gjm comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: lisper 09 February 2016 01:42AM

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Comment author: gjm 16 February 2016 11:09:58PM 1 point [-]

good reasoning

The quality of the reasoning involved is debatable, and Leah's apparent reluctance to say more about just how the reasoning went doesn't seem like a good sign. (For the avoidance of doubt, I firmly agree that Leah is very intelligent and I'm sure she was trying to reason well. But even very intelligent people trying to reason well perpetrate bad reasoning sometimes.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 16 February 2016 11:30:13PM *  0 points [-]

When I say good reasoning then I mean using the ideological turing test to decide which experts know most about the subject and then copying the judgement of those experts.

That's not the only thing that Leah did, but bootstraping priors in that way is a pretty sophisticated way to reason. It's an impressive example on focusing more on using a reasoning technique than focusing on achiving the generally accepted results that your social circle wants you to achieve.

As far as relucatance goes, I think most people aren't fully transparent about all reasoning that goes into major belief changes in written articles.

Comment author: gjm 17 February 2016 12:31:45AM 1 point [-]

using the ideological turing test to decide which experts know most about the subject and then copying the judgement of those experts

Although Leah hasn't been terribly forthcoming about how her conversion happened, I think she's said enough to be pretty sure that it wasn't that. What makes you think it was?

Read the blog post you linked to. She doesn't say anything about ideological Turing tests; she doesn't say anything about deferring to the judgement of experts-on-religion; she says she had a lot of trouble figuring out how to make sense of ethics and decided that "Morality just loves me or something" provided the best explanation.

the generally accepted results that your social circle wants you to achieve

My understanding is that a lot of Leah's social circle was RC even before she converted.

Comment author: ChristianKl 17 February 2016 12:42:41AM 0 points [-]

She doesn't say anything about ideological Turing tests

She did elsewhere. She run the first ideological Turing test for religion. Theists scored better. A catholic scored best overall.

Read the blog post you linked to.

I didn't reread the article. I just took the link from Wikipedia's page on ideological turing tests that points to her moving to Catholics.

Comment author: gjm 17 February 2016 02:48:42AM 0 points [-]

I think you are mixing up the true proposition

  • Leah ran an ideological Turing test, in which theists scored better than atheists, AND
  • Leah converted to Catholicism

with the false proposition

  • Leah ran an ideological Turing test, in which theists scored better than atheists, AND SO
  • Leah converted to Catholicism.

Wikipedia's page

... also neither claims nor implies that Leah's conversion was a result of her finding that Christians did better than atheists in her ideological Turing test.