army1987 comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 29 October 2014 08:58:46AM 2 points [-]

Do the terms "believe" and "correct", respectively, in these questions refer strictly to the supernatural elements of a religion (accuracy of creation story, reification of pantheon, etc.)? Or more broadly over its entire catechism?

I typed “Please taboo “correct”” into the P(Religion) question.

Comment author: mattcwilson 29 October 2014 12:02:23PM 0 points [-]

That would have been a better choice, perhaps.

I instead gave a numerical answer to the rephrased question "What is the probability that the supernatural figurehead of your chosen belief system will appear to declare total operational success for your side, in our reality or in any afterlife in which you meaningfully believe?"

If that is a reasonable paraphrasing of the average interpretation of the question, I expect a strongly bimodal distribution of answers. Not sure that's useful.

I was disappointed the question was not something more like "what is the probability that humanity's far future descendants / FAI / alien modernoanthropologists will generally hold your religious system to have been a net good influence on humanity and worthy of participation by its members?" That is the most charitable interpretation of "correct" I can think of, sans a literal Judgment Day / Cast Party.