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Boyi comments on How to Not Lose an Argument - Less Wrong
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Don't you think it would be easy to say your point, or the problem that you have with my point than cryptically telling me I am missing something. You ever think it is you who are missing something you are just not being open enough to let me figure out what it is. Same to the other 4 silent people.
In my opinion the Karma system is really stupid if you just criticize someone's idea without stating what it is your criticizing or even who you are.
I didn't downvote, but your wall-o-text approach, combined with the spelling errors, does make it tempting -- even though I do agree with some of what you say. Sorry :-(
I didn't downvote, but it's literally impossible to respond to your wall of text. You've tried to rebut every point of Yvain's article, and it's just too much to engage with. I could write at least three long posts in response to specific points I disagree with, none of which would have any relationship to each other. But if I don't write long posts, it won't be clear what I mean. It would violate the norms of polite debate to put a huge wall of text here, and that would particularly ironic when the original post is about how to debate politely.
But I like debate, so I'll outline my objections to your post. If you think you can change my mind for the better, or that I don't understand your position, a response would be welcome.
I never really thought of my posts as debates. I write them during my break at work as fast as possible. I would call them brainstorms more than anything. I can see how that makes understanding what I am saying complicated. I will try to be more considerate from this point on.
-Rhetoric is orthogonal to truth. I like truth. While rhetorical knowledge is not a valid way to discover truth about the true nature of reality, it does reflect truth about the nature of human psychology. There is truth about the human condition. The idea I am trying to convey is that humans are born with ways to evaluate knowledge. They are taught to evaluate it by the standard of facts, but their are other "logics" that we as human animals run on. You are right that purely deductive reasoning produces no new knowledge. It was for this very reason that philosophers and scientists wanted to delegitimize it. My point is that just because the science of rhetoric does not produce new facts about the external world, does not mean that it does not represent facts about how humans naturally interpret information.
-If the proposition is that there is a "transcendental" god, and all you have is non-transcendental evidence, then the best course of action is to reject the hypothesis. No amount of empirical evidence supports believing a hypothesis that is asserted to be beyond empiricism.
My use of the word transcendental here has nothing to do with a physical God. I do not believe in a literal God. Some philosophers and other scholars use the word transcendental to categorize issues dealing with meaning or abstract principle. The author of this article spoke of the morality of the universe. Regardless of whether you are talking about God or not, this would be categorized as a transcendental issue. My point was that some theists probably are not theists for transcendental reasons, but rather for social ones. Meaning that they do not really think about whether or not the universe is moral. The morality of the universe has nothing to do with their religious faith. They are loyal to a belief system because they are loyal to the social network that supports it. For people like this, convincing them that there is a morality without God is futile, because morality was never the issue. They are theists in the same way you root for your home team at the game regardless of who is better or worse.
-It is unpleasant to learn that your beliefs (of any kind) were false. I think it is still worth it to learn the truth. Not everyone here agrees.
When there is such a plurality of truth being developed how do you assess what truth is Truth. And even if you could how do you know that such truth is not contingent, or that it is more beneficial than detrimental to your life?
Learning about rhetoric helps you understand human thinking. Using rhetoric is a way to cause another person to believe X, whether or not X is true.
The fact that people act as if they believe (and even actually believe) religion for social reasons is true. But acting as if you believe something is true when you don't makes it harder to achieve your goals. And supporting religion only because it supports your other beliefs is a waste of your resources.
I don't think this is responsive to my third point. But maybe I just don't understand.
ETA: If you want to quote, just write a ">" then paste in the quoted text. The "Show Help" button on the right side of the comment box has some more formatting stuff.
You are correct that rhetoric can be misused. It should be complemented by facts. My point is that just because rhetoric can be used to convince people of falsehoods does not prove that truth is not equally dependent on rhetoric to become normative in people's minds.
People are not born judging information by its verisimilitude. Empirical fact as a criteria for knowledge must be taught. I am not saying it is a bad thing to teach people (it is really good), what I am saying is that judging information by fact has to be seen as highly technical knowledge, not a fundamental system of cognition. The majority of the world's population does not judge information by fact. I am not even convinced that all scientists or rationalists truly judge information by fact.
My perception of you is that you see religion as an antiquated method for producing knowledge. I agree with you. I do not think religion should be the criteria of determining facts. Where we do not see eye to eye is that I also believe that religion serves several other functions beyond literal interpretation of the world. One of which is the maintenance and strengthening of social bonds. So I cannot as easily deem non-factual beliefs as a waste of resources (see my comment here http://lesswrong.com/lw/bk/the_trouble_with_good/ for more on this).
My response was meant to question your statement " I think it is still worth it to learn the truth."
At the pinnacle of your values is Truth. Can you explain to my why Truth should be regarded more important than social relationships/ personal health.
Truth is an instrumental value, not a terminal value of mine. Believing true things helps me achieve my actual goals.
Yes, and a major goal of LessWrong is to help people avoid cognitive bias and therefore do better at achieving their goals.
How is religion a "method for producing knowledge" at all?
Religion is the original norm for producing knowledge whether you like it or not. I am not saying it was a good method, but you cannot deny that it is embryologically the basis of knowledge and knowledge production. The first scholars were theologians and aristocrates, the first colleges were religous institutions. I am not saying that it is a correct methodology, but it is our history.
Early doctors healed people in ways we no longer condone, but we cannot deny the fact that they were the forefathers of modern medical knowledge.
That's just a more emphatic way of stating the premise, isn't it?
Religions are certainly models of the world, or at least of certain parts of it: fertility, cosmology, all those things with mysterious causes. And it's true that the lines between religion and philosophy (including natural philosophy) were awfully blurry in pre-modern thought; I'd actually put the watershed there relatively late, somewhere around Darwin or a little earlier. But calling religions methods of producing knowledge carries certain implications which don't necessarily follow from a conception of religion as a model of the numinous world: "knowledge" is a fairly strong word, much stronger than "thought" or "belief".
I'd say a more productive approach would be to call religions the first totalizing systems of belief: there are other and earlier paths to knowledge (nonhuman animals can learn from experience, but we don't observe worship among them), but before the Classical period all the Western attempts at organizing knowledge and belief into a comprehensive system of the world wound up looking pretty religious. When people start limiting themselves to talking about knowledge, you don't get religion, you get philosophy: often religious philosophy, yes, but that's a proper subset of all religious topics.
Most knowledge is entirely orthogonal to religion. If Ugg wanted to know whether there was a fruit tree on the other side of that hill, he didn't pray about it - he looked. I understand that chimpanzees exhibit curiosity. I think it is certainly fair to say that religion was, in part, an early attempt at knowledge generation; it may well be fair to say that it was the original norm for producing cosmogonical knowledge (or, at least, attempting to).
From what I can tell, the chief issue lies in your talk of a "moral universe" that is somehow "transcendental". The post you respond to suggests "that morality is possible even in a godless universe", which I think refers to relatively concrete behaviors.
Also, the post goes on to mention the status issues you raise ("parents and loved ones were stupid") and more generally, urges us to consider context and rhetorical feel. So it seems like you may have missed some humor in the introduction ("Dark Arts").
I probably did mis the humor I am really gullible, but you missed my point about the morality of the universe.
by transcendental I meant a value dealing with issues of the meaning of life. Anytime you talk about what is the purpose of life, what should people do, what is moral, is the universe moral, whether you are talking about a god or a godless universe, it is a transcendental question. There is a misconception on this blog that transcendental means christian or God.
I am not a theist. I am a transatheist.
The author of the article is arguing that a better way to convince theists of the atheist agenda is to not attack them socially, but to find some other critique in their argument. MY POINT, is that this is a good strategy BUT a flaw in the author's example of how to initiate it is an assumption of the theists reasons for their values. The assumption the author makes is that theists believe in God because they need the universe to be moral. Or in other words, that the value of religious belief is dealing with a transcendental issue. I am saying that for some people this is not the case. Some people value their religious beliefs for social reasons (such as loyalty to an in-group). For people like this, the author's tactic is just as cornering as what he is advocating against.