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... I was an Evangelical Christian for 22 years ...
That explains things, there appears to be no way back from there. What would your young self thought of you now?
The common factor here; that you need to evangelize about something; what exactly that something is, does not appear to concern you. Some examples of your evangelical 'thoughts' from your posts over the past few days:
... I mean that is bullshit ...
... Nonsense ...
... a more ethical option would be to murder as many Muslims, Atheists and Buddhists ... as you can ...
... An even better option is to kill all males who will not convert ...
... You are wrong ...
... No they haven't ...
... it is "naive" ... when people take ... beliefs literally ...
I could go on, but that would be even more boring than the original diatribes from which these fragments were abstracted. How wrong can one possibly be; evangelism is the last thing expected on a forum which claims to be:
... devoted to refining the art of human rationality ...
Please convert back to some appropriate religion, before you lose any last semblance of credibility. Perhaps then you can die a happy man, and the other users on LW can resume normal rational discourse.
Votes can not be counted more than once, and every vote counts (according to the voter.) As all voters have an equal opportunity to withhold or spend votes - how can this be unfair?
In current systems, a minority voter may never be offered a candidate worth a vote - all such votes don't count (according to the voter.) This is clearly unfair, and has only an appearance of proportional representation.
With the right maneuvering among a well-organized block of voters, I could imagine a situation where the system becomes a perpetual minority rule.
And this does not happen now?
This is likely the reason for low turn outs in many elections - the voters simply do not care.
... they frequently vibrate the air, radiate heat, and exude various chemicals ...
These signals appear to be unavoidable. When we lie, however, many of our behavioural signals appear to be avoidable: for example.
There is no dispute that we betray our own lies; but why do we betray our lies?
... Expected payoff is low in this tangent ...
Expected payoff for whom?
I am new to this forum; as far as I remember I came here via the QM sequence. I was immediately impressed by the material, and became interested in other sequences (I have a long term interest in rationality, and especially general semantics.)
In order to acquaint myself with the general gist of the forums, I made a couple of innocuous posts on this thread; to which I received this response:
... I mean it is bullshit.
I have a natural aversion to narcissistic types, and my hackles were immediately alerted. After one or two more pokes, I was on full alert.
Do you consider yourself to be a moderator of this forum? If so, why are you both moderating and rating comments? If not, why do you think your opinions are privileged?
... any rational defences are welcomed and may be appended below.
What part of that in unclear?
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
– James Baldwin
The obscure language was likely due to the political context of the original; try substituting 'identified' for 'faced'.
In the case that the second proposition (with respect QM) is irrelevant to the thread, any apparent dislike of the comment must associate to the first proposition.
... symbols (or strings of symbols) have different sense in different contexts ...
This in response to your comment:
This is an excellent quote ... I downvoted it here ...
Please elaborate.
I am new to LW, and I don't get it; this is supposed to be a forum promoting rationality, and anyone who dissed this comment appears to be behaving re-actively.
Any rational justifications as to why anyone would respond to the above comment are welcomed, and may be appended below.
A good resource on distinctions (if you are not yet aware of it), is George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form. These ideas are being further explored (Bricken, Awbrey), and various resources on boundary logic and differential logic, are now available on the web.
When mapping labels (symbols) to their underlying concepts, look for the distinction, not the concept. Distinctions divide a particular perspective of the map; each side of the distinction being marked with a label. In early Greek philosophy the opposites were: love and strife (see empedocles.)
(An abstraction corresponds to a class of distinctions, where each particular distinction of the class, corresponds to another abstraction.)
Not to say that everyone is a heathen ;-) but as for those who missed out on the subtlety of my original Goethe post ... if they wish to further advertise their lack of sophistication ... diss this post.
Please ignore this, unless you are a hydrophobic Canis antarcticus, barking up the wrong tree. Its only purpose is to provide a pissing post to discourage the great unwashed from otherwise fouling the streets. With any luck the post, complete with its surrounding territory, will soon disappear completely off the bottom of the map. There, unfettered by the strictures of reason, the pack can feel free to bark and scratch, whilst attending to their compulsions to lick the sweat off each others balls.
Another Goethe quote, whilst on that tack; seems appropriate for disciples of GS.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(re-posted on request.)
And there you have it: symbols (or strings of symbols) have different sense in different contexts.
One of the contexts in which I found this aphorism insightful, was in certain interpretations of quantum physics.
Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... intentionally vague deep sounding ... (symbols) ... to which wisdom can be associated. You've just given multiple meanings to the same ... (symbols) ... Those other meanings may be useful but the ... (symbols) ... themselves are nonsense.
That pretty much describes any proposition. If you wish, substitute the word 'noise' for the word 'symbol, then the paragraph describes an utterance.
There is a good resource on semiotics here.
Not necessarily deep; a couple of concrete interpretations:
'Do not let what you can not do, interfere with what you can do;' and 'If you wish to discover the unknown, begin by exploring what is known.'
There is often much hidden wisdom in interpretation of aphorisms, which perhaps explains my preference for the poetic turn of phrase.
There are numerous systems of verifiable secret ballot, for example this one.
Why should those whom are not 'fans' of any current member of the ruling regime, never be offered a meaningful vote? That is the point of non expiring votes, that minorities will have representation at least some of the time. The fundamental test of any democracy, is whether the incumbent regime can be peacefully overthrown.
If you wish to advance into the infinite, explore the finite in all directions.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You were likely referring to some of the recent work of Vincent Courtillot. A video summarizing some of his work here.
The most interesting aspect of this work, is that Courtillot did not start out with any intention of finding correlations with climate; his field is geomagnetism. Only after noticing certain correlations between geomagnetic cycles and sun spot cycles, did suspected correlations with natural climate cycles become evident.
On the basis that if one makes definite assertions, responses are more likely :-)
My question: Why is it an evolutionary advantage to betray our lies with behavioural clues? Until challenged with an alternative reason that makes any sense, my assertion remains the only possible reason.
However, if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all?
Rewrite the paragraph; but remove all unnecessary particulars and emotive words, leaving the propositions in the abstract:
... if we can't trust our beliefs ... to tell us the truth ... why should we trust them to tell us the truth ...? ... If our cognitive faculties ... only tell us what we need to survive ... not what is true ... why trust them?
The first proposition reduces to an entirely meaningless tautology. The second proposition implies that truth is something other than what we need to survive. Together, the propositions ask the question: In what contexts can we trust our beliefs?
These abstract forms of the propositions, expose the issues under discussion: What is belief? To what extent can we trust our beliefs? These issues have been the subject of much discourse and quite a number of wars, genocides, and such like; over the past few thousand years. Although there appears to be no convincing philosophical argument either way, historical and palaeontological evidence suggests that species and cultures unable to adapt, do not survive. In the human cultural context, these issues have been explored by Jared Diamond.
The evolutionary source of empathy appears to be our mirror neurons, you may follow the research from the work of V.S.Ramachandran, outlined here, and from this video.
The evolutionary advantage of mirror neurons, appears to result from the human trait toward scavenging. When following another creature to its source of food, we must imitate the other creature, whilst at the same time distinguishing ourselves from the other creature; in order to know the difference between 'something has eaten', and 'I have eaten'.
Here are a few pointers to philosophical arguments that might expose fallacies in thinking.
Beliefs may be classified into two types:
- a belief that can be externally verified by experiment (science)
- a belief that can not be externally verified by experiment (faith.)
The former type, are those beliefs that I must have; for example, if I do not believe the doorway is where it is (my map does not correspond to the territory), I will likely walk into the wall. These types of beliefs are necessary for my survival.
The latter type, are those beliefs that I choose to have; these beliefs express my preferences and values; for example, if I prefer to eat chicken than pork, and am offered an option, I will value a bowl of chicken more than a bowl of pork.
Preferences are contextual: if I am offered no choice, and have the option of eating pork or starving; then my preference for chicken may compromise my survival. If my preference for chicken prevents me from eating pork, and I subsequently die; my unshakeable preference for chicken will die with me.
I consider that the above illustrates that only the former type of belief will survive in the long run; which answers the question by inference.
Provided that one person feels that their preferences were freely chosen; then, what justification is there for denying another similar freedoms? If someone asks: Do you believe in God? - answer: Do you believe in a god? If their answer is in the affirmative, one can then answer in honesty: I believe that you believe in a god? This becomes a little tricky if someone asks: Do you believe there is only one God? Then one must find at least two people to respond in the affirmative, before one can answer in honesty: No (the burden of proof falls to them, if they wish to claim that these are one and the same god.)
For those of a more philosophical temperament, this paradox sometimes suffices (or failing that, invokes a perplexed expression):
For some 'thing' to exist; that 'thing' must first be recognized (there can never, therefore, be only one instance of any 'thing'.)
This works for any ideal (universal), but can be applied to the concept of 'god', as easily as the concept of 'chair' or 'unicorn'. It makes no sense to ask: Do you believe in the existence of 'chair'? For the question to have sense, one must ask in the particular; Do you believe in the existence of 'that chair'?
These are all plays on words, and I for one, have never really understood the difference: a 'believer' claims to believe in one 'unicorn', and a 'non believer' claims to not believe in another 'unicorn'. This confuses me; if pressed, I prefer to label myself 'apatheist', I really do not see that this kind of belief makes any difference either way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism
To lie convincingly, it is necessary to first believe the lie yourself; in other words once you deceive yourself, convincing others is easy. The reason for this phenomenon appears to be the behavioral clues offered when one knowingly lies. Why is it that we offer these behavioral clues when we lie? Surely it would be advantageous to disguise our lies?
The only possible reason appears to be, that these behavioral clues are the only way we have of knowing of ourselves, that we lie. Without this metaphorical 'crossing of fingers', we would have no way of knowing that we lied. If this is the case, then behaviorism has a point; much as we might like to think otherwise, it appears that we may be nothing more than the sum of our behavior.
It would appear that many of these problems would be circumnavigated, if voters were permitted to save their votes. In the case that none of the candidates were to my liking, I could then save up my vote for any forthcoming election. When, after a 50 years of waiting, I am finally offered a candidate of my liking, I may then have an opportunity to spend all 50 of my votes at once (great for minorities who are never offered a meaningful choice.)
A system based upon non expiring votes would likely be sufficiently unpredictable to discourage strategic voting (manipulation), as the total number of votes cast in any one election is variable. This could be extended to different types of election; perhaps, an initial equal allocation of 10 votes per year each, to be cast on any election of my choice, whenever I choose. I might just get to spend all of my 500 votes, saved up from 50 years of not voting for local and regional representatives, on a referendum to make one meaningful change to the system itself.
Sorry, this is a hobby horse of mine: the goods market offers bountiful choice, but unfairly allocates the number of spendable votes; the political market fairly allocates the number of votes, but never offers any choice of when and what these may be spent on. Does not appear that either system is democratic in any meaningful sense.
Interesting that you should prefer 'they', referring to the plural data; some versions of the aphorism also use this form - in retrospect, I prefer this form.
Torturing data is a common problem in my field (geophysics). With large but sparse datasets, data can be manipulated to mean almost anything. Normal procedure: first make a reasonable model for the given context; then make a measureable prediction based upon your model; then collect an appropriate dataset by 'tuning' your measuring apparatus to the model; then process your data in a standard way. In the case that that your model is not necessarily wrong; then make another measureable prediction based upon your model; collect another dataset by an independent experimental method; then ...
Even when following this procedure, models are often later found to be wildly erroneous; in other words, all of the experimental support for your model was dreamt up.
A perennial favourite: "If you torture the data enough, they will confess."
Often attributed to Ronald Coase, however this version was likely: "If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess" - perhaps implying a confession of truth. Another version, attributed to Paolo Magrassi: "If you torture the data enough, it will confess anything" - perhaps implying a confession of falsehood.
Personally, I find the ambiguous version of greater interest.