JoshuaZ comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 12:18AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (533)

Comments (533)

Sort By: Best

Show:

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 20 January 2011 03:04:06AM * 16 points [-]

How low a percentage does one need to assign a claim in order to declare it to be closed? I'd assign around a 5% chance that there exists something approximating God (using this liberally to include the large variety of entities which fall under that label). I suspect that my probability estimate is higher than many people on LW. (Tangent: I recently had a discussion with an Orthodox Jewish friend about issues related to Bayesianism, and he was surprised that I assigned the idea that high a probability. In his view, if he didn't have faith and had to assign a probability he said it might be orders of magnitude lower.) So how low a probability do we need to estimate before we consider something closed?

Moreover, how much attention should we pay to apologetics in general? We know that theology and apologetics are areas that have spent thousands of years of memetic evolution to be as dangerous as possible. They take almost every little opportunity to exploit the flaws in human cognition. Apologetic arguments aren't (generally) basilisk level, but they can take a large amount of cognitive resources to understand where they are wrong. After 10 or 15 of them, how much effort do we need to spend seeing if # 16 (variation of first cause argument number 8) is worth spending resources investigation? Also, given that there's a vibrant subset of the internet that is dedicated to handling just this question and related issues, why should LW be the forum for handling the issue?

There's a related issue: humans are overactive agent recognizers. We love to see patterns where none exist and see intelligence in random action. Theism fits with deep-seated human intuitions. In contrast, MWI, simulationism and full-scale Tegmark all clash strongly with human intuition. They may seem weird, but the weirdness may not be a product of evidential issues but rather that they clash with human intuitions. So putting them in the same category as religion may be misleading.

Incidentally, I'm curious, would you similarly object if LW said explicitly that homeopathy was a closed subject? What about evolution? Star formation? If these are different, why are they different?

Comment author: b1shop 20 January 2011 07:19:30PM 2 points [-]

Perhaps a question becomes a closed issue not when the probability of the belief reaches a certain point, but when our estimate of the probability of the belief changing reaches a certain threshold. A fair coin is heads 50% of the time, and my probability won't change. That's a closed question. I may be fairly confident about the modern theory of star formation, but I wouldn't be too surprised if a new theory added some new details. So it's not a closed subject.

I can imagine no evidence that would lead me to believe in something nonfalsifiable. Theism is a closed subject.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 20 January 2011 07:58:57PM 0 points [-]

You say that you can't imagine evidence that would cause you to believe in something nonfalsifiable. But then seem to apply that the theism in general. I'm curious. If say, almost all the evangelical Christians in the world disappeared along with all the world's children, would you not assign a substantial probability to the Rapture having just taken place?

Comment author: b1shop 20 January 2011 08:26:19PM 0 points [-]

Fair point. Some religions make falsifiable claims.

But my point still stands. I assign a low probability to the rapture happening -- even lower than there being a xian God, so I don't put much weight into the idea my religious beliefs will change. The people who take the rapture seriously do so because they also believe in nonfalsifiable things.

Comment author: lionhearted 20 January 2011 01:10:11PM 2 points [-]

This comment is brilliant. In particular, I'd really really love to see two top level posts covering:

Moreover, how much attention should we pay to apologetics in general? We know that theology and apologetics are areas that have spent thousands of years of memetic evolution to be as dangerous as possible. They take almost every little opportunity to exploit the flaws in human cognition. Apologetic arguments aren't (generally) basilisk level, but they can take a large amount of cognitive resources to understand where they are wrong.

...and...

There's a related issue: humans are overactive agent recognizers. We love to see patterns where none exist and see intelligence is random action. Theism fits with deep-seated human intuitions. In contrast, MWI, simulationism and full-scale Tegmark all clash strongly with human intuition. They may seem weird, but the weirdness may not be a product of evidential issues but rather that they clash with human intuitions. So putting them in the same category as religion may be misleading.

Both really fascinating insights, I'd love to read more. Especially the first one about memetic evolution to be dangerous - I wonder what various secular social and societal memes fit in similarly.

Comment author: Will_Newsome comment score below threshold [+] (103 children)

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 06:24:58PM -6 points [-]

I'd assign around a 5% chance that there exists something approximating God (using this liberally to include the large variety of entities which fall under that label).

Interesting. I'd assign high probability to there being a Creator computing roughly 'this' part of spacetime, a high probability to it being omniscient and omnipotent, a fair probability to it being omnibenevolent, and a low probability to it being 'personal' in the Christian sense (maybe 5%, but this is liable to change a ton when I think about it more and get a better sense of what a personal God is).

I also think it's unlikely that Christ was the memetic son of God (genetic son of Joseph), though not terribly unlikely. Not less than .1%, probably more. I think it is likely that Christ died for our sins given my interpretation of those words, which may be entirely unlike what Christians mean. (I mean something like Christ set it up such that we're more likely to have a positive singularity, though this is very disputable, and I'm mostly following that line of reasoning because meta-contrarianism is fun.) I think it's unlikely that Christ was able to cast resurrection on himself, but I agree with Yvain that it's odd that the resurrection myth spread so far and so fast. User:Kevin tells me that Christianity was largely a cannabis cult, and weed in large doses is a hallucinogen. This allegedly explains most of the perceived miracles in the Bible. For example, turning water into wine is no problem if you have a tincture of cannabis on hand.

Moreover, how much attention should we pay to apologetics in general?

Not much. We can come up with better apologetics than anyone else could, I think, if we put our minds to it. My theodicy tends to be more persuasive than any I find in apologetics. Which is funny, since it's largely inspired by Eliezer's fun theory plus a few insights from decision theory and cosmology.

So putting them in the same category as religion may be misleading.

I didn't mean to do so. Apparently the word 'theism' has lots of weird connotations I didn't intend to convey. (That said, I see value in many religions. Not all of it is the progeny of bad epistemology.)

Incidentally, I'm curious, would you similarly object if LW said explicitly that homeopathy was a closed subject? What about evolution? Star formation? If these are different, why are they different?

No, I would not object. Those have all made predictions and been tested. Theism/atheism is a Bayesian question, not a scientific one. Unfortunately it might be a (subjective?) Bayesian decision theory question, in which case it will never be fit for Less Wrong.

Comment author: Vaniver 20 January 2011 06:34:14PM 5 points [-]

My theodicy tends to be more persuasive than any I find in apologetics.

This is almost definitely the result of inferential distances, not any actual differences in logical power.

Comment author: ata 20 January 2011 06:42:14PM 7 points [-]

I mean something like Christ set it up such that we're more likely to have a positive singularity, though this is very disputable, and I'm mostly following that line of reasoning because meta-contrarianism is fun.

Maybe you should stop doing that, if it's leading you to say things like "I mean something like Christ set it up such that we're more likely to have a positive singularity".

Unfortunately it might be a (subjective?) Bayesian decision theory question, in which case it will never be fit for Less Wrong.

Assuming that the other people you encounter inhabit the same reality as you — and I suspect you'll be able to find something about that to object to, but you know what I mean :P — what is subjective about it? The fact that from a decision-theoretic perspective we may be in many universes at once doesn't suggest that the distribution of your measure depends systematically on your beliefs about it (which is the only thing I can imagine this use of "subjective" meaning, bur correct me if I'm mistaken about that).

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 07:03:26PM -2 points [-]

Maybe you should stop doing that, if it's leading you to say things like "I mean something like Christ set it up such that we're more likely to have a positive singularity".

Why?

Assuming that the other people you encounter inhabit the same reality as you — and I suspect you'll be able to find something about that to object to, but you know what I mean :P — what is subjective about it?

Existence is probably tied up with causal significance, and causal significance is tied up with individuals' local utility functions along with this more global probability thing. But around singularities where lots of utility is up for grabs it might be that the local utility differences override the global similarities of how existence works. I haven't thought about this carefully. Hence the question mark.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 24 January 2011 02:44:29PM 0 points [-]

Request for downvote explanation.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 01:46:25AM 0 points [-]

I upvoted, even though I didn't fully grok your last paragraph, I sensed interesting meaning embedded in it. Care to elaborate?

Comment author: Desrtopa 26 January 2011 01:49:15AM 0 points [-]

I did not downvote, not having read the comment previously but "existence is probably tied up with causal significance" sounds extremely dubious and in need of justification.

Comment author: Kevin 24 January 2011 03:31:10PM * 0 points [-]

They didn't understand what you meant and mapped it as something else that was wrong. Also possible political downvote.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 January 2011 06:35:57PM 3 points [-]

I also think it's unlikely that Christ was the memetic son of God (genetic son of Joseph), though not terribly unlikely. Not less than .1%, probably more.

I'm curious what you would say to someone whose estimate of that probability was, say, .01%, or 25%. Do you expect that you could both compare evidence and come to a common estimate, given enough time?

Comment author: jwhendy 05 March 2012 04:34:47AM * 0 points [-]

...a high probability to it being omniscient and omnipotent, a fair probability to it being omnibenevolent...

I realize this is a necromancer post, but I'm interested in your definitions of the above. How do you square up with some of the questions regarding:

on what mindware something non-physical would store all the information that is
how omniscience settles with free-will (if you believe we have free will)
how omniscience interacts with the idea that this being could intervene (doing something different than it knows it's going to do)

I won't go on to more. I'm sure you're familiar with things like this; I was just surprised to see that you listed these terms outright, and wanted ti inquire about details.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 March 2012 04:48:35AM * 5 points [-]

Knowing your decisions doesn't prevent you from being able to make them, for proper consequentialist reasons and not out of an obligation to preserve consistency. It's the responsibility of knowledge about your decisions to be correct, not of your decisions to anticipate that knowledge. The physical world "already" "knows" everyone's decisions, that doesn't break down anyone's ability to act.

Comment author: jwhendy 05 March 2012 01:48:56PM 0 points [-]

True, but I more meant the idea of theistic intervention, how that works with intercession and so on. The world "knows" everyone's decisions... but no one intercedes to the world expecting it to change something about the future. But theists do.

I suppose one can simply take the view that god knows both what will happen, what people will intercede for, and that he will or will not answer those prayers. Thus, most theists think they are calling on god to change something, when in reality he "already" "knew" they would ask for it and already knew he would do it.

Is it any clearer what I was inquiring about?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 March 2012 03:05:44PM * 1 point [-]

Reality can't be changed, but it can be determined, in part by many preceding decisions. The changes happen only to the less than perfectly informed expectations.

(With these decision-philosophical points cleared out, it's still unclear what you're inquiring about. Logical impossibility is a bad argument against theism, as it's possible to (conceptually) construct a world that includes any artifacts or sequence of events whatsoever, it just so happens that our particular world is not like that.)

Comment author: jwhendy 05 March 2012 05:43:55PM 0 points [-]

Logical impossibility is a bad argument against theism, as it's possible to...

Good point, though my jury is still out on whether it really is possible to parse what it would mean to be omniscient, for example. Or if we can suggest things like the universe "knowing everything," it's typically not what theists are implying when they speak of an omniscient being.

...it's still unclear what you're inquiring about.

I think I'll just let it go. Even the fact that we're both on the same page with respect to determinism pretty much ends the need to have a discussion. Conundrums like how an omniscient being can know what it will do and also be said to be responsive (change what it was going to do) based on being asked via prayer only seems to work if determinism is not on the table, and about every apologetics bit I've read suggests that it's not on the table.

This thread has been the first time I think I can see how intercession and omniscience could jive in a deterministic sense. A being could know that it will answer a prayer, and that a pray-er would pray for such an answer.

From the theists I know/interact with, I think they would find this like going through the motions though. It would remove the "magic" from things for them. I could be wrong.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 March 2012 04:28:34PM 1 point [-]

On another note, I buy the typical compatibilist ideas about free will, but there's also this idea I was kicking around that I don't think is really very interesting but might be for some reason (pulled from a comment I made on Facebook):

"I don't know if it ultimately makes sense, but I sometimes think about the possibility of 'super' free will beyond compatibilist free willl, where you have a Turing oracle that humans can access but whose outputs they can't algorithmicly verify. The only way humans can perform hypercomputation is by having faith in the oracle. Since a Turing oracle is construbtable from Chaitin's constant and is thus the only truly random source of information in the universe, this would (at least on a pattern-match-y surface level) seem to supply some of the indeterminism sought by libertarians, while also letting humans transcend deterministic, i.e. computable, constraints in a way that looks like having more agency than would otherwise be possible. So in a universe without super free will no one would be able to perform hypercomputation 'cuz they wouldn't have access to an oracle. But much of this speculation comes from trying to rationalize why theologians would say 'if there were no God then there wouldn't be any free will'."

Implicit in this model is that universes where you can't do hypercomputation are significantly less significant than universes where you can, and so only with hypercomputation can you truly transcend the mundanity of a deterministic universe. But I don't think such a universe actually captures libertarians' intuitions about what is necessary for free will, so I doubt it's a useful model.

Comment author: jwhendy 05 March 2012 06:48:21PM * 0 points [-]

I'll have to check into compatabilism more. It had never occurred to me that determinism was compatible with omniscience/intercession until my commenting with Vladimir_Nesov. In seeing wiki's definition, it sounded more reasonable than I remembered, so perhaps I never really understood what compatabilism was suggesting.

I'm not positive I get your explanations (due to simple ignorance), but it sounds slightly like what Adam Lee presented here concerning a prediction machine; namely that such a thing could be built, but that actually knowing the prediction would be impossible for it would set off something of an infinite forward calculation of factoring in the prediction, that the human knows the prediction itself, that the prediction machine knows that the human knows the prediction... and then trying to figure out what the new action will actually be.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 March 2012 07:23:20AM * -1 points [-]

Note that I was pretty new to theology a year ago when I made this post so my thoughts are different and more subtle now.

To all three of your questions I think I hold the same views Aquinas would, even if I don't know quite what those views are.

on what mindware something non-physical would store all the information that is

How does Platonic mathstructure "store information" about the details of Platonic mathstructure? I think the question is the result of a confused metaphysic, but we don't yet have an alternative metaphysic to be confident in. Nonetheless I think one will be found via decision theory.

how omniscience settles with free-will (if you believe we have free will)

My answer is the same as Nesov's, and I think Aquinas answers the question beautifully: "Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature."

how omniscience interacts with the idea that this being could intervene (doing something different than it knows it's going to do)

I think my answer is the typical Thomistic answer, i.e. that God is actuality without potentiality, and that God cannot do something different than He knows He will do, as that would be logically impossible, and God cannot do what is logically impossible.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2012 04:26:22PM 0 points [-]

"Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature."

I don't think this is satisfying. Suppose there are two ways in which something may be a cause, either by being an unmoved mover or a moved mover ('moved' here is to be understood in the broadest necessary sense). If God is the first cause of our action, then we are not unmoved movers with reference to our action. If we nevertheless have free will, just because we are the causes of our actions, then we have free will in virtue of being movers but not in virtue of being unmoved movers.

But when we act to, say, throw a stone, we are the cause of our arm's movement and our arm (a moved mover) is the cause of the stone's movement. Likewise the stone, another moved mover, is the cause of Tom's being injured. Now God is the unmoved mover here, and everything else in the chain is a moved mover. If being a mover is all it takes to have free will, then I have it, my arm has it, the stone has it, etc. But surely, this is not what we (assuming neither of us is Spinoza) means by free will.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 March 2012 04:43:33PM 0 points [-]

If being a mover is all it takes to have free will

That wasn't claimed; the necessary preconditions of free will weren't in the intended scope of the passage I quoted. If you want Aquinas' broader account of free will, see this. It's pretty commonsensical philosophy.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2012 05:03:20PM 0 points [-]

That wasn't claimed; the necessary preconditions of free will weren't in the intended scope of the passage I quoted.

Granted, but the implication of your quotation was that it would do something to settle the question of how to reconcile God's omniscience or first-cause-hood with the idea of free will. But it doesn't do anything to address the question (you quoted the right bit of Aquinas, so I mean that he does nothing to answer the question). In order to address the question, Aquinas would have to show why free will is compatible with a more prior cause of our action than our own reasoning. All he manages to argue is that our reason's being a cause of our action is compatible with there being a prior cause of same. And this at a level of generality which would cover (as he says) natural and purportedly voluntary causes. But this isn't in doubt: in fact, this is the premise of his opponent.

The opponent is arguing that while we are the cause of our actions, we are not the free cause, because we are not the first cause. So the opponent is setting up a relation between 'free' and 'first' which Aquinas does nothing to address beyond simply denying (without argument) that the relation thus construed is a necessary one. In short, this just isn't an answer to the objection.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 March 2012 06:32:59PM 1 point [-]

So there are two levels of movement going on here. God moves the will to self-move, but does not move the rock to self-move, He only moves the rock. The objector claims that being moved precludes self-moving, but Aquinas claims that this is a confusion, because just as moving doesn't preclude being fluffy, moving doesn't preclude self-moving. This seems more like a clarification rather than a simple restatement of opposition: Aquinas is saying roughly 'you seem to see a contradiction here, but when we lay the metaphysics out clearly there's no a priori reason to see self-moving-ness as different from fluffiness'. It seems plausible that the objector hadn't realized that being moved to self-moving-ness was metaphysically possible, and thus Aquinas could feel that the objector would be satisfied with his counter. But if the objector had already seen the distinction of levels and still objected, then in that case it seems true that Aquinas' response doesn't answer the objection. But in that case it seems that the objector is denying common sense and basic physical intuition rather than simply being confused about abstract metaphysics. I may be wrong about that though, I feel like I missed something.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2012 07:12:29PM -1 points [-]

The objector claims that being moved precludes self-moving, but Aquinas claims that this is a confusion, because just as moving doesn't preclude being fluffy, moving doesn't preclude self-moving.

The objector is making what seems to me to be a common sense point: if something moves you, then in that respect you don't move yourself. I grant that there is nothing incompatible about being fluffy and being moved by some external power, but there's no obvious (nor argued for, on Aquinas' part) analogy between this kind of case and the case of the self mover. And there's an at least apparent contradiction in the idea of a self-mover which is moved by something else in the very sense that it moves itself.

And we're not concerned with the property of being a self mover, but of whether the idea that a given action is freely caused by me is incompatible with the idea that the very same action is (indirectly) caused by some prior thing. It does us no good to say that we have the property of having free will if every action of ours is caused in the way that a thrown stone causes injury.

Really, Aquinas' objection seems to turn on the observation (correct, I think) that reasoning to an action means undertaking it freely. This is the point that needs some elaboration.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 March 2012 07:35:34PM * 1 point [-]

This kind of argument just seems to be bad philosophy, involving too many unclear words without unpacking them. Specifically, going through your comment: "moves", "external", "the very sense", "property", "freely caused", "prior thing". Since the situation in question doesn't seem to involve anything that's too hard to describe, most of the trouble seems to originate from unclear terminology, and could be avoided by discarding the more confused ideas and describing in more detail the more useful ones.

continue this thread »

Comment author: Will_Newsome 05 March 2012 08:18:28PM 0 points [-]

And there's an at least apparent contradiction in the idea of a self-mover which is moved by something else in the very sense that it moves itself.

When I think of moving something to move itself I think of building an engine and turning it on such that it moves itself. There seems to be no contradiction here. I interpreted "what is free is cause of itself" as meaning that self-movement is necessary but not necessarily sufficient for free will. If an engine can be moved and yet move itself, just as an engine can be moved and yet be fluffy, then that means our will can be moved and yet move itself, contra the objection. Which part of this argument is incorrect or besides the point? (I apologize if I'm missing something obvious, I'm a little scatterbrained at the moment.)

continue this thread »

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 March 2012 03:47:36PM 0 points [-]

God cannot do something different than He knows

I think not believing something different from what He does (i.e. something incorrect) is a better turn.

Comment author: jwhendy 05 March 2012 06:01:31PM 0 points [-]

Fair enough, and I've heard that before as well. The typical theistic issue is how to reconcile god's knowledge and free will, hence why I don't think we need to continue in this discussion anymore. You are responding to my questions based on things being determined, which is not what I think most theists believe.

This is why many attempts have been made to reconcile free will and omniscience by apologists.

But that's not the discussion I think we're having. It's shifted to determinism and omniscience, which I think is compatible, but I'm still not on board with some kind of mind that could house all information that exists, or at least that mind being consistent with what theists generally want it to mean (it caused the universe specifically for us, wants us to be in heaven with it forever, inspired holy books to be written, and so on.)

Comment author: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 01:38:49AM * 0 points [-]

I think this whole line of thought is interesting and is too easily dismissed on LW, which is unfortunate.

If the SA holds, and so far there is no reason to believe it doesn't . . .

Then historical interventions are possible. The Singularity future should also radically up estimate our prior of historical intervention by physical aliens, and these two scenarios are difficult to distinguish regardless.

The question then is how likely are interventions? Do they have utility for the simulator? This is an interesting, open question.

A large portion of the planet believes or at least suspects that historical intervention occurred. That they may have come to these beliefs for the wrong reasons, using inferior tools, does not change in any way the facts of the matter the beliefs concern.

Just even considering these ideas brings up a whole vast history of priors that biases us one way or the other.

Before knowledge of a future-Singularity, there were no mechanisms that could possibly allow for superintelligences, let alone those creating universes like our own. Now we are very clearly aware of such mechanisms, and it is time to percolate this belief update through a vast historical web.

Anyway, if you then take a second pass at history looking for possible interventions, the origin of Christianity does look a little odd, a little too closely connected to the later Singularity which appears to be spawning from it as a historical development.

I speculate on that a bit towards the latter middle of this page here

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 20 January 2011 07:04:42PM * 0 points [-]

Theism/atheism is a Bayesian question, not a scientific one.

Theism is a claim about the existence of an entity (or entities) relating to the universe and also about the nature of the universe; how is that not a scientific question?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 07:06:12PM 0 points [-]

Theism is a claim about the existence of an entity (or entities) in the universe and also about the nature of the universe; how is that not a scientific question?

Because it might be impossible to falsify any predictions made (because we can't observe things outside the light cone, for instance), and science as a social institution is all about falsifying things.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 01:52:25AM 1 point [-]

Falsification is not a core requirement of developing efficient theories through the scientific method.

The goal is the simplest theory that fits all the data. We've had that theory for a while in terms of physics, much of what we are concerned with now is working through all the derived implications and future predictions.

Incidentally, there are several mechanisms by which we should be able to positively prove SA-theism by around the time we reach Singularity, and it could conceivably be falsified by then if large-scale simulation is shown to be somehow impossible.

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 20 January 2011 07:52:14PM 1 point [-]

You're confusing falsifiability with testability. The former is about principle, the latter is about practice.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 07:59:54PM -1 points [-]

Ah, thank you. So in that case it is rather difficult to construct a plausibly coherent unfalsifiable hypothesis, no?

Comment author: CronoDAS 24 January 2011 04:21:03AM 0 points [-]

So in that case it is rather difficult to construct a plausibly coherent unfalsifiable hypothesis, no?

"2 + 2 = 4" comes pretty close.

Comment author: Vaniver 20 January 2011 07:18:24PM 0 points [-]

Because it might be impossible to falsify any predictions made (because we can't observe things outside the light cone, for instance), and science as a social institution is all about falsifying things.

Isn't an unfalsifiable prediction one that, by definition, contains no actionable information? Why should we care?

Comment author: jimrandomh 20 January 2011 07:43:32PM 5 points [-]

Isn't an unfalsifiable prediction one that, by definition, contains no actionable information? Why should we care?

Not quite. Something can be unfalsifiable by having consequences that matter, but preventing information about those consequences from flowing back to us, or to anyone who could make use of it. For example, suppose I claim to have found a one-way portal to another universe. Or maybe it just annihalates anything put into it, instead. The claim that it's a portal is unfalsifiable because no one can send information back to indicate whether or not it worked, but if that portal is the only way to escape from something bad, then I care very much whether it works or not.

Some people claim that death is just such a portal. There're religious versions of this hypothesis, simulationist versions, and quantum immortality versions. Each of these hypotheses would have very important, actionable consequences, but they are all unfalsifiable.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 January 2011 08:48:57PM * 0 points [-]

For example, suppose I claim to have found a one-way portal to another universe. Or maybe it just annihilates anything put into it, instead. The claim that it's a portal is unfalsifiable because no one can send information back to indicate whether or not it worked, but if that portal is the only way to escape from something bad, then I care very much whether it works or not.

Somewhat off topic, but that all instantly made me think of this. I may very well want to know how such a portal would work as well as whether or not it works.

WARNING: Wikipedia has spoilers to the plot

Comment author: Vaniver 20 January 2011 08:22:22PM 0 points [-]

preventing information about those consequences from flowing back to us, or to anyone who could make use of it.

I am parsing this as "contains no actionable information." That suggests we are in agreement or I parsed this incorrectly.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 07:32:48PM 1 point [-]

Unfalsifiable predictions can contain actionable information, I think (though I'm not exactly sure what actionable information is). Consider: If my universe was created by an agenty process that will judge me after I die, then it is decision theoretically important to know that such a Creator exists. It might be that I can run no experiments to test for Its existence, because I am a bounded rationalist, but I can still reason from analogous cases or at worse ignorance priors about whether such a Creator is likely. I can then use that reasoning to determine whether I should be moral or immoral (whatever those mean in this scenario).

Perhaps I am confused as to what 'unfalsifiability' implies. If you have nigh-unlimited computing power, nothing is unfalsifiable unless it is self-contradictory. Sometimes I hear of scientific hypotheses that falsifiable 'in principle' but not in practice. I am not sure what that means. If falsifiability-in-principle counts then simulationism and theism are falsifiable predictions and I was wrong to call them unscientific. I do not think that is what most people mean by 'falsifiable', though.

Comment author: Vaniver 20 January 2011 08:29:04PM 2 points [-]

As I understand unfalsifiable predictions (at least, when it comes to things like an afterlife), they're essentially arguments about what ignorance priors we should have. Actionable information is information that takes you beyond an ignorance prior before you have to make decisions based on that information.

If you have nigh-unlimited computing power, nothing is unfalsifiable unless it is 2self-contradictory.

Huh? Computing power is rarely the resource necessary to falsify statements.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 08:34:37PM 0 points [-]

As I understand unfalsifiable predictions (at least, when it comes to things like an afterlife), they're essentially arguments about what ignorance priors we should have.

It seems to be that an afterlife hypothesis is totally falsifiable... just hack out of the matrix and see who is simulating you, and if they were planning on giving you an afterlife.

Huh? Computing power is rarely the resource necessary to falsify statements.

Computing power was my stand-in for optimization power, since with enough computing power you can simulate any experiment. (Just simulate the entire universe, run it back, simulate it a different way, do a search for what kinds of agents would simulate your universe, et cetera. And if you don't know how to use that computing power to do those things, use it to find a way to tell you how to use it. That's basically what FAI is about. Unfortunately it's still unsolved.)

Comment author: Document 20 January 2011 08:43:19PM * 6 points [-]

with enough computing power you can simulate any experiment. (Just simulate the entire universe, run it back, simulate it a different way

I may be losing the thread here, but (1) for a universe to simulate itself requires actually unlimited computing power, not just nigh-unlimited, and (2) infinities aside, to simulate a physics experiment requires knowing the true laws of physics in order to build the simulation in the first place, unless you search for yourself in the space of all programs or something like that, and then you still potentially need experiment to resolve your indexical uncertainty.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 January 2011 01:35:05AM 0 points [-]

Concur with the above.

Comment author: Vaniver 21 January 2011 01:05:54AM * 4 points [-]

It seems to be that an afterlife hypothesis is totally falsifiable... just hack out of the matrix

What.

Just simulate the entire universe

What.

I'm having a hard time following this conversation. I'm parsing the first part as "just exist outside of existence, then you can falsify whatever predictions you made about unexistence," which is a contradiction in terms. Are your intuitions about the afterlife from movies, or from physics?

I can't even start to express what's wrong with the idea "simulate the entire universe," and adding a "just" to the front of it is just such a red flag. The generic way to falsify statements is probing reality, not remaking it, since remaking it requires probing it in the first place. If I make the falsifiable statement "the next thing I eat will be a pita chip," I don't see how even having infinite computing power will help you falsify that statement if you aren't watching me.

Comment author: jimrandomh 21 January 2011 01:18:43AM * 1 point [-]

No, actually, "just simulate the entire universe" is an acceptable answer, if our universe is able to simulate itself. After all, we're only talking about falsifiability in principle; a prediction that can only be falsified by building a kilometer-aperture telescope is quite falsifiable, and simulating the whole universe is the same sort of issue, just on a larger scale. The "just hack out of the matrix" answer, however, presupposes the existence of a security hole, which is unlikely.

continue this thread »

Comment author: wedrifid 21 January 2011 01:17:49AM 0 points [-]

Are your intuitions about the afterlife from movies, or from physics?

They match posts on the subject by Yudkowsky. The concept does not even seem remotely unintuitive, much less boldably so.

continue this thread »

JoshuaZ comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong

Article Navigation

Comments (533)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (533)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login