= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
TimS comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1430)
If there is no empirical evidence either way about a belief, how would one go about destroying it? Beliefs pay rent in anticipated experience, not anticipated actions.
In short, the religious person has adopted a terminal value of being a nicer person, but is confused an thinks this is an instrumental value in pursuit of the "real" terminal value of implementing the desires of a supernatural being. Epistemic rationality has no more to say about this terminal value than about any other terminal value.
One way you could go about destroying a belief like that is to use Ockham's Razor: sure, it's possible that all kinds of unfalsifiable beliefs are true, but why should you waste time in believing any of them, if they have no effect on anything ?
However, if the believer has some subjective evidence for the belief -- f.ex., if he personally experienced the gods talking to him -- then this attack cannot work. In this case, would you still say that his belief is "indestructible" ?