MatthewB comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong

215 Post author: PhilGoetz 19 September 2009 09:05PM

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Comment author: timtyler 28 December 2009 04:12:07PM 5 points [-]

Don't be too hard on them for that!

"Belief" is an overloaded word. Some use it to mean a p=1 concept, while others use it to mean a p > 0.95 concept. Of course, p=1 ideas are crazy faith issues, but some people seem to sustain them. The "I have no beliefs" crowd just mean to say that they "have no p=1 beliefs that they hold with absolute faith" - which is a fair enough thing to observe.

Comment author: MatthewB 28 December 2009 05:45:33PM 5 points [-]

I wish that were the case, but it seems to me that the "I have no beliefs" crowd that I am familiar with means that they have no beliefs for which P<1.

In other words, they either know something with absolute certainty, or they give it no credence whatsoever.

I can't think of how many times I have told them that they need to both reclaim the word "Belief" and to understand that they have many things for which P≠1 (P<1, but greater than .5, or some other arbitrary number for which they will accept some information as being true).

Yet, sometimes the certainties of faith get assumed by those without faith (of the religious kind)