Of course there are less people who were killed for their faith than people who were not killed, I wasn't contesting this. I was only contesting your claim that people who are killed for their faiths don't really believe and are just suicidal. Do you think that all (or most) missionaries who go to a dangerous area, do it with the explicit purpose of getting killed, and do not believe in their cause? This seems to be a common bias, when people think that as they are always right and their ideological opponents are always wrong, their opponents can't possibly really believe in their cause. E.g. like many pro-abortion activists say that their opponents simply hate women, and anti-abortion activists say their opponents just hate babies.
About your North Korean example, it's not the example I asked for, as they didn't just go directly to an officer or a border guard to announce their faith, I have an educated guess that they would continue their work and take at least some steps for not being found out. But let's suppose I was wrong. Even if we assumed that the missionaries going to north Korea don't believe in their cause and are doing it just because they want to commit suicide and are just lazy or afraid to hang themselves, what do you think about people who are not actively seeking danger, and are killed by death squads because of their beliefs? Are all these victims suicidal? Let's not confine ourselves to religion, but to any belief, be it social or political. Do you think that in oppressive regimes, when people are told "join us or we kill you", the people who don't submit were already wanting to commit suicide and they just found a good opportunity to do so?
I don't know anything personal about you, but I guess there is at least something which you wouldn't do even if forced to do it at gunpoint. If not, then that might explain your opinion about the topic. Now think about yourself, or about anyone who might be in such a situation and not yield: do you think that only those people would refuse cooperation and risk death in this hypothetical situation, who would have already wanted to commit suicide even without this event happening, and this event was just a convenient way to do it?
Another example. As you said, there are fewer people who are killed because of their beliefs than those who are not killed, just as there are fewer occasions of murder-suicide-plane-crashes than normal successful flights. By your logic, there are much fewer mountain climbers than people who don't climb mountains, and mountain climbers are much more likely to die a violent death than the average people. Nevertheless, there are fewer mountain climbers who died during their expedition than those who didn't. Does this mean that the mountain climbers climb mountains because they seek death as their primary reason, and those who died, died because of this? Or that they accept falling from a cliff as a risk, and are climbing the mountain because they love it, not because they want to die?
I'm sorry, but for you to convince me that people who are killed for their beliefs don't really believe but are just suicidal, you would need a lot more proof than just a very extreme example and a statement of your opinion.
Of course there are less people who were killed for their faith than people who were not killed, I wasn't contesting this.
You should be. Let's review. Your first comment was http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m0l/is_belief_in_belief_a_useful_concept/c89r , in which you quoted the claim
a person does not notice much harm from believing the Messiah is coming
and objected, 'martyrs!':
...Say that to the countless martyrs, especially in Roman times, who could have evaded torture and death just by publicly saying "I no longer believe" (even if th
I am not sure that it is productive to tell certain people that they do not really believe what they claim to believe, and that they only believe they believe it. I have an alternative suggestion that could possibly be more useful.
Binary Beliefs
It seems that human beings have two kinds of beliefs: binary beliefs and quasi-Bayesian beliefs. The binary beliefs are what we usually think of as beliefs, simple statements which are true or false like "Two and two make four," "The sun will rise tomorrow," "The Messiah is coming," and so on.
Binary beliefs are basically voluntary. We can choose such beliefs much as we can choose to lift our arms and legs. If I say "the sun will rise tomorrow," I am choosing to say this, just as I can choose to lift my arm. I can even choose the internal factor. I can choose to say to myself, "the sun will rise tomorrow." And I can also choose to say that the sun will NOT rise. I can choose to say this to others, and I can even choose to say it to myself, within my own head.
Of course, it would be reasonable to respond to this by saying that this does not mean that someone can choose to believe that the sun will not rise. Even if he says this to himself, he still does not act as though the sun is not going to rise. He won't start making preparations for a freezing world, for example. The answer to this is that choosing to believe something is more than choosing to say it to oneself and to others. Rather, it is choosing to conform the whole of one's life to the idea that this is true. And someone could indeed choose to believe that the sun will not rise in this sense, if he thought he had a reason to do so. If he did so choose, he would indeed begin to make preparations for a dark world, because he would be choosing to conform his actions to that opinion. And he would do this voluntarily, just as someone can voluntarily lift his arm.
Quasi-Bayesian Beliefs
At the same time, human beings have quasi-Bayesian beliefs. These are true degrees of belief like probabilities, never really becoming absolutely certain of the truth or falsity of anything, but sometimes coming very close. These are internal estimates of the mind, and are basically non-voluntary. Instead of depending on choice, they actually depend on evidence, although they are influenced by other factors as well. A person cannot choose to increase or decrease this estimate, although he can go and look for evidence. On account of the flawed nature of the mind, if someone only looks for confirming evidence and ignores disconfirming evidence, this estimate in principle can go very high even when the objective state of the evidence does not justify this.
Belief in Belief
It seems to me that what we usually call belief in belief basically means that someone holds a binary belief together with a quasi-Bayesian belief which conflicts with it. So he says "The Messiah is coming," saying it to himself and others, and in every way acting as though this is true, even though his internal Bayesian estimate is that after all these thousands of years, the evidence is strongly against this. So he has a positive binary belief while having a very low estimate of the probability of this belief.
The reason why this often happens with religion in particular is that religious beliefs very often do not have huge negative consequences if they are mistaken. In principle, someone can choose to believe that if he jumps from the window of the tenth story of a building, he will be ok. In practice, no one will choose this on account of his non-voluntary Bayesian estimate that he is very likely to be hurt if does so. But a person does not notice much harm from believing the Messiah is coming, and so he can choose to believe it even if his internal estimate says that it is likely to be false.
A cautionary note: one might be tempted to think that religious people in general have belief in belief in this sense, that they all really know that their religions are unlikely to be true. This is not the case. There are plenty of ways to distort the internal estimate, even though one cannot directly choose this estimate. I know many very religious people who clearly have an extremely high internal estimate of the truth of their religion. They REALLY BELIEVE it is true, in the fullest possible sense. But on the other hand I also know others, also extremely devout, who clearly have an internal estimate which is extremely low: they are virtually certain that their religion is false, and yet in every way, externally and internally, they act and think as though it were true.