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Comments (180)
This seems false as a matter of plain fact. It isn't especially different to being highly intelligent and rational despite believing Pi=4. It may be a rude thing to say, or unnecessary or inflammatory but it isn't an incorrect thing to say.
It may indeed be impossible to be a believer if you have very high levels of epistemic rationality, but it's compatible with very high levels of instrumental rationality combined with moderately high levels of epistemic rationality.
Agree. (Or at least I agree about the instrumental rationality compatibility. The "moderately high levels of epistemic rationality" would depend on the design of the metric.)
Edit: Other replies reminded me I may have been hasty in my agreement. Perhaps put the instrumental rationality compatible in with "depending on the standard of measurement". Simply because that belief puts some hard limits on how instrumentally rational the individual can be. Unless the belief is so compartmentalised that they do things like still actively work to combat existential risk, at least as it applies to themselves or otherwise act as if they are taking such concerns into account in their decision making. I maintain my endorsement with your general sentiment.
" very high levels of instrumental rationality combined with moderately high levels of epistemic rationality"?
And in a world where other agents are the most important powers you deal with, social instrumental rationality is more relevant to evolutionary fitness and personal success than epistemic rationality. I worry that me and my kind are going the way of the dodo.
Apply your epistemic rationality to the society and the agents around you as well -- they are part of reality, too.
Yes, one can.
But I have this unfortunate habit of treating people as people, and not internal combustion engines to be optimized. Even more unfortunately, it's not just a habit, it's a preference. I have a strange compulsion towards honesty, and respecting the autonomy of others, and something of an aversion to people who don't have that strange compulsion.
Read more carefully -- I'll bold the relevant part: "Apply your epistemic rationality to the society..."
And what does apply mean to you when it comes to epistemic rationality? Just to know, or to do something with that knowledge?
"Apply" means "learn" in this context.
Applying epistemic rationality means you try to make your map match the territory as well as you can.
What you do with this map is an entirely separate question (which is, largely, a function of your goals and instrumental rationality).
Yeah. Fixed, thanks.
"Intelligent" doesn't mean "cares about the truth", anymore than "intelligent" means "moral/ethical". Intelligent more than likely just means maximizes goals while expounding the least effort. I've known quite a few intelligent religious people, and their goals simply aren't to find "the truth". To them, religion is more like cheesecake.
The original specified "and rational".
Affirm this reply. It certainly wasn't the intelligent part that prompted my objection.
Well, the whole point of instrumental rationality is that you need a correct map of reality (ie, to care about the truth) in order to be able to reach your goals whatever they are.
There is a strong signaling issue, appearing to be a conservative Christian can give a lot of political/social benefits in some circles, and it's easier to appear being one when you truly are one, but apart from that, having the belief of conservative Christian leads you to acts that are inefficient for reaching your goals, from rejecting your gay grandson to wasting time in prayer to not going to cryonics because you believe in afterlife.
Having a flawed map of a city means you'll not reach your goal efficiently (but either completely miss it, or use much more time/resources to finally reach it), and that's true whatever your goal is. The same is true with a flawed map of reality and navigating your life.
Even if you do not care about the truth for its own sake (if curiosity and preference for truth aren't in your terminal values), if you're intelligent, you should care about the truth as an instrumental value to reach whatever goal you truly have.
This is a good point, and holds in the majority of cases, although there are other considerations which should also be mentioned.
Since all maps are 'flawed' by definition, an important question is whether the flaws in your map actually interact with your goals, and if they do whether they are beneficial or harmful. It's usually not a good use of your energy to fine tune areas of your map which don't have any impact on your life and actively wasteful to "fix" them in ways which make it harder to achieve your goals.
Incorrect beliefs can be useful in the aggregate even if they fail in certain situations, as long as those situations are rare or inconsequential enough. I can be utterly wrong in my belief that there are no tigers in New York City (there are several in the Bronx Zoo, not to mention that more might well be kept illegally as pets) but it's completely orthogonal to my daily life and thus not important enough to spend effort investigating. And if I had a pathological fear of tigers, I would gain a pretty significant advantage from that same false belief; I would do well to maintain it even if presented with genuine counter-evidence.
I think that most religions are wrong to harmful degrees, but it's not an ironclad rule of rationality that beliefs must be maximally accurate. A pessimist is actually more accurate in their assessments of people, but optimists are happier and more successful; if your rationality insists you cannot be optimistic, then it is not useful and should be ignored.
I would submit that it rather depends on your goals.
That might be true, but you wouldn't be in much of a position to know whether it was true until you could conduct an unbiased analysis of your own motivations given a state where it was false versus a state where it was true.
But the same is true for everyone, isn't it? What's special about conservative Christians here?
Also, consider the goal "I want to be resurrected by Jesus and live forever".
Well, if it were really your goal to be resurrected by Jesus and live forever, and not just to be comforted by the belief that you were going to be resurrected by Jesus and live forever, then if Jesus didn't exist, it would be of prime importance for you to know that, since for there to be any chance of it happening at all, someone would have to make him.
I am sure the fellow considered that possibility and rejected it :-) Or maybe he likes the Pascal's Wager.
In any case, getting back to the original issue, it was, to put it crudely, that Christians are necessarily stupid. That seems to be false on its face as there are a lot of people who believe in Jesus and are highly intelligent by all the usual measures of intelligence.
Which is exactly the matter which, as Wedrifid pointed out, bears on the individual's intelligence and/or rationality.
Nobody in this conversation made such a claim that I'm aware of. The point of contention originally raised in Wedrifid's comment was that religious conservatives may be intelligent and rational in spite of, rather than regardless of, their religious conservatism. That is, religious conservatism would be counterevidence to the overlap of intelligence and rationality.
I read wedrifid's post as stating that, in a bit more polite terms.
So what does this actually mean? You see a girl, she looks intelligent and rational, you learn that she's a conservative Christian and you go "Oh, she isn't intelligent at all, my mistake"..?
This is true in as much as the No Free Lunch theorem is true. As for the relevance to the beliefs and preferences of actual Christians, the testimony of the relevant religious texts, expressed beliefs of Christians and emphasis of Christian apologetics arguments do much to affirm that "long life of positive experience" is a goal that is in general shared by Christians. The "carrot" presented to reward belief is "eternal life". John 3:16 is the most famous quote from the Bible and the one used to express the core of Christian doctrine concisely:
People, including Christians, tend to prefer long life---either in their physical body or after that body has been destroyed. If the beliefs of the Christian are false then the actions they choose when attempting to achieve this goal will fail.
I agree that having a correct map of reality is needed if you care about arriving at some (I hate this word) "materialist" goal, but not everyone can live in a more liberal area of the US/world. Areas where not fitting into the local community creates more burdens than necessary.
For example, when I was in the military, I identified as an atheist pretty openly, barely concealing my contempt for religion. One of my last Enlisted Performance Reports, my supervisor said I would do better if I were a Christian. I wasn't sure if that was a threat, or him implying that I was immoral and thus not quite a fit in the military community, but nevertheless I was penalized (in his eyes) for not being religious.
There's the map of reality, the map of the physical roads and buildings, but there's also the map of human interactions. One can signal consciously, but what I gather is that most people signal unconsciously and then generate a cached version of themselves that eventually becomes the real them (belief in belief and all that). While I might say I had an accurate map of reality when I was in the military, I didn't have, nor did I want to even accept, that there was another map of social situations that would also have helped me reach my goals more efficiently if I had an accurate map of it.
Hmm, its true that your map needs to be correct (in the sense that it corresponds to reality) in order to reach your destination, but it need not be wholly so.
Let's say I'm a firm believer that I must obey the laws written on a sheet of paper somewhere. I think they were written there by all powerful alien forces, obedience to whose dictates is the sole criteria for determining virtue. Any evidence to the contrary (say, the fact that no one has seen the sheet of paper) is part of the alien's test. Could you work with me?
It depends on what I think is on the paper.
If I believe that something approaching your, I dunno, call it ethics, are written on there, then it doesn't really matter to you too much why this is the case. The two of us ought to be able to cooperate (you holding your nose at my fundamentalism, me rolling my eyes at your relativism.).
My map of reality is wildly inaccurate at the edge of my neighborhood, but the two of us are only going to the drug store (voting on an issue we agree on).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that having a flawed map of a city only means you won't reach your goal if the flaws manifest themselves on the route between you and your goal. Flying Saucer Cult members still tie their shoes just fine (maybe, if you think they don't please substitute a task you believe that they routinely accomplish, perhaps donning their cult attire).
I believe that what you say about caring about truth as an instrumental value to reach my goal is true IFF my goal is essentially discovery-related. I need an accurate map when I venture beyond my neighborhood. But what if my goal is pretty much local?
I have a brother who is happily married, works to support his family, regular church goer, roots for his local sports teams, etc. He's pleasant and friendly to his many friends and associates, well respected. He learned what he needs to know for his job long ago, and is uninterested in improving at it (there's not much room to do so).
What does he need truth for? He is at his destination, his map was sufficient to reach it. How can truth improve his attending of church, or his time at the bar with his buds, or help him play with his kids? Its superfluous to his life.
You may be fine with a flawed map, sure, if you're lucky. But then you're at a risk. Take your brother, what will happen if his kids end up gay or lesbian or polyamorist ? If he's really a conservative Christian, he'll believe his kids will burn in hell, you think that will make him "be at his destination" ? Or (and I really don't wish that to happen) if his wife ends up being pregnant again, but with a child having a severe disability that is detected at the early stages of pregnancy, will they abort ?
Yes, if your map is flawed in a location you never go, it doesn't matter much. But you're always at risk of potentially catastrophic failure if you do so.
Now, you may argue the risk of failure is low, and the cost of having an accurate isn't worth it... maybe, but there is no way to know that, to make that estimation, with a flawed map. You can't rationally chose to be biased, for to make that decision you've to know the truth already.
"Or (and I really don't wish that to happen) if his wife ends up being pregnant again, but with a child having a severe disability that is detected at the early stages of pregnancy, will they abort ?"
Is it the "rationalist" position that it is advantageous or obligatory to do so?
So what would you conclude about someone to whom "pi=4" was more like cheesecake?
I would conclude a deficit of general appreciation of why beliefs are not like cheesecake, a specific deficit of mathematics, and various other algorithmic deficits.
Pi=4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2xYjiL8yyE
(Sadly, Vi Hart rejects the obvious proof.)
Intelligent religious person here. I've got several different things to say on the subject.
Firstly, GK Chesterton lived almost a hundred years ago. It's simply unreasonable to demand that a dead man retroactively conform to every belief confirmed, falsified, or nonindicated by modern science. As it was, he held fairly sophisticated and well-grounded opinions for his time.
Now, on to the subject of religion and intelligence or rationality today. The first issue is to dissolve the word "religion", and find out what we are really talking about.
Let's say: spirituality, theology, and practice form an ad-hoc deconstruction of religion. Well then, in what circumstances are these different attributes of religion rational to exercise?
Spirituality: I see no reason that a rational person shouldn't have spiritual beliefs, in the sense of overarching notions or narrative (summoning Terry Pratchett and his pan narrans view of Man here) regarding the universe, how it works, what forces are at work in it, and our place in it. It is entirely plain to anyone with eyes that powerful, eldritch forces run the universe, and the only way people manage to miss that simple fact is by not noticing that we're made of those forces. Life and evolution, as processes which self-organize and optimize the world of matter towards lower-entropy states by spending energy (currently: from the sun, by and large), are themselves far larger forces than you would expect in a universe of mathematical laws and subatomic particles. What reveals the "eldritch force" at work is looking at ontology separately from our current matter substrate and noticing that any ontology with a potential for self-replicating things or patterns will become subject to evolution.
Theology: As separate from spirituality, theology is largely about believing the spiritual and material universe has a specific arrangement as dictated by some story, text, or leader. This is usually the least-rational component of religion, and the one that comes under such detestation.
Practice/Observance: Frankly, a series of lifestyle choices like any other, which can have worth like any other. If I get more emotional significance out of separating milk and meat than out of cheeseburgers, then I should do so, including if the reason is that it Ties Me To My Tribe.
Now, as to God in specific, of course scientific evidence has yet to indicate Him, but we also all know here that anything more intelligent than humanity could hide its own existence from humanity should it want to. This actually accords entirely with the theological holding that "God has hidden his face" while His children remain in the Exile (hinting: yes, I'm Jewish).
The proper position to take on theology is, therefore, agnosticism. You cannot strongly support or strongly refute most of it. Just leave it alone: you don't have to live on theologically-based lifestyle recommendations, but neither should you do something that you would only do if God cannot exist.
People aren't objecting to particular scientific opinions held by Chesterton, but to how Chesterton's standards lead one along bad paths in general. Some things have fences for no reason than bigotry.
As far as I can tell, "something that you would only do if God cannot exist" refers to an empty set.
"Something that you would only do if the Christian God cannot exist", of course, is not an empty set, but that's very different and it's very hard to justify why you wouldn't do that but you'd do the equivalent with some god other than the Christian one.
It may be, since I gave a declarative definition rather than a constructive one.
I actually gave my own objection to the Fence thing in my own comment, namely that fences are often there simply because some powerful tyrant wanted them, and nobody else wants them.
No, it is not. It may be false as a matter of your definition of "highly intelligent and rational", but I don't see facts involved here.
It's pretty easy to convincingly demonstrate that that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is not 4. I haven't seen anyone convincingly demonstrate that God (or some god) does not exist.
All those proofs you supposedly saw that pi was not 4 could have been flawed, we have to remember that there are two sides to every story. Besides, it's okay to believe that pi = 4 if it brings you joy.
And frankly, my belief that pi = 4 is irrelevant to my opinion on philosophy; no philosophy paper hinges on what the exact value of pi is. You should evaluate my philosophical work on its own merits, not on your prejudices about people who believe in pi=4.
Proofs? I can just measure myself. If you want to argue that I can't believe the evidence of my own senses, well, then we're getting into quite different territory.
To your opinion maybe, to my opinion about your opinion it's quite relevant :-P
All the great scientists are aware that there is always some error in measurement. With real knowledge comes humility, because the more we know, the more we realize we don't know enough. There are many optical illusions, biases, etc. Your eyes may be telling you that the Sun rotates around Earth, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
Once you learn more about math and life in general, you will realize that pi is greater than 3. Maybe then you will feel ashamed about what you wrote now. Just have an open mind and keep learning.
PS: My grandfather was fired from university for teaching that pi = 4, and I will not allow you to stain my loving memory of him. He was a good person; much more loving that most of the mathematicians I know, including the assholes that fired him.
(jokingly pattern-matching some religious arguments)
Given that this is an observation straight out of Stats 101, yes, I suppose all the great scientists are aware...
Do note that this error is often quantifiable.
Actually my eyes don't tell me what rotates around what. My eyes tell me that there is a very bright ball moving across the sky.
In any case, are you really arguing that I should accept the opinion of authority over my personal experience (assuming reasonable intelligence on my part)?
It may help to re-read the last line of V_B's comment.
Ah. I applied it only to the last two paragraphs. I may have been hasty about that :-)
(Can you please confirm that this is intended to be satire? That seems to be the intent but I'm unsure because some of the other replies say things more bizarre while evidently intended to be literal.)
Confirmed.
Thanks, I am now free to upvote!
Yes it's satire, and it's telling that you can't tell :-)
Poeslaw, the side dish of champions!
Specifically it says something about wedrifid's understanding (to lack thereof) of other people's positions.
It could also be trolling.
You regularly disbelieve in things without requiring someone to convincingly demonstrate their falsehood, on the basis that there isn't reason to suspect that they're actually true.
Religious conservatism comes down to a number of empirical claims which are either right or wrong, and the fact that we cannot now demonstrate which is correct does not mean that some people are not getting the answer right and some getting it wrong on the basis of the same available evidence.
At best I can concede that if one can redefine "rational" to mean something different to rational then the quote in question can be said to be 'true'. But that isn't how words are supposed to work and such conversation ceases to be relevant.
You have convincingly demonstrated that people can be as intelligent and rational as Lumifer while still believing that a god from a popular mainstream religion exists. Nothing more.
Different people will attach quite different meanings to the word "rational". For example, I don't think the standard LW idea of what "rational" means matches the common mainstream usage.
I am sorry, your rationality is broken :-P I do not believe a god from a popular mainstream religion exists.
You seem to have fallen into the common trap of "Why is she not condemning the enemies from tribe X? She MUST be from tribe X herself!"
No, you're just wrong. That is the extent of what your "have not seen convincing" claim implies. A problem with your "be convinced" algorithm. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that believing wholeheartedly in the specific "Daddy in the sky" fantasy of Yahweh 2.0 is epistemically sane.
No, you are saying something wrong because you are saying something wrong. Most Christians wouldn't make the particular mistake you are making. Basic reasoning failures like this are not a property of Christianity, they are a property of Lumifer's comments in this thread.
Incidentally, most of my tribe is Christian. This includes most of my family and friends and among them some of the people I most respect intellectually. So while I cannot happen to call their epistemic practice rational I still claim offence on their behalf at your equivocation between accusation of specific reasoning failure and accusation of Christianity.
We seem to disagree about that. Naked assertions are not particularly effective arguments.
Ah, well then, of course! :-D
By the way, the "accusation of a specific reasoning failure" is aimed pretty specifically at your heavy-handed implication that I am a Christian.
The claim was not naked until you stripped it of clothing by selectively quoting it out of the context of a paragraph of explanation. Your move is not 'effective' unless aimed at users who approve of disingenuous rhetoric.
I repeat the contradiction of this claim that I spent paragraphs explaining in the previous comment.
It seemed the discussion turned into a spat. I apologize for my role in this transformation and bow out.
A piece of well-intentioned advice: When you're involved in a disagreement, responding to someone's argument with "LOL" or a smiley emoticon signals dismissiveness and borderline hostility. It seemed to me in places that you were actively trying to turn the discussion into a spat. Since it appears that this was not actually your intention, you might reconsider that particular (easily-adjusted, I think) rhetorical tic.
In my usual vocabulary, it does signal dismissiveness, but not hostility. Unrolled, it says "Your point/argument/position does not pass the laugh test, I consider your assertion ridiculous, either reconsider it or provide strong support".
As to smileys in my posts, they are "adjectives" for my own words and usually serve to soften the impact (e.g. explicitly show lack of hostility).
I use “Are you fucking kidding me” for that. (I only feel the need to do that once every couple of years, though.)
Sometimes interaction strategies are not mutually beneficial. In such cases non-engagement is a practical and all to often neglected option. Wise move.
More like "People can be conservative Christians in spite of being highly intelligent and rational".
See also RationalWiki's articles on engineers and woo and the Salem Hypothesis. People can be highly intelligent and rational within a domain where their judgments are strongly tested while believing all sorts of wacky crap in other domains where they can get away with it.
(All the usual caveats about RW do apply. Exactly what counts as "wacky crap" is, of course, highly disputable.)
I'm assuming that there exists a g factor of generalized intelligence; how to measure that and what the cutoff for 'highly intelligent' is are undefined, and 'highly rational' is too complicated to begin to define.
With two undefined terms, the area between the goalposts is either negative or imaginary, so I won't suggest that there are no counterexamples or leap into the 'no true rationalist' fallacy.
That said, your confusion comes from asserting that 'intelligent' and 'rational' are behaviors rather than traits. If someone regularly engages in irrational behavior, I adjust my belief in their rational nature downward; if they profess belief in something that I consider stupid, I also adjust my opinion of their intelligence downward.
Membership in the "Conservative Christian" club appears to require a large amount of stupid, irrational behavior, and seems incompatible with being highly intelligent and rational. However, there are people who manage to provide enough signs of intelligence and/or rationality while approaching conservative Christianity for me to give up and cry.
That's stream of consciousness explanation of what I think my thoughts were, which might help resolve any confusion you have. I doubt that it will convince anybody of anything substantive, but it might help people who disagree with my conclusions find the pivot.
That way does seem slightly better. At least it is certainly more clear what the claim means, even if I would personally put a qualifier of some kind before 'rational' or perhaps append 'compared to their peers'.
"People can be conservative Christians compared to their peers in spite of being highly intelligent and rational"?
Or "There exist conservative Christians who are highly intelligent and rational compared to their peers"?
I'm going to step away from the definition discussion on whether 'Conservative Christian' is mutually exclusive with 'intelligent and rational'. I have a specific person in mind who is Christian, very intelligent, and mostly rational (all beyond any reasonable argument), but there exists a reasonable argument that this person is not conservative, or that 'conservative Christian' means something other than "possess the quality 'conservative' and the quality 'Christian'"
This.
I have several people in mind (immediate family members) who meet this criteria too. "Mostly" is the kind of qualifier I had in mind. (So any disagreement we may have about categorisations here must not be fundamental.)
I wish I could make the fundamental categorization, but the world provides a counterexample from which the only escape is a weak cry of 'not conservative enough to count?'.
The weaker form of 'Conservative Christianity is a negative predictor of intelligence and rationality' is roughly equivalent to the same thing that we've been agreeing about.
That doesn't seem to be a counterexample to anything here. It seems to be a somewhat sad failure of thinking by an individual. If it is a failure that occurs frequently then it would be worth exploring just which human biases are involved in the decline.
Are you confusing an observation with a conclusion? I think the only reason I or you disagree with the conclusion is that we don't share the same observation; everything from there on is either logically sound or high-probability.
No, not from what I can see.
What is the failure of thinking that you see, then? "Morality loves me" implies "theism is correct".