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JoshuaZ comments on A few questions on International Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: Locke 30 April 2012 10:27PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 May 2012 01:18:59AM 6 points [-]

Caring about a hypothesis isn't an aspect of simplicity for evaluating the hypotheses. Obviously some questions are more or less interesting. But the idea that questions concerning the existence or nature of deities as uninteresting doesn't make much sense. If any form of classical deity exists then the deity has serious concerns about how we act and it will impact our lives in this life or the next life. At the same time, if such a deity does exist then issues of existential risk are either irrelevant or minimal. But if no such deity exists then existential risk becomes a severe concern. Acting like these questions don't matter is irrational for almost any goal-set.

Comment author: shminux comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 May 2012 05:34:00AM * 5 points [-]

Existence or non-existence of a deity is not a question that can be answered experimentally

That's wrong for at least three reasons.

First, while certain deific claims that are so vague as to be close to meaningless cannot be falsified, most deities don't fall into that category. For example, all the classical Abrahamic religions make testable claims. Religions have only adapted to more generic, harder to test claims when those claims failed. There's a relevant bit in the sequences about this.

Second, even weaker claims like vaguely just deities who watch over everything easily lead to essentially testable consequences. Indeed, some of these, like the existential risk issue mentioned earlier are not only testable but are highly relevant to society: if a deity is watching over in any way then we don't need to worry nearly as much about existential risk. If there is no such entity, things become a lot more serious. So actual allocation of resources is impacted by this.

Third, many deity claims also are connected to specific claims about the afterlife, which makes the claims testable if one simply waits a while. Moreover, many of those claims have far reaching consequences. If Jack Chick is correct about how reality works then it is quite worth figuring that out before one is subject to eternal torment.

It may be true that the entire superset of deity hypotheses may be so broad as to be not really falsifiable, but that's largely due to the more vague terms that are classified as deities like people saying things like "God is the transcendent morality inside us all" or something like that.

As an aside, I'm mildly curious if you've downvoted the comment that I made above as well as the comment two above. I don't particularly care about karma, but I did notice that both comments received a downvote within a few seconds of your reply. There's no particular rule about downvoting comments made by people one is talking to, but if one is having an extended disagreement, downvoting is probably not a good idea since, given standard cognitive biases (especially issues of cognitive dissonance), it will likely make one more set in one's opinion. So downvoting in such contexts is probably not a great idea if one wants to have productive discussion.

Comment author: shminux comment score below threshold [+] (7 children)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 01 May 2012 03:23:11PM * 1 point [-]

Yes, I did, based on a 5-sec negative reaction that I immediately rationalized for myself, so now it seems like a perfectly rational action to me (now I think I did it because you totally missed my point).

Huh? Are you saying that they you are completely aware of your rationalization but are still sticking to that belief despite knowing it is a rationalization?

I don't feel like addressing your argument point-by-point, though, as it clearly failed the first two times.

None of your replies have been longer than a sentence, so I'm not sure where you think you've addressed any points earlier. A longer reply might help clear up confusion or point out why I'm wrong.

Comment author: shminux comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 May 2012 12:01:49AM 3 points [-]

Anyway, here is my point, again, since you insist: given that faith is largely belief-in-belief, it cannot be refuted experimentally.

Ok. This isn't true for everyone and isn't true for quite a few people. For example, Eliezer, myself and Dr. Manhattan are all former Orthodox Jews who (at least by our descriptions and best knowledge) left in part due to actual evidence issues. So people really do care about evidence. Moreover, most humans are pretty complicated so even if someone has some amount of belief-in-belief they often also care about evidence issues.

The simulation argument gives one model where supernatural influence may well be "real", so hard atheism fails there

I'm not sure what you mean by "hard atheism" in this context and wonder if differences in meaning are relevant here. Most atheists aren't going to claim that there's a 100% chance that there is no deity (even Richard Dawkins won't do that). So if that's what you mean then there's no disagreement. Do you mean that or do you mean something else?

Realizing that worrying about whether God is real is a waste of time lets you concentrate on more pragmatic matters, including existential risks

And if Jack Chick turns out to be correct, not only will all that effort put into existential risk be a complete waste, but you will have wasted a tremendous amount of resources that could have gone to prevent eternal torture. And this applies to less sadistic or less interventionary deities also. If you are worried about existential risk, then one is already operating on a framework that assigns a low probability to most notions of "God".

And yeah, Laplace said it better.

It may help to reread what Laplace is saying. Laplace isn't saying that he's not thinking about the hypothesis, he's saying he doesn't need it. The God-of-the-gaps created by Newton to explain planets not falling drastically out of orbit is something Laplace doesn't need. That's not at all the same thing as saying one isn't thinking about the issue.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 May 2012 11:03:10PM 2 points [-]

given that faith is largely belief-in-belief, it cannot be refuted experimentally.

To me you seem as if you're trying to find clever ways by which you may allow yourself to be stupid.

Something being even worse than wrong isn't something to brag about.

Comment author: shminux 01 May 2012 11:17:47PM -2 points [-]

To me you seem as if you're trying to find clever ways by which you may allow yourself to be stupid. Something being even worse than wrong isn't something to brag about.

No idea what you mean...

Comment author: [deleted] 02 May 2012 06:33:54AM 0 points [-]

I think he's saying that beliefs that by their nature can't be refuted empirically are worse than wrong, so there's plenty reason to be concerned not to have such beliefs.

Comment author: shminux 02 May 2012 02:44:56PM 0 points [-]

I thought that was my point about faith...

JoshuaZ comments on A few questions on International Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

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