William_Quixote comments on Trusting Expert Consensus - Less Wrong

27 Post author: ChrisHallquist 16 October 2013 08:22PM

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Comment author: William_Quixote 19 October 2013 04:01:21AM *  -2 points [-]

Based on your claim that many theists don’t hold the views that seem to obviously pair with theism, my whole approach may be off, but for the sake of transparency the questions I looked at for my (admittedly loosely calculated) claim of “95% on easy questions excluding theists and other” were as follows: All results sorted by course rather than fine

Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? Accept or lean toward: scientific realism 699 / 931 (75.1%) Other 124 / 931 (13.3%) Accept or lean toward: scientific anti-realism 108 / 931 (11.6%)

I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and opposing scientific realism

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? Accept or lean toward: physicalism 526 / 931 (56.5%) Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 252 / 931 (27.1%) Other 153 / 931 (16.4%)

I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and non physicalism. This is slightly below average for the level of consensus among things I was thinking about

God: theism or atheism? Accept or lean toward: atheism 678 / 931 (72.8%) Accept or lean toward: theism 136 / 931 (14.6%) Other 117 / 931 (12.6%)

I kicked out other and theists and shockingly got near 100% agreement afterwards.

Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? Accept or lean toward: compatibilism 550 / 931 (59.1%) Other 139 / 931 (14.9%) Accept or lean toward: libertarianism 128 / 931 (13.7%) Accept or lean toward: no free will 114 / 931 (12.2%)

I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and libertarianism. I further grouped no free will and compatibilists since compatibilists basically believe “no free will” if you interpret the phrase as having its common language meaning. Compatibleism claims the common langue concept is somewhat incoherent and offers a different but related concept that gets the same name but doesn’t mean the same thing. If you reduce the question to a binary, compatbislm is on the other side from libertarianism.

External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%) Other 86 / 931 (9.2%) Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%) Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)

Kick out other

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 19 October 2013 05:19:07AM *  2 points [-]

So I hadn't checked this, but it turns out the survey did report correlation data. Link to correlation data for belief in God.

Some highlights:

  • ~22% of theists are physicalists. The ratio of physicalists:non-physicalists among atheists is about 3:1.
  • Only 50% of theists accept the libertarian view of free will, but hardly any (<8% of) atheists do.
  • Theism is slightly correlated with scientific anti-realism, but only slightly. 70% of theists are scientific realists and and >10% of atheists are scientific anti-realists.
  • Shockingly, to me, ~17.7% of theists are moral anti-realists. Unlike the free will and philosophy of mind cases, I have no idea who these people are or what they're thinking.

Also, you're making some questionable assumptions about compatibilism. Many compatibilists would claim their definition of free will does match the common language understanding, and there's some x-phi work that backs this up (done by Eddy Nahmias).

Comment author: Nornagest 19 October 2013 04:44:56PM 4 points [-]

Shockingly, to me, ~17.7% of theists are moral anti-realists. Unlike the free will and philosophy of mind cases, I have no idea who these people are or what they're thinking.

"There's no objective morality, but God has the biggest stick"? That's my best guess, anyway.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 06 July 2014 02:11:15PM 0 points [-]

If a physicalist can think ethical subjectivism can work, why not a thesis?

Comment author: William_Quixote 19 October 2013 04:00:38PM *  0 points [-]

Wow! Those correlations are very surprising to me. I didn't bother checking because it had seemed obvious to me that a theist must believe in a non physical enduring self or moral realism. I'm glad you asked me for more detail because my initial assumptions were way off.

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