Vague thought: it is very bad when important scientists die (in the general sense, including mathematicians and cmputer scientists). I recently learned that von Neumann died at age 54 of cancer. I think it's no exaggeration to say that von Neumann was one of the most influential scientists in history and that keeping him alive even 10 years more would have been of incredible benefit to humankind.
Seems like a problem worth solving. Proposed solution: create an organization which periodically offers grants to the most influential / important scientists (or maybe just the most influential / important people period), only instead of money they get a team of personal assistants who take care of their health and various unimportant things in their lives (e.g. paperwork). This team would work to maximize the health and happiness of the scientist so that they can live longer and do more science. Thoughts?
Comment author:CellBioGuy
02 May 2013 01:41:22AM
16 points
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Only tangentially related vague thought:
As I understand it, Stephen Hawking's words-per-minute in writing is excruciatingly slow, and as a result I recall seeing in a documentary that he has a graduate student whose job is to watch as he is writing and to complete his sentences/paragraphs, at which point Hawking says 'yes' or 'no'. I would think that over time this person would develop an extremely well-developed mental Hawking...
Emulators are slow due to being on different hardware than the device they are emulating. If you're also on inferior hardware to the device you're trying to emulate, it will be very slow.
That said, even a very slow Hawking emulator is a pretty cool thing to have.
It is unclear whether the intellectual output of eminent scientists is best increased by prolonging their lives through existing medical technology, rather than by increasing their productivity through time-management, sleep-optimization or other techniques. Maybe the goal of your proposed organization would be better achieved by paying someone like David Allen to teach the von Neumanns of today how to be more productive. (MIRI did something similar to this when it hired Kaj Sotala to watch Eliezer Yudkowsky as he worked on his book.)
Anyone who has managed to become an eminent scientist is probably doing a pretty good job at things like time management. Since maintaining healthy habits is not a prerequisite for attaining eminence, that is more likely to be an area where they're lacking.
Comment author:asr
02 May 2013 02:02:43PM
3 points
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Von Neumann himself, I believe, had poor work habits; maybe the goal of your proposed organization is better achieved by paying someone like David Allen to teach the von Neumanns of today how to be more productive.
There is something comically presumptuous about this statement. Von Neumann had very unusual work habits (he liked noise and distraction). He was also phenomenally productive (how many branches of mathematics have YOU helped invent?)
Given that he was (A) smarter and (B) more successful than any life coach you are likely to find, I would be surprised if this sort of coaching added value.
I deleted the remark about von Neumann while you were composing your reply, after a quick Google search revealed no support for it. (I seem to remember a quote by von Neumann himself where he lamented that his lack of focus had prevented him from being much more productive as a scientist, but this is a very vague memory and I'm now unwilling to rest any claims on it.) For what is worth, here are some relevant remarks on von Neumann's work habits by Herman Goldstine, which contradict my earlier (and now retracted) statement:
His work habits were very methodical. He would get up in the morning, and go to the Nassau Club to have breakfast. And then from the Nassau Club he'd come to the Institute around nine, nine-thirty, work until lunch, have lunch, and then work until, say, five, and then go on home. Many evenings he would entertain. Usually a few of us, maybe my wife and me. We would just sit around, and he might not even sit in the same room. He had a little study that opened off of the living room, and he would just sit in there sometimes. He would listen, and if something interested him, he would interrupt. Otherwise he would work away. [...] So those were his work habits. He was a very methodical worker. Everytime he thought about something, he wrote it down in great detail. There was nothing rough or unpolished. Everything got written down either in the form of a letter or a memorandum.
A more straightforward approach: Give a prize to every leading scientist who reach 70, 80, and 90 years of age. It is counter-intuitive, but it seems that monetary incentives do actually influence people's mortality. Source: I remember reading this somewhere, so it must be true.
Comment author:shminux
02 May 2013 01:28:31AM
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6 points
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"Most influential/important scientists" would likely tell this organization exactly where to go and how fast. They are usually not short on cash and can handle their own affairs. Or their partners/secretaries do that already. Some eccentric ones might not, but they are even more likely to reject this "help".
I am also wondering whom you would name as top 5 or so "important scientists"?
Comment author:[deleted]
02 May 2013 01:47:47AM
4 points
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My thoughts exactly. Most of the high-level mathematicians I know are loathe to off-load their travel arrangements onto the department travel agent, even though the process is more efficient.
They are usually not short on cash and can handle their own affairs.
Maybe, but this isn't their comparative advantage. They could spend some time becoming an expert on health, but it makes much more sense to have a health expert take care of the health stuff. I expect there are enough trivial inconveniences along the way that even academics with the money don't do this, and that seems very bad.
Or their partners/secretaries do that already.
I see no particular reason that the partner of an influential scientist ought to be particularly knowledgeable about health. And do academics even have personal secretaries anymore? I haven't observed any such people in my limited experience in academia so far.
I am also wondering whom you would name as top 5 or so "important scientists"?
Comment author:maia
03 May 2013 01:11:59AM
2 points
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Isn't there a known phenomenon where, for example, where Nobel prize winners get significantly less productive after they win their prizes? Is it really true that the marginal benefit of keeping old scientists alive longer would be that great?
Maybe. Feynman talks about scientists getting less productive once they move to the IAS. But 10 years of a less productive von Neumann still beats 10 years of a dead one, I think. (Edit: It's less clear whether 10 years of a productive von Neumann and then 10 years of a dead von Neumann beats 20 years of a less productive von Neumann, I guess.)
Anyone know why Jaan Tallin is an investor in this? I don't see anything on their site about a friendliness emphasis. Is he following Shane Legg's advice here? Is that also why Good Ventures are involved, or do they just want to make a profit?
Incidentally, if anybody is curious why I stopped doing the Politics threads, it's because it seemed like people were -looking- for political things to discuss, rather than discussing the political things they had -wanted- to discuss but couldn't. People were still creating discussion articles which were politically oriented, so it didn't even help isolate existing political discussion.
Some people seem to have a strong moral intuition about purity that informs many of their moral decisions, and others don't. One guess for where a purity meme might come from is that it strongly enforces behaviors that prevented disease at the time the meme was created (e.g. avoiding certain foods or STDs). This hypothesis predicts that purity memes would be strongest coming from areas and historical periods where it would be particularly easy to contract diseases, especially diseases that are contagious, and especially diseases that don't cause quick death but cause infertility. Is this in fact the case?
Strong moral intuitions about purity do not carry significant useful knowledge about disease — and indeed can lead people to be resistant to accurate information about disease prevention. Rather, these intuitions stem from practices for maintaining group identity by refusing to share food, accommodations, or sexuality with members of rival groups. These are (memetically) selected-for because groups that do not maintain group identity cease to be groups. (This is not "group selection" — it's not that the members of these groups die out; it's that they blend in with others.)
Thus, we should expect purity memes to be strongest among people whose groups feel economically or politically threatened by foreigners, by different ethnic groups (including the threat of assimilation) or the like — and possibly weakest among world travelers, members of mixed-race or interfaith families, international traders, career diplomats, foreign correspondents, and others who benefit from engaging with foreigners or different ethnic groups.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
08 May 2013 05:02:03AM
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6 points
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The standard problem with using the Drake Equation and similar formulas to estimate how much of the Great Filter is in front of us and how much is behind us is the lack of good estimates for most terms. However, there are other issues also. The original version of the Drake Equation presupposes independence of variables but this may not be the case. For example, it may be that the same things that lead to a star having a lot of planets also contribute to making life more likely (say for example that the more metal rich a star is the more elements that life has a chance to form from or make complicated structures with). What are the most likely dependence issues to come up in this sort of context, or do we know so little now that this question is still essentially hopeless?
My partner (who actually had a résumé posted online, whereas I did not) got calls from two recruiters for the same company; and redirected one of them to me. We wanted to relocate to a warmer climate; we both interviewed and got offers.
In other words, I had sufficient skill ... but also I got lucky big-time.
(A harder question is whether I actually like my job. I've been doing it for 7+ years, but I'm also actively looking for alternatives.)
Comment author:jooyous
02 May 2013 08:50:50PM
5 points
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I have a question about linking sequence posts in comment bodies! I used to think it was a nice, helpful thing to do, such as citing your sources and including a convenient reference. But then it struck me that it might come off as patronizing to people that are really familiar with the sequences. Oops. Any pointers for striking a good balance?
Linking old posts helps all of the new readers who are following the conversation; this is probably more important than any effects on the person you're directly responding to.
Comment author:DaFranker
02 May 2013 09:04:20PM
8 points
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Always err on the side of littering your comment with extra links. IME, that's more practical and helpful, and I've never personally felt irked when reading posts or comments with lots of links to basic Sequence material.
In most cases, I've found that it actually helps remember the key points by seeing the page again, and helps most arguments flow more smoothly.
Comment author:ITakeBets
02 May 2013 04:42:58PM
5 points
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Request for advice:
I need to decide in the next two weeks which medical school to attend. My two top candidates are both state universities. The relevant factors to consider are cost (medical school is appallingly expensive), program quality (reputation and resources), and location/convenience.
Florida International UniversityCost: I have been offered a full tuition scholarship (worth about $125,000 over four years), but this does not cover $8,500/yr in "fees" and the cost of living in Miami is high. The FIU College of Medicine's estimated yearly cost of attendance (including all living expenses) is nearly $69,000; if I multiply that by four years and subtract the value of my scholarship I get about $145,000. However, my husband will continue working during all four years, defraying some of my expenses, so I hope to keep my actual indebtedness at graduation under $100,000 if I attend FIU.
Program Quality: This is difficult to gauge, because the program is very new, having only graduated its first class of MDs this year. Their reputation is necessarily unestablished. All of their graduates successfully matched into residencies this year (a few in prestigious hospitals and competitive specialties), but this is reassuring rather than impressive. They only graduated 33 students although they matriculated 40 in their first year; not sure if that represents a worrying rate of attrition or what became of the other students (though I plan to ask). Another consideration is that although FIU is affiliated with many well-known hospitals in South Florida, they do not have a dedicated teaching hospital.
Location/convenience: Already mentioned the higher cost of living. Miami is also farther from where we are currently living and working (over 3 hours away vs under 2 for Gainesville). My husband could probably find work in Miami, but it might be less desirable or pay less than his current job, and we would probably need to live apart during the week until he does. Also, the widely-scattered hospitals through which FIU students rotate, as well as South Florida traffic, make me worry about my quality of life during my third year.
The University of FloridaCost: I have been offered $7500 per year in aid. The rest of the $50k/year cost of attendance (including living expenses) would be loans. Again, my husband would continue to work and pay some of my expenses. In all I estimate a $30k-$60k difference in indebtedness at graduation between the two programs (in FIU's favor).
Program Quality: UF is Florida's oldest and best-respected medical school, which is to say good but not elite. UF also has a reputable teaching hospital on campus, and a larger research budget, which would help build my resume if I decide to try for a very competitive specialty. They graduate 95% of their students within 4 years (98% in 5 years), and their residency match list looks a bit nicer than FIU's on average. For what it's worth (probably not much), I have a better feeling about this program's "culture" based on the events I've attended.
Location/Convenience: Gainesville is closer. It might be feasible for my husband to stay at his current workplace for all four years if we find a good place to live around midway between.
Other advice I have received: Jess Whittlestone at 80,000 Hours suggested I'd do best, impact-wise, to consider which school would maximize my earning-to-give potential. This would mostly depend on the specialty I go into-- based on how I feel now, I'm most likely to try for an Internal Medicine subspecialty, which would mean doing a fellowship after residency. A good residency match would position me well for a fellowship in a competitive field. Physicians whom I have asked for advice tell me that people commonly match into even very competitive residencies from lower-ranked US MD schools, but it takes more work (better test scores, stronger evaluations). They also tend to say "OMG take the money" when I say the words "full tuition scholarship".
You can probably tell that I lean towards UF, but I don't want to make a bad call. What am I missing? What should I be asking the schools? Where should I go?
Comment author:CAE_Jones
02 May 2013 09:40:34AM
5 points
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I started typing something, then realized it was based on someone's claim in a forum discussion and I hadn't bothered trying to verify it.
It turns out that the information was exaggerated in such a way that, had I not bothered verifying, I would have updated much more strongly in favor of the efficacy of an organization of which he was a member. I got suspicious when Google turned up nothing interesting, so I checked the web site of said organization, which included a link to a press release regarding the subject.
Based on this and other things I've read, I conclude that this organization tends to have poor epistemic rationality skills overall (I haven't tested large groups of members; I'm comparing the few individual samples I've seen to organization policies and strategies), but the reports that they publish aren't as biased as I would expect if this were hopelessly pervasive.
(On the off chance that said person reads this and suspects that he is the subject, remember that I almost did the exact same thing, and I'm not affiliated with said organization in any way. Is there LW discussion on the tendency to trust most everything people say?)
Comment author:Document
02 May 2013 11:49:43AM
2 points
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It turns out that the information was exaggerated in such a way that, had I not bothered verifying, I would have updated much more strongly in favor of the efficacy of an organization of which he was a member.
I initially misread this as saying you were impressed with his persuasive skill and strongly tempted to update on the organization's effectiveness based on that.
Comment author:shminux
09 May 2013 10:25:12PM
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4 points
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I have looked through this thread, bravely started by ibidem, and I have noticed what seems like a failure mode by all sides. A religious person does not just believe in God, s/he alieves in God, too, and logical arguments are rarely the best way to get through to the relevant alieving circuit in the brain. Oh, they work eventually, given enough persistence and cooperation, but only indirectly. If the alief remains unacknowledged, we tend to come up with logical counterarguments which are not "true rejections". As long as the alief is there, the logic will bounce off with marginal damage, if any. I wonder if there is a more effective level of discourse.
Just to refresh, here is the definition:
alief is associative, action-generating, affect-laden, arational, automatic, agnostic with respect to its content, shared with animals, and developmentally and conceptually antecedent to other cognitive attitudes
So, for example, subjects are reluctant to drink from a glass of juice in which a completely sterilized dead cockroach has been stirred, hesitant to wear a laundered shirt that has been previously worn by someone they dislike, and loath to eat soup from a brand-new bedpan. They are disinclined to put their mouths on a piece of newly-purchased vomit-shaped rubber (though perfectly willing to do so with sink stopper of similar size and material), averse to eating fudge that has been formed into the shape of dog feces, and far less accurate in throwing darts at pictures of faces of people they like than at neutral faces
I am guessing that part of any religious belief is the alief in a just universe.
Comment author:Intrism
10 May 2013 07:58:28PM
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2 points
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A religious person does not just believe in God, s/he alieves in God, too, and logical arguments are rarely the best way to get through to the relevant alieving circuit in the brain.
If I were talking to a religious person elsewhere, that would make sense. But, this is LessWrong, and the respectful way to have this discussion here is to depend upon logic and rationalism. Anything else, and in my opinion we'd be talking down to him.
Comment author:shminux
10 May 2013 08:25:49PM
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4 points
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Sorry, we don't live in a should-universe, either. If your goal is to influence a religious person's perception of his/her faith, you do what it takes to get through, not complain that the other party is not playing by some real or imaginary rules. But hey, feel free to keep talking about logic, rationalism and respect. That's what two-boxers do.
Anyone here have experience hiring people on sites like Mechanical Turk, oDesk, TaskRabbit, or Fiverr? What kind of stuff did you hire them to do, and how good were they at doing it? It seems like these services could be potentially quite valuable so I'd like to get an idea of what it's possible to do with them.
Comment author:lukeprog
05 May 2013 09:38:30AM
6 points
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MIRI has hired an artist, an LW programmer, and probably some others on oDesk. One person I heard about pays $1/hr people on oDesk to just sit with him on Skype all day and keep him on task.
I have used Fiverr to hire a professional voice actor to read short messages. For small scripting jobs or Photoshop work, I have always found reddit's r/forhire subreddit useful.
Comment author:FiftyTwo
02 May 2013 02:00:39PM
4 points
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As a stereotypical twenty-something recent graduate I am lacking in any particular career direction. I've been considering taking various psychometric or career aptitude tests, but have found it difficult to find unbiased reports on their usefulness. Does anyone have any experience or evidence on the subject?
imagine your ideal workplace, try to quantify what makes it ideal, and then work backwards. Or just try to make the most money you can since you're young and probably have a high stress tolerance given the lack of stressors elsewhere (children, marriage, housing, health, etc.)
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
03 May 2013 12:00:49PM
9 points
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I have some thoughts about extending "humans aren't automatically strategic" to whole societies. I am just not sure how much of that is specific for the place where I live, and how much is universal.
Seems to me that many people believe that improvements happen magically, so you don't have to use any strategy to get them, and actually using a strategy would somehow make things worse -- it wouldn't be "natural", or something. Any data can be explained away using hindsight bias: If we have an example of a strategy bringing a positive change, we can always say that the change happened "naturally" and the strategy was superfluous. On the other hand, about a positive change not happening we can always say the problem wasn't lack of strategy, but that the change simply wasn't meant to happen, so any strategy would have failed, too.
Another argument against strategic changes is that sometimes people use a strategy and screw up. Or use a strategy to achieve an evil goal. (Did you notice it is usually the evil masterminds who use strategy to reach their goals? Or neurotic losers.) Just like trying to change yourself is "unnatural", trying to change the society is "undemocratic". We should only follow the uncoordinated unstrategic moves of millions of unstrategic individuals, and expect all the good things to happen magically (unless they simply weren't meant to happen, of course).
If you start following a strategy, all your imperfections may be reinterpreted as costs of following this strategy. Let's say that you don't have many friends. That's okay, there are many people like this. But let's say that you don't have enough friends while studying Japanese. Well, that means you are a heartless person who sacrificed human relations because of their stupid obsession with anime, or something like this. A group of people can be criticized for taking things too seriously and spending too much time following their goals (any value greater than zero can be too much). Even worse sin would be not accepting someone as their member, just because the actions of the person are contrary to the group's goals.
I am not sure where this all goes, I just have a feeling that if you want to live in a good society, you should not expect magic to happen, but you should find similarly thinking people, create a group, and try to make the change you want to see. And you should expect to be attacked completely irrationally from all sides. Than includes from inside, because even some of your well-meaning members will accept the anti-epistemology, and will try to convince you to self-destructive actions, and if you refuse they will leave you disappointed.
I was wondering to what extent you guys agree with the following theory:
All humans have at least two important algorithms left over from the tribal days: one which instantly evaluates the tribal status of those we come across, and another that constantly holds a tribal status value for ourselves (let's call it self-esteem). The human brain actually operates very differently at different self-esteem levels. Low-status individuals don't need to access the parts of the brain that contains the "be a tribal leader" code, so this part of the brain is closed off to everyone except those with high self-esteem. Meanwhile, those with low self-esteem are running off of an algorithm for low-status people that mostly says "Do what you're told". This is part of the reason why we can sense who is high status so easily - those who are high status are plainly executing the "do this if you're high-status" algorithms, and those who are low status aren't. This is also the reason why socially awkward people report experiencing rare "good nights" where they feel like they are completely confident and in control (their self-esteem was temporarily elevated, giving them access to the high-status algorithms) , and why in awkward situations they feel like their "personality disappears" and they literally cannot think of anything to say (their self-esteem is temporarily lowered and they are running off of a "shut up and do what you're told" low-status algorithm). This suggests that to succeed socially, one must trick one's brain into believing that one is high-status, and then one will suddenly find oneself taking advantage of charisma one didn't know one had.
Translated out of LessWrong-speak, this equates to "A boost or drop in confidence can make you think very differently. Take advantage of confidence spirals in order to achieve social success."
Comment author:latanius
02 May 2013 03:48:06AM
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7 points
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Your "running different code" approach is nice... especially paired up with the notion of "how the algorithm feels from the inside", seems to explain lots of things. You can read books about what that code does, but the best you can get is some low quality software emulation... meanwhile, if you're running it, you don't even pay attention to that stuff as this is what you are.
Comment author:[deleted]
02 May 2013 06:54:32PM
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5 points
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Yes, IME that's very close to the truth. I think that's the “less strong version” of this comment that people were talking of.
The Blueprint Decoded puts it as ‘when you [feel low-status], you don't give yourself permission to [do high-status stuff]’.
(I also seem to recall phonetician John C. Wells claiming that it's not like working-class people don't know what upper-class people speak like, it's just that they don't want to speak like that because it'd sound too posh for them.)
Comment author:Adele_L
02 May 2013 03:06:39AM
5 points
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I've had a similar idea that perceived self status was the primary difference between skill/comfort at public speaking. I think the theory might be a good first approximation, but that there is a lot more going on too.
Comment author:wedrifid
03 May 2013 04:09:27AM
4 points
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Translated out of LessWrong-speak, this equates to "A boost or drop in confidence can make you think very differently. Take advantage of confidence spirals in order to achieve social success."
Note that the flip side is that (perception of personal) high status can make you stupid, for analogous reasons to the ones you give here.
A possible reason rejection therapy has positive spillover effects. When, contra your expectations, people agree to all sorts of weird requests from you, it signals to you that you are high status.
Comment author:[deleted]
08 May 2013 09:43:49PM
7 points
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Hello,
I am a young person who recently discovered Less Wrong, HP:MOR, Yudkowsky, and all of that. My whole life I've been taught reason and science but I'd never encountered people so dedicated to rationality.
I quite like much of what I've found. I'm delighted to have been exposed to this new way of thinking, but I'm not entirely sure how much to embrace it. I don't love everything I've read although some of it is indeed brilliant. I've always been taught to be skeptical, but as I discovered this site my elders warned me to be skeptical of skepticism as well.
My problem is that I'd like an alternate viewpoint. New ideas are always refreshing, and it's certainly not healthy to constantly hear a single viewpoint, no matter how right your colleagues think they are. (It becomes even worse if you start thinking about a cult.)
Clearly, the Less Wrong community generally (unanimously?) agrees about a lot of major things. For example, religion. The vast majority of "rationalists" (in the [avoid unnecessary Yudkowsky jab] LW-based sense of the term) and all of the "top" contributors, as far as I can tell, are atheists.
Here I need to be careful to stay on topic. I was raised religious, and still am, and I'm not planning to quit anytime soon. I don't want to get into defending religion or even defending those who defend religion. My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking? If you say there aren't any, I won't believe you. I sincerely hope that you aren't afraid to expose your young ones to alternate viewpoints, as some parents and religions are. The optimal situation for you is that you've heard intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism but your position remains strong.
In other words, one way to demonstrate an argument's strength is by successfully defending it against able criticism. I sometimes see refutations of pro-religious arguments on this site, but no refutations of good arguments.
Can you help? I don't necessarily expect you to go to all this trouble to help along one young soul, but most religious leaders are more than happy to. In any case, I think that an honest summary of your own weak points would go a long way toward convincing me that you guys are any better than my ministers.
Sincerely, and hoping not to be bitten, a thoughtful but impressionable youth
Comment author:Intrism
09 May 2013 05:12:12AM
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6 points
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I sometimes see refutations of pro-religious arguments on this site, but no refutations of good arguments.
What good arguments do you think LW hasn't talked about?
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking?
Religion holds an important social and cultural role that the various attempts at rationalist ritual or culture haven't fully succeeded at filling yet.
Comment author:[deleted]
08 May 2013 10:21:41PM
4 points
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Clearly, the Less Wrong community generally (unanimously?) agrees about a lot of major things. For example, religion.
The 2012 survey showed something around 10% non-atheist, non-agnostic.
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking?
From most plausible to least plausible:
It's possible to formulate something like an argument that religious practice is good for neurotypical humans, in terms of increasing life expectancy, reducing stress, and so on.
Monocultures tend to do better than populations with mixed cultural heritage, and one could argue that some religions do very well at creating monocultures where none previously existed, e.g., the mormons, or perhaps the Catholic Church circa 1800 in the states.
I've heard some reports that religious affiliation is good for one's dating pool.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 01:50:42PM
2 points
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See, but these are only arguments that religion is useful. Rationalists on this site say that religion is most definitely false, even if it's useful; are there any rational thinkers out there who actually think that religion could realistically be true? I think that's a much harder question that whether or not it's good for us.
Comment author:shminux
09 May 2013 05:11:47PM
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10 points
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I have been vocally anti-atheist here and elsewhere, though I was brought up as a "kitchen atheist" ("Obviously there is no God, the idea is just silly. But watch for that black cat crossing the road, it's bad luck"). My current view is Laplacian agnosticism ("I had no need of that hypothesis"). Going through the simulation arguments further convinced me that atheism is privileging one number (zero) out of infinitely many possible choices. It's not quite as silly as picking any particular anthropomorphization of the matrix lords, be it a talking bush, a man on a stick, a dude with a hammer, a universal spirit, or what have you, but still an unnecessarily strong belief.
If you are interested in anti-atheist arguments based on moral realism made by a current LWer, consider Unequally Yoked. It's as close to "intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism" as I can think of.
There is an occasional thread here about how Mormonism or Islam is the one true religion, but the arguments for either are rarely rational.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 05:30:18PM
1 point
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That's a really good way of looking at things, thanks. From now on I'm an "anti-atheist" if nothing else...and I'll take a look at that blog.
Could you bring yourself to believe in one particular anthropomorphization, if you had good reason to (a vision? or something lesser? how much lesser?)
Comment author:shminux
09 May 2013 05:38:53PM
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8 points
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Could you bring yourself to believe in one particular anthropomorphization, if you had good reason to (a vision? or something lesser? how much lesser?)
I find it unlikely, as I would probably attribute it to a brain glitch. I highly recommend looking at this rational approach to hypnosis by another LW contributor. It made me painfully aware how buggy the wetware our minds run on is, and how easy it is to make it fail if you know what you are doing. Thus my prior when seeing something apparently supernatural is to attribute it to known bugs, not to anything external.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 05:43:14PM
1 point
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The brain glitch is always available as a backup explanation, and they certainly do happen (especially in schizophrenics etc.) But if I had an angel come down to talk to me, I would probably believe it.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 07:34:45PM
7 points
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Personally, I think this one is more relevant. The biggest problem with the argument from visions and miracles, barring some much more complicated discussions of neurology than are really necessary, is that it proves too much, namely multiple contradictory religions.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:32:09AM
2 points
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It's a very interesting post. You're right that we can't accept all visions, because they will contradict each other, but in fact I think that many don't. It's entirely plausible in my mind that God really did appear to Mohammed as well as Joseph Smith, for instance, and they don't have to invalidate each other. But of course if you take every single claim that's ever been made, it becomes ridiculous.
Does it prove too much, then, to say that some visions are real and some are mental glitches? I'm not suggesting any way of actually telling the difference.
Comment author:Desrtopa
10 May 2013 01:42:26PM
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4 points
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Well, it's certainly not a very parsimonious explanation. This conversation has branched in a lot of places, so I'm not sure where that comment is right now, but as someone else has already pointed out, what about the explanation that most lightning bolts are merely electromagnetic events, but some are thrown by Thor?
Proposing a second mechanism which accounts for some cases of a phenomenon, when the first mechanism accounts for others, is more complex (and thus in the absence of evidence less likely to be correct) than the supposition that the first mechanism accounts for all cases of the phenomenon. If there's no way to tell them apart, then observations of miracles and visions don't count as evidence favoring the explanation of visions-plus-brain-glitches over the explanation of brain glitches alone.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean we have any reason to suppose it's true. And when we have no reason to suppose something is true, it generally isn't.
Comment author:shminux
09 May 2013 08:26:25PM
2 points
[-]
It's a good post, but overly logical and technically involved for a non-LWer. Even if you agree with the logic, I can hardly imagine a religious person alieving that their favorite doctrine proves too much.
FWIW, I've had the experience of a Presence manifesting itself to talk to me. The most likely explanation of that experience is a brain glitch. I'm not sure why I ought to consider that a "backup" explanation.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 07:56:38PM
2 points
[-]
Right, obviously it's a problem. There are lots of people who think they've been manifested to, and some of them are schizophrenic, and some of them are not, and it's a whole lot easier to just assume they're all deluded (even if not lying). But even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he could believe in God if he had no other choice. (I have a source if you want.)
Certainly, if you're completely determined not to believe no matter what—if you would refuse God even if He appeared to you himself—then you never will. But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you're giving it a chance of 0.
Since you are rationalists, you can't have it actually be 0. So what is that 0.0001 that would convince you?
There's a big difference between "no matter what" and "if He appeared to you himself," especially if by the latter you mean appearing to my senses. I mean, the immediate anecdotal evidence of my senses is far from being the most convincing form of evidence in my world; there are many things I'm confident exist without having directly perceived them, and some things I've directly perceived I'm confident don't exist.
For example, a being possessing the powers attributed to YHWH in the Old Testament, or to Jesus in the New Testament, could simply grant me faith directly -- that is, directly raising my confidence in that being's existence. If YHWH or Jesus (or some other powerful entity) appeared to me that way, I would believe in them.
I'm assuming you're not counting that as convincing me, though I'm not sure why not.
But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you're giving it a chance of 0.
Actually, that isn't true. It might well be that I assign a positive probability to X, but that I still can't rationally reach a state of >50% confidence in X, because the kind of evidence that would motivate such a confidence-shift simply isn't available to me. I am a limited mortal being with bounded cognition, not all truths are available to me just because they're true.
But it may be that with respect to the specific belief you're asking about, the situation isn't even that bad. I don't know, because I'm not really sure what specific belief you're asking about. What is it, exactly, that you want to know how to convince me of?
That is... are you asking what would convince me in the existence of YHWH, Creator of the Universe, the God of my fathers and my forefathers, who lifted them up from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand an an outstretched arm, and through his prophet Moses led them to Sinai where he bequeathed to them his Law?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who was born a man and died for our sins, that those who believe in Him would not die but have eternal life?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Loki, son of the All-Father Odin who dwells in highest Asgard, and will one day bring about Ragnarok and the death of the Gods?
Or... well, what, exactly?
With respect to those in particular, I can't think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering (EDIT: that's hyperbole; I really mean "to convince me"; see below), though that's not to say that such experiences don't exist or aren't possible... I just don't know what they are.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 09:25:33PM
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8 points
[-]
With respect to those in particular, I can't think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering, though that's not to say that such experiences don't exist or aren't possible... I just don't know what they are.
Huh. That's interesting. For at least the first two I can think of a few that would convince me, and for the third I suspect that a lack of being easily able to be convinced is connected more to my lack of knowledge about the religion in question. In the most obvious way for YHVH, if everyone everywhere started hearing a loud shofar blowing and then the dead rose, and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up and started answering every halachic question in ways that resolve all the apparent problems, I think I'd be paying close attention to the hypothesis.
Similar remarks apply for Jesus. They do seem to depend strongly on making much more blatant interventions in the world then the deities generally seem to (outside their holy texts).
Technically the shofar blowing thing should not be enough sensory evidence to convince you of the prior improbability of this being the God - probability of alien teenagers, etcetera - but since you weren't expecting that to happen and other people were, good rationalist procedure would be to listen very carefully what they had to say about how your priors might've been mistaken. It could still be alien teenagers but you really ought to give somebody a chance to explain to you about how it's not. On the other hand, we can't execute this sort of super-update until we actually see the evidence, so meanwhile the prior probability remains astronomically low.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 09:37:20PM
7 points
[-]
and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up
In this context I think it makes sense to ask "showed up where?" but if the answer were "everywhere on earth at once," I'd call that pretty damn compelling.
Yeah, you're right, "to be worth considering" is hyperbole. On balance I'd still lean towards "powerful entity whom I have no reason to believe created the universe, probably didn't lift my forefathers up from bondage in Egypt, might have bequeathed them his Law, and for reasons of its own is adopting the trappings of YHWH" but I would, as you say, be paying close attention to alternative hypotheses.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:13:18AM
1 point
[+]
(9
children)
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:13:18AM
1 point
[-]
You're right, I'm assuming that God doesn't just tweak anyone's mind to force them to believe, because the God of the Abrahamic religions won't ever do that—our ultimate agency to believe or not is very important to Him. What would be the point of seven billion mindless minions? (OK, it might be fun for a while, but I bet sentient children would be more interesting over the course of, say, eternity.)
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 05:46:39PM
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4 points
[-]
And if it were a demon? A ghost? A fairy? A Greek deity? If these are different, why are they different? What about an angel that 's from another religion?
Comment author:wedrifid
09 May 2013 04:58:58AM
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7 points
[-]
The optimal situation for you is that you've heard intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism but your position remains strong.
The optimal situation could also be hearing intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism, learn from it and having a new 'strong position' incorporating the new information. (See: lightness).
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 04:07:56PM
3 points
[-]
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking? If you say there aren't any, I won't believe you.
How legitimate does "most legitimate" have to be? If I thought there were any criticisms sufficiently legitimate to seriously reconsider my viewpoints, I would have changed them already. To the extent that my religious beliefs are different than they were, say, fifteen years ago, it's because I spent a long time seeking out arguments, and if I found any persuasive, I modified my beliefs accordingly. But I reached a point where I stopped finding novel arguments for theism long before I stopped looking, so if there are any arguments for theism that I would find compelling, they see extremely little circulation.
The arguments for "theism" which I see the least reason to reject are ones which don't account for anything resembling what we conventionally recognize as theism, let alone religion, so I'm not sure those would count according to the criteria you have in mind.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 08:02:41PM
2 points
[-]
I'd be happy to hear what you've got. I can't just ask you to share all of your life-changing experiences, obviously. Having looked for new arguments and not found any good ones is a great position, I think, because then you can be pretty sure you're right. I don't know if I could ever convince myself there are no new arguments, though.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 09:06:12PM
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1 point
[-]
I'm certainly not convinced that there are no new arguments, but if there were any good arguments, I would expect them to have more currency.
If you want to explain what good arguments you think there are, I'd certainly be willing to listen. I don't want to foist all the work here onto you, but honestly, having you just cover what you think are the good arguments would be simpler than me covering all the arguments I can think of, none of which I actually endorse, without knowing which if any you ascribe to.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:34:33AM
1 point
[-]
I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. I'm sure that you've done much more research on this than I have. I'm looking for decent arguments because I don't believe all these people who say there aren't any.
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking?
That's a complicated question in general, because "our own way of thinking" is not a unary thing. We spend a lot of time disagreeing with each other, and we talk about a lot of different things.
But if you specifically mean atheism in its "it is best to reason and behave as though there are no gods, because the alternative hypotheses don't have enough evidence to justify their consideration" formulation, I think the most legitimate objection is that it may turn out to be true that, for some religious traditions -- maybe even for most religious traditions -- being socially and psychologically invested in that tradition gets me more of what I want than not being invested in it, even if the traditions themselves include epistemically unjustifiable states (such as the belief that an entity exists that both created the universe and prefers that I not eat pork) or false claims about the world (as they most likely do, especially if this turns out to be true for religious traditions that disagree with one another about those claims).
I don't know if that's true, but it's plausible, and if it is true it's important. (Not least of which because it demonstrates that those of us who are committed to a non-religious tradition need to do more work at improving the pragmatic value of our social structures.)
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 01:56:15PM
3 points
[-]
As for atheism, I don't mean those that think religion is good for us and we ought to believe it whether or not it's true. I meant rational thinkers who actually believe God realistically could exist. It's definitely interesting to think about trying to convince yourself to believe in God, or just act that way, but is it possible to actually believe with a straight face?
Well, you asked for the most legitimate criticisms of rejecting religious faith.
Religious faith is not a rational epistemology; we don't arrive at faith by analyzing evidence in an unbiased way.
I can make a pragmatic argument for embracing faith anyway, because rational epistemology isn't the only important thing in the world nor necessarily the most important (although it's what this community is about).
But if you further constrain the request to seeking legitimate arguments for treating religious faith (either in general, or that of one particular denomination) as a rational epistemology, then I can't help you. Analyzing observed evidence in an unbiased way simply doesn't support faith in YHWH as worshiped by 20th-century Jews (which is the religious faith I rejected in my youth), and I know of no legitimate epistemological criticism that would conclude that it does, nor of any other denomination that doesn't have the same difficulty.
Now, if you want to broaden your search to include not only counterarguments against rejecting religious faith of specific denominations, but also counterarguments against rejecting some more amorphous proto-religious belief like "there exist mega-powerful entities in the universe capable of feats I can barely conceive of" (without any specific further claims like "and the greatest one of them all divided the Red Sea to free our ancestors from slavery in Egypt" or "and the greatest one of them all wrote this book so humanity would know how to behave" or even "and they pay attention to and direct human activity") then I'd say the most legitimate counterargument is Copernican: I start out with low confidence that my species is the most powerful entity in the universe, and while the lack of observed evidence of such mega-powerful entities necessarily raises that confidence, it might not legitimately raise it enough to accept.
But we've now wandered pretty far afield from "my way of thinking," as I'm perfectly comfortable positing the existence of mega-powerful entities in the universe capable of feats I can barely conceive of.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 04:49:42PM
2 points
[-]
if you further constrain the request to seeking legitimate arguments for treating religious faith (either in general, or that of one particular denomination) as a rational epistemology, then I can't help you.
Thank you for answering my question. If I read it right you're saying "No, it's not possible to reconcile religion and rationality, or at least I can't refer you to any sane person who tried."
If I understand what you're using "religion" and "rationality" to mean, then I would agree with the first part. (In particular, I understand you to be referring exclusively to epistemic rationality.)
As for the second part, there are no doubt millions of sane people who tried. Hell, I've tried it myself. The difficulty is not in finding one, but rather in finding one who provides you with what you're looking for.
Comment author:Bugmaster
09 May 2013 04:50:36AM
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3 points
[-]
I'm much closer to "below average" than to the "top" as far as LW users go, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking ?
I assume that by "way of thinking" you mean "atheism", specifically (if not, what did you mean ?).
I don't know how you judge which criticisms are "legitimate", so I can't answer the question directly. Instead, I can say that the most persuasive arguments against atheism that I'd personally seen come in form of studies demonstrating the efficacy of prayer. If prayer does work consistently with the claims of some religion, this is a good indication that at least some claims made by the religion are true.
Note, though, that I said "most persuasive"; another way to put it would be "least unpersuasive". Unfortunately, all such studies that I know of have either found no correlation between prayer and the desired effect whatsoever; or were constructed so poorly that their results are meaningless. Still, at least they tried.
In general, it is more difficult to argue against atheism (of the weak kind) than against theism, since (weak) atheism is simply the null hypothesis. This means that theists must provide positive evidence for the existence of their god(s) in order to convince an atheist, and this is very difficult to do when one's god is undetectable, or works in mysterious ways, or is absent, etc., as most gods tend to be.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 02:21:42PM
1 point
[-]
Many people would disagree that atheism is the null hypothesis. "All things testify of Christ," as some say, and in those circles people honestly believe they've been personally contacted by God. (I'm talking about Mormons, whose God, from what I've heard, is not remotely undetectable.)
Have most atheists honestly put thought into what if there actually was a God? Many won't even accept that there is a possibility, and I think this is just as dangerous as blind faith.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 04:18:18PM
7 points
[-]
I would venture a guess that atheists who haven't put thought into the possibility of there being a god are significantly in the minority. Although there are some who dismiss the notion as an impossibility, or such a severe improbability as to be functionally the same thing, in my experience this is usually a conclusion rather than a premise, and it's not necessarily an indictment of a belief system that a conclusion be strongly held.
Some Christians say that "all things testify of Christ." Similarly, Avicenna was charged with heresy for espousing a philosophy which failed to affirm the self-evidence of Muslim doctrine. But cultures have not been known to adopt Christianity, Islam, or any other particular religion which has been developed elsewhere, independent of contact with carriers of that religion.
If cultures around the world adopted the same religion, independently of each other, that would be a very strong argument in favor of that religion, but this does not appear to occur.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:42:37AM
2 points
[-]
Although there are some who dismiss the notion as an impossibility, or such a severe improbability as to be functionally the same thing, in my experience this is usually a conclusion rather than a premise
OK, that works. But what evidence do we have that unambiguously determines that there is no deity? I'd love to hear it. Not just evidence against one particular religion. Active evidence that there is no God, which, rationally taken into account, gives a chance of ~0 that some deity exists.
Comment author:Intrism
10 May 2013 04:16:15PM
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3 points
[-]
What evidence of no deity could you possibly expect to see? If there were no God, I wouldn't expect there to be any evidence of the fact. In fact, if I were to find the words "There is no God, stop looking" engraved on an atom, my conclusion would not be "There is no God," but rather (ignoring the possibility of hallucination) "There is a God or some entity of similar power, and he's a really terrible liar." Eliezer covers this sort of thing in his sequence entry You're Entitled to Arguments But Not That Particular Proof.
If you really want to make this argument, describe a piece of evidence that you would affirmatively expect to see if there were no God.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 04:39:45PM
0 points
[-]
Right, I don't see how there could be any evidence to convince a person to the point of a 0.0001 chance of God. And so when all of these people say that they've concluded that the chance of God is negligible, I think that they're subject to a strong cognitive bias worsened by the fact that they're supposed to be immune to those.
Comment author:Prismattic
10 May 2013 05:35:52PM
5 points
[-]
Two things that your perpsective appears to be missing here:
1) Lots of people here were raised in religious families; they didn't start out privileging atheism. (Or they aren't atheists per se; I'm agnostic between atheism and deism; it's just the anthropomorphic interventionist deity I reject.)
2) You aren't the first believer to come here and present the case you are trying to make. See, for example, the rather epic conversation with Aspiringknitter here. You aren't even the first Mormon to make the case here. Calcsam has been quite explicit about it.
Note that both of those examples are people who've accumulated quite a bit of karma on LessWrong. People give them a fair hearing. They just don't agree that their arguments are compelling.
Comment author:wedrifid
09 May 2013 03:52:23PM
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8 points
[-]
Have most atheists honestly put thought into what if there actually was a God?
Don't know. Most probably have something better to do. I have thought about what would happen if there was a God. If it turned out the the god of the religion I was brought up in was real then I would be destined to burn in hell for eternity. If version 1 of the same god (Yahweh) existed I'd probably also burn in hell for eternity but I'm a bit less certain about that because the first half of my Bible talked more about punishing people while alive (well, at the start of the stoning they are alive at least) than the threat of torment after death. If Alah is real... well, I'm guessing there is going to be more eternal pain involved since that is just another fork of the same counterfactual omnipotent psychopath. Maybe I'd have more luck with the religions from ancient India---so long as I can convince the gods that lesswrong Karma counts.
So yes, I've given some thought to what happens if God exists: I'd be screwed and God would still be a total dick of no moral worth.
Many won't even accept that there is a possibility, and I think this is just as dangerous as blind faith.
Assigning probability 0 or 1 to a hypothesis is an error, but rounding off 0.0001 to 0 is less likely to be systematically destructive to an entire epistemological framework than rounding 0.0001 off to 1.
Comment author:wedrifid
09 May 2013 04:50:30PM
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2 points
[-]
So, with no evidence either way, would you honestly rate the probability of the existence of God as 0.0001%?
That probability is off by a factor of 100 from the one I mentioned.
(And with 'no evidence either way' the probability assigned would be far, far lower than that. It takes rather a lot of evidence to even find your God in hypothesis space.)
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 03:59:31PM
5 points
[-]
Have most atheists honestly put thought into what if there actually was a God?
Many people here are grew up in religious settings. Eliezer for example comes from an Orthodox Jewish family. So yes, a fair number have given thought to this.
people honestly believe they've been personally contacted by God.
Curiously many different people believe that they've been contacted by God, but they disagree radically on what this contact means. Moreover, when they claim to have been contacted by God but have something that doesn't fit a standard paradigm, or when they claim to have been contacted by something other than God, we frequently diagnose them as schizophrenic. What's the simplest explanation for what is going on here?
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 08:08:38PM
1 point
[-]
Simple explanations are good, but not necessarily correct. It's awfully easy to say they're all nutcases, but it's still easy and a bit more fair to say that they're mostly nutcases but maybe some of them are correct. Maybe. I think it's best to give it a chance at least.
It's awfully easy to say they're all nutcases, but it's still easy and a bit more fair to say that they're mostly nutcases but maybe some of them are correct. Maybe. I think it's best to give it a chance at least.
Openmindedness in these respects has always seemed to me highly selective -- how openminded are you to the concept that most thunderbolts may be mere electromagnetic phenomena but maybe some thunderbolts are thrown down by Thor? Do you give that possibility a chance? Should we?
Or is it only the words that current society treats seriously e.g. "God" and "Jesus", that we should keep an open mind about, and not the names that past societies treated seriously?
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 10:45:45AM
1 point
[-]
how openminded are you to the concept that most thunderbolts may be mere electromagnetic phenomena but maybe some thunderbolts are thrown down by Thor? Do you give that possibility a chance? Should we?
If billions of people think so, then yes, we should.
It's not just that our society treats Jesus seriously, it's that millions of people have overwhelming personal evidence of Him. And most of them are not rationalists, but they're not mentally insane either.
Comment author:Bugmaster
09 May 2013 09:50:02PM
4 points
[-]
Maybe. I think it's best to give it a chance at least.
I agree. As soon as a theist can demonstrate some evidence for his deity's existence... well, I may not convert on the spot, given the plethora of simpler explanations (human hoaxers, super-powered alien teenagers, stuff like that), but at least I'd take his religion much more seriously. This is why I mentioned the prayer studies in my original comment.
Unfortunately, so far, no one managed to provide this level of evidence. For example, a Mormon friend of mine claimed that their Prophet can see the future. I told him that if the Prophet could predict the next 1000 rolls of a fair six-sided die, he could launch a hitherto unprecedented wave of atheist conversions to Mormonism. I know that I personally would probably hop on board (once alien teenagers and whatnot were taken out of the equation somehow). That's all it would take -- roll a die 1000 times, save a million souls in one fell swoop.
I'm still waiting for the Prophet to get back to me...
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 11:11:35PM
0 points
[-]
This one is a classic Sunday School answer. The God I was raised with doesn't do that sort of thing very often because it defeats the purpose of faith, and knowledge of God is not the one simple requirement for many versions of heaven. It is necessary, they say, to learn to believe on your own. Those who are convinced by a manifestation alone will not remain faithful very long. There's always another explanation. So yes, you're right, God (assuming Mormonism is true for a moment, as your friend does) could do that, but it wouldn't do the world much good in the end.
Comment author:Bugmaster
10 May 2013 12:05:11AM
1 point
[-]
The God I was raised with doesn't do that sort of thing very often because it defeats the purpose of faith...
Right, but hopefully this explains one of the reasons why I'm still an atheist. From my perspective, gods are no more real than 18th-level Wizards or Orcs or unicorns; I don't say this to be insulting, but merely to bring things into perspective. There's nothing special in my mind that separates a god (of any kind) from any other type of a fictional character, and, so far, theists have not supplied me with any reason to think otherwise.
In general, any god who a priori precludes any possibility of evidence for its existence is a very hard (in fact, nearly impossible) sell for me. If I were magically transported from our current world, where such a god exists, into a parallel world where the god does not exist, how would I tell the difference ? And if I can't tell the difference, why should I care ?
Comment author:Desrtopa
10 May 2013 12:48:18AM
2 points
[-]
And if I can't tell the difference, why should I care ?
Well, if in one world, your disbelief results in you going to hell and being tormented eternally, I think that would be pretty relevant. Although I suppose you could say in that case you can tell the difference, but not until it's too late.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 08:35:50PM
3 points
[-]
Simple explanations are good, but not necessarily correct.
Right, simpler explanations start with a higher probability of being correct. And if two explanations for the same data exist, you should assign a high chance to the one that is simpler.
It's awfully easy to say they're all nutcases, but it's still easy and a bit more fair to say that they're mostly nutcases but maybe some of them are correct. Maybe. I think it's best to give it a chance at least.
Why should one give "it a chance" and what does that mean? Note also that "nutcase" is an overly strong conclusion. Human reasoning and senses are deeply flawed, and very easy to have problems. That doesn't require nutcases. For example, I personally get sleep paralysis. When that occurs, I get to encounter all sorts of terrible things, demons, ghosts, aliens, the Borg, and occasionally strange tentacled things that would make Lovecraft's monsters look tame. None of those things exist- I have a minor sensory problem. The point of using something like schizophrenia is an example is that it is one of the most well-known explanations for the more extreme experiences or belief sets. But the general hypothesis that's relevant here isn't "nutcase" so much as "brain had a sensory or reasoning error, as they are wont to do."
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 04:13:41AM
3 points
[-]
My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking? If you say there aren't any, I won't believe you. I sincerely hope that you aren't afraid to expose your young ones to alternate viewpoints, as some parents and religions are. The optimal situation for you is that you've heard intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism but your position remains strong.
Do you mean to ask this about specifically the religion issue or things in general? Keep in mind, that while policy debates should not be one sided, that's because reality is complicated and doesn't make any effort to make things easy for us. But, hypotheses don't function that way- the correct hypotheses really should look extremely one-sided, because they reflect what a correct description of reality is.
So the best arguments for an incorrect hypothesis are by nature going to be weak. But if I were to put on my contrarian arguer hat for a few minutes and give my own personal response, I'd say that first cause arguments are possibly the strongest argument for some sort of deity.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 02:12:24PM
1 point
[-]
It's a good point. Of course, hundreds of years ago, the argument was also pretty one-sided, but that doesn't mean anyone was correct. I also don't think that the argument really is one-sided today, I just think that the two sides manage to ignore each other quite thoroughly. I
'm not expecting this site to house a debate on the possibility of God's existence. Clearly this site is for atheists. I'm asking, is that actually necessary? I suppose you're saying that yes, it is impossible for rationality and religion to coexist, and that's why there are very few theistic rationalists. I'm still not convinced of that.
First cause arguments are a strange existential puzzle, depending on the nature of your God. Any thought system that portrays God as a sort of person will run into the same problem of how God came into existence.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 04:07:22PM
5 points
[-]
I'm asking, is that actually necessary? I suppose you're saying that yes, it is impossible for rationality and religion to coexist, and that's why there are very few theistic rationalists.
A rationalist should strive to have a given belief if and only if that belief is true. I want to be a theist if and only if theism is correct.
Note also that getting the right answers to these sorts of questions matters far more than some would estimate. If Jack Chick is correct, then most people here (and most of the world) is going to burn in hell unless they are saved. And this sort of remark applies to a great deal of religious positions (less so for some Muslims, most Jews and some Christians but the basic point is true for a great many faiths). In the other direction, if there isn't any protective, intervening deity, then we need to take serious threats to humanity's existence, like epidemics, asteroids, gamma ray bursts, nuclear war, bad AI, nanotech, etc. a lot more seriously, because no one is going to pick up the pieces if we mess up.
To a large extent, most LWians see the basics of these questions as well-established. Theism isn't the only thing we take that attitude about. You also won't see here almost any discussion of continental philosophy for example.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 05:02:25PM
1 point
[-]
So is LW for people who think highly rationally, or for atheists who think highly rationally? Are those necessarily the same? If not, where are the rational theists?
A rationalist should strive to have a given belief if and only if that belief is true. I want to be a theist if and only if theism is correct.
You're assuming that "no God" is the null hypothesis. Is there a good, rational reason for this? One could just as easily argue that you should be an atheist if and only if it's clear that atheism is correct. Without any empirical evidence either way, is it more likely that there is some sort of Deity or that there isn't?
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 08:33:17PM
7 points
[-]
You're assuming that "no God" is the null hypothesis. Is there a good, rational reason for this? One could just as easily argue that you should be an atheist if and only if it's clear that atheism is correct. Without any empirical evidence either way, is it more likely that there is some sort of Deity or that there isn't?
IMO there's no such thing as a null hypothesis; epistemology doesn't work like that. The more coherent approach is bayesian inference, where we have a prior distribution and update that distribution on seeing evidence in a particular way.
If there were no empirical evidence either way, I'd lean towards there being an anthropomorphic god (I say this as a descriptive statement about the human prior, not normative).
The trouble is that once you start actually looking at evidence, nearly all anthropomorphic gods get eliminated very quickly, and in fact the whole anthropomorphism thing starts to look really questionable. The universe simply doesn't look like it's been touched by intelligence, and where it does, we can see that it was either us, or a stupid natural process that happens to optimize quite strongly (evolution).
So while "some sort of god" was initially quite likely, most particular gods get eliminated, and the remaining gods are just as specific and unlikely as they were at first. So while the "gods" subdistribution is getting smashed, naturalistic occamian induction is not getting smashed nearly as hard, and comes to dominate.
The only gods remaining compatible with the evidence are things like "someone ran all possible computer programs", which is functionally equivalent to metaphysical "naturalism", and gods of very specific forms with lots of complexity in the hypothesis that explains why they constructed the world to look exactly natural, and then aren't intervening yet.
Those complex specific gods only got a tiny slice of the god-exists pie at the beginning and cannot collect more evidence than the corresponding naturalistic explanation (because they predict the same), so they are pretty unlikely.
And then when you go to make predictions, what these gods might do gets sliced up even further such that the only useful predictive framework is the occamian naturalism thing.
There is of course the chance that there exists things "outside" the universe, and the major implication from that is that we might some day be able to break out and take over the metauniverse as well.
So is LW for people who think highly rationally, or for atheists who think highly rationally?
Neither, really. It's for people who are interested in epistemic and instrumental rationality.
There are a number of such folks here who identify as theists, though the majority don't.
Without any empirical evidence either way, is it more likely that there is some sort of Deity or that there isn't?
Can you clarify what you mean by "some sort of Deity"? It's difficult to have a coherent conversation about evidence for X without a shared understanding of what X is.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 05:14:21PM
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4 points
[-]
You're assuming that "no God" is the null hypothesis. Is there a good, rational reason for this?
In general, it's not rational to posit that anything exists without evidence. Out of the set of all things that could be posited, most do not exist.
"Evidence" need not be direct observation. If you have a model which has shown good predictive power, which predicts a phenomenon you haven't observed yet, the model provides evidence for that phenomenon. But in general, people here would agree that if there isn't any evidence for a proposition, it probably isn't true.
Comment author:Desrtopa
09 May 2013 06:19:12PM
10 points
[-]
Because nearly all things that could exist, don't. When you're in a state where you have no evidence for an entity's existence, then odds are that it doesn't exist.
Suppose that instead of asking about God, we ask "does the planet Hoth, as portrayed in the Star Wars movies, exist?" Absent any evidence that there really is such a planet, the answer is "almost certainly not."
If we reverse this, and ask "Does the planet Hoth, as portrayed in the Star Wars movies, not exist?" the answer is "almost certainly."
It doesn't matter how you specify the question, the informational content of the default answer stays the same.
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 11:13:40AM
1 point
[+]
(8
children)
Comment author:[deleted]
10 May 2013 11:13:40AM
1 point
[-]
I don't think that the Hoth argument applies here, because what we're looking for is not just some teapot in some random corner of the univers—it's a God actively involved in our universe. In other words, in God does exist, He's a very big part of our existence, unlike your teapot or Hoth.
Comment author:Desrtopa
10 May 2013 01:47:34PM
4 points
[-]
That's a salient difference if his involvement is providing us with evidence, but not if it isn't.
Suppose we posit that gravitational attraction is caused by invisible gravity elves, which pull masses towards each other. They'd be inextricably tied up in every part of our existence. But absent any evidence favoring the hypothesis, why should we suspect they're causing the phenomenon we observe as gravity? In order for it to make sense for us to suspect gravity elves, we need evidence to favor gravity elves over everything else that could be causing gravity.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 05:09:50PM
2 points
[-]
A rationalist should strive to have a given belief if and only if that belief is true. I want to be a theist if and only if theism is correct.
You're assuming that "no God" is the null hypothesis.
Not really. Bayesian reasoning doesn't have any notion of a null hypothesis. I could just as well have said "I want to be an atheist if and only if atheism is correct".
Without any empirical evidence either way, is it more likely that there is some sort of Deity or that there isn't?
One can talk about the prior probability of a given hypothesis, and that's a distinct issue which quickly gets very messy. In particular, it is extremely difficult to both a) establish what priors should look like and b) not get confused about whether one is taken for granted very basic evidence about the world around us (e.g. its existence). One argument, popular at least here, is that from an Occam's razor standpoint, most deity hypotheses are complicated and only appear simple due to psychological and linguistic issues. I'm not sure how much I buy that sort of argument. But again, it is worth emphasizing that one doesn't need control of the priors except at a very rough level.
It may help if you read more on the difference between Bayesian and frequentist approaches. The general approach of LW is primarily Bayesian, whereas notions like a "null hypothesis" are essentially frequentist.
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 05:20:11PM
1 point
[+]
(2
children)
Comment author:[deleted]
09 May 2013 05:20:11PM
1 point
[-]
You're right that prior probability gets very, very messy. It's a bit too abstract to actually be helpful to us.
So, then, all we can do is look at the evidence we do have. You're saying that the argument is one-sided; there is no evidence in favor of theism, at least no good evidence. I agree that there is a lot of bad evidence, and I'm still looking for good evidence. You've said you don't know of any. Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. In general I don't think it's healthy to believe the opposing viewpoint literally has no case.
Comment author:khafra
14 May 2013 06:54:26PM
3 points
[-]
You're right that prior probability gets very, very messy. It's a bit too abstract to actually be helpful to us.
You cannot escape the necessity of dealing with priors, however messy they are.
So, then, all we can do is look at the evidence we do have.
The available evidence supports an infinite number of hypotheses. How do you decide which ones to consider? That is your prior, and however messy it may be, you have to live with it.
Comment author:JoshuaZ
09 May 2013 05:28:14PM
6 points
[-]
In general I don't think it's healthy to believe the opposing viewpoint literally has no case.
Do you think that young earth creationists have no substantial case? What about 9/11 truthers? Belief in astrology? Belief that cancer is a fungus(no I'm not making that one up)? What about anything you'll find here?
The problem is that some hypotheses are wrong, and will be wrong. There are always going to be a lot more wrong hypothesis than right ones. And in many of these cases, there are known cognitive biases which lead to the hypothesis type in question. It may help to again think about the difference between policy issues (shouldn't be one-sided), and factual questions (which once one understands most details, should be).
Lately there seems to be an abundance of anecdotal and research evidence to refrain from masturbation/quit porn. I am not sure that the evidence is conclusive enough for me to believe the validity of the claims. The touted benefits are impressive, while the potential cons seem minimal. I would be interested in some counter arguments and if not too personal, I'd like to know the thoughts of those who have participated in quitting masturbation/porn.
I quit porn three weeks ago and attempted to quit masturbation but failed. Subjectively I notice that I'm paying more attention to the women around me (and also having better orgasms when I do masturbate). My main reason for doing this was not so much that I found the research convincing as that the fact that people were even thinking about porn in this particular way helped me reorient my attitude towards porn from "it's harmless" to "it's a superstimulus, it may be causing a hedonic treadmill, and I should be wary of it in the same way that I'm now wary of sugar." (There's also a second reason which is personal.)
I like sixes_and_sevens' hypothesis. Here's another one: a smallish number of people really do have a serious porn addiction and really do benefit substantially from quitting cold turkey, but they're atypical. (I don't think I fall into this category, but I still think this is an interesting experiment to run.)
General comment: I think many people on LW have an implicit standard for adopting potential self-improvements that is way too high. When you're asking for conclusive scientific evidence, you're asking for something in the neighborhood of a 90% probability of success or higher. I think you should be willing to take probabilities of success in the neighborhood of 10% or lower in cases where the costs are sufficiently low. If you try out enough self-improvements, one of them may improve your life enough to have been worth all of the other failures (again, in cases where the costs are low). Plus, I think it's useful to make a habit out of changing your habits (think of it as simulated annealing on your life). Otherwise, you may just get better and better at arguing yourself out of changing anything.
In other words, I think people should be less risk-averse with respect to potential self-improvements. Anna thinks something like this is particularly likely to be a failure mode of people with a math background, where the demands for probability of correctness are much higher than in most of life.
Comment author:Adele_L
02 May 2013 09:04:39PM
6 points
[-]
On a slightly related note, vibrators like the Hitachi Magic Wand are probably a superstimulus for women analogous to porn for men. (of course, anyone can enjoy either type, but that is less common)
Also I agree with your general comment about self improvements, especially since it is hard to find techniques/habits that work for everyone.
Comment author:Kaj_Sotala
06 May 2013 07:30:58PM
2 points
[-]
I think many people on LW have an implicit standard for adopting potential self-improvements that is way too high.
I thought that the opposite was true, in that LW regulars tended to be eager to try any suggested self-improvement idea that anybody had spent more than a few sentences offering anecdotal support for. Though that might just be overgeneralizing from my own habits.
Hmm. My impression is that people here are very willing to try anti-akrasia ideas but not very willing to try other kinds of ideas. I could be mistaken though.
This is also my impression. People are willing to discuss anti-akrasia since Eliezer talked about it, but otherwise people have an unfortunate allief that any advise older than a couple decades is superstition.
There's a big difference between the physical act of masturbation, which is probably harmless and good for you in moderate amounts, and the mental act of watching porn, which seems to be what people are advocating refraining from.
Also, r/nofap is weirdly cult-like from what I've seen and probably not a good resource. For example, this is the highest upvoted post that's not a funny picture, and it seems to be making very, very exaggerated claims about the benefits of not jacking off: "If you actually stop jerking off, and I mean STOP - eliminate it as a possibilty from your life (as I and many others have) - your sex starved brain and testicles will literally lead you out into the world and between the legs of a female. It just HAPPENS. Try it, you numbskull. You'll see that I speak the truth."
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
03 May 2013 06:40:50AM
4 points
[-]
There's a big difference between the physical act of masturbation, which is probably harmless and good for you in moderate amounts, and the mental act of watching porn, which seems to be what people are advocating refraining from.
Oh. I didn't notice the difference, because I automatically assumed those two acts to be connected.
So, would that mean that masturbation without watching porn is healthy and harmless, but masturbation with watching porn is harmful? Sounds like an easy setup for a scientific experiment.
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
03 May 2013 08:46:43AM
6 points
[-]
Uhhh... perhaps the best solution would be to masturbate while solving problems of algebra, just to make sure to avoid the sin of superstimulus. (Unless algebraic equations count as superstimulus too, in which case I am doomed completely.)
This whole topic feels extremely suspicious to me. We have two crowds shouting their messages ("masturbation is completely safe and healthy, no bad side effects ever", "porn is a dopamine addiction to superstimulus and will destroy your mind"), both of them claim to have science on their side, and imagining the world where both are correct does not make much sense.
To be honest, I suspect that both crowds are exaggerating and filtering the evidence. I also suspect that the actual reasons which created these crowds are something like this -- "Watching porn and masturbation is something that low-status males do, because high-status males get real sex. Let's criticize the low-status thing. Oh wait, women masturbate too; and we can't criticize that, because criticizing women would be sexist! Also, religion criticized masturbation, so we should actually promote it, just to show how open-minded we are. But porn is safe to criticize, because that's mostly a male thing. Therefore masturbation is perfectly okay, especially for a female, but porn is bad, and masturbation with porn is also bad. Other kinds of superstimuli, such as romantic stories for women, don't associate with low status, therefore we should ignore them in our debate about the dangers of superstimuli. Let's focus on criticizing the low-status things."
Comment author:bogus
03 May 2013 10:20:46AM
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4 points
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We have two crowds shouting their messages ("masturbation is completely safe and healthy, no bad side effects ever", "porn is a dopamine addiction to superstimulus and will destroy your mind"), both of them claim to have science on their side, and imagining the world where both are correct does not make much sense.
Really? I can imagine a world where plenty of things that might be considered addictive are quite safe and healthy, as long as you do them in moderation - and what counts as "moderation" may well be different among different people. E.g. some people might be highly sensitive to addiction, so that their only alternative is quitting the habit entirely.
I really don't understand how imagining "porn is a superstimulus because it allows you to instantly watch amazing sex that conforms to your personal taste. and therefore makes real sex seem less enjoyable" and "masturbation is not physically unhealthy, nor will it make real sex seem less enjoyable, and not walking around with blue balls all the time will make you a little happier, and 'practicing' for sex occasionally will make the act easier" leads to a world that doesn't make sense. I think it makes much more sense than your conspiracy theory against low-status males.
And romantic stories for woman seem to obviously not be a superstimulus in the same way porn might be? (For one, outside the realm of porn, TV is fairly addictive and literature isn't.) There are diagnosed porn addicts whose addiction is ruining their lives, but I've never heard of any romantic novel addicts.
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
03 May 2013 03:25:02PM
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5 points
[-]
My reasoning is that if porn is seriously harmful and masturbation is absolutely harmless, there should be some aspect present at porn, but absent at masturbation and everyday life, which causes the harm. I have problem pointing out precisely what exactly that aspect would be.
Too much conforming to my personal taste? That's already true for masturbation. Unlike at real sex, I can decide when, how often, for how long or short time, etc. But I am supposed to believe that none of this is a superstimulus, and it cannot make real sex less enjoyable even a bit. I am also supposed to believe that the similarities between masturbation and sex will help practising and make the act easier, but the differences are absolutely inconsequential.
Seeing too many sexy ladies that I can't have sex with, some of them could be even more attractive than my partner? Well, I see sexy ladies when I walk down the street. And in the summer I will see even more. On the beach, still more. (I am not sure whether nudist beach is already beyond the limits, or not.) But I am supposed to believe that as long as I don't see their nipples or something, it is completely safe. But if I see a nipple, my brain will release the waves of dopamine and my mind will be ruined. (If I understand the definition of porn correctly, seeing a naked sexy lady on a picture is already porn, even if she is not doing anything with anyone, am I right? And even limiting oneself to that kind of porn would be already harmful.)
All of that together? So if I see a sexy lady on the beach, and then I go home and masturbate thinking about her, that's completely harmless. However, if I make a picture of her, and then at home I look at the picture, especially if the picture was taken at the nudist beach, that is harmful; the mere looking is harmful, even if I don't touch myself.
Sorry for exaggerations, but this is how those theories feel to me, when taken together. I can imagine making convincing arguments for each of them separately. I just have trouble imagining a reasonable model which would explain both of them at the same time. Why a visual superstimulus ruins the real sex, but a tactile one is completely harmless.
Compared with that, a hypothesis "it is popular to slander low-status behavior, and the rest is rationalization" seems more likely.
Honestly, dude, you seem to be sort of engaging in black-and-white thinking that I wouldn't expect from a LW reader. Yes, a noncentral example of porn use such as "looking at a candid picture of a nude woman and not touching your dick" is almost definitely harmless. A much more central example of porn use, however, is a guy who has been jacking off to porn four times a week since he was about thirteen, and has in that time seen probably hundreds of porn videos, of which he has selected a few that appeal very specifically to his particular tastes, which he watches regularly. There's obviously no boundary where as soon as you do something labeled "watching porn" your brain will "release waves of dopamine and ruin your mind". But it doesn't seem hard to imagine that maybe that guy would be healthier if he changed his habits and started jacking off to his imagination (which he would probably end up doing much less frequently, I imagine), and "don't jack off to anything but your imagination" is a much, much more effective rule to precommit to than "stop watching porn if you get the feeling that you might be falling for a superstimulus", or whatever.
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
04 May 2013 08:39:47AM
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6 points
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Honestly, dude, you seem to be sort of engaging in black-and-white thinking that I wouldn't expect from a LW reader.
Ironically, I imagined myself as making fun of other people's black-and-white thinking. (Masturbation completely healthy and harmless: in the skeptics discussion I linked. Porn: superstimulus ruining one's mind and life.) I tried to find out how exactly the world would look like for people who believe both of these things; mostly because nobody here tried to contradict either of them. What would be the logical consequences of these beliefs -- because people are often not aware of logical consequences of the beliefs they already have.
To me, both these beliefs feel like exaggerations, and they also feel contradictory, although technically they are not speaking about exactly the same thing. One kind of superstimulus is perfectly safe, other kind of superstimulus is addictive -- is this an inconsistent approach to superstimuli, or a claim that these superstimuli are of a different nature?
I am thankful for two contributors willing to bite the bullet and describe what could the world look like if both beliefs were true. TheOtherDave said that actions controlled by one's own mind (masturbation) could have smaller effect than actions not controlled by one's own mind (watching a porn movie), just like it is difficult to tickle oneself. Qiaochu_Yuan said that some actions have natural limit where a human must stop (masturbation), while other actions have no such limit and can be prolonged indefinitely (watching porn), just like you can't eat the whole day, but you can play a computer game the whole day. -- Both of these answers make sense and I did not realize that.
And that's essentially all I wanted from this topic. (Unless someone would give me a pointer to a scientific study concerned with differences between masturbation without porn and masturbation with porn, in terms of addiction and behavioral change.)
Comment author:[deleted]
03 May 2013 10:08:58PM
3 points
[-]
I guess that according to such people the problem is not porn per se, but the addiction to porn. Looking at ladies on the beach and going home and masturbating once isn't problematic, but if you do that for 10% of your waking time for years... And ‘don't watch porn’ makes for a better Schelling point than ‘don't watch more than half an hour of porn a week’, for someone who's trying to quit.
I have problem pointing out precisely what exactly that aspect would be.
You can continuously watch porn in the same way that you can continuously play World of Warcraft. You can't continuously masturbate in the same way that you can't continuously eat pizza.
"Porn" is too vague. Are you talking about a quick 5-minute session or a marathon lasting several hours? If you've never done the latter, consider that some people might. The effects of the two are likely to be quite different, especially if the latter is a frequent occurrence.
Also, it's not at all popular among my friend groups to slander porn. That's seen as sex-negative, which is one reason I never got around to thinking about porn as potentially harmful until quite recently.
Comment author:Jiro
03 May 2013 06:08:41PM
3 points
[-]
Generally, when people claim something is harmless, they don't mean that it's "absolutely harmless". Playing videogames is harmful if you do it to the exclusion of eating, sleeping, and excreting, but one would not normally say that videogames are harmful based on them being harmful under such conditions. It is entirely possible to claim that porn is harmful, and that masturbation under similar circumstances (such as masturbating to mental images of people) is also harmful, while still consistently insisting that masturbation is harmless.
While I agree with your ultimate conclusion, it's not that implausible that synchronously controlled self-stimulation (which IME most masturbation is, though I suppose it depends on what you're into) is less stimulating than asychronously controlled self-stimulation (e.g., programming a pattern of changing frequencies on a vibrator, or downloading a bunch of porn and queuing a slideshow on my desktop, or visiting a series of previously selected websites with changing content), for many of the same reasons that I can't tickle myself effectively with my fingers but can easily be tickled by inanimate objects.
If that turns out to be true, I would expect a not-very-rigorous analysis to conclude "masturbation is less stimulating than porn", since asynchronously controlled masturbation is relatively rare, as is synchronously controlled porn.
Comment author:MrMind
02 May 2013 08:33:35AM
4 points
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I cannot reach the site from where I am now, but try to look at The Last Psychiatrist blog, it has an article right about that. Its main point is that there's a problem that cause both porn addiction and difficulties with sexual relationships, so that they're not directly related. I have to say that my experience agrees with that: I haven't any particular problem with my sexuality, and quitting porn for a couple of months did not had any noticeable positive or negative effect.
Comment author:gwern
02 May 2013 03:52:42PM
2 points
[-]
I am not sure that the evidence is conclusive enough for me to believe the validity of the claims.
I don't either. The anecdotal evidence is the usual crap that you'll see for anything, and the research they cite is equivocal or only distantly related or worse (someone linked a blog post arguing for this on LW in the past and I pointed out that most of the points were awful and one study actually showed the opposite of what they thought it showed, although I can't seem to refind this comment right now).
Comment author:[deleted]
08 May 2013 04:01:57PM
3 points
[-]
Suppose I have several different points to make in response to a given comment. Do I write all of them in a single comment, or do I write each of them in a separate comment? There doesn't seem to be an universally accepted norm about this -- the former seems to be more common, but there's at least one regular here who customarily does the latter and I can't remember anyone complaining about that.
Advantages of writing separate comments:
I can retract each of them individually, in case I change my mind about one of them but still stand by the others (as here).
Each of them can be upvoted or downvoted separately, so I don't have to guess what people are enjoying or objecting to.
If each comment gives rise to a discussion, and someone is only interested in one of them, they can collapse the other ones.
Disadvantages of writing separate comments:
It clutters the Recent Comments sidebar and page, my contribution history, and the mailbox of the author of the parent comment.
It increases the total number of comments in the thread, making it more likely for it to exceed the maximum number a reader has set and for other comments to get hidden.
It may come across as something unusual done in the attempt of getting more total karma that I could otherwise have.
Should we standardize on one possibility, or decide on a case-by-case basis?
Comment author:khafra
08 May 2013 01:58:59PM
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3 points
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Michael Chwe, a game theorist at UCLA, just wrote a book on Jane Austin. It combines game theory and social signaling, so it looks like it'll be on the LW interest spectrum:
Austen’s clueless people focus on numbers, visual detail, decontextualized literal meaning, and social status. These traits are commonly shared by people on the autistic spectrum; thus Austen suggests an explanation for cluelessness based on individual personality traits. Another of Austen’s explanations for cluelessness is that not having to take
another person’s perspective is a mark of social superiority over that person. Thus a superior remains clueless about an inferior to sustain the status difference, even though this prevents him from realizing how the inferior is manipulating him.
A later expansion on that gives a list of biases to avoid, including the typical mind fallacy and a few new ones:
Austen gives five explanations for cluelessness, the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking. First, Austen suggests
that cluelessness can result from a lack of natural ability: her clueless people have several personality traits (a fixation with numeracy, visual detail, literality, and social status) often associated with autistic spectrum disorders. Second, if you don’t know much about another person, it is difficult to put yourself into his mind; thus cluelessness can result from social distance, for example between man and woman, married and unmarried, or young and old. Third, cluelessness can result from excessive self-reference, for example thinking that if you do not like something, no one else does either. Fourth, cluelessness can result from status differences: superiors are not supposed to enter into the minds of inferiors, and this is in fact a mark or privilege of higher status. Fifth, sometimes presuming to know another’s mind actually works: if you can make another person desire you, for example, then his prior motivations truly don’t matter.
Comment author:Tenoke
05 May 2013 11:36:28AM
3 points
[-]
I got a decent smartphone (SGS3) a few days ago and am looking for some good apps for LessWrong-related activities. I am particularly interested in recommendations for lifelogging apps but would look into any other type of recommendations. Also I've rooted the phone.
I've recently gotten the idea in my head of taking a twelve-week course in introductory Latin, mostly for nerdy linguistic reasons. It occurs to me that learning an idiosyncratic dead language is archetypal signalling behaviour, and this fits in with my observations. The only people I know with any substantial knowledge of the language either come from privileged backgrounds and private education, or studied Classics at university (which also seems to correlate with a privileged background).
A lot of the bonding that takes place over Latin doesn't even seem to involve being able to actually use it. A shared experience of the horrors of conjugate forms and declension tables seems to be enough. While a twelve-week introductory course isn't going to equip someone with much in the way of usable skills, it will certainly satisfy this criteria.
It seems odd that it's possible to just acquire an elite status marker like this.
Comment author:wedrifid
05 May 2013 09:11:48AM
7 points
[-]
Would learning Latin confer status benefits?
Some, usually. But there is (almost) no chance that if status is your goal that learning latin is a sane approach for gaining it. Learn something social.
Comment author:whpearson
01 May 2013 10:32:48PM
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3 points
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I'd like some comments on the landing page of a website I am working on Experi-org. It is to do with experimenting with organisations.
I mainly want feedback on tone and clarity of purpose. I'll work on cleaning it up more (getting a friend who is a proof reader to give it the once over), once I have those nailed down.
You might be interested in Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. More generally, I was a little surprised at the pure experimental approach that didn't have a look at the degree of corruption in different real-world societies.
Corruption is widespread through our society. From major events like the Enron scandel to low level inefficiency in government it has a massive impact on our day to day lives. People aren't inherently evil, so it is the type of organisations that we create that are at fault.
I recommend "From major events like the Enron scandal to low level inefficiency in government, corruption has a massive effect on our day to day lives."
As for the next sentence, I'm not sure whether I don't understand you or don't agree with you. Admittedly, there will be more crime when there are weak barriers to crime, but I also believe that people who want to get away with something will, if they have the power, try to shape organizations which will let them get away with what they want.
Something to contemplate: Man creates huge Ponzi scheme in EVE Online just to prove he can do it. When it's over, he considers returning the money, which he has no use for, but he just can't make himself do it.
Together with Vallinder, I'm working on a paper on wild animal suffering. We decided to poll some experts on animal perception about their views on the likelihood that various types of animals can suffer. It now occurs to me that it might be interesting to compare their responses with those of the LW community. So, if you'd like to participate, click on one of the links below. The survey consists of only five questions and completing it shouldn't take more than a minute.
Click here if your year of birth is an even number
Click here if your year of birth is an odd number
(The two surveys are identical, except for the order in which the questions are presented. Please only take one of the surveys. Thanks!)
Comment author:MedicJason
03 May 2013 12:02:39AM
2 points
[-]
Hi, my name is Jason, this is my first post. I have recently been reading about 2 subjects here, Calibration and Solomoff Induction; reading them together has given me the following question:
How well-calibrated would Solomonoff Induction be if it could actually be calculated?
That is to say, if one generated priors on a whole bunch of questions based on information complexity measured in bits - if you took all the hypotheses that were measured at 10% likely - would 10% of those actually turn out to be correct?
I don't immediately see why Solomonoff Induction should be expected to be well-calibrated. It appears to just be a formalization of Occam's Razor, which itself is just a rule of thumb. But if it turned out not to be well-calibrated, it would not be a very good "recipe for truth." What am I missing?
Comment author:Viliam_Bur
03 May 2013 07:13:32AM
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3 points
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Solomonoff Induction could be well-calibrated across mathematically possible universes. If a hypothesis has a probability 10%, you should expect it to be true in 10% of the universes.
Important thing is that Solomonoff priors are just a starting point in our reasoning. Then we update on evidence, which is at least as important as having reasonable priors. If it does not seem well calibrated, that is because you can't get good calibration without using evidence.
Imagine that at this moment you are teleported to another universe with completely different laws of physics... do you expect any other method to work better than Solomonoff Induction? Yes, gradually you get data about the new universe and improve your model. But that's exactly what you are supposed to do with Solomonoff priors. You wouldn't predictable get better results by starting from different priors.
It appears to just be a formalization of Occam's Razor, which itself is just a rule of thumb.
To me it seems that Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb, and Solomonoff Induction is a mathematical background explaining why the rule of thumb works. (OR: "Choose the most simple hypothesis that fits your data." Me: "Okay, but why?" SI: "Because it is more likely to be the correct one.")
But if it turned out not to be well-calibrated, it would not be a very good "recipe for truth." What am I missing?
You can't get a good "recipe for truth" without actually looking at the evidence. Solomonoff Induction is the best thing you can do without the evidence (or before you start taking the evidence into account).
Essentially, the Solomonoff Induction will help you avoid the following problems:
Getting inconsistent results. For example, if you instead supposed that "if I don't have any data confirming or rejecting a hypothesis, I will always assume its prior probability is 50%", then if I give you two new hypotheses X and Y without any data, you are supposed to think that p(X) = 0.5 and p(Y) = 0.5, but also e.g. p(X and Y) = 0.5 (because "X and Y" is also a hypothesis you don't have any data about).
Giving so extremely low probability to a reasonable hypothesis that available evidence cannot convince you otherwise. For example if you assume that prior probability of X is zero, then with proper updating no evidence can convince you about X, because there is always an alternative explanation with a very small but non-zero evidence (e.g. the lords of Matrix are messing with your brain). Even if the value is technically non-zero, it could be very small like 1/10^999999999, so all the evidence you could get within your human life could not make you change your mind.
On the other hand, some hypotheses do deserve very low prior probability, because reasoning like "any hypothesis, however unlikely, has prior probability at least 0.01" can be exploited by a) Pascal's mugging, b) constructing multiple mutually exclusive hypotheses which together have arbitrarily high probability (e.g. "AAA is the god of this world and I am his prophet", "AAB is the god of this world and I am his prophet"... "ZZZ is the god of this world and I am his prophet").
Comment author:Adele_L
02 May 2013 12:21:52AM
3 points
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I had a small thought the other day. Average utilitarianism appeals to me most it the various utilitarianisms I have seen, but has the obvious drawback of allowing utility to be raised simply by destroying beings with less than average utility.
My thought was that maybe this could be solved by making the individual utility functions permanent in some sense, i. e. killing someone with low utility would still cause average utility to decrease if they would have wanted to live. This seems to match my intuitions on morality better than any other utilitarianism I have seen.
One strange thing is that the preferences of our ancestors still would count just as much as any other person, but I had already been updating in this direction after reading an essay by gwern called the narrowing moral circle. I wasn't able to think of anything else too weird, but I haven't thought too much about this yet.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has explored this idea already, or if anyone has any thoughts about it.
Comment author:Nornagest
02 May 2013 01:08:27AM
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3 points
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That's even less tractable a problem than summing over the utility functions of all existing agents, but that's not necessarily a game-changer. There are some other odd features of this idea, though:
It only seems to work with preference utilitarianism; pleasure/pain utilitarianism would still treat the painless death of an agent with neutral expected utility as neutral. Fair enough; preference utilitarianism seems less broken than conventional utilitarianism anyway.
Contingent on using preference utilitarianism, certain ways of doing the summing lead to odd features regarding changing cultural values: if future preferences are unbounded in time, a big enough stack of dead ancestors with strong enough preferences could render arbitrary social changes unethical. This could be avoided by summing only over potential lifespan, time-discounting in some way, or using some kind of nonstandard aggregation function that takes new information into account.
Let's say we're now at a point in time . We can plan for using only the preferences of existing or previous agents; all very intuitive so far. But let's say we consider a time further in the future. New agents will have been introduced between and , and there's no obvious way to take their preferences into account; every option gives us potential inconsistencies between optimal actions planned at and optimal actions taken at time . The least bad option seems to be doing a probability-weighted average over agents extant in all possible futures, but (besides being just ridiculously intractable) that seems to introduce some weird acausal effects that I'm not sure I want to deal with. Taking the average at least avoids some of the crazier possible consequences, like the utilitarian go forth and multiply that I'm sure you've thought of already.
Comment author:CAE_Jones
02 May 2013 07:16:59PM
1 point
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I notice that most of the innovation in game accessibility (specifically accessibility to the visually impaired) comes from sighted or formerly-sighted developers. I feel like this is a bad thing. I'm not sure why I feel this way, considering that the source of innovation is less important than that it happens. Maybe it's a sort of egalitarian instinct?
(To clarify, I mean innovation in indie games like those in the audiogames.net database. Mainstream console/PC games have so little innovation toward accessibility as to be negligible, so far as I can tell.)
Have you adjusted for (what I assume is) the fact that most game developers are sighted? In fact, have you checked whether there even exist any not-even-formerly-sighted game developers? It seems like that would be a tough row to hoe even by the standards of blind-from-birth life.
That aside, I'm really not seeing the problem here. You're going to complain about people being altruistic towards the visually impaired? Really confused about your thought process.
Has anyone here heard of Michael Marder and his "Plant Thinking" - there is this book being published by Columbia University which argues that plants need to be considered as subjects with ethical value, and as beings with "unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom." This is not satire. He is a research professor of philosophy at a European university.
Comment author:Jack
03 May 2013 02:27:25AM
9 points
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In Gender Trouble (1990), Judith Butler
...
accommodates plants' constitutive subjectivity, drastically different from that of human beings, and describes their world from the hermeneutical perspective of vegetal ontology (i.e., from the standpoint of the plant itself)"
...
So, in addition to the "vegetal différance" and "plants' proto-writing" (112) associated with Derrida, we're told that plant thinking "bears a close resemblance to the 'thousand plateaus'" (84) of Deleuze and Guattari. At the same time, plant thinking is "formally reminiscent of Heidegger's conclusions apropos of Dasein" (95),
So it's that kind of book.
Just so everyone is clear: this is the kind of "philosophy" that, in the States or the UK, would be done only at unranked programs or in English departments.
The review literally name checks every figure of shitty continental philosophy.
Comment author:MrMind
03 May 2013 10:20:33AM
2 points
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If I'm not mistaken, there have been some study on plant communication and data elaboration from their roots, enough to classify them as at least primitively intelligent.
Anyway, since they are in fact living and autonomous being, I don't see why they shouldn't be considered subjects of ethical reflections...
Comment author:gwern
03 May 2013 02:15:43AM
2 points
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It's too bad; a book on what plants might think or what their views might look like - a look which took the project seriously in extrapolating a possible plant civilization and its views and ethics, a colossally ambitious and scientificly-grounded work of SF - could be pretty awesome. But from the sound of that review, it's exactly where Marder falls down.
After contemplating how odd it is that people have a revulsion against weapons which use disease and poison that they don't seem to have against weapons which use momentum and in fact are apt to consider momentum weapons high status, I wondered if there could be sentients with a reversed preference.
I think sentient trees could fill the requirement. IIRC, plants modulate their poisons according to threat level.
Comment author:CellBioGuy
03 May 2013 05:56:37AM
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3 points
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Olaf Stapledon's 'Star Maker'. The whole thing is filtered through semi-communist theology, but its a fascinating trek through the author's far-flung ideas about all kinds of creatures and what they could hold in common versus major differences that come from their natures. One of the dozens of races he describes is a race of plant-men on an airless world that locked up all its volatiles in living soup in the deep valleys, they stand at the shore and soak up energy from their star in a meditative trance during the day and do more animal-style activity at night... his writing style is NOT for everyone nor is his philosophy but I heartily enjoyed it.
Comment author:gwern
03 May 2013 03:49:22PM
5 points
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Yes! Star Maker is one of the very few books that I'd place up there with Blindsight and a few others in depicting truly alien aliens; and he doesn't do it once but repeatedly throughout the book. It's really impressive how Stapledon just casually scatters around handfuls of jewels that lesser authors might belabor singly throughout an entire book.
Comments (648)
-EY
I agree but man does EY/MIRI need a better PR agent.
It is known.
(oh, oops, wrong fandom.)
Vague thought: it is very bad when important scientists die (in the general sense, including mathematicians and cmputer scientists). I recently learned that von Neumann died at age 54 of cancer. I think it's no exaggeration to say that von Neumann was one of the most influential scientists in history and that keeping him alive even 10 years more would have been of incredible benefit to humankind.
Seems like a problem worth solving. Proposed solution: create an organization which periodically offers grants to the most influential / important scientists (or maybe just the most influential / important people period), only instead of money they get a team of personal assistants who take care of their health and various unimportant things in their lives (e.g. paperwork). This team would work to maximize the health and happiness of the scientist so that they can live longer and do more science. Thoughts?
Only tangentially related vague thought:
As I understand it, Stephen Hawking's words-per-minute in writing is excruciatingly slow, and as a result I recall seeing in a documentary that he has a graduate student whose job is to watch as he is writing and to complete his sentences/paragraphs, at which point Hawking says 'yes' or 'no'. I would think that over time this person would develop an extremely well-developed mental Hawking...
Emulators are slow due to being on different hardware than the device they are emulating. If you're also on inferior hardware to the device you're trying to emulate, it will be very slow.
That said, even a very slow Hawking emulator is a pretty cool thing to have.
It is unclear whether the intellectual output of eminent scientists is best increased by prolonging their lives through existing medical technology, rather than by increasing their productivity through time-management, sleep-optimization or other techniques. Maybe the goal of your proposed organization would be better achieved by paying someone like David Allen to teach the von Neumanns of today how to be more productive. (MIRI did something similar to this when it hired Kaj Sotala to watch Eliezer Yudkowsky as he worked on his book.)
Anyone who has managed to become an eminent scientist is probably doing a pretty good job at things like time management. Since maintaining healthy habits is not a prerequisite for attaining eminence, that is more likely to be an area where they're lacking.
There is something comically presumptuous about this statement. Von Neumann had very unusual work habits (he liked noise and distraction). He was also phenomenally productive (how many branches of mathematics have YOU helped invent?)
Given that he was (A) smarter and (B) more successful than any life coach you are likely to find, I would be surprised if this sort of coaching added value.
I deleted the remark about von Neumann while you were composing your reply, after a quick Google search revealed no support for it. (I seem to remember a quote by von Neumann himself where he lamented that his lack of focus had prevented him from being much more productive as a scientist, but this is a very vague memory and I'm now unwilling to rest any claims on it.) For what is worth, here are some relevant remarks on von Neumann's work habits by Herman Goldstine, which contradict my earlier (and now retracted) statement:
A more straightforward approach: Give a prize to every leading scientist who reach 70, 80, and 90 years of age. It is counter-intuitive, but it seems that monetary incentives do actually influence people's mortality. Source: I remember reading this somewhere, so it must be true.
"Most influential/important scientists" would likely tell this organization exactly where to go and how fast. They are usually not short on cash and can handle their own affairs. Or their partners/secretaries do that already. Some eccentric ones might not, but they are even more likely to reject this "help".
I am also wondering whom you would name as top 5 or so "important scientists"?
My thoughts exactly. Most of the high-level mathematicians I know are loathe to off-load their travel arrangements onto the department travel agent, even though the process is more efficient.
This, about pursuing varied movement, might offer intrinsic motivation to a few.
Maybe, but this isn't their comparative advantage. They could spend some time becoming an expert on health, but it makes much more sense to have a health expert take care of the health stuff. I expect there are enough trivial inconveniences along the way that even academics with the money don't do this, and that seems very bad.
I see no particular reason that the partner of an influential scientist ought to be particularly knowledgeable about health. And do academics even have personal secretaries anymore? I haven't observed any such people in my limited experience in academia so far.
Dunno. This is out of my domain.
If they have an administrative position, yes.
Isn't there a known phenomenon where, for example, where Nobel prize winners get significantly less productive after they win their prizes? Is it really true that the marginal benefit of keeping old scientists alive longer would be that great?
Isn't that more a case of reversion to the mean, with the implication that it's more a random variable than anything else?
Maybe. Feynman talks about scientists getting less productive once they move to the IAS. But 10 years of a less productive von Neumann still beats 10 years of a dead one, I think. (Edit: It's less clear whether 10 years of a productive von Neumann and then 10 years of a dead von Neumann beats 20 years of a less productive von Neumann, I guess.)
To make the device seem more trustworthy he made the handle heavier.
From the same article:
Anyone know why Jaan Tallin is an investor in this? I don't see anything on their site about a friendliness emphasis. Is he following Shane Legg's advice here? Is that also why Good Ventures are involved, or do they just want to make a profit?
Incidentally, if anybody is curious why I stopped doing the Politics threads, it's because it seemed like people were -looking- for political things to discuss, rather than discussing the political things they had -wanted- to discuss but couldn't. People were still creating discussion articles which were politically oriented, so it didn't even help isolate existing political discussion.
Some people seem to have a strong moral intuition about purity that informs many of their moral decisions, and others don't. One guess for where a purity meme might come from is that it strongly enforces behaviors that prevented disease at the time the meme was created (e.g. avoiding certain foods or STDs). This hypothesis predicts that purity memes would be strongest coming from areas and historical periods where it would be particularly easy to contract diseases, especially diseases that are contagious, and especially diseases that don't cause quick death but cause infertility. Is this in fact the case?
Not exactly the same question, but see here. (Short answer: yes.)
A contrary hypothesis:
Strong moral intuitions about purity do not carry significant useful knowledge about disease — and indeed can lead people to be resistant to accurate information about disease prevention. Rather, these intuitions stem from practices for maintaining group identity by refusing to share food, accommodations, or sexuality with members of rival groups. These are (memetically) selected-for because groups that do not maintain group identity cease to be groups. (This is not "group selection" — it's not that the members of these groups die out; it's that they blend in with others.)
Thus, we should expect purity memes to be strongest among people whose groups feel economically or politically threatened by foreigners, by different ethnic groups (including the threat of assimilation) or the like — and possibly weakest among world travelers, members of mixed-race or interfaith families, international traders, career diplomats, foreign correspondents, and others who benefit from engaging with foreigners or different ethnic groups.
The standard problem with using the Drake Equation and similar formulas to estimate how much of the Great Filter is in front of us and how much is behind us is the lack of good estimates for most terms. However, there are other issues also. The original version of the Drake Equation presupposes independence of variables but this may not be the case. For example, it may be that the same things that lead to a star having a lot of planets also contribute to making life more likely (say for example that the more metal rich a star is the more elements that life has a chance to form from or make complicated structures with). What are the most likely dependence issues to come up in this sort of context, or do we know so little now that this question is still essentially hopeless?
People who are currently in jobs you like, how did you get them?
My partner (who actually had a résumé posted online, whereas I did not) got calls from two recruiters for the same company; and redirected one of them to me. We wanted to relocate to a warmer climate; we both interviewed and got offers.
In other words, I had sufficient skill ... but also I got lucky big-time.
(A harder question is whether I actually like my job. I've been doing it for 7+ years, but I'm also actively looking for alternatives.)
Last night I finished writing http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns
I'd appreciate any comments or fixes before I go around making a Discussion post and everything.
I have a question about linking sequence posts in comment bodies! I used to think it was a nice, helpful thing to do, such as citing your sources and including a convenient reference. But then it struck me that it might come off as patronizing to people that are really familiar with the sequences. Oops. Any pointers for striking a good balance?
Linking old posts helps all of the new readers who are following the conversation; this is probably more important than any effects on the person you're directly responding to.
Always err on the side of littering your comment with extra links. IME, that's more practical and helpful, and I've never personally felt irked when reading posts or comments with lots of links to basic Sequence material.
In most cases, I've found that it actually helps remember the key points by seeing the page again, and helps most arguments flow more smoothly.
There is no balance. It's always better to provide the links.
If you got a reference in mind, linking it will always be more helpful than not.
The only failure mode to avoid is implicitly or explicitly stating "Because you haven't read X, your input is not worth considering."
There was a time when that was a common failure mode on LW ("Go read the Sequences, then we'll talk"). Less so now.
Request for advice:
I need to decide in the next two weeks which medical school to attend. My two top candidates are both state universities. The relevant factors to consider are cost (medical school is appallingly expensive), program quality (reputation and resources), and location/convenience.
Florida International University Cost: I have been offered a full tuition scholarship (worth about $125,000 over four years), but this does not cover $8,500/yr in "fees" and the cost of living in Miami is high. The FIU College of Medicine's estimated yearly cost of attendance (including all living expenses) is nearly $69,000; if I multiply that by four years and subtract the value of my scholarship I get about $145,000. However, my husband will continue working during all four years, defraying some of my expenses, so I hope to keep my actual indebtedness at graduation under $100,000 if I attend FIU. Program Quality: This is difficult to gauge, because the program is very new, having only graduated its first class of MDs this year. Their reputation is necessarily unestablished. All of their graduates successfully matched into residencies this year (a few in prestigious hospitals and competitive specialties), but this is reassuring rather than impressive. They only graduated 33 students although they matriculated 40 in their first year; not sure if that represents a worrying rate of attrition or what became of the other students (though I plan to ask). Another consideration is that although FIU is affiliated with many well-known hospitals in South Florida, they do not have a dedicated teaching hospital. Location/convenience: Already mentioned the higher cost of living. Miami is also farther from where we are currently living and working (over 3 hours away vs under 2 for Gainesville). My husband could probably find work in Miami, but it might be less desirable or pay less than his current job, and we would probably need to live apart during the week until he does. Also, the widely-scattered hospitals through which FIU students rotate, as well as South Florida traffic, make me worry about my quality of life during my third year.
The University of Florida Cost: I have been offered $7500 per year in aid. The rest of the $50k/year cost of attendance (including living expenses) would be loans. Again, my husband would continue to work and pay some of my expenses. In all I estimate a $30k-$60k difference in indebtedness at graduation between the two programs (in FIU's favor). Program Quality: UF is Florida's oldest and best-respected medical school, which is to say good but not elite. UF also has a reputable teaching hospital on campus, and a larger research budget, which would help build my resume if I decide to try for a very competitive specialty. They graduate 95% of their students within 4 years (98% in 5 years), and their residency match list looks a bit nicer than FIU's on average. For what it's worth (probably not much), I have a better feeling about this program's "culture" based on the events I've attended. Location/Convenience: Gainesville is closer. It might be feasible for my husband to stay at his current workplace for all four years if we find a good place to live around midway between.
Other advice I have received: Jess Whittlestone at 80,000 Hours suggested I'd do best, impact-wise, to consider which school would maximize my earning-to-give potential. This would mostly depend on the specialty I go into-- based on how I feel now, I'm most likely to try for an Internal Medicine subspecialty, which would mean doing a fellowship after residency. A good residency match would position me well for a fellowship in a competitive field. Physicians whom I have asked for advice tell me that people commonly match into even very competitive residencies from lower-ranked US MD schools, but it takes more work (better test scores, stronger evaluations). They also tend to say "OMG take the money" when I say the words "full tuition scholarship".
You can probably tell that I lean towards UF, but I don't want to make a bad call. What am I missing? What should I be asking the schools? Where should I go?
I started typing something, then realized it was based on someone's claim in a forum discussion and I hadn't bothered trying to verify it.
It turns out that the information was exaggerated in such a way that, had I not bothered verifying, I would have updated much more strongly in favor of the efficacy of an organization of which he was a member. I got suspicious when Google turned up nothing interesting, so I checked the web site of said organization, which included a link to a press release regarding the subject.
Based on this and other things I've read, I conclude that this organization tends to have poor epistemic rationality skills overall (I haven't tested large groups of members; I'm comparing the few individual samples I've seen to organization policies and strategies), but the reports that they publish aren't as biased as I would expect if this were hopelessly pervasive.
(On the off chance that said person reads this and suspects that he is the subject, remember that I almost did the exact same thing, and I'm not affiliated with said organization in any way. Is there LW discussion on the tendency to trust most everything people say?)
This older post is relevant.
I initially misread this as saying you were impressed with his persuasive skill and strongly tempted to update on the organization's effectiveness based on that.
I have looked through this thread, bravely started by ibidem, and I have noticed what seems like a failure mode by all sides. A religious person does not just believe in God, s/he alieves in God, too, and logical arguments are rarely the best way to get through to the relevant alieving circuit in the brain. Oh, they work eventually, given enough persistence and cooperation, but only indirectly. If the alief remains unacknowledged, we tend to come up with logical counterarguments which are not "true rejections". As long as the alief is there, the logic will bounce off with marginal damage, if any. I wonder if there is a more effective level of discourse.
Just to refresh, here is the definition:
from the original paper, and some examples:
I am guessing that part of any religious belief is the alief in a just universe.
If I were talking to a religious person elsewhere, that would make sense. But, this is LessWrong, and the respectful way to have this discussion here is to depend upon logic and rationalism. Anything else, and in my opinion we'd be talking down to him.
Sorry, we don't live in a should-universe, either. If your goal is to influence a religious person's perception of his/her faith, you do what it takes to get through, not complain that the other party is not playing by some real or imaginary rules. But hey, feel free to keep talking about logic, rationalism and respect. That's what two-boxers do.
Unsure rather than "yes", but: xrrcvat gur qhfg qbja?
Regarding question 1: Fhecevfrq gurer jrer fb srj crbcyr gung xarj jung n "ubylfgbar" jnf. V thrff gurer nera'g znal Cngevpx B'Oevra ernqref urer.
Vs V'z guvaxvat pbeerpgyl, lneqf hfrq gb or ragveryl qveg, fhpu gung vs lbh fcevaxyrq gur lneq jvgu jngre, lbh pbhyq nibvq evfvat qhfg.
I also answered "unsure", and thought it was gb xrrc gur qhfg qbja (ybbxf yvxr V'z gur guveq bar va gung pnfr).
For #2 Fcevaxyvat jngre ba gur tebhaq gb xrrc vg sebz envfvat qhfg?
Anyone here have experience hiring people on sites like Mechanical Turk, oDesk, TaskRabbit, or Fiverr? What kind of stuff did you hire them to do, and how good were they at doing it? It seems like these services could be potentially quite valuable so I'd like to get an idea of what it's possible to do with them.
MIRI has hired an artist, an LW programmer, and probably some others on oDesk. One person I heard about pays $1/hr people on oDesk to just sit with him on Skype all day and keep him on task.
I have used Fiverr to hire a professional voice actor to read short messages. For small scripting jobs or Photoshop work, I have always found reddit's r/forhire subreddit useful.
As a stereotypical twenty-something recent graduate I am lacking in any particular career direction. I've been considering taking various psychometric or career aptitude tests, but have found it difficult to find unbiased reports on their usefulness. Does anyone have any experience or evidence on the subject?
imagine your ideal workplace, try to quantify what makes it ideal, and then work backwards. Or just try to make the most money you can since you're young and probably have a high stress tolerance given the lack of stressors elsewhere (children, marriage, housing, health, etc.)
I have some thoughts about extending "humans aren't automatically strategic" to whole societies. I am just not sure how much of that is specific for the place where I live, and how much is universal.
Seems to me that many people believe that improvements happen magically, so you don't have to use any strategy to get them, and actually using a strategy would somehow make things worse -- it wouldn't be "natural", or something. Any data can be explained away using hindsight bias: If we have an example of a strategy bringing a positive change, we can always say that the change happened "naturally" and the strategy was superfluous. On the other hand, about a positive change not happening we can always say the problem wasn't lack of strategy, but that the change simply wasn't meant to happen, so any strategy would have failed, too.
Another argument against strategic changes is that sometimes people use a strategy and screw up. Or use a strategy to achieve an evil goal. (Did you notice it is usually the evil masterminds who use strategy to reach their goals? Or neurotic losers.) Just like trying to change yourself is "unnatural", trying to change the society is "undemocratic". We should only follow the uncoordinated unstrategic moves of millions of unstrategic individuals, and expect all the good things to happen magically (unless they simply weren't meant to happen, of course).
If you start following a strategy, all your imperfections may be reinterpreted as costs of following this strategy. Let's say that you don't have many friends. That's okay, there are many people like this. But let's say that you don't have enough friends while studying Japanese. Well, that means you are a heartless person who sacrificed human relations because of their stupid obsession with anime, or something like this. A group of people can be criticized for taking things too seriously and spending too much time following their goals (any value greater than zero can be too much). Even worse sin would be not accepting someone as their member, just because the actions of the person are contrary to the group's goals.
I am not sure where this all goes, I just have a feeling that if you want to live in a good society, you should not expect magic to happen, but you should find similarly thinking people, create a group, and try to make the change you want to see. And you should expect to be attacked completely irrationally from all sides. Than includes from inside, because even some of your well-meaning members will accept the anti-epistemology, and will try to convince you to self-destructive actions, and if you refuse they will leave you disappointed.
I was wondering to what extent you guys agree with the following theory:
All humans have at least two important algorithms left over from the tribal days: one which instantly evaluates the tribal status of those we come across, and another that constantly holds a tribal status value for ourselves (let's call it self-esteem). The human brain actually operates very differently at different self-esteem levels. Low-status individuals don't need to access the parts of the brain that contains the "be a tribal leader" code, so this part of the brain is closed off to everyone except those with high self-esteem. Meanwhile, those with low self-esteem are running off of an algorithm for low-status people that mostly says "Do what you're told". This is part of the reason why we can sense who is high status so easily - those who are high status are plainly executing the "do this if you're high-status" algorithms, and those who are low status aren't. This is also the reason why socially awkward people report experiencing rare "good nights" where they feel like they are completely confident and in control (their self-esteem was temporarily elevated, giving them access to the high-status algorithms) , and why in awkward situations they feel like their "personality disappears" and they literally cannot think of anything to say (their self-esteem is temporarily lowered and they are running off of a "shut up and do what you're told" low-status algorithm). This suggests that to succeed socially, one must trick one's brain into believing that one is high-status, and then one will suddenly find oneself taking advantage of charisma one didn't know one had.
Translated out of LessWrong-speak, this equates to "A boost or drop in confidence can make you think very differently. Take advantage of confidence spirals in order to achieve social success."
Your "running different code" approach is nice... especially paired up with the notion of "how the algorithm feels from the inside", seems to explain lots of things. You can read books about what that code does, but the best you can get is some low quality software emulation... meanwhile, if you're running it, you don't even pay attention to that stuff as this is what you are.
Yep. As I understand it, this is part of standard PUA advice.
Yes, IME that's very close to the truth. I think that's the “less strong version” of this comment that people were talking of.
The Blueprint Decoded puts it as ‘when you [feel low-status], you don't give yourself permission to [do high-status stuff]’.
(I also seem to recall phonetician John C. Wells claiming that it's not like working-class people don't know what upper-class people speak like, it's just that they don't want to speak like that because it'd sound too posh for them.)
Related research: Mark Leary's sociometer theory and Amy Cuddy on power posing.
I've had a similar idea that perceived self status was the primary difference between skill/comfort at public speaking. I think the theory might be a good first approximation, but that there is a lot more going on too.
Note that the flip side is that (perception of personal) high status can make you stupid, for analogous reasons to the ones you give here.
A possible reason rejection therapy has positive spillover effects. When, contra your expectations, people agree to all sorts of weird requests from you, it signals to you that you are high status.
Have you considered looking into the psychology literature? http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/
tldr: Fake it 'till you make it.
Onwards to find a combination of electrical impulses or chemicals one can pump into the brain to keep it permanently in high-status mode!
Way simplified; people are not only complicated, but different from each other.
If one stripped away the big claims and just left a correctly-sized claim about human brains, that would be better.
Hello,
I am a young person who recently discovered Less Wrong, HP:MOR, Yudkowsky, and all of that. My whole life I've been taught reason and science but I'd never encountered people so dedicated to rationality.
I quite like much of what I've found. I'm delighted to have been exposed to this new way of thinking, but I'm not entirely sure how much to embrace it. I don't love everything I've read although some of it is indeed brilliant. I've always been taught to be skeptical, but as I discovered this site my elders warned me to be skeptical of skepticism as well.
My problem is that I'd like an alternate viewpoint. New ideas are always refreshing, and it's certainly not healthy to constantly hear a single viewpoint, no matter how right your colleagues think they are. (It becomes even worse if you start thinking about a cult.)
Clearly, the Less Wrong community generally (unanimously?) agrees about a lot of major things. For example, religion. The vast majority of "rationalists" (in the [avoid unnecessary Yudkowsky jab] LW-based sense of the term) and all of the "top" contributors, as far as I can tell, are atheists.
Here I need to be careful to stay on topic. I was raised religious, and still am, and I'm not planning to quit anytime soon. I don't want to get into defending religion or even defending those who defend religion. My point in posting this is simply to ask you—what, in your opinion, are the most legitimate criticisms of your own way of thinking? If you say there aren't any, I won't believe you. I sincerely hope that you aren't afraid to expose your young ones to alternate viewpoints, as some parents and religions are. The optimal situation for you is that you've heard intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism but your position remains strong.
In other words, one way to demonstrate an argument's strength is by successfully defending it against able criticism. I sometimes see refutations of pro-religious arguments on this site, but no refutations of good arguments.
Can you help? I don't necessarily expect you to go to all this trouble to help along one young soul, but most religious leaders are more than happy to. In any case, I think that an honest summary of your own weak points would go a long way toward convincing me that you guys are any better than my ministers.
Sincerely, and hoping not to be bitten, a thoughtful but impressionable youth
What good arguments do you think LW hasn't talked about?
Religion holds an important social and cultural role that the various attempts at rationalist ritual or culture haven't fully succeeded at filling yet.
The 2012 survey showed something around 10% non-atheist, non-agnostic.
From most plausible to least plausible:
It's possible to formulate something like an argument that religious practice is good for neurotypical humans, in terms of increasing life expectancy, reducing stress, and so on.
Monocultures tend to do better than populations with mixed cultural heritage, and one could argue that some religions do very well at creating monocultures where none previously existed, e.g., the mormons, or perhaps the Catholic Church circa 1800 in the states.
I've heard some reports that religious affiliation is good for one's dating pool.
See, but these are only arguments that religion is useful. Rationalists on this site say that religion is most definitely false, even if it's useful; are there any rational thinkers out there who actually think that religion could realistically be true? I think that's a much harder question that whether or not it's good for us.
You may find this helpful: http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2012/02/results-of-the-.html
I have been vocally anti-atheist here and elsewhere, though I was brought up as a "kitchen atheist" ("Obviously there is no God, the idea is just silly. But watch for that black cat crossing the road, it's bad luck"). My current view is Laplacian agnosticism ("I had no need of that hypothesis"). Going through the simulation arguments further convinced me that atheism is privileging one number (zero) out of infinitely many possible choices. It's not quite as silly as picking any particular anthropomorphization of the matrix lords, be it a talking bush, a man on a stick, a dude with a hammer, a universal spirit, or what have you, but still an unnecessarily strong belief.
If you are interested in anti-atheist arguments based on moral realism made by a current LWer, consider Unequally Yoked. It's as close to "intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism" as I can think of.
There is an occasional thread here about how Mormonism or Islam is the one true religion, but the arguments for either are rarely rational.
That's a really good way of looking at things, thanks. From now on I'm an "anti-atheist" if nothing else...and I'll take a look at that blog.
Could you bring yourself to believe in one particular anthropomorphization, if you had good reason to (a vision? or something lesser? how much lesser?)
I find it unlikely, as I would probably attribute it to a brain glitch. I highly recommend looking at this rational approach to hypnosis by another LW contributor. It made me painfully aware how buggy the wetware our minds run on is, and how easy it is to make it fail if you know what you are doing. Thus my prior when seeing something apparently supernatural is to attribute it to known bugs, not to anything external.
The brain glitch is always available as a backup explanation, and they certainly do happen (especially in schizophrenics etc.) But if I had an angel come down to talk to me, I would probably believe it.
How would you tell the difference? Also see this classic by another LWer.
Personally, I think this one is more relevant. The biggest problem with the argument from visions and miracles, barring some much more complicated discussions of neurology than are really necessary, is that it proves too much, namely multiple contradictory religions.
It's a very interesting post. You're right that we can't accept all visions, because they will contradict each other, but in fact I think that many don't. It's entirely plausible in my mind that God really did appear to Mohammed as well as Joseph Smith, for instance, and they don't have to invalidate each other. But of course if you take every single claim that's ever been made, it becomes ridiculous.
Does it prove too much, then, to say that some visions are real and some are mental glitches? I'm not suggesting any way of actually telling the difference.
Well, it's certainly not a very parsimonious explanation. This conversation has branched in a lot of places, so I'm not sure where that comment is right now, but as someone else has already pointed out, what about the explanation that most lightning bolts are merely electromagnetic events, but some are thrown by Thor?
Proposing a second mechanism which accounts for some cases of a phenomenon, when the first mechanism accounts for others, is more complex (and thus in the absence of evidence less likely to be correct) than the supposition that the first mechanism accounts for all cases of the phenomenon. If there's no way to tell them apart, then observations of miracles and visions don't count as evidence favoring the explanation of visions-plus-brain-glitches over the explanation of brain glitches alone.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean we have any reason to suppose it's true. And when we have no reason to suppose something is true, it generally isn't.
It's a good post, but overly logical and technically involved for a non-LWer. Even if you agree with the logic, I can hardly imagine a religious person alieving that their favorite doctrine proves too much.
FWIW, I've had the experience of a Presence manifesting itself to talk to me. The most likely explanation of that experience is a brain glitch. I'm not sure why I ought to consider that a "backup" explanation.
Right, obviously it's a problem. There are lots of people who think they've been manifested to, and some of them are schizophrenic, and some of them are not, and it's a whole lot easier to just assume they're all deluded (even if not lying). But even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he could believe in God if he had no other choice. (I have a source if you want.)
Certainly, if you're completely determined not to believe no matter what—if you would refuse God even if He appeared to you himself—then you never will. But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you're giving it a chance of 0.
Since you are rationalists, you can't have it actually be 0. So what is that 0.0001 that would convince you?
There's a big difference between "no matter what" and "if He appeared to you himself," especially if by the latter you mean appearing to my senses. I mean, the immediate anecdotal evidence of my senses is far from being the most convincing form of evidence in my world; there are many things I'm confident exist without having directly perceived them, and some things I've directly perceived I'm confident don't exist.
For example, a being possessing the powers attributed to YHWH in the Old Testament, or to Jesus in the New Testament, could simply grant me faith directly -- that is, directly raising my confidence in that being's existence. If YHWH or Jesus (or some other powerful entity) appeared to me that way, I would believe in them.
I'm assuming you're not counting that as convincing me, though I'm not sure why not.
Actually, that isn't true. It might well be that I assign a positive probability to X, but that I still can't rationally reach a state of >50% confidence in X, because the kind of evidence that would motivate such a confidence-shift simply isn't available to me. I am a limited mortal being with bounded cognition, not all truths are available to me just because they're true.
But it may be that with respect to the specific belief you're asking about, the situation isn't even that bad. I don't know, because I'm not really sure what specific belief you're asking about. What is it, exactly, that you want to know how to convince me of?
That is... are you asking what would convince me in the existence of YHWH, Creator of the Universe, the God of my fathers and my forefathers, who lifted them up from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand an an outstretched arm, and through his prophet Moses led them to Sinai where he bequeathed to them his Law?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who was born a man and died for our sins, that those who believe in Him would not die but have eternal life?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Loki, son of the All-Father Odin who dwells in highest Asgard, and will one day bring about Ragnarok and the death of the Gods?
Or... well, what, exactly?
With respect to those in particular, I can't think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering (EDIT: that's hyperbole; I really mean "to convince me"; see below), though that's not to say that such experiences don't exist or aren't possible... I just don't know what they are.
With respect to other things, I might be able to.
Huh. That's interesting. For at least the first two I can think of a few that would convince me, and for the third I suspect that a lack of being easily able to be convinced is connected more to my lack of knowledge about the religion in question. In the most obvious way for YHVH, if everyone everywhere started hearing a loud shofar blowing and then the dead rose, and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up and started answering every halachic question in ways that resolve all the apparent problems, I think I'd be paying close attention to the hypothesis.
Similar remarks apply for Jesus. They do seem to depend strongly on making much more blatant interventions in the world then the deities generally seem to (outside their holy texts).
Technically the shofar blowing thing should not be enough sensory evidence to convince you of the prior improbability of this being the God - probability of alien teenagers, etcetera - but since you weren't expecting that to happen and other people were, good rationalist procedure would be to listen very carefully what they had to say about how your priors might've been mistaken. It could still be alien teenagers but you really ought to give somebody a chance to explain to you about how it's not. On the other hand, we can't execute this sort of super-update until we actually see the evidence, so meanwhile the prior probability remains astronomically low.
In this context I think it makes sense to ask "showed up where?" but if the answer were "everywhere on earth at once," I'd call that pretty damn compelling.
Yeah, you're right, "to be worth considering" is hyperbole. On balance I'd still lean towards "powerful entity whom I have no reason to believe created the universe, probably didn't lift my forefathers up from bondage in Egypt, might have bequeathed them his Law, and for reasons of its own is adopting the trappings of YHWH" but I would, as you say, be paying close attention to alternative hypotheses.
Fixed.
You're right, I'm assuming that God doesn't just tweak anyone's mind to force them to believe, because the God of the Abrahamic religions won't ever do that—our ultimate agency to believe or not is very important to Him. What would be the point of seven billion mindless minions? (OK, it might be fun for a while, but I bet sentient children would be more interesting over the course of, say, eternity.)
And if it were a demon? A ghost? A fairy? A Greek deity? If these are different, why are they different? What about an angel that 's from another religion?
The optimal situation could also be hearing intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism, learn from it and having a new 'strong position' incorporating the new information. (See: lightness).
How legitimate does "most legitimate" have to be? If I thought there were any criticisms sufficiently legitimate to seriously reconsider my viewpoints, I would have changed them already. To the extent that my religious beliefs are different than they were, say, fifteen years ago, it's because I spent a long time seeking out arguments, and if I found any persuasive, I modified my beliefs accordingly. But I reached a point where I stopped finding novel arguments for theism long before I stopped looking, so if there are any arguments for theism that I would find compelling, they see extremely little circulation.
The arguments for "theism" which I see the least reason to reject are ones which don't account for anything resembling what we conventionally recognize as theism, let alone religion, so I'm not sure those would count according to the criteria you have in mind.
I'd be happy to hear what you've got. I can't just ask you to share all of your life-changing experiences, obviously. Having looked for new arguments and not found any good ones is a great position, I think, because then you can be pretty sure you're right. I don't know if I could ever convince myself there are no new arguments, though.
I'm certainly not convinced that there are no new arguments, but if there were any good arguments, I would expect them to have more currency.
If you want to explain what good arguments you think there are, I'd certainly be willing to listen. I don't want to foist all the work here onto you, but honestly, having you just cover what you think are the good arguments would be simpler than me covering all the arguments I can think of, none of which I actually endorse, without knowing which if any you ascribe to.
I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. I'm sure that you've done much more research on this than I have. I'm looking for decent arguments because I don't believe all these people who say there aren't any.
I have no sense of what's important, and respond to stimuli that I should just ignore.
That's a complicated question in general, because "our own way of thinking" is not a unary thing. We spend a lot of time disagreeing with each other, and we talk about a lot of different things.
But if you specifically mean atheism in its "it is best to reason and behave as though there are no gods, because the alternative hypotheses don't have enough evidence to justify their consideration" formulation, I think the most legitimate objection is that it may turn out to be true that, for some religious traditions -- maybe even for most religious traditions -- being socially and psychologically invested in that tradition gets me more of what I want than not being invested in it, even if the traditions themselves include epistemically unjustifiable states (such as the belief that an entity exists that both created the universe and prefers that I not eat pork) or false claims about the world (as they most likely do, especially if this turns out to be true for religious traditions that disagree with one another about those claims).
I don't know if that's true, but it's plausible, and if it is true it's important. (Not least of which because it demonstrates that those of us who are committed to a non-religious tradition need to do more work at improving the pragmatic value of our social structures.)
As for atheism, I don't mean those that think religion is good for us and we ought to believe it whether or not it's true. I meant rational thinkers who actually believe God realistically could exist. It's definitely interesting to think about trying to convince yourself to believe in God, or just act that way, but is it possible to actually believe with a straight face?
Well, you asked for the most legitimate criticisms of rejecting religious faith.
Religious faith is not a rational epistemology; we don't arrive at faith by analyzing evidence in an unbiased way.
I can make a pragmatic argument for embracing faith anyway, because rational epistemology isn't the only important thing in the world nor necessarily the most important (although it's what this community is about).
But if you further constrain the request to seeking legitimate arguments for treating religious faith (either in general, or that of one particular denomination) as a rational epistemology, then I can't help you. Analyzing observed evidence in an unbiased way simply doesn't support faith in YHWH as worshiped by 20th-century Jews (which is the religious faith I rejected in my youth), and I know of no legitimate epistemological criticism that would conclude that it does, nor of any other denomination that doesn't have the same difficulty.
Now, if you want to broaden your search to include not only counterarguments against rejecting religious faith of specific denominations, but also counterarguments against rejecting some more amorphous proto-religious belief like "there exist mega-powerful entities in the universe capable of feats I can barely conceive of" (without any specific further claims like "and the greatest one of them all divided the Red Sea to free our ancestors from slavery in Egypt" or "and the greatest one of them all wrote this book so humanity would know how to behave" or even "and they pay attention to and direct human activity") then I'd say the most legitimate counterargument is Copernican: I start out with low confidence that my species is the most powerful entity in the universe, and while the lack of observed evidence of such mega-powerful entities necessarily raises that confidence, it might not legitimately raise it enough to accept.
But we've now wandered pretty far afield from "my way of thinking," as I'm perfectly comfortable positing the existence of mega-powerful entities in the universe capable of feats I can barely conceive of.
Thank you for answering my question. If I read it right you're saying "No, it's not possible to reconcile religion and rationality, or at least I can't refer you to any sane person who tried."
If I understand what you're using "religion" and "rationality" to mean, then I would agree with the first part. (In particular, I understand you to be referring exclusively to epistemic rationality.)
As for the second part, there are no doubt millions of sane people who tried. Hell, I've tried it myself. The difficulty is not in finding one, but rather in finding one who provides you with what you're looking for.
I'm much closer to "below average" than to the "top" as far as LW users go, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
I assume that by "way of thinking" you mean "atheism", specifically (if not, what did you mean ?).
I don't know how you judge which criticisms are "legitimate", so I can't answer the question directly. Instead, I can say that the most persuasive arguments against atheism that I'd personally seen come in form of studies demonstrating the efficacy of prayer. If prayer does work consistently with the claims of some religion, this is a good indication that at least some claims made by the religion are true.
Note, though, that I said "most persuasive"; another way to put it would be "least unpersuasive". Unfortunately, all such studies that I know of have either found no correlation between prayer and the desired effect whatsoever; or were constructed so poorly that their results are meaningless. Still, at least they tried.
In general, it is more difficult to argue against atheism (of the weak kind) than against theism, since (weak) atheism is simply the null hypothesis. This means that theists must provide positive evidence for the existence of their god(s) in order to convince an atheist, and this is very difficult to do when one's god is undetectable, or works in mysterious ways, or is absent, etc., as most gods tend to be.
Many people would disagree that atheism is the null hypothesis. "All things testify of Christ," as some say, and in those circles people honestly believe they've been personally contacted by God. (I'm talking about Mormons, whose God, from what I've heard, is not remotely undetectable.)
Have most atheists honestly put thought into what if there actually was a God? Many won't even accept that there is a possibility, and I think this is just as dangerous as blind faith.
I would venture a guess that atheists who haven't put thought into the possibility of there being a god are significantly in the minority. Although there are some who dismiss the notion as an impossibility, or such a severe improbability as to be functionally the same thing, in my experience this is usually a conclusion rather than a premise, and it's not necessarily an indictment of a belief system that a conclusion be strongly held.
Some Christians say that "all things testify of Christ." Similarly, Avicenna was charged with heresy for espousing a philosophy which failed to affirm the self-evidence of Muslim doctrine. But cultures have not been known to adopt Christianity, Islam, or any other particular religion which has been developed elsewhere, independent of contact with carriers of that religion.
If cultures around the world adopted the same religion, independently of each other, that would be a very strong argument in favor of that religion, but this does not appear to occur.
OK, that works. But what evidence do we have that unambiguously determines that there is no deity? I'd love to hear it. Not just evidence against one particular religion. Active evidence that there is no God, which, rationally taken into account, gives a chance of ~0 that some deity exists.
What evidence of no deity could you possibly expect to see? If there were no God, I wouldn't expect there to be any evidence of the fact. In fact, if I were to find the words "There is no God, stop looking" engraved on an atom, my conclusion would not be "There is no God," but rather (ignoring the possibility of hallucination) "There is a God or some entity of similar power, and he's a really terrible liar." Eliezer covers this sort of thing in his sequence entry You're Entitled to Arguments But Not That Particular Proof.
If you really want to make this argument, describe a piece of evidence that you would affirmatively expect to see if there were no God.
Right, I don't see how there could be any evidence to convince a person to the point of a 0.0001 chance of God. And so when all of these people say that they've concluded that the chance of God is negligible, I think that they're subject to a strong cognitive bias worsened by the fact that they're supposed to be immune to those.
Two things that your perpsective appears to be missing here:
1) Lots of people here were raised in religious families; they didn't start out privileging atheism. (Or they aren't atheists per se; I'm agnostic between atheism and deism; it's just the anthropomorphic interventionist deity I reject.)
2) You aren't the first believer to come here and present the case you are trying to make. See, for example, the rather epic conversation with Aspiringknitter here. You aren't even the first Mormon to make the case here. Calcsam has been quite explicit about it.
Note that both of those examples are people who've accumulated quite a bit of karma on LessWrong. People give them a fair hearing. They just don't agree that their arguments are compelling.
Don't know. Most probably have something better to do. I have thought about what would happen if there was a God. If it turned out the the god of the religion I was brought up in was real then I would be destined to burn in hell for eternity. If version 1 of the same god (Yahweh) existed I'd probably also burn in hell for eternity but I'm a bit less certain about that because the first half of my Bible talked more about punishing people while alive (well, at the start of the stoning they are alive at least) than the threat of torment after death. If Alah is real... well, I'm guessing there is going to be more eternal pain involved since that is just another fork of the same counterfactual omnipotent psychopath. Maybe I'd have more luck with the religions from ancient India---so long as I can convince the gods that lesswrong Karma counts.
So yes, I've given some thought to what happens if God exists: I'd be screwed and God would still be a total dick of no moral worth.
Assigning probability 0 or 1 to a hypothesis is an error, but rounding off 0.0001 to 0 is less likely to be systematically destructive to an entire epistemological framework than rounding 0.0001 off to 1.
So, with no evidence either way, would you honestly rate the probability of the existence of God as 0.0001%?
That probability is off by a factor of 100 from the one I mentioned.
(And with 'no evidence either way' the probability assigned would be far, far lower than that. It takes rather a lot of evidence to even find your God in hypothesis space.)
Many people here are grew up in religious settings. Eliezer for example comes from an Orthodox Jewish family. So yes, a fair number have given thought to this.
Curiously many different people believe that they've been contacted by God, but they disagree radically on what this contact means. Moreover, when they claim to have been contacted by God but have something that doesn't fit a standard paradigm, or when they claim to have been contacted by something other than God, we frequently diagnose them as schizophrenic. What's the simplest explanation for what is going on here?
Simple explanations are good, but not necessarily correct. It's awfully easy to say they're all nutcases, but it's still easy and a bit more fair to say that they're mostly nutcases but maybe some of them are correct. Maybe. I think it's best to give it a chance at least.
Openmindedness in these respects has always seemed to me highly selective -- how openminded are you to the concept that most thunderbolts may be mere electromagnetic phenomena but maybe some thunderbolts are thrown down by Thor? Do you give that possibility a chance? Should we?
Or is it only the words that current society treats seriously e.g. "God" and "Jesus", that we should keep an open mind about, and not the names that past societies treated seriously?
If billions of people think so, then yes, we should.
It's not just that our society treats Jesus seriously, it's that millions of people have overwhelming personal evidence of Him. And most of them are not rationalists, but they're not mentally insane either.
I agree. As soon as a theist can demonstrate some evidence for his deity's existence... well, I may not convert on the spot, given the plethora of simpler explanations (human hoaxers, super-powered alien teenagers, stuff like that), but at least I'd take his religion much more seriously. This is why I mentioned the prayer studies in my original comment.
Unfortunately, so far, no one managed to provide this level of evidence. For example, a Mormon friend of mine claimed that their Prophet can see the future. I told him that if the Prophet could predict the next 1000 rolls of a fair six-sided die, he could launch a hitherto unprecedented wave of atheist conversions to Mormonism. I know that I personally would probably hop on board (once alien teenagers and whatnot were taken out of the equation somehow). That's all it would take -- roll a die 1000 times, save a million souls in one fell swoop.
I'm still waiting for the Prophet to get back to me...
This one is a classic Sunday School answer. The God I was raised with doesn't do that sort of thing very often because it defeats the purpose of faith, and knowledge of God is not the one simple requirement for many versions of heaven. It is necessary, they say, to learn to believe on your own. Those who are convinced by a manifestation alone will not remain faithful very long. There's always another explanation. So yes, you're right, God (assuming Mormonism is true for a moment, as your friend does) could do that, but it wouldn't do the world much good in the end.
The primary problem with this sort of thing is that apparently God was willing to do full-scale massive miracles in ancient times. So why the change?
Right, but hopefully this explains one of the reasons why I'm still an atheist. From my perspective, gods are no more real than 18th-level Wizards or Orcs or unicorns; I don't say this to be insulting, but merely to bring things into perspective. There's nothing special in my mind that separates a god (of any kind) from any other type of a fictional character, and, so far, theists have not supplied me with any reason to think otherwise.
In general, any god who a priori precludes any possibility of evidence for its existence is a very hard (in fact, nearly impossible) sell for me. If I were magically transported from our current world, where such a god exists, into a parallel world where the god does not exist, how would I tell the difference ? And if I can't tell the difference, why should I care ?
Well, if in one world, your disbelief results in you going to hell and being tormented eternally, I think that would be pretty relevant. Although I suppose you could say in that case you can tell the difference, but not until it's too late.
Right, simpler explanations start with a higher probability of being correct. And if two explanations for the same data exist, you should assign a high chance to the one that is simpler.
Why should one give "it a chance" and what does that mean? Note also that "nutcase" is an overly strong conclusion. Human reasoning and senses are deeply flawed, and very easy to have problems. That doesn't require nutcases. For example, I personally get sleep paralysis. When that occurs, I get to encounter all sorts of terrible things, demons, ghosts, aliens, the Borg, and occasionally strange tentacled things that would make Lovecraft's monsters look tame. None of those things exist- I have a minor sensory problem. The point of using something like schizophrenia is an example is that it is one of the most well-known explanations for the more extreme experiences or belief sets. But the general hypothesis that's relevant here isn't "nutcase" so much as "brain had a sensory or reasoning error, as they are wont to do."
Do you mean to ask this about specifically the religion issue or things in general? Keep in mind, that while policy debates should not be one sided, that's because reality is complicated and doesn't make any effort to make things easy for us. But, hypotheses don't function that way- the correct hypotheses really should look extremely one-sided, because they reflect what a correct description of reality is.
So the best arguments for an incorrect hypothesis are by nature going to be weak. But if I were to put on my contrarian arguer hat for a few minutes and give my own personal response, I'd say that first cause arguments are possibly the strongest argument for some sort of deity.
It's a good point. Of course, hundreds of years ago, the argument was also pretty one-sided, but that doesn't mean anyone was correct. I also don't think that the argument really is one-sided today, I just think that the two sides manage to ignore each other quite thoroughly. I
'm not expecting this site to house a debate on the possibility of God's existence. Clearly this site is for atheists. I'm asking, is that actually necessary? I suppose you're saying that yes, it is impossible for rationality and religion to coexist, and that's why there are very few theistic rationalists. I'm still not convinced of that.
First cause arguments are a strange existential puzzle, depending on the nature of your God. Any thought system that portrays God as a sort of person will run into the same problem of how God came into existence.
A rationalist should strive to have a given belief if and only if that belief is true. I want to be a theist if and only if theism is correct.
Note also that getting the right answers to these sorts of questions matters far more than some would estimate. If Jack Chick is correct, then most people here (and most of the world) is going to burn in hell unless they are saved. And this sort of remark applies to a great deal of religious positions (less so for some Muslims, most Jews and some Christians but the basic point is true for a great many faiths). In the other direction, if there isn't any protective, intervening deity, then we need to take serious threats to humanity's existence, like epidemics, asteroids, gamma ray bursts, nuclear war, bad AI, nanotech, etc. a lot more seriously, because no one is going to pick up the pieces if we mess up.
To a large extent, most LWians see the basics of these questions as well-established. Theism isn't the only thing we take that attitude about. You also won't see here almost any discussion of continental philosophy for example.
So is LW for people who think highly rationally, or for atheists who think highly rationally? Are those necessarily the same? If not, where are the rational theists?
You're assuming that "no God" is the null hypothesis. Is there a good, rational reason for this? One could just as easily argue that you should be an atheist if and only if it's clear that atheism is correct. Without any empirical evidence either way, is it more likely that there is some sort of Deity or that there isn't?
IMO there's no such thing as a null hypothesis; epistemology doesn't work like that. The more coherent approach is bayesian inference, where we have a prior distribution and update that distribution on seeing evidence in a particular way.
If there were no empirical evidence either way, I'd lean towards there being an anthropomorphic god (I say this as a descriptive statement about the human prior, not normative).
The trouble is that once you start actually looking at evidence, nearly all anthropomorphic gods get eliminated very quickly, and in fact the whole anthropomorphism thing starts to look really questionable. The universe simply doesn't look like it's been touched by intelligence, and where it does, we can see that it was either us, or a stupid natural process that happens to optimize quite strongly (evolution).
So while "some sort of god" was initially quite likely, most particular gods get eliminated, and the remaining gods are just as specific and unlikely as they were at first. So while the "gods" subdistribution is getting smashed, naturalistic occamian induction is not getting smashed nearly as hard, and comes to dominate.
The only gods remaining compatible with the evidence are things like "someone ran all possible computer programs", which is functionally equivalent to metaphysical "naturalism", and gods of very specific forms with lots of complexity in the hypothesis that explains why they constructed the world to look exactly natural, and then aren't intervening yet.
Those complex specific gods only got a tiny slice of the god-exists pie at the beginning and cannot collect more evidence than the corresponding naturalistic explanation (because they predict the same), so they are pretty unlikely.
And then when you go to make predictions, what these gods might do gets sliced up even further such that the only useful predictive framework is the occamian naturalism thing.
There is of course the chance that there exists things "outside" the universe, and the major implication from that is that we might some day be able to break out and take over the metauniverse as well.
Neither, really. It's for people who are interested in epistemic and instrumental rationality.
There are a number of such folks here who identify as theists, though the majority don't.
Can you clarify what you mean by "some sort of Deity"? It's difficult to have a coherent conversation about evidence for X without a shared understanding of what X is.
In general, it's not rational to posit that anything exists without evidence. Out of the set of all things that could be posited, most do not exist.
"Evidence" need not be direct observation. If you have a model which has shown good predictive power, which predicts a phenomenon you haven't observed yet, the model provides evidence for that phenomenon. But in general, people here would agree that if there isn't any evidence for a proposition, it probably isn't true.
ETA: see also Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Certainly. But why is "God" the proposition, and not "no God?"
Because nearly all things that could exist, don't. When you're in a state where you have no evidence for an entity's existence, then odds are that it doesn't exist.
Suppose that instead of asking about God, we ask "does the planet Hoth, as portrayed in the Star Wars movies, exist?" Absent any evidence that there really is such a planet, the answer is "almost certainly not."
If we reverse this, and ask "Does the planet Hoth, as portrayed in the Star Wars movies, not exist?" the answer is "almost certainly."
It doesn't matter how you specify the question, the informational content of the default answer stays the same.
I don't think that the Hoth argument applies here, because what we're looking for is not just some teapot in some random corner of the univers—it's a God actively involved in our universe. In other words, in God does exist, He's a very big part of our existence, unlike your teapot or Hoth.
That's a salient difference if his involvement is providing us with evidence, but not if it isn't.
Suppose we posit that gravitational attraction is caused by invisible gravity elves, which pull masses towards each other. They'd be inextricably tied up in every part of our existence. But absent any evidence favoring the hypothesis, why should we suspect they're causing the phenomenon we observe as gravity? In order for it to make sense for us to suspect gravity elves, we need evidence to favor gravity elves over everything else that could be causing gravity.
Not really. Bayesian reasoning doesn't have any notion of a null hypothesis. I could just as well have said "I want to be an atheist if and only if atheism is correct".
One can talk about the prior probability of a given hypothesis, and that's a distinct issue which quickly gets very messy. In particular, it is extremely difficult to both a) establish what priors should look like and b) not get confused about whether one is taken for granted very basic evidence about the world around us (e.g. its existence). One argument, popular at least here, is that from an Occam's razor standpoint, most deity hypotheses are complicated and only appear simple due to psychological and linguistic issues. I'm not sure how much I buy that sort of argument. But again, it is worth emphasizing that one doesn't need control of the priors except at a very rough level.
It may help if you read more on the difference between Bayesian and frequentist approaches. The general approach of LW is primarily Bayesian, whereas notions like a "null hypothesis" are essentially frequentist.
You're right that prior probability gets very, very messy. It's a bit too abstract to actually be helpful to us.
So, then, all we can do is look at the evidence we do have. You're saying that the argument is one-sided; there is no evidence in favor of theism, at least no good evidence. I agree that there is a lot of bad evidence, and I'm still looking for good evidence. You've said you don't know of any. Thank you. That's what I wanted to know. In general I don't think it's healthy to believe the opposing viewpoint literally has no case.
You cannot escape the necessity of dealing with priors, however messy they are.
The available evidence supports an infinite number of hypotheses. How do you decide which ones to consider? That is your prior, and however messy it may be, you have to live with it.
Do you think that young earth creationists have no substantial case? What about 9/11 truthers? Belief in astrology? Belief that cancer is a fungus(no I'm not making that one up)? What about anything you'll find here?
The problem is that some hypotheses are wrong, and will be wrong. There are always going to be a lot more wrong hypothesis than right ones. And in many of these cases, there are known cognitive biases which lead to the hypothesis type in question. It may help to again think about the difference between policy issues (shouldn't be one-sided), and factual questions (which once one understands most details, should be).
Lately there seems to be an abundance of anecdotal and research evidence to refrain from masturbation/quit porn. I am not sure that the evidence is conclusive enough for me to believe the validity of the claims. The touted benefits are impressive, while the potential cons seem minimal. I would be interested in some counter arguments and if not too personal, I'd like to know the thoughts of those who have participated in quitting masturbation/porn.
I quit porn three weeks ago and attempted to quit masturbation but failed. Subjectively I notice that I'm paying more attention to the women around me (and also having better orgasms when I do masturbate). My main reason for doing this was not so much that I found the research convincing as that the fact that people were even thinking about porn in this particular way helped me reorient my attitude towards porn from "it's harmless" to "it's a superstimulus, it may be causing a hedonic treadmill, and I should be wary of it in the same way that I'm now wary of sugar." (There's also a second reason which is personal.)
I like sixes_and_sevens' hypothesis. Here's another one: a smallish number of people really do have a serious porn addiction and really do benefit substantially from quitting cold turkey, but they're atypical. (I don't think I fall into this category, but I still think this is an interesting experiment to run.)
General comment: I think many people on LW have an implicit standard for adopting potential self-improvements that is way too high. When you're asking for conclusive scientific evidence, you're asking for something in the neighborhood of a 90% probability of success or higher. I think you should be willing to take probabilities of success in the neighborhood of 10% or lower in cases where the costs are sufficiently low. If you try out enough self-improvements, one of them may improve your life enough to have been worth all of the other failures (again, in cases where the costs are low). Plus, I think it's useful to make a habit out of changing your habits (think of it as simulated annealing on your life). Otherwise, you may just get better and better at arguing yourself out of changing anything.
In other words, I think people should be less risk-averse with respect to potential self-improvements. Anna thinks something like this is particularly likely to be a failure mode of people with a math background, where the demands for probability of correctness are much higher than in most of life.
On a slightly related note, vibrators like the Hitachi Magic Wand are probably a superstimulus for women analogous to porn for men. (of course, anyone can enjoy either type, but that is less common)
Also I agree with your general comment about self improvements, especially since it is hard to find techniques/habits that work for everyone.
Yes, but make sure to count all the costs, incl. opportunity costs, in there.
Agreed. But the opportunity cost of quitting porn, for example, is negative: it's actually saving me time.
People on LW have a habit of treating posts as if LW were a peer-reviewed journal rather than a place to play with ideas.
I thought that the opposite was true, in that LW regulars tended to be eager to try any suggested self-improvement idea that anybody had spent more than a few sentences offering anecdotal support for. Though that might just be overgeneralizing from my own habits.
Hmm. My impression is that people here are very willing to try anti-akrasia ideas but not very willing to try other kinds of ideas. I could be mistaken though.
This is also my impression. People are willing to discuss anti-akrasia since Eliezer talked about it, but otherwise people have an unfortunate allief that any advise older than a couple decades is superstition.
Hypothesis: arbitrary long-term acts of self-control improve personal well-being, regardless of the benefits of the specific act.
See also: Lent.
On skeptics.stackexchange.com, the only answer on this topic is that masturbation is completely harmless.
There's a big difference between the physical act of masturbation, which is probably harmless and good for you in moderate amounts, and the mental act of watching porn, which seems to be what people are advocating refraining from.
Also, r/nofap is weirdly cult-like from what I've seen and probably not a good resource. For example, this is the highest upvoted post that's not a funny picture, and it seems to be making very, very exaggerated claims about the benefits of not jacking off: "If you actually stop jerking off, and I mean STOP - eliminate it as a possibilty from your life (as I and many others have) - your sex starved brain and testicles will literally lead you out into the world and between the legs of a female. It just HAPPENS. Try it, you numbskull. You'll see that I speak the truth."
Oh. I didn't notice the difference, because I automatically assumed those two acts to be connected.
So, would that mean that masturbation without watching porn is healthy and harmless, but masturbation with watching porn is harmful? Sounds like an easy setup for a scientific experiment.
But what if you're imagining porn?
Uhhh... perhaps the best solution would be to masturbate while solving problems of algebra, just to make sure to avoid the sin of superstimulus. (Unless algebraic equations count as superstimulus too, in which case I am doomed completely.)
This whole topic feels extremely suspicious to me. We have two crowds shouting their messages ("masturbation is completely safe and healthy, no bad side effects ever", "porn is a dopamine addiction to superstimulus and will destroy your mind"), both of them claim to have science on their side, and imagining the world where both are correct does not make much sense.
To be honest, I suspect that both crowds are exaggerating and filtering the evidence. I also suspect that the actual reasons which created these crowds are something like this -- "Watching porn and masturbation is something that low-status males do, because high-status males get real sex. Let's criticize the low-status thing. Oh wait, women masturbate too; and we can't criticize that, because criticizing women would be sexist! Also, religion criticized masturbation, so we should actually promote it, just to show how open-minded we are. But porn is safe to criticize, because that's mostly a male thing. Therefore masturbation is perfectly okay, especially for a female, but porn is bad, and masturbation with porn is also bad. Other kinds of superstimuli, such as romantic stories for women, don't associate with low status, therefore we should ignore them in our debate about the dangers of superstimuli. Let's focus on criticizing the low-status things."
Romance novels are low status. They just aren't as low status as porn.
Really? I can imagine a world where plenty of things that might be considered addictive are quite safe and healthy, as long as you do them in moderation - and what counts as "moderation" may well be different among different people. E.g. some people might be highly sensitive to addiction, so that their only alternative is quitting the habit entirely.
I really don't understand how imagining "porn is a superstimulus because it allows you to instantly watch amazing sex that conforms to your personal taste. and therefore makes real sex seem less enjoyable" and "masturbation is not physically unhealthy, nor will it make real sex seem less enjoyable, and not walking around with blue balls all the time will make you a little happier, and 'practicing' for sex occasionally will make the act easier" leads to a world that doesn't make sense. I think it makes much more sense than your conspiracy theory against low-status males.
And romantic stories for woman seem to obviously not be a superstimulus in the same way porn might be? (For one, outside the realm of porn, TV is fairly addictive and literature isn't.) There are diagnosed porn addicts whose addiction is ruining their lives, but I've never heard of any romantic novel addicts.
Literature isn't addictive? I think I'm going to have to disagree with you there. (And TV isn't addictive for me, personally, at -all-.)
Additionally, a Google search on "romance novel addiction" suggests there are such addicts.
My reasoning is that if porn is seriously harmful and masturbation is absolutely harmless, there should be some aspect present at porn, but absent at masturbation and everyday life, which causes the harm. I have problem pointing out precisely what exactly that aspect would be.
Too much conforming to my personal taste? That's already true for masturbation. Unlike at real sex, I can decide when, how often, for how long or short time, etc. But I am supposed to believe that none of this is a superstimulus, and it cannot make real sex less enjoyable even a bit. I am also supposed to believe that the similarities between masturbation and sex will help practising and make the act easier, but the differences are absolutely inconsequential.
Seeing too many sexy ladies that I can't have sex with, some of them could be even more attractive than my partner? Well, I see sexy ladies when I walk down the street. And in the summer I will see even more. On the beach, still more. (I am not sure whether nudist beach is already beyond the limits, or not.) But I am supposed to believe that as long as I don't see their nipples or something, it is completely safe. But if I see a nipple, my brain will release the waves of dopamine and my mind will be ruined. (If I understand the definition of porn correctly, seeing a naked sexy lady on a picture is already porn, even if she is not doing anything with anyone, am I right? And even limiting oneself to that kind of porn would be already harmful.)
All of that together? So if I see a sexy lady on the beach, and then I go home and masturbate thinking about her, that's completely harmless. However, if I make a picture of her, and then at home I look at the picture, especially if the picture was taken at the nudist beach, that is harmful; the mere looking is harmful, even if I don't touch myself.
Sorry for exaggerations, but this is how those theories feel to me, when taken together. I can imagine making convincing arguments for each of them separately. I just have trouble imagining a reasonable model which would explain both of them at the same time. Why a visual superstimulus ruins the real sex, but a tactile one is completely harmless.
Compared with that, a hypothesis "it is popular to slander low-status behavior, and the rest is rationalization" seems more likely.
Honestly, dude, you seem to be sort of engaging in black-and-white thinking that I wouldn't expect from a LW reader. Yes, a noncentral example of porn use such as "looking at a candid picture of a nude woman and not touching your dick" is almost definitely harmless. A much more central example of porn use, however, is a guy who has been jacking off to porn four times a week since he was about thirteen, and has in that time seen probably hundreds of porn videos, of which he has selected a few that appeal very specifically to his particular tastes, which he watches regularly. There's obviously no boundary where as soon as you do something labeled "watching porn" your brain will "release waves of dopamine and ruin your mind". But it doesn't seem hard to imagine that maybe that guy would be healthier if he changed his habits and started jacking off to his imagination (which he would probably end up doing much less frequently, I imagine), and "don't jack off to anything but your imagination" is a much, much more effective rule to precommit to than "stop watching porn if you get the feeling that you might be falling for a superstimulus", or whatever.
Ironically, I imagined myself as making fun of other people's black-and-white thinking. (Masturbation completely healthy and harmless: in the skeptics discussion I linked. Porn: superstimulus ruining one's mind and life.) I tried to find out how exactly the world would look like for people who believe both of these things; mostly because nobody here tried to contradict either of them. What would be the logical consequences of these beliefs -- because people are often not aware of logical consequences of the beliefs they already have.
To me, both these beliefs feel like exaggerations, and they also feel contradictory, although technically they are not speaking about exactly the same thing. One kind of superstimulus is perfectly safe, other kind of superstimulus is addictive -- is this an inconsistent approach to superstimuli, or a claim that these superstimuli are of a different nature?
I am thankful for two contributors willing to bite the bullet and describe what could the world look like if both beliefs were true. TheOtherDave said that actions controlled by one's own mind (masturbation) could have smaller effect than actions not controlled by one's own mind (watching a porn movie), just like it is difficult to tickle oneself. Qiaochu_Yuan said that some actions have natural limit where a human must stop (masturbation), while other actions have no such limit and can be prolonged indefinitely (watching porn), just like you can't eat the whole day, but you can play a computer game the whole day. -- Both of these answers make sense and I did not realize that.
And that's essentially all I wanted from this topic. (Unless someone would give me a pointer to a scientific study concerned with differences between masturbation without porn and masturbation with porn, in terms of addiction and behavioral change.)
I guess that according to such people the problem is not porn per se, but the addiction to porn. Looking at ladies on the beach and going home and masturbating once isn't problematic, but if you do that for 10% of your waking time for years... And ‘don't watch porn’ makes for a better Schelling point than ‘don't watch more than half an hour of porn a week’, for someone who's trying to quit.
You can continuously watch porn in the same way that you can continuously play World of Warcraft. You can't continuously masturbate in the same way that you can't continuously eat pizza.
"Porn" is too vague. Are you talking about a quick 5-minute session or a marathon lasting several hours? If you've never done the latter, consider that some people might. The effects of the two are likely to be quite different, especially if the latter is a frequent occurrence.
Also, it's not at all popular among my friend groups to slander porn. That's seen as sex-negative, which is one reason I never got around to thinking about porn as potentially harmful until quite recently.
It may be that masturbation has satiation much more than looking at pictures does.
Generally, when people claim something is harmless, they don't mean that it's "absolutely harmless". Playing videogames is harmful if you do it to the exclusion of eating, sleeping, and excreting, but one would not normally say that videogames are harmful based on them being harmful under such conditions. It is entirely possible to claim that porn is harmful, and that masturbation under similar circumstances (such as masturbating to mental images of people) is also harmful, while still consistently insisting that masturbation is harmless.
While I agree with your ultimate conclusion, it's not that implausible that synchronously controlled self-stimulation (which IME most masturbation is, though I suppose it depends on what you're into) is less stimulating than asychronously controlled self-stimulation (e.g., programming a pattern of changing frequencies on a vibrator, or downloading a bunch of porn and queuing a slideshow on my desktop, or visiting a series of previously selected websites with changing content), for many of the same reasons that I can't tickle myself effectively with my fingers but can easily be tickled by inanimate objects.
If that turns out to be true, I would expect a not-very-rigorous analysis to conclude "masturbation is less stimulating than porn", since asynchronously controlled masturbation is relatively rare, as is synchronously controlled porn.
I cannot reach the site from where I am now, but try to look at The Last Psychiatrist blog, it has an article right about that. Its main point is that there's a problem that cause both porn addiction and difficulties with sexual relationships, so that they're not directly related. I have to say that my experience agrees with that: I haven't any particular problem with my sexuality, and quitting porn for a couple of months did not had any noticeable positive or negative effect.
I don't either. The anecdotal evidence is the usual crap that you'll see for anything, and the research they cite is equivocal or only distantly related or worse (someone linked a blog post arguing for this on LW in the past and I pointed out that most of the points were awful and one study actually showed the opposite of what they thought it showed, although I can't seem to refind this comment right now).
A monthly "Irrational Quotes" thread might be nice. My first pick would be:
Samuel Nigro, "Why Evolutionary Theories are Unbelievable."
Previous threads: Anti-rationality quotes and Arational quotes. There have also been A sense of logic and A Kick in the Rationals, though these were not restricted to quotes.
Suppose I have several different points to make in response to a given comment. Do I write all of them in a single comment, or do I write each of them in a separate comment? There doesn't seem to be an universally accepted norm about this -- the former seems to be more common, but there's at least one regular here who customarily does the latter and I can't remember anyone complaining about that.
Advantages of writing separate comments:
Disadvantages of writing separate comments:
Should we standardize on one possibility, or decide on a case-by-case basis?
Michael Chwe, a game theorist at UCLA, just wrote a book on Jane Austin. It combines game theory and social signaling, so it looks like it'll be on the LW interest spectrum:
A later expansion on that gives a list of biases to avoid, including the typical mind fallacy and a few new ones:
I got a decent smartphone (SGS3) a few days ago and am looking for some good apps for LessWrong-related activities. I am particularly interested in recommendations for lifelogging apps but would look into any other type of recommendations. Also I've rooted the phone.
Would learning Latin confer status benefits?
I've recently gotten the idea in my head of taking a twelve-week course in introductory Latin, mostly for nerdy linguistic reasons. It occurs to me that learning an idiosyncratic dead language is archetypal signalling behaviour, and this fits in with my observations. The only people I know with any substantial knowledge of the language either come from privileged backgrounds and private education, or studied Classics at university (which also seems to correlate with a privileged background).
A lot of the bonding that takes place over Latin doesn't even seem to involve being able to actually use it. A shared experience of the horrors of conjugate forms and declension tables seems to be enough. While a twelve-week introductory course isn't going to equip someone with much in the way of usable skills, it will certainly satisfy this criteria.
It seems odd that it's possible to just acquire an elite status marker like this.
Some, usually. But there is (almost) no chance that if status is your goal that learning latin is a sane approach for gaining it. Learn something social.
Taboo "status." Who do you want to impress?
It probably depends on where you are, how old you are, and what your social circle is like.
I'd like some comments on the landing page of a website I am working on Experi-org. It is to do with experimenting with organisations.
I mainly want feedback on tone and clarity of purpose. I'll work on cleaning it up more (getting a friend who is a proof reader to give it the once over), once I have those nailed down.
You might be interested in Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity. More generally, I was a little surprised at the pure experimental approach that didn't have a look at the degree of corruption in different real-world societies.
I recommend "From major events like the Enron scandal to low level inefficiency in government, corruption has a massive effect on our day to day lives."
As for the next sentence, I'm not sure whether I don't understand you or don't agree with you. Admittedly, there will be more crime when there are weak barriers to crime, but I also believe that people who want to get away with something will, if they have the power, try to shape organizations which will let them get away with what they want.
Something to contemplate: Man creates huge Ponzi scheme in EVE Online just to prove he can do it. When it's over, he considers returning the money, which he has no use for, but he just can't make himself do it.
99 life hacks around the house: http://siriuslymeg.tumblr.com/post/33738057928/99-life-hacks-to-make-your-life-easier
I have come to adore this sentence. It feels like home. Or a television character's catchphrase.
That's actually discussed in Thinking Fast and Slow... familiar things that are cognitively easy to process feel nice.
Together with Vallinder, I'm working on a paper on wild animal suffering. We decided to poll some experts on animal perception about their views on the likelihood that various types of animals can suffer. It now occurs to me that it might be interesting to compare their responses with those of the LW community. So, if you'd like to participate, click on one of the links below. The survey consists of only five questions and completing it shouldn't take more than a minute.
Click here if your year of birth is an even number
Click here if your year of birth is an odd number
(The two surveys are identical, except for the order in which the questions are presented. Please only take one of the surveys. Thanks!)
"Foos can suffer" could mean "all foos can suffer", "the prototypical foo can suffer", or "there exists a foo that can suffer".
You might clarify whether "mammals" is meant to include humans and other primates.
There is an article on impending AI and its socioeconomic consequences in the current issue of Mother Jones.
Karl Smith's reaction sounds rather Hansonian, except he doesn't try to make it sound less dystopian.
Does anyone remember a post (possibly a comment) with a huge stack of links about animal research not transferring to humans?
It was indeed me. You can find it somewhere, but I copied it over to http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#fn95
Hi, my name is Jason, this is my first post. I have recently been reading about 2 subjects here, Calibration and Solomoff Induction; reading them together has given me the following question:
How well-calibrated would Solomonoff Induction be if it could actually be calculated?
That is to say, if one generated priors on a whole bunch of questions based on information complexity measured in bits - if you took all the hypotheses that were measured at 10% likely - would 10% of those actually turn out to be correct?
I don't immediately see why Solomonoff Induction should be expected to be well-calibrated. It appears to just be a formalization of Occam's Razor, which itself is just a rule of thumb. But if it turned out not to be well-calibrated, it would not be a very good "recipe for truth." What am I missing?
Solomonoff Induction could be well-calibrated across mathematically possible universes. If a hypothesis has a probability 10%, you should expect it to be true in 10% of the universes.
Important thing is that Solomonoff priors are just a starting point in our reasoning. Then we update on evidence, which is at least as important as having reasonable priors. If it does not seem well calibrated, that is because you can't get good calibration without using evidence.
Imagine that at this moment you are teleported to another universe with completely different laws of physics... do you expect any other method to work better than Solomonoff Induction? Yes, gradually you get data about the new universe and improve your model. But that's exactly what you are supposed to do with Solomonoff priors. You wouldn't predictable get better results by starting from different priors.
To me it seems that Occam's Razor is a rule of thumb, and Solomonoff Induction is a mathematical background explaining why the rule of thumb works. (OR: "Choose the most simple hypothesis that fits your data." Me: "Okay, but why?" SI: "Because it is more likely to be the correct one.")
You can't get a good "recipe for truth" without actually looking at the evidence. Solomonoff Induction is the best thing you can do without the evidence (or before you start taking the evidence into account).
Essentially, the Solomonoff Induction will help you avoid the following problems:
Getting inconsistent results. For example, if you instead supposed that "if I don't have any data confirming or rejecting a hypothesis, I will always assume its prior probability is 50%", then if I give you two new hypotheses X and Y without any data, you are supposed to think that p(X) = 0.5 and p(Y) = 0.5, but also e.g. p(X and Y) = 0.5 (because "X and Y" is also a hypothesis you don't have any data about).
Giving so extremely low probability to a reasonable hypothesis that available evidence cannot convince you otherwise. For example if you assume that prior probability of X is zero, then with proper updating no evidence can convince you about X, because there is always an alternative explanation with a very small but non-zero evidence (e.g. the lords of Matrix are messing with your brain). Even if the value is technically non-zero, it could be very small like 1/10^999999999, so all the evidence you could get within your human life could not make you change your mind.
On the other hand, some hypotheses do deserve very low prior probability, because reasoning like "any hypothesis, however unlikely, has prior probability at least 0.01" can be exploited by a) Pascal's mugging, b) constructing multiple mutually exclusive hypotheses which together have arbitrarily high probability (e.g. "AAA is the god of this world and I am his prophet", "AAB is the god of this world and I am his prophet"... "ZZZ is the god of this world and I am his prophet").
I had a small thought the other day. Average utilitarianism appeals to me most it the various utilitarianisms I have seen, but has the obvious drawback of allowing utility to be raised simply by destroying beings with less than average utility.
My thought was that maybe this could be solved by making the individual utility functions permanent in some sense, i. e. killing someone with low utility would still cause average utility to decrease if they would have wanted to live. This seems to match my intuitions on morality better than any other utilitarianism I have seen.
One strange thing is that the preferences of our ancestors still would count just as much as any other person, but I had already been updating in this direction after reading an essay by gwern called the narrowing moral circle. I wasn't able to think of anything else too weird, but I haven't thought too much about this yet.
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has explored this idea already, or if anyone has any thoughts about it.
You don't evaluate the level of contemporary preference at each future time.
You evaluate the current preferences, which are evaluated over the future history of the universe.
The people to be slain will likely object to this plan based on these current preferences.
That's even less tractable a problem than summing over the utility functions of all existing agents, but that's not necessarily a game-changer. There are some other odd features of this idea, though:
To whoever implemented this:
You win, sir or madam.
I notice that most of the innovation in game accessibility (specifically accessibility to the visually impaired) comes from sighted or formerly-sighted developers. I feel like this is a bad thing. I'm not sure why I feel this way, considering that the source of innovation is less important than that it happens. Maybe it's a sort of egalitarian instinct?
(To clarify, I mean innovation in indie games like those in the audiogames.net database. Mainstream console/PC games have so little innovation toward accessibility as to be negligible, so far as I can tell.)
Have you adjusted for (what I assume is) the fact that most game developers are sighted? In fact, have you checked whether there even exist any not-even-formerly-sighted game developers? It seems like that would be a tough row to hoe even by the standards of blind-from-birth life.
That aside, I'm really not seeing the problem here. You're going to complain about people being altruistic towards the visually impaired? Really confused about your thought process.
Has anyone here heard of Michael Marder and his "Plant Thinking" - there is this book being published by Columbia University which argues that plants need to be considered as subjects with ethical value, and as beings with "unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom." This is not satire. He is a research professor of philosophy at a European university.
http://www.amazon.ca/Plant-Thinking-A-Philosophy-Vegetal-Life/dp/0231161255 and here is a review http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/39002-plant-thinking-a-philosophy-of-vegetal-life/
I don't want to live on this planet anymore
...
...
So it's that kind of book.
Just so everyone is clear: this is the kind of "philosophy" that, in the States or the UK, would be done only at unranked programs or in English departments.
The review literally name checks every figure of shitty continental philosophy.
If I'm not mistaken, there have been some study on plant communication and data elaboration from their roots, enough to classify them as at least primitively intelligent. Anyway, since they are in fact living and autonomous being, I don't see why they shouldn't be considered subjects of ethical reflections...
It's too bad; a book on what plants might think or what their views might look like - a look which took the project seriously in extrapolating a possible plant civilization and its views and ethics, a colossally ambitious and scientificly-grounded work of SF - could be pretty awesome. But from the sound of that review, it's exactly where Marder falls down.
After contemplating how odd it is that people have a revulsion against weapons which use disease and poison that they don't seem to have against weapons which use momentum and in fact are apt to consider momentum weapons high status, I wondered if there could be sentients with a reversed preference.
I think sentient trees could fill the requirement. IIRC, plants modulate their poisons according to threat level.
Olaf Stapledon's 'Star Maker'. The whole thing is filtered through semi-communist theology, but its a fascinating trek through the author's far-flung ideas about all kinds of creatures and what they could hold in common versus major differences that come from their natures. One of the dozens of races he describes is a race of plant-men on an airless world that locked up all its volatiles in living soup in the deep valleys, they stand at the shore and soak up energy from their star in a meditative trance during the day and do more animal-style activity at night... his writing style is NOT for everyone nor is his philosophy but I heartily enjoyed it.
Yes! Star Maker is one of the very few books that I'd place up there with Blindsight and a few others in depicting truly alien aliens; and he doesn't do it once but repeatedly throughout the book. It's really impressive how Stapledon just casually scatters around handfuls of jewels that lesser authors might belabor singly throughout an entire book.
Speaker for the Dead?