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ChristianKl comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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In general scientific writing doesn't use five letter words that are easy to type but longer more precise words.
In Bem's meta analysis case we are talking about extrasensory perception. Information transfer for which our existing theories don't account. Not just experience.
Sure, but this is a comment thread, not a journal submission.
I don't see why that is relevant. What difference does it make if it's God or ESP or leprechauns? Strong evidence for any of those would be enough to be of considerable interest.
Also, can you please re-post the link to "Bem's meta analysis"? I can't figure out what you're referring to here.
BTW, I read the Leah Libresco piece you referred me to. Thanks for the reference. I don't agree with you that it represents "good reasoning." Her reasoning was, essentially, "Someone has asked me a question for which I do not have a satisfactory answer. Therefore everything the Catholic church teaches must be true." That doesn't seem like good reasoning to me.
We are at a place that values reasoning. You are making a mistake in reasoning by switching different claims with each other.
Again you make a reasoning mistake by confusing claims. I didn't said I linked to Bem's meta analysis. I said I linked to Scott Alexander's discussion of it. And I linked to it in the first sentence speaking about a shard of evidence. Is that too hard too find?
But in general looking up papers isn't hard if you want to look up papers of Bem there's Google Scholar. If you are actually interested in the evidence than reading a bit Bem could be worthwhile to understand his arguments.
To the extend that you think that's why Leah changed the position I don't think that summarizes what I know over the process from reading her writting. The information about her the ideological turing project might be distributed over more articles.
Fair enough. I'll endeavor to be more precise.
I'm trying to keep up with a lot of parallel threads here simultaneously, and backtracking a thread more than 2-3 steps is actually fairly time consuming because of the way the LW UI is set up. I was hoping you might do me a favor and save me the trouble of having to go back and figure out what you were referring to.
But since you're giving me a hard time for my lack of precision and adherence to the conventions of scientific discourse, here is how Scott Alexander references Bem:
"Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, and Duggan (2014), full text available for download at the top bar of the link above..."
The link that I presume he's referring to (the phrase "the link above" is ambiguous because there are many links above) has anchor text, "What now, motherfuckers?" which is not a phrase you find much in scientific discourse. I followed that link, and it leads to a page that has the abstract of the paper that I presume you're referring to, and a notation that says "Not available for download." So that's as far as I'm willing to go down that particular rabbit hole. Sorry. Life is short.
Of course it is, and I read some of them. I don't have time to go back and read everything she's written. But going from being a non-theist to being a theist is a huge leap, and it calls for a better explanation than the one she gave if she wanted anyone to accept is as "good reasoning" rather than a straightforward leap of faith.
Put "?context=5" on the end of the comment's permalink url to backtrack 5 steps.
So, for example, backtracking this comment 5 steps would be http://lesswrong.com/lw/n9y/is_spirituality_irrational/d4c9?context=5
Aha! Thanks!
I think this is the paper in question, completely online. I think this is official and not in any way illegitimately piratical. There is apparently a more recent revised version, but since even the first published version (to which that's a link) postdates Scott's article you should probably start with that.
Thanks!
If you don't actually want to evaluate the paper, the basic heuristic is to trust what a highly regarded member of this community with Scott Alexander says about it. It does provide a fair amount of evidence. It therefore makes sense to update and not continue to say that there's no evidence at all.
We live at a time where that's the information that specifies a scientific paper. It's quite alright to say that you don't care about the evidence for paranormal phenomena and spend your time on other issues. If you however do care about the state of the evidence then there a time where it makes sense to read scientific papers instead about making arguments about what the evidence is based on what's reported in mainstream media.
I have no problem with someone saying that he doesn't know or cares to know about the state of the evidence, but if that's your position don't claim that there's no evidence.
The even more basic heuristic is to look at the history of psi claims and observe that the overwhelming majority of them have failed to stand up to scrutiny. It might even be true that not a single psi claim has ever stood up to scrutiny (though this depends a bit on what you mean by "scrutiny".) It is certainly true that no psi phenomenon has ever been reliably reproduced, and that the Randi prize went unclaimed despite there having been over 1000 applicants. One person's opinion, no matter how well respected, doesn't make much of a Bayesian dent in that mountain of negative evidence. People can be fooled, and people make mistakes. Even smart people.
I already conceded this point, so you are now attacking a straw man. If you're not going to cut me any slack over terminology the you should expect me to cut you any when you don't pay attention. (Though I submit that this conversation will be more fruitful if we both cut each other a little more slack.)
The linked paper is about a meta-study that described how a specifc psi phenomena was reliably reproduced.
There's an older meta-review of Ganzfeld experiments that came to a similar result. Ganzfeld experiments have been multiple time reproduced.
The standard of the Randi prize (betting chances of 1:1,000,000) is substantially more tough than the standards of evidence-based medicine (two trials that beat 1:20).
You don't go around and say that there's no significant evidence that FDA approved drugs work because they aren't proven to work for Randi's standards.
That's not what reliable reproduction means. What it means is that you would be willing to place a real-money bet on the outcome of a future experiment.
Actually, there's good reason to believe that the drug testing process has some serious flaws. But even under ideal circumstances, the odds of getting a false positive are 1 in 400. There have been about 1500 drugs approved by the FDA so almost certainly at least 3 or 4 of them actually don't work. Those are good enough odds for me, particularly when compared to the alternatives.
Yes, of course. If Randi had used the FDA standard, then with over 1000 applicants, you would expect two or three of them to win at 1:400 purely by chance. I'll take the bet at 1:400 confidence if you're willing to pay 1/40th of the prize as an entrance fee, and are willing to do the experiment more than once. In fact, I'll go you one better: You name any statistical test you think you can beat and I'll take a bet at 10:1 odds. Heck, make it 2:1. (If it's good enough for a Vegas casino, it's good enough for me.) Truthfully, that's a bet I would be absolutely thrilled to lose.
But my prediction is that you will not accept this offer.
Could you refer me to any authoritive scientific body that defines the test of what scientific results are defined as reliably produced over real-money bets?
I think you can make an argument that the scientific establishment should work that way, but if you consider that to be the sole standard you have to throw out most scientific findings because nobody ever bet on them.
I think Dean Radin or Bem might be open to do a run at the Ganzfeld experiment provided the amount of money involved justifies the effort or there reputation to be gained by a prominent skeptic holding the other side of the bet.
On the other hand I'm personally not in the business of doing parapsychology experiments.
You are asking me to advance an argument from authority? Seriously?
That's not true. You place implicit bets on the reliable reproducibility of scientific results every time you use any piece of modern technology. If you've ever flown in an airplane you have actually staked your life on the proposition that scientific results are reliably reproducible.
And, BTW, the reason very few people ever place "real" bets on the reliable reproducibility of scientific results is that there's a shortage of suckers stupid enough to bet against it.
Aaaaand... here come the excuses. What a surprise.
I'm not asking you to conduct the experiment, I'm just asking you how much you'd be willing to bet.
For my part, I'll put up $10,000.
I don't think that's fair. More like: "Someone has asked me a question for which the least unsatisfactory answer I can find is that there is a god who somewhat resembles that of Christianity; I have already decided that Roman Catholicism is the most plausible variety of theism; therefore I shall convert to Roman Catholicism". She doesn't say explicitly the bit about having already decided that RCism is the most plausible sort of theism, but it seems clear from context.
The step from theism-in-general to RCism-in-particular is, though, something Leah seems particularly unwilling to justify in any way that would make sense to a skeptic, and I agree it looks like a very weak point. Just not quite as weak as you represent it as being :-).
Sure, I'd agree with that. Sometimes when trying to be brief one fails to capture all of the subtle nuances of someone else's argument. But one way or another, I think she skipped a step or two.
I can see how you can get to something resembling "morality loves me". What I don't see is how you get from there to "Jesus, an actual flesh-and-blood human being (who was also the physical embodiment of the omniscient omnipresent omnipotent deity who created the universe) died for my sins, and this is an actual point of physical fact, not merely an allegorical myth."