Taking what you said one piece at a time:
In the world of science, I can reason by the results. My microwave oven works. What is the chance it would work, if we got physics wrong?
So, I assume the reason you’re asking this is because you assume that belief in physics and mystical beliefs are incompatible. This is a false assumption.
As one of my favorite examples of this being false, I happen to be friends with someone who is a Tibetan grand master of Reiki, who is also a quantum physicist, with a Ph.D from Oxford. She is obviously extremely spiritual, identifies as a believer in the laws of physics, and knows what the laws of physics are in far more detail and with greater understanding than almost anyone who may read this blog.
I believe the base rate of "a random machine doing seemingly miraculous things" is pretty low, otherwise we would be surrounded by magical machines built on theories often incompatible with the official physics. And I mean, magical machines that would work as obviously and reliably as my microwave oven does, or as my mobile phone does... not just something supposedly providing some invisble and hard-to-measure effects.
Okay, so this is more elaboration based on the first assumption made, which I already addressed.
Now my personal life, and my everyday beliefs, that seems like a different kind of game. I see people with different beliefs, having not significantly worse or better results than myself. (A colleague of mine told me recently that he heard that the theory of evolution was disproved. Doesn't have any impact on his programming skills, which is what he gets paid for. But a better example would be some idea outside of science.) I don't have this kind of feedback for the correctness of my ideas. Thus it would be incorrect to put the same degree of faith in them.
Okay, so this is said to contrast the initial statement, again, doesn’t need a response now.
Unfortunately, I have no mind-reading abilities, so I don't know what the obviously successful people believe in. I can listen to what they tell me, but there are problems with this.
Perhaps time to start asking? :)
First, people compartmentalize (and that's the charitable approach; sometimes they also just plainly lie), so what they tell me they believe may not be the same thing they actually believe or alieve. (For example, reading the books by Kiyosaki will not give me the recipe for how to be as rich as Kiyosaki. The true secret of Kiyosaki is more likely something like: Just pretend to know the secret of being rich, and let other people pay you for whatever soundbites you have for them. It's not like someone would ever do a double-blind study to verify your teachings.)
Agreed that the true secret may be different than that given. Agreed that people also sometimes compartmentalize. True of everyone whether a rationalist or not. Gathering data and finding ways to test for truth and compartmentalization seems like a good idea.
Second, there could be a selection bias; even if most of the successful people believe the same thing, there may be even more unsuccessful people believing the very same thing. For example, "follow your passion" or "just buy a lottery ticket" may make a few people incredibly rich, and yet, it may be a poor strategy on average. But we will only hear the stories of the winners. "Yeah, I used to be a chicken like you, but then I decided to follow my gut, and played a few rounds of the Russian roulette, and look where I am now! If you are so smart, why aren't you as rich as me?”
True. Also, a strategy could be good, but not the only ingredient necessary.
Funny religious story:
There’s a big flood, and a priest is stuck on top of a roof as the water is gradually covering up the ground and the buildings. He is praying reverently. Eventually the water is up pretty high on the roofline, and a boat comes by.
They invite the priest to come with them. The priest says "no no no, God will save me!"
This happens a couple more times as the water gets higher and higher, and he eventually drowns.
When he eventually meets God, he asks “Why didn’t you save me? I still had work to do!”
God responds: “I sent you three boats, why didn’t you get on one?!”
One moral of this religious story is that you need to take opportunity when it comes to you, not assume its going to happen through magic.
Another aspect I find important is that it can take many different elements to get the results you want. In the reality of the story described, it requires praying + action. Praying alone was enough to get the opportunity, but only praying didn’t do anything at all for him.
Hence what I was getting at in my previous post about how over-simplification is really not useful and only leads to false confidence.
In the world of science, I can reason by the results. My microwave oven works. What is the chance it would work, if we got physics wrong?
So, I assume the reason you’re asking this is because you assume that belief in physics and mystical beliefs are incompatible. This is a false assumption.
Huh ... I don't see that assumption there at all.
The contrast I see Viliam_Bur making is between ideas that are constantly re-tested and those which are not.
In religion, what we see is that people have vastly different beliefs from each other ... but this doesn't r...
The Puzzle of Faith and Belief
Faith and Belief are different words for talking about the concepts of Perspective and Point of view.
When you use the word Perspective v.s. Faith, you are attaching slightly different connotations to the same concept.
Perspective is a more rationalist way of seeing the different ways of looking at the world. The associations with it are scientific, grounded, and well defined.
Faith is the more intuitive way of seeing the different ways of looking at reality. I’m more include to use the word “reality” than “the world” even in defining it. The word itself is more open/less well defined.
Dictionary definitions from Google for the aspects of these words that I am referring to:
Perspective: a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view.
Faith: a strongly held belief or theory.
Belief: something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion or conviction.
Point of View: a particular attitude or way of considering a matter.
Why does all this matter?
It matters because they are more or less all the same thing, everyone is biased, and people tend to nit pick the different versions in order to justify their own biases.
Virtually no one has any solid grounding for their Perspective, Faith, Belief, or Point of View.
There are different ways in which people delude themselves into feeling safe and comfortable in the points of view, beliefs, and perspectives. Its fairly easy to make sense on a mid-level. You can join a consensus reality, where everyone around you has certain things they also agree with, and people who they believe are clearly right, and this feels comforting. But how many people really question the doctrine? How many people verify the origin?
Are you ultimately putting your trust in a guru and a bunch of other people, or have you verified the physics and math yourself?
If you have not verified the physics and math and the origin yourself of something which you are assuming to be true, down to the level of particle physics:
This is faith.
Even if you are a myers-briggs INTP, and you don’t feel that you “strongly” hold beliefs, you are in action every day. You are choosing to do, and to not do things. Whether you hold your beliefs loosely or tightly, everything you do always is impacted by them.
Whether or not you choose to get out of bed in the morning is absolutely a matter of faith. You have faith that your life will be better if you do. There are a number of reasons why:
1. You believe the hunger you feel or eventually will feel from not eating will go away if you go get food and put it in your mouth.
2. You believe that you need to do something in order to maintain the lifestyle in which you will continue to have a bed to sleep on.
3. You believe that taking care of 1 & 2 will ultimately cause your feeling state to be better than if you do not address them, and you desire to not suffer.
4. You likely have much more inspiring beliefs than 1, 2, and 3, but those differ more from person to person and are harder to nail accurately for the majority in a group of many thousands of people.
Again, why does this matter?
It matters because perspective, point of view, faith, and belief, are power.
What I have found working as a business coach and anxiety specialist for seven years is the degree to how powerful these things are. As someone with a rationalist influence, I am the only coach I know who takes and publishes statistics on my clients. While they are not anywhere near as thorough as I would like, the signal is very very strong. While I got a 50% increase for mood as according to moodscope.com in 2013, I’m up to about a 78% increase in 2014. The increase in mood is directly correlated with increase in productivity. I consider this to be a chicken and egg sort of relationship - improving one improves the other, and its hard to say which is cause and which is effect.
How do I get these sorts of results simply by working with the concepts referred to in this post?
Mostly just by eliminating false beliefs, and replacing them with more empowering true beliefs. The deal is, no one is unbiased - whether they are a believer in the biases associated with “point of view” or a believer in biases associated with “faith” is unbiased. Give me 30 minutes of your time, and you will learn things you did not already know.
I am not so charismatic that I can plant beliefs in anyone that they do not see as true. Nor would I want to be. I am simply able to identify the biases people have and reveal them in a way that is generally non-threatening, and I am able to point at many alternative beliefs so that people can choose a new system that is more functional for them.
What I have found most interesting doing this work, is the relationship between willingness to change belief/faith/perspective/point of view on many different levels.
Ie:
The more willing someone is to adopt a new perspective on the topic of the benefits of getting out of bed, the more likely that person is to solve the problem and start getting out of bed at the time they desire.
The more willing that person will be to adopt a new perspective on applying for a job, the more likely they are to apply, and the more likely they are to get the job.
The more willing a person is to adopt a new perspective on applying for a job, the more likely the person is to adopt a new perspective on what jobs they can apply for, and the more likely they are to get their dream job.
The more willing a person is to change perspective to the point of getting out of bed, applying for a job, and specifically applying for and getting their dream job, the more likely they are to genuinely question their Faith in the religious/atheist sense, and the more willing they are to take their questioning to the level of particle and quantum physics.
[edit] Summary:
I frequently hear people of a rationalist mindset, who prefer the biases associated with the terms "Perspective" and "Point of View" dismiss the biases associated with the terms "Faith" and "Belief" as inferior.
I've come to see this particular dismissal bias as "A form of Faith." It is a faith that one can use science to justify their actions, that is not actually grounded in science.
The result of this is that there are a lot of people walking around thinking that they are being rational, when really, they are doing more or less what Viliam_Bur describes in this comment.
I have spent many years now talking in depth to many clients, including hundreds of rationalists. What I've found is that the degree of people's willingness to be open to introspection on this topic, and to realize just how much of their so called "rational" beliefs are actually based on faith, and their willingness to start correcting in order to seek truth more effectively with this understanding, determines their degree of success in being able to update their belief systems in order to get what they want in life.
Once you realize that you are operating a faith based system, then you can optimize it as a faith based system, rather than operating under the false belief that it is grounded in science.
In truth, all of the systems all of us use are a combination of faith and science. We can determine a lot from science, but virtually no one takes it to the level of "grounded," where they really understand how the science works at the core. Even physics Ph.Ds don't know everything, let alone the people who base their beliefs on what the physics Ph.Ds say.
So, if you truly want to be rational, it makes the most sense to realize what the system is that you are actually using, and to optimize it accordingly. Either go to the root of the science, and tune it that way, or tune it as a faith based system, and follow the signal of "what makes the most sense to put my faith into?"
The lowest hanging fruit in tuning your system is actually at the roots, assuming you have the time and energy to really dig into the research, and/or that you have a good guide who you trust. Asking the questions of "Why do I believe what I do?" and "Why do I do what I do?" at a very fundamental level, without the assumption that you already know, is extremely powerful.
The testimonials and statistics I linked above are those I have collected personally showing results of what happens as you do this sort of grounding of your belief systems. The way in which you do it is to start questioning how grounded in science your assumptions actually are, and to release the attachment you have to thinking that you are less wrong because you are science based.