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calcsam comments on The elephant in the room, AMA - Less Wrong Discussion
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I first read Eliezer’s posts about 3 years ago, before I left for India. On an abstract level, I believe that humans' purpose on earth is to become, like God, perfect, and making correct judgments seems to certainly be part of that. On a practical level, I really enjoyed reading the Sequences, because I love learning new things and because cognitive toolboxes for clear thinking are extremely useful.
Things that have caused me to downward-adjust the probability that there is a God: Occam’s Razor and MML. I realized that (God) and (not-God) are not a priori equally likely, because you can't code "God" in one bit.
Things that caused me to upwardly-adjust the probability that there is a God. Finding independent support for principles I had reached through religious means. Your actual beliefs are best determined by your actions, not what you say your beliefs are. (The ‘invisible dragon’). That many people’s beliefs are actually just attire and tribe-identification.
The downward-adjusters are more powerful; Eliezer and LW have a fairly coherent atheistic worldview.
Why only "fairly"?
Just to make sure I understand, you mean that Eliezer's writings have more powerful downward-adjusters and a fairly coherent atheistic worldview, right?
Yes. Edited to make it more clear.
Why did these two things cause upward-adjustment?
I don't understand this. Why would learning this make it seem more likely that there is a god?
My impression is that calcsam believes that Mormonism (or the Book of Mormon) has produced accurate claims or predictions about human nature, non-supernatural events, and the like, and then extrapolated from that to a high probability that the institution's metaphysical claims are accurate. If this isn't the argument, I'd appreciate clarification or correction!
Are you trying to say that he's trying to say that the Book of Mormon caused him to anticipate experiences which then happened?
That could certainly be the case, and I can see how one might incorrectly extrapolate from performance in one area to another in a situation like that. But it seems likely that many of these predictions are things that are interpreted as predictions after-the-fact, and possibly collected, filtered, and interpreted by Mormon scholars.
I agree that if Calcsam does believe that Mormonism has made predictions, at least some of them are probably postdictions. Right now I'm just trying to figure out how the part of his comment I quoted above would raise his probability there's a god. Your interpretation makes sense as an interpretation for how that would happen, though as you say it implies that Calcsam was making a mistake.
This, on its own, does not make sense to me. If you believe the arguments against theism (i.e., the downward-adjusters) are more powerful than your arguments for, why are you still a theist?
No, I meant that the net effect of being on LW was to downward-adjust my perceived probability of God existing.
That looks odd to me. Why does finding that someone has reached some of the same conclusions as you, but by a completely different and incompatible path, constitute evidence for your path?
Am I correct in reading that as meaning that on balance, your religious faith has been lessened?