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Xaway comments on How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3 - Less Wrong
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Comments (381)
There were some things I thought of saying, but I think I'll hold my tongue for now. In short, I think your assertions have some logical errors. This is not a put-down or a personal comment -- I'm certainly no more than an aspiring rationalist, at best, myself. I hope you stick around this forum. In the spirit of Tarski I would ask you to join me in saying:
If Christianity is true I desire to believe that Christianity is true. If Christianity is not true, I desire to believe that Christianity is not true.
I would say this, and do!
If you spot a logical error, bring it on.
Obviously I don't want to believe untrue things.
But if there is two things I am sure about, it's (1) that humans are not rational, especially not me and (2) there are things that are true which can not be proven to be true (the real world analogue to Godels theorems).
I frequent this site, but I generally do not participate in internet discussions. I only registered this account and gave my two cents because Eliezer asked for a Christian who speaks Bayes to chime in.
I'm afraid that once I log off, I will probably forget the password to this account.
Again, I hope you stick around. No need to burn yourself out as the lone voice of Christianity -- pacing yourself is fine.
Also, this truly is a rationalist site. If you can present well-thought out arguments, people here will listen to you. If you can make a rational argument demonstrating the truth of Christianity, then (according to some denominations) you could save some souls. (I understand the Calvinists would not necessarily agree.) But according to some traditions, good works (not just fide sola) have merit, and evangelizing is one of the greatest of all good works. Is it not?
My ulterior motive in making that argument is that I also think this forum could benefit from the perspective of a Christian who speaks Bayes.
I think I'd rather have a better calibrated Frequentist.
I'd rather have a rock. Or a Christian who doesn't speak Bayes. At least that implies less doublethink.
Christianity here is actually a memetic hazard. It's a set of beliefs that has so many things wrong with it all of us feel compelled to address all of the bad thinking and wrong evidence all at once. It immediately draws everyone away from whatever productive comments they were making and into an attempt to deconvert the interlocutor. The interlocutor then responds to these attempts with more nonsense in different places which draws still more people in to the battle. Better to just keep the Hydra's out than try and chop off all those heads.
No one here is actually at risk but we don't get anything to justify the strain on the immune system.
I can think of some counterexamples. We "got" SarahC, for instance (according to her own words), and that was an unadulterated boon.
Also, the claims of religion are varied enough that they provide a range of topics, many trivial but some interesting. E.g., if we were in a sim and somebody changed it from outside in violation of the sim's internal physical law, that would constitute a "miracle" at this level of reality. How would we recognize such an event from inside?
A lot of Sarah's comments were made this summer when I wasn't around, so I may have missed something but I quick glance confirms that she is not a believing Christian. She certainly hasn't argued for the truth Christianity, which is really my concern.
Which we can discuss successfully without real Christians.
Sorry, I was unclear in speaking. I meant she acknowledged LW's influence in her deconversion, and is no longer religious. I think she started out Jewish actually. I can't seem to find the relevant comment/post.
I was never Christian, I was raised Jewish, and now I don't believe in God. And, yes, LessWrong contributed. (I think, IIRC, we also have a member who was raised Muslim and recently became an atheist since he found LW.)
I don't think you can randomly deconvert someone who isn't already seeking a change. Like most major changes in belief or lifestyle, deconversion has to be self-motivated. But if a Christian (or other religious person) is hanging around LW and not trolling, then he's probably looking for some alternatives, and there's no harm pointing him in that direction.
Although I appreciate some of the articles on this site, I don't think I'll participate much in the discussion.
Although I speak Bayes and know more logic than a human should know, I do not consider myself a rationalist, because I doubt my own rationality. It wouldn't make sense for an inherently irrational person to spend his time trying to talk rationally when he could be dancing or programming.
Also, I firmly believe that Christianity can not be proven by argument, only by evidence (miracles). And only God himself, not the Christian, can provide the evidence, which he does on his own terms.
This site isn't called Always Right, you know.
The truth status of Christianity is something that Less Wrong should be able to consider a settled question. We can debate about things like the Simulation Argument, etc. and other reductionist non-supernaturalist claims that look sorta like deism if you squint, but Jehovah did not create the universe, and Jesus is not Lord, and I don't think there's any point in humouring someone who disagrees, or encouraging them to come up with smarter-sounding rationalizations. Let's not push Less Wrong in the direction of becoming the sort of place where these old debates are rehashed; there are more interesting things to think and talk about. Although it seems that Xaway in particular may not have come here with the intention of actually convincing anyone to believe in Christianity, I would propose in the general case that anyone who does want to should be referred to some place like /r/atheism instead.
Well, I certainly don't think Jehovah created the universe. On the other hand, this thread is devoted to the consideration of the proposition that 2 + 2 = 3 -- arguably a settled question -- with the understanding that "a belief is only really worthwhile if you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise." I don't know if Xaway is going to be participating any more (hi, Xaway, if you're reading this!), but I was hoping that this might be a good exercise in practicing rational discussion. In part, I thought we could win him over to the dark side (joking about it being the dark side.)
That is not 'truly rationalist'. Well thought out arguments for a preselected bottom line are bullshit.
Perhaps you could go to 'Preferences' on the right and change your password to something easier to remember.
Regarding your revelation and direct experience with God, I am very curious as to whether the revelation specified in any way which religion God would prefer you to participate in. (You wrote above that you think the Judeo-Christian religions seem more likely, only, so this leads me to believe the revelation wasn't that specific.)
(Echoing Costanza's questions) How much error do you allow for knowing about God, but following the wrong religion? Even if Christianity seems most likely to you, what probability do you assign to any current organized religion being correct? I suppose the reason why I'm asking is that something like Christianity seems unnecessarily specific if you are potentially deist or atheist. Probabilistically, God could exist in a lot of different ways, and provide true revelations, long before all the specific things are true about Christianity.
Did. Didn't work. Wrote you off. :)
Arguably this is the case for everything (until we solve the problem of induction). In the meantime, I don't know of anything you can't assign a probability to or collect evidence about.
As for whether this is an analogue to Godel's theorem (or, in times gone by, Russel's paradoxical catalogues - or in times yet to come, the halting problem) - no. Mathematical systems are useful ways to carve reality at its joints. So are categories, and so is computation. They can't answer questions about themselves. But reality quite clearly can answer questions about itself.
How about the question of whether there is anything you can't assign a probability to or collect evidence about?
You can assign a probability to that. I hadn't considered the question strongly enough to have a mathematical number for you, but I would estimate there is a 10% chance that there are things which I cannot assign a probability to or collect evidence about. (Note that I assign a much lower probability to the claim "you can't assign a probability to or collect evidence about x"; empirically those statements have been made probably millions of times in history and as far as I know not a single one has been correct)
That said, "I don't know of anything you can't assign a probability to or collect evidence about" is true with a probability of 1 - 4x10^-8 (the chance I am hallucinating, or made a gross error given that I double-checked).