Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015

elharo

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

You could do a planet-size-spectrum like that; but reversing the analogy would be - I don't know, some sort of spectrum ranging from "God doesn't exist" to "God exists"? That seems a pretty binary set of points to me - how can the state of "God 50% exists" make any sort of sense?

And with nothing to need God for you can then reject the existence of God.

Similarly, if nothing that you ever see requires the existence of Jim, then you can reject the existence of Jim, right?

The state isn't "God 50% exists" but "there is evidence which indicates that God might exist, but the evidence is 50% as good (or there is 50% as much of it) as the evidence at the far end of the spectrum". There's a continuous line from lots of evidence for God, to some evidence for God, to no evidence for God.

3gjm11y

Suppose it turns out that the skeptics are mostly right about Christianity, but that there really was an itinerant preacher called Yeshua in Galilee about 2000 years ago who talked about forgiveness and love and had a reputation for casting out demons and the like; but he didn't really work any miracles, he didn't get crucified, and he certainly didn't rise from the dead. Then: Did Jesus exist? Well, kinda. Someone existed who's fairly clearly the person the gospels are about. No one existed about whom they're actually accurate accounts. Many of the most important things about "Jesus" don't apply to anyone. While it might feel a bit weird to say something like "Jesus 50% existed" in that case, I think it would give a reasonable idea of the situation.

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