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Suryc11 comments on The problem with too many rational memes - Less Wrong
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Just as a data point, I'm somebody who became an atheist through reading Dawkins and I have a few friends who went through the same process. The attitude that you mention actually helped in forcing me to examine my beliefs. It could be true that people who have a religious faith deeply entrenched in their worldview might not change their minds, but young people, people who have a tenuous hold to religion, etc., certainly do stand a chance of de-converting because of a book like The God Delusion.
In any case, 'New Atheists' like Dawkins and Harris are raising the sanity waterline, albeit in a relatively confrontational manner.
Sam Harris did considerable damage with The Moral Landscape. His new book about free will probably be just as bad.
Dawkins...meh. There's nothing original in The God Delusion, and his meta-ethics is sloppy. But he's basically right, which is more than Sam Harris can say.
Can you elaborate? I find the main argument from neuroscience in The Moral Landscape to be pretty effective and in line with what I know about connectomics and cognition. It seems like a very reasonable idea and something important for us to explore about morality. But I could be missing many critical facts that "do damage" as you put it.
Other reviewers have criticized Harris more keenly then I can, but here are the basic problems.
*He ignored centuries of philosophical literature on the is-ought problem, and instead wrote 200 pages of pet intuitions. Because he thought philosophy was boring.
*His "theory" that morality is equivalent to whatever increases global well-being is just repackaged utilitarianism. He doesn't answer the standard objections to utilitarianism. For example, if sociologists showed you strong evidence that societies which practice female genital mutilation had a greater well-being than societies that didn't, should you support FGM? Utilitarians say "yes" but that answer is hardly self-evident.
*His discussion of free-will is off-topic and devoid of philosophical research. Yes, we know that libertarianism is false, but what about compatabilism?
I was very disappointed in Sam's book. I thought it was an embarrassment. The arguments just didn't hold up at all. I've wondered if he didn't really believe it, and it was just a memetic ploy meant to entice the religious away by telling them they can still have their Objective Morality if they accept otherwise rationalistic epistemology.
With the passing of HItchens, and Sam busy writing bad philosophy, the Four Horsemen have unfortunately run out of gas. Tragic for the movement that Hitchens passed away.
I think so, too. I don't disagree with any of the facts Dawkins presents, not enough for it to annoy me anyway. I disagree with the execution, because I think he could have presented the same facts (and even the same opinions) more effectively without all the venom against religious people and sense of superiority.
I don't actually understand this bit. I've heard the argument being made many times, yet no one seems to be able to pinpoint what they mean by it.
Here's a recent example I can think of. Richard Dawkins said a little while ago that early bible writers were ignorant of certain facts we now take for granted. People reacted to the "ignorant" bit, to which Dawkins asked "Do you know what the word ignorant means?" This is a fair question; do you know what the word mean, or are you reacting because your knowledge is lacking? I often find that people are fuming more over clear writing than over fuzzy language, even if there is no real venom or sarcasm or superiority within. (I could go into a tirade about people getting offended at mere words, and whether people generally fully, truly understand what it means to be offended, again with pointers to the identity comments at the top of this post!)
I can discuss with people - say the change of musical styles from the renaissance to the baroque in early Italian music (and the early influence on German music through Schuts) - and rightfully and without any venom say that most people are ignorant of the issue. It's not an insult, it's a word describing a lack of knowledge on something (knowledge I'm not proud of, btw, as my geekery is a negative liability in society ... more on this one later). I am myself terribly ignorant on a number of issues and subjects, and have no problem admitting so; I use the word for what it means. Yet people think it means a negative when it really is neutral. (Same problem with liability, btw. Something can be a liability to you, but there's positive and negative liability, and we often just say "liability" and draw a negative over anything we say by being less precise)
I think Dawkins attempt to be precise is often misinterpreted as having some negative connotation they read into it. (Hitchens is another chapter all-together, of course) I think, in general, that people should strive to be less wrong in their own reaction to the world. Things would quickly be a far gentler place.
"Ignorant" is often used as a perjorative, the connotation being "wilfully ignorant, and a bad person because of it". I'm hardly surprised that people get upset for being called that. Also, words in general don't really mean anything, though you and Dawkins might discuss things in a context where "ignorant" has no connotation, while it has such connotation among the general public. In that case it would be accurate to say that you are literally speaking a different language.
I am not a native speaker, so I looked up, what google says about ignorant:
adjective: ignorant 1. lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated. 2. (informal) discourteous or rude.
The connotation is negative. The neutral word would probably be "uninformed".
This is about the one-place predicate "ignorant", not about the two-place predicate "ignorant of". My impression as a non-native speaker is that a negative connotation attaches to the first, but not the second. There might also be a two-place version of "ignorant" with a negative connotation: "ignorant about".
I don't have any particular negative reaction to the word 'ignorant', AFAICT, so I doubt that was the source of me finding 'The God Delusion' a turn-off. (I read it a long time ago, so I'm not sure I can pinpoint exactly why I disliked it, especially since my opinions and attitudes have changed appreciably in the meantime.) It might even not have been vocabulary so much as just the general attitude that came across...basically, that you'd be stupid to believe in God, and furthermore, you'd be stupid to want to believe in God. I don't know if he used the word 'stupid' but that's what I remember as coming across, and there's a big difference between calling someone ignorant and implying that they're stupid.
I doubt very much he used the word 'stupid' to label religious people. He has said, though; "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is either ignorant, stupid, or insane.”
And of course, people will take from that what they want. "I'm religious, I'm not insane nor am I ignorant, so he must be calling me stupid!"
Another one is his opening to the God Delusion where he lists a long list of characteristics of the christian god. People have of course taken issues with that list, however you can find bible references for every single one of those characteristics, words you'll even hear in church, so again it's mostly being taken negatively by people who want it to be negative.
But if you have something concrete, do tell. It's a puzzle I've long wanted to solve.
I don't know about safe to say... it is certainly true.
EDIT: This neglects the "Could be a liar" loophole.
It could be a knowledgeable, intelligent and sane liar.
Oh, true. I didn't even notice the lack of the liar category!
Well, hypothetically, they could just be electable.
Didn't Eliezer write something about how assuming that your ideological rivals must be defective or aberrant is a bad assumption to make? He phrased it in terms of "evil", but I think the same principle applies to "stupid/insane".
As for ignorant, well, isn't almost tautologically true that we all believe people who hold beliefs that are incompatible with our own to be ignorant or mistaken?
Yes, but sometimes that isn't an assumption but a conclusion. I can think of a large number of ideological and non-ideological issues where I wouldn't make that conclusion. Evolution is one where the conclusion seems easier (with the caveat that in the relevant quote "insane" is considered broad enough to mean "highly irrational and subject to cognitive biases in way almost all humans are about at least a few things").
There are degrees of how ignorant or mistaken someone can be. For example, Sniffnoy and I are coauthoring a pair of papers on integer complexity. There are certain conjectures we can't prove that we have different opinions about whether they are true or false. I'm pretty sure that he and I are probably at this point in a set of 5 or 6 people on the planet who understand the relevant problems the most. So our disagreement doesn't seem to be due to ignorance.
Probabilistic opinions?
Can you take a set of "unrelated" (the inapplicability of this term to math might make my suggestion worth very little) theorems known to be true or false and give your opinions about the chances they are true?
Also relevant are the costs of type I and type II errors in your paper...and your lives, as these may may have significantly conditioned your reactions to uncertainty.
I don't know about "certainly." For example, I consider you none of those things, but I suspect I could induce you to claim not to believe in evolution for a sufficient sum. (This is not an offer.)
It's an interesting characteristic of human language that the word 'ignorant', which I find pretty innocuous if used on its own, comes across as a lot harsher when put in the company of 'stupid' and 'insane.' Some kind of context-building I guess, the brain automatically assuming that the author's point is simple and uni-faceted.
Obviously, that doesn't mean that's the right way to read that sentence, or that it's constructive to get offended by it. I'm not offended by it now. It's perfectly possible for one of my friends to be one of those three things and still be a kind, generous, awesome person to hang out with. Maybe I made that distinction less when I was in high school, which is when I read "The God Delusion."
Come to think of it, I read 'The God Delusion' before I'd even heard of Less Wrong, or cognitive biases, or ways in which words could be misinterpreted... I might find it illuminating to read it again.
I think what happens when I read the word in this context is that my brain automatically inserts the word "willfully" before "ignorant." I mean, it's trivial to say that, for instance, members of uncontacted tribes are ignorant of evolution, but that's usually not what people are talking about when they use the word like this.
Yes, interesting point of view. I do remember in my earlier days of reading stuff that at the time was emotional in some way, but now, having re-read it many years later and with (hopefully) more science-based knowledge on-board, seems benign. What was all that fuzz about, really? And really, I think the fuzz was the sound of preconceived and poorly thought-out ideas in my head shredded.
I think the outrage and negativity attached to criticism can be measure in how much you treasure those beliefs. Now that I don't hold many beliefs at all (I think I can boil them down to some scientific workflow platform), there's less for me to get upset about. We humans put a strange personal identity on mere ideas, and a critique of ideas are far too often thought of as a critique of the person who holds those beliefs, probably linked to our sense of self.
I think Dawkins and Hitchins (and people like them) have a short way of dealing with stuff that has had a tradition of being dealt with in longer terms. This abrupt and concise way of dealing with issues can have a shocking effect. Sometimes the shock is awakening, other times it can be painful, hurtful and offensive. It comes down to how well we deal with shocks of revelation about our own mind, and many, many people don't like to face the ugly truth about themselves (which is also why we love herd thinking and the removal of the personal responsibility of our thinking and actions, even when we claim not to do 'like everybody else.'. Oh yes, you do. :) )
I wonder how much scoping the 'ignorant' to 'ignorant of evolution' would help.
Have you read any of his atheism books more recently? Is it possible that you disliked them (at least in part) for attacking a group you associated yourself with?
That's really quite an accusation. Citations, please.
I have only my subjective feeling, when I finished reading 'The God Delusion' of "that could have been a really interesting book, but his attitude ruined it." Whether that response was based more on the book itself or on my own attitude, I can't say. (But I loved Dawkins' other books, i.e. 'The Selfish Gene' and others related to biology...they are still among my favourites.)
You may wish to try rereading it and seeing if it's actually the book you remember.
What were you before you became an atheist? If you were someone with a 'tenuous hold to religion', i.e. family background, how likely is it that you would eventually (maybe sooner, maybe later) have become an atheist without having read Dawkins? Or maybe just with having read his biology-based books? (I made the transition from not-really-caring to atheism after I realized that there were lots of neat domains where we have a lot of established knowledge, and believing in God actually made the world look messier.)
If you were someone with strong personal reasons for your religion, I don't think Dawkins' writings would have had the same effect.
I don't claim to speak for anyone else, but I grew up in the "evangelical Christian" community and was a fairly strong believer (constantly worrying about sin, street preaching, missions work, and a host of other things). Dawkins alone wouldn't have been able to convince me of the incorrectness of my beliefs, but his attitude certainly helped.
His writing introduced me to the idea that it was possible not to take one's "personal relationship with Christ" seriously! Before that I was quite thoroughly convinced that everyone who wasn't a Christian was constantly experiencing a terrible internal conflict over religion.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. It seems likely that you mean that Richard Dawkins was the first model you observed of an atheist who was confident in and content with their lack of belief in God, whereas you hadn't known any examples of that before and had assumed no one could really be that different from you inside, to the point of not having a relationship with Christ and being okay with it.
My first assumption on reading, which seems less likely on second thought, is that Dawkins exposed you to reasons why what might seem like a "relationship with Christ", a subjective experience that couldn't be disproved, could actually be due to factors other than Christ actually existing. This is what LW changed the most about my thinking...I was somewhat swayed before by my friends' earnest insistence that "yes, they talk to God! Yes, their prayers have been answered! Yes, they feel God's presence and it gives them strength!" My naive self tended to think "well, if they say they experienced something, and they have no good reason to lie, how can I just ignore that as evidence?" My current self says "well, it's perfectly possible that my friends really and truly do think that such-and-such subjective experience came from God. That doesn't mean God existing is the simplest explanation. Cognitive biases and poor introspection and "mystical" experiences, due to certain circuits being triggered in the human brain by singing/meditation/prayer, are actually a simpler explanation."
In the evangelical community, especially the more fundamentalist regions of it, one is taught from a very young age that the "spiritual world" is more real than the real world and that everyone knows this fact, at least subconsciously. People who treat Christianity as a reasonable thing that they just happen not to believe in are, of course, merely in denial.
Dawkins was the first writer I came across who expected other people to actually be reasonable if they wanted to be taken seriously, rather than spiraling off into a cloud of nonsense about only God being certain and being tested by Satan. He presented plenty of evidence for his position too, but attitude and evidence are separate things and both are important when you're dealing with someone who's convinced that faith is more meaningful than evidence.
That's probably one of those things that I always forget, not having been raised in a fundamentalist evangelical community. But you're right, attitude (and what is counted as "evidence") is very important, and maybe more important than whether mere facts are for/against a given hypothesis.