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Jack comments on The Sin of Underconfidence - Less Wrong
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Comments (176)
If we shouldn't expect evidence in either case then the probability of God's existence is just the prior, right? How could P(God) be above .5? I can't imagine thinking that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being who answers prayers and rewards and punishes the sins of mortals with everlasting joy or eternal punishment was a priori more likely than not.
I wonder what variety of first cause argument he's making. Even if everything must have a cause that does not mean there is a first cause and the existence of a first cause doesn't mean the first cause is God. Aquinas made two arguments of this variety that actually try to prove the existence of God, but they require outdated categories and concepts to even make.
If God's existence is the prior, I don't think you include that he is also an "omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being, [...]". Those are things you deduce about him after. The way I've thought about it is let X =whatever the explanation is to the creation conundrum. We will call X "God". X exists trivially (by definition), can we then infer properties about X that would justify calling it God? In other words, does the solution to creation have to be something omniscient and benevolent? (This is the part which is highly unlikely.)
If you call X "God" by definition, you may find yourself praying to the Big Bang, or to mathematics.
There is a mysterious force inherent in all matter and energy which binds the universe together. We call it "gravity", and it obeys differential equations.
The Big Bsng and mathematics are good candidates. I've considered them. It only sounds ridiculous because you mentioned praying to them. The value of 'praying to X' is again something you need to deduce, rather than assume.
Nah, gravity isn't universal or fundamental enough. That is, I would be very surprised if it was a 'first cause' in any way.
You certainly should not call X "God", nor should you suppose that X has the property "existence" which is exactly that which is to be rendered non-confusing.
I just read your posts about the futility of arguing "by definition". I suspect that somewhere there is where my error lies.
More precisely, could you clarify whether I "shouldn't" do those things because they are "not allowed" or because they wouldn't be effective?
You shouldn't because even though when you speak the word "God" you simply intend "placeholder for whatever eventually solves the creation conundrum," it will be heard as meaning "that being to which I was taught to pray when I was a child" -- whether you like it or not, your listener will attach the fully-formed God-concept to your use of the word.
Got it. if X is the placeholder for whatever eventually solves the creation conundrum, there's no reason to call it anything else, much less something misleading.
precisely =)
In fact even naming it X is a bit of a stretch, because "the creation conundrum" is being assumed here, but my own limited understanding of physics suggests this "conundrum" itself is a mistake. What a "cause" really is, is something like: the information about past states of the universe embedded in the form of the present state. But the initial state doesn't have embedded information, so it doesn't really have either a past or a cause. As far as prime movers go, the big bang seems to be it, sufficient in itself.
Yes, I agree with you: there is no real conundrum. In the past, we've solved many "conundrums" (for example, Zeno's paradox and the Liar's Paradox). By induction, I believe that any conundrum is just a problem (often a math problem) that hasn't been solved yet.
While I would say that the solution to Zeno's paradox "exists", I think this is just a semantic mistake I made; a solution exists in a different way than a theist argues that God exists. (This is just something I need to work on.)
Regarding the physics: I understand how a state may not causally depend upon the one proceeding (for example, if the state is randomly generated). I don't understand (can't wrap my head around) if that means it wasn't caused... it still was generated, by some mechanism.
You shouldn't do something not directly because it's not allowed, but for the reason it's not allowed.
This comment is condescending and specious.
That comment was meta. It isn't condescending, as it's not about you.
It's about me because you imply that I don't already know what you're saying, and I could benefit from this wise advice.
If someone speaks the obvious, then it's just noise, no new information, and so the speaker should be castigated for destructive stupidity. Someone or I.
You could do it that way but then the question is just the priors for the probability that X has those traits. You can't say. "It would be a lot easier for God to do all of the things we think he needs to do if he was omnipotent therefore it is more likely that God is omnipotent. Adding properties to God that increase His complexity have to decrease the probability that He exists otherwise we're always going to be ascribing super powers to the entities we posit since they never make it harder for those entities to accomplish the tasks we need them to. Now I suppose if you could deduce that God has those traits then you would be providing evidence that X had those traits with a probability of 1. Thats pretty remarkable but anyone is free to have at it.
So either you're putting a huge burden on your evidence to prove that there is some X such that X has these traits OR you have to start out with an extremely low prior.
For some reason, the idea that P(God) = 0.5 exactly amuses me. Thank you for the smile :)
It reminded me of one of my formative childhood books:
--Martin Gardner, Aha! Gotcha
He goes on to demonstrate the obvious contradiction, and points out some related fallacies. The whole book is great, as is its companion Aha! Insight. (They're bundled into a book called Aha! now.)
Contradiction: answered prayers is lots of evidence.
I looking at the concept of God and trying to guess what the priors would be for a being that meets that description. That description usually includes answering prayers. If there is evidence of answered prayers then we might want to up the probability of God's existence- but a being capable of doing that is going to be some complex that extraordinary evidence is necessary to come to the conclusion one exists.
Only if you have some sort of information about the unanswered prayers.
Given the problems for the principle of indifference, a lot of bayesians favor something more "subjective" with respect to the rules governing appropriate priors (especially in light of Aumann-style agreement theorems).
I'm not endorsing this manuever, merely mentioning it.