. Do I need to keep making these disclaimers?)
We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests.
Point.
though I would point out that not all of them are wrong either. Just the good majority. That's neither here nor there though.
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble? My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them. One of those calls was to me and it helped me greatly. While she has missed calling people that were in trouble, she has never once called someone with that intent and been wrong.She told me that it feels like someone is telling her to call them because they are in trouble. I can't know if that is true or not, but I can't think of her ever lying to me. This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
I know that she isn't the only person that does this, because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god, but that might be because I played to many role-playing games.
Sorry if this seems odd, it was just something that came to mind as I was thinking about supernatural* things.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
As already pointed out, would it change either my beliefs or your beliefs? I've already recounted a medical mystery with my foot and blood loss. It comes down in the end to my word, and that of people I know. We could all be lying. There is no long term proof, so I don't see any need to explain it. That was my point. What is strong proof to me, is weak proof to others because I know that I am not lying. I have no way to prove I am not lying however so what would be the point?
Many, possibly even all religions though, make claims of supernatural events being witnessed by large numbers of people, and religions make enough mutually exclusive claims that they cannot all be true, so we know that claims of large scale supernatural observations are something that must at least sometimes arise in religions that are false.
That may be the case, and I won't disagree that some claims are fabricated. However for the rest imagine the following: A parent has two children, and he gives a present (say a chocolate that they eat) to each child without the other child knowing. Each child takes this to mean that they are the parents favorite. After all they have proof in the gift. They get into an argument over it. However because their beliefs about why the gifts were given are wrong, the fact that the gifts were given remains.
In the same way it is possible that a supernatural* being is out there, and people are just misinterpreting what the gifts it bestows mean. As far as I can tell it doesn't mind when someone calls themselves a Christian, and follows the Christian faith, so I identify as Christian.
...if a person who claims highly compelling religious experiences is unable to persuade other people, it does not indicate a failing in the other people's rationality.
I would never dream to claim otherwise. I wouldn't even try to convince people that have not had their own experiences. It would prove that you were rather inferior rationalists if I could. Unless you have proof, you should not believe. I am not here to try to convince anyone otherwise. The only reason that I talk about it is that you seem interested in how I could believe, and I suspect that I can point out why I believe to you in such a way that you will understand.
Why does everyone think that I want to convert them to Christianity? Even the churches I go, though they are not super rationalist agree that such a thing is pointless unless the person has some experience in their life that would lead them to believe. Do you often get Christians here trying to convert you?
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
Is "god exists, has the properties I believe it to have, and wants to stay hidden" really the only reason you can think of for the observable universe being as we observe it to be?
My own belief is closer to: "Something very powerful and supernatural exists, doesn't seem to be hostile, and doesn't mind that I call it the Christian God." And while I would answer 'no' to that question, the amount of evidence that there is something supernatural if far greater than the amount of evidence that there are millions of people lying about their experiences.
For instance, every culture has a belief in the supernatural. Now I would expect that social evolution would trend away from such beliefs. If you say, I can dance and make it rain, and then you fail, you would get laughed at. If you don't believe me gather a bunch of your closest friends and try it. The reason for people to believe someone else is if they had proof to back it up, or they already had reason to believe. Humans aren't stupid, and I don't think we've become radically more intelligent in the last couple thousand years. Why then is belief in the supernatural* everywhere? Is it something in our makeup, how we think? I have heard such a thing discounted by both sides. So there must be some cause, some reason for people to have started believing.
And that's without even getting into my experiences, or those close to me. As was suggested, misremembering, and group hallucination are possible, but if that is the case than I should probably check myself and some people I know into a medical clinic because I would be forced to consider myself insane. Seeing things that aren't there wold be a sign of something being very wrong with me, but I do not any any other symptoms of insanity so I strongly doubt this is the case.
I suppose when I get right down to it, either I and some others are insane with an unknown form of insanity, or there is something out there.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
So what I'm getting from you is that you would ignore your own observations to conform to what others expect? That your belief in a universe without god is so strong that even if I did show you something like this you would refuse to believe it because it didn't fit with your expectations? Then I fail to see how I could ever convince you.
Addendum: Have group hallucinations been proven or disproven?
If you can show strong, convincing evidence for why the existence of your God is special, I will be very, very interested.
Ah, now that is a funny thing isn't it. Once upon a time I played a joke on a friend. I told him something that he would have never have believed unless it came from my own mouth, and then when he tried to tell others I just looked confused and denied it. He ended up looking like a fool. (For the record I asked him to tell nobody else).
Why is this relevant? Because if for example (and no, I'm not saying this is what happened), God came out of the sky, pointed at me, and said "I exist." I would know that either he existed, or something else did that was trying to fool me into thinking he did. Either way I would have belief that something supernatural (outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts) had happened. Let's say I came onto this board and told everyone that. How would I 'prove' it? I could say it happened, but I doubt anyone here would believe me. I could try a few tests, but I'd be hard pressed with how to prove that a something of a godlike intelligence exists if it didn't want anyone else to find out. However I might not be smart enough, so I'll pose the question to you:
How do you prove that a godlike entity exists if it doesn't want to be proven? Assume that it has complete freedom to move through time so that tricking it doesn't work because it can just go back in time (that's what omnipotent means after all). And that you don't know the reasons why it's staying hidden so no argument to try to get it to show itself will work.
I look forward to suggestions. But unless there is something that works for that, I am just someone who believes because of experience, but knows of no way to prove it to others (though honestly I am making an assumption by saying god wants to stay hidden, it's the only reason I can think of).
I think this is called "behaving rationally". I understand "rationality" as using reason to my benefit.
Thus my point that sometimes you should not question one of your own beliefs is preserved. You agree that it would be the rational thing to do in some situations.
As far as "bad" goes, I don't have a ready definition.
If you can't explain what bad is, then I am unable to discuss this with you. You might have a good definition, or you might be just saying that whatever makes you mad is automatically bad. I can't know, so I can't form any arguments about it.
This isn't to say that there aren't situations where it will disadvantage me to be a rationalist
Indeed. My entire point was that it might be possible to recognize these situations and then act in an appropriate manner. (Or would that be being meta-rationalist?)
Whatever misconceptions I may have about Christianity are gained from growing up with a religious family and attending services "religiously" for the first two decades of my life.
Anecdotal evidence shouldn't be a cause to say something is horrible. If that were the case I could point to the secular schools I went to growing up where I was the only Christian in my class, and watched as the other kids fought, did hard drugs, had sex, and generally messed up their life and beat me up. On the other hand the Church was friendly, focused on working together and planning for the future. It focused on tolerance and accepting people who were hostile without hating them. If I was to go just from my childhood I would despise atheists with a passion.
Religious instruction is targeted predominantly towards children.
Depends on the church. The church that I go to most of the time has only 2 or three children in it and is mostly made up of members over 60. Besides, if you look at it from a Christian point of view, is it wrong to teach children when they are young? Would you advocate waiting till a person is 20 to start teaching them how to read, write and do math?
The claims of the religious are false.
I respectfully disagree. I would appreciate it if you could be respectful in turn.
Threatening a child with eternal damnation is bad.
Is it as bad as telling a child that if they play in traffic they could cease to exist? Or that if they are not careful around a lawnmower they could end up with pain and disabilities for the rest of their lives? Define 'Bad' for me so that we can discuss this point.
A consequence of being a Christian is giving 10% of your money to the church.
Not true for all churches. In fact I have yet to be in a single one that even suggests it. Usually it is more along the lines of "If you believe the work we are doing is good than please donate so that we may continue doing it." You know, kind of like what Eliezer is doing right now with the workshops he is setting up.
It's probably because you said you identify as a Christian, and Christians tend to advance this sort of argument more often than non-theists, regarding Christianity specifically.
That tends so show that they don't actually believe in Christianity. Rather they want to believe. I feel sorry for those people. Of course as I tend to sit on the other side of the fence I try to help them believe, but belief is a hard thing to cultivate and an easy thing to destroy. If you were in a group and you were shown a box with 5 dice in it for a brief moment, but later everyone agreed that there were only 4 dice, most people would start to doubt their memories. I know that I would. If the people were very smart and showed the box again, and this time it only had 4 dice in it many people would be very hard pressed not to doubt their memories and be convinced they remembered wrong. They might want to believe that they were right about 5 dice, but they would have a hard time believing it. They would want to believe in the truth, but wouldn't.
Of course that is coming at it from a strictly religious point of view. Atheist would use the same argument in the exact opposite fashion with the proof of no god being the 5 dice and the religious people around them saying that there were 4.
If you truly believed you were about to die no matter what, why would you waste time on tying off your foot?
Because I wasn't thinking about if I would live or die, I was thinking that to live I needed to do this. It was only after I had done everything that I could that I stopped and considered my chances and figured that I was probably going to die. Even so though I believe that it is my biological duty to do everything possible to survive no matter how hopeless the situation.
Honestly from this side of it, I don't really have any post traumatic stress. I remember how I felt at the time, but the memories have no sting to them. Don't worry about it. Generally I'm able to discuss anything that I bring up.
What is it ? That something outside of what is generally accepted by science stepped in and helped me. Could have been anything, but it makes the most sense that since I was praying at the time it was God. Of course it could have been aliens that wiped my memory, or a host of other things, but the possibility exists that something stepped in, and it makes for a simpler explanation. However I am aware that simple explanations are not always the right ones.
Can you describe some examples ? Your own experience with the bleeding foot is not one of them, because your death would've negatively affected quite a few people (including yourself).
I could argue that if that hadn't have saved my life (that I was going to die no matter what), than at that point my actions and thoughts would have very little meaning. I suppose honestly I could have written a note to my parents, but at the time I didn't think of it. Other than that I could have believed, or done anything I wanted and not have really effected the outcome.
However the examples I was thinking of were extinction level events.
Understood. However, if everyone thought like you do, no one would be tracking near-Earth asteroids right now.
Fair point. And I hope that our leaders are wise enough to know that blowing up the world would be a bad idea. However if there was an asteroid going to hit tomorrow, I am not sure what help I could offer humanity even if I did know. Wouldn't it just cause me pointless suffering? If no one else knew I could tell them about it, but after that I couldn't really do anything about it. And I don't know anything about this, but is there anything out there that shows that some people enjoy worrying? They would be perfect to do that sort of thing. I personally am happier not worrying about things I can't change.
[Note: Skip stuff in brackets if religious talk annoys or offends you]
(Why does everyone assume that this has to do with religion? If I was asking this about religion wouldn't that already signify that I didn't believe, I just wanted to? My belief comes from actual events that I have witnessed, and tested, and been unable to falsify. )
The example with the bleeding out was sort of a personal one because it happened to me. I cut my foot with an axe. I was far from help, and a helicopter wouldn't pick me up for another 4 hours. If I had been off to the side by 3 mm I would have hit an artery and bled out, and nothing was going to stop it. I did tie it off, raise it up, and stop moving, but it was down to chance. At the time I believed I was going to die and it quite distressed me. If I was to be in the same situation again, lying on the ground, foot supported and tied off, even if I was going to die I would rather not know and believe I was going to make it. That might make me a sub-optimal rationalist, but at that point as there was nothing more to do it would have made me a happier person. (Gasp! Yes, a religious person said they didn't want to die. It might sound like a logical fallacy, but it was in fact (if I recall correctly, it was sort of a traumatic experience) empathy for my father and mother, who I had just seen about half an hour before I cut my foot.)
(I will further note that either I was lied to a lot, or that there were several inconsistencies with the entire event. I was told that I should have been unconscious with the amount of blood I lost 6 hours later when I made it in to the hospital. I had of course been doing such activities such as hopping around on my one foot to go places, and didn't feel in the slightest bit woozy. Nor did I have any symptoms of shock when it happened. Finally I never felt any pain from the wound, though this last I suspect was because I severed the nerve endings. Yet doing that in such a way that I never felt pain seems unlikely to me using something as unwieldy as an axe, and I have not come across similar stories. How does one interpret events? That the doctors lied to me or were mistaken? It's possible. That a lot of things went just right? The likely hood of that happening falls well within the realm of the possible as well. On the other and there is another explication that does not require lies, mistakes or luck to be involved. I feel that how you see it strongly depends on your bias.(And then there is the possibility that I am lying. I know I'm not, but over the internet I'd be hard pressed to prove it))
As for the Nigerian prince example, I am specifically talking about situations where there is no long run, and you are not affecting other people with your decisions. I agree that in most cases trying to know the truth is better than not knowing it.
The sun going nova was just an example. Big asteroid hitting earth, thermal nuclear war, there are all sorts of stuff that falls into the category of things I can't do anything about that will end my life.
I pose the question of what does being a superior rationalist do for you if you are about to die? And I'll use a more real example because you don't seem to like that one. Let us suppose that you are about a miles walk from your car and you cut yourself badly. You don't have any means of communicating with people. You start walking back to your car. You suspect that you aren't going to make it. Now does it make you happier to follow up on that thought and figure out the rate you are losing blood, realize you aren't going to make it and die in fear and sadness, or is it better to put that suspicion aside and keep walking toward your car, sitting down for a quick rest when you get tired? One has you dieing in fear, the other in peace. All because of your choice to destroy your belief that you can get to the car. Is being a superior rationalist giving your more happiness that the knowledge of your own imminent death is taking away?
You can't know in advance what beliefs you hold are false, however you can know which ones make you happy and don't get in the way of your life. I believe that I am sitting in front of a computer enjoying a stimulating conversation. I could devote a lot of time trying to disprove it. I would probably not succeed, but who knows, I might. I however don't see anything to be gained from attempting to disprove this. Again, I believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning. My belief might be false, however if it is, and the sun goes nova tonight, I would gain nothing but unhappiness (if I was an atheist, which I am in this argument). I could try to disprove it, and put resources towards seeing if it is or it isn't. I could try to find out if there is a conspiracy to hide if from the public to stop rioting. But even if the sun was about to go nova, my knowledge of it would change nothing, and it would be unlikely I could find out anyway, so it would be a waste of resources to try to find out.
And I am trying to leave religion out of this. Your misconceptions about Christianity are show that you have never done any real research into the subject of religion, and that you are just copying what you have heard from others. If however you really want to get into it, let me know and I will. I admit, I have anti-anti-theist tendencies.
Still, the original question has been answered.
[The following is just me being slightly insane about probability and has no bearing on the point of the artical]
I have to point out some flaws with the probability that you are using here. For the most part betting blue all the time works. However Cards don't work quite like that. Each draw of the cards reduces the total number of the card that was drawn. For instance if you have 10 cards, 7 blue, 3 red, and after the first 7 draws there have been 6 blue cards drawn, but only one red card drawn then the probability now favors drawing a red card. In fact, if now you switch to calling red for every card you can achieve an 80% success rate over all because now there is only 1 blue card left, but two red cards. Just because you have come up with a strategy for success does not mean that you should stop thinking and reassessing the situation as more information becomes known.
Hello. I come from HPMoR. I identify as Christian, though my belief and reasons for belief are a bit more complex than that. I'll probably do a post on that later in 'how to convince me 2+2=3'. I also get told that I over think things.
Anyway, that's not the reason I joined. I was reading an article by Eliezer Yudkowsky and he stated that whatever can be destroyed by truth should be. This got me wondering in what context that was meant. My first thought was that it meant that we should strive to destroy all false beliefs, which has the side effect of not lying, but then I began to wonder if it wasn`t more personal. We should strive to let the truth that we observe destroy any beliefs that they are able to.
I realized that the difference between the two is that one is an end in and of itself (destroy all false belief), and one is a means to achieve a goal more effectively (don`t hold on to false belief when it has been proved false). I am really not sure how I feel about the first one, it seems very confrontational to no good purpose. There are a lot of false beliefs out there that people hold dear. However the second one is strange as well.
One of peoples goals is to be happy. Now there is an old saying that ignorance is bliss. While this is definitely not always a good policy I can think of several cases off the top of my head were a person would be happier with a false belief than with reality. For example what if everything that is happening to you right now is your mind constructing an elaborate fantasy to stop you from realizing that you are slowly being tortured to death? If you break free of said belief you are not happy, and you can do nothing to save yourself. The goal of being happy is actively opposed by the goal of learning the truth. [disclaimer: I've read about the mind constructing such fantasies in books and have experienced it only once in my life to a limited degree when I was being beaten up as a child. I don't know how scientifically accurate they are. This is just an example and if necessary I can come up with another one.]
So probably that wasn't what Mr. Yudkowsky meant when he said that what can be destroyed by truth should be (and if it is, can someone explain to me why?). So what does it mean? I've run out of theories here.