At the Singularity Summit yesterday, several speakers alleged that we should "reach out" to artists and poets to encourage their participation in the Singularity dialogue.  So at the end of one such session, a woman went up to the audience microphone and said:

"I am an artist.  I want to participate.  What should I do?"

And there was a brief, frozen silence.

Once, when I was holding forth upon the Way, I remarked upon how most organized belief systems exist to flee from doubt.  A listener replied to me that the Jesuits must be immune from this criticism, because they practice organized doubt: their novices, he said, are told to doubt Christianity; doubt the existence of God; doubt if their calling is real; doubt that they are suitable for perpetual vows of chastity and poverty.  And I said:  Ah, but they're supposed to overcome these doubts, right?  He said:  No, they are to doubt that perhaps their doubts may grow and become stronger.

Googling failed to confirm or refute these allegations.  (If anyone in the audience can help, I'd be much obliged.)  But I find this scenario fascinating, worthy of discussion, regardless of whether it is true or false of Jesuits.  If the Jesuits practiced deliberate doubt, as described above, would they therefore be virtuous as rationalists?

I have so far distinguished between belief as anticipation-controller, belief in belief, professing and cheering.  Of these, we might call anticipation-controlling beliefs "proper beliefs" and the other forms "improper belief".  A proper belief can be wrong or irrational, e.g., someone who genuinely anticipates that prayer will cure her sick baby, but the other forms are arguably "not belief at all".

Yet another form of improper belief is belief as group-identification—as a way of belonging.  Robin Hanson uses the excellent metaphor of wearing unusual clothing, a group uniform like a priest's vestments or a Jewish skullcap, and so I will call this "belief as attire".

In terms of humanly realistic psychology, the Muslims who flew planes into the World Trade Center undoubtedly saw themselves as heroes defending truth, justice, and the Islamic Way from hideous alien monsters a la the movie Independence Day.  Only a very inexperienced nerd, the sort of nerd who has no idea how non-nerds see the world, would say this out loud in an Alabama bar.  It is not an American thing to say.  The American thing to say is that the terrorists "hate our freedom" and that flying a plane into a building is a "cowardly act".  You cannot say the phrases "heroic self-sacrifice" and "suicide bomber" in the same sentence, even for the sake of accurately describing how the Enemy sees the world.   The very concept of the courage and altruism of a suicide bomber is Enemy attire—you can tell, because the Enemy talks about it.  The cowardice and sociopathy of a suicide bomber is American attire.  There are no quote marks you can use to talk about how the Enemy sees the world; it would be like dressing up as a Nazi for Halloween.

I once attended a panel on the topic, "Are science and religion compatible?" One of the women on the panel, a pagan, held forth interminably upon how she believed that the Earth had been created when a giant primordial cow was born into the primordial abyss, who licked a primordial god into existence, whose descendants killed a primordial giant and used its corpse to create the Earth, etc. The tale was long, and detailed, and more absurd than the Earth being supported on the back of a giant turtle. And the speaker clearly knew enough science to know this.

I still find myself struggling for words to describe what I saw as this woman spoke. She spoke with... pride? Self-satisfaction? A deliberate flaunting of herself?

Followup to: Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

Carl Sagan once told a parable of a man who comes to us and claims: "There is a dragon in my garage." Fascinating! We reply that we wish to see this dragon—let us set out at once for the garage! "But wait," the claimant says to us, "it is an invisible dragon."

Now as Sagan points out, this doesn't make the hypothesis unfalsifiable. Perhaps we go to the claimant's garage, and although we see no dragon, we hear heavy breathing from no visible source; footprints mysteriously appear on the ground; and instruments show that something in the garage is consuming oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.

But now suppose that we say to the claimant, "Okay, we'll visit the garage and see if we can hear heavy breathing," and the claimant quickly says no, it's an inaudible dragon. We propose to measure carbon dioxide in the air, and the claimant says the dragon does not breathe. We propose to toss a bag of flour into the air to see if it outlines an invisible dragon, and the claimant immediately says, "The dragon is permeable to flour."

Carl Sagan used this parable to illustrate the classic moral that poor hypotheses need to do fast footwork to avoid falsification. But I tell this parable to make a different point: The claimant must have an accurate model of the situation somewhere in his mind, because he can anticipate, in advance, exactly which experimental results he'll need to excuse.

What are we to think when someone says with their lips that they desire truth, but by their other cognitive deeds choose comfortable illusions over reality (or comfortable cynicism over reality)?

Robin Hanson has labeled such individuals hypocrites.  In the traditional sense of the term, a hypocrite is a moral liar: someone who says a morality which they do not, themselves, believe.  On the other hand, we don't always live up to the goals we set for ourselves.  If I really believe that I ought to exercise at least 3 times per week, but I don't always do so, am I properly termed a "hypocrite"?  The term akrasia, meaning "weakness of will" or "failure of self-control", seems more appropriate.  Even if I tell all my friends that they ought to exercise 3 times per week, that doesn't necessarily make me a hypocrite.  It's good advice.  (Now, if I claimed to always exercise 3 times per week, knowing that this claim was false, that would be dishonest.)

Accusations of hypocrisy garner a lot more attention than accusations of akrasia - because hypocrisy is a deliberate transgression.  It is tempting to say "hypocrisy" when you really mean "akrasia", because you'll get more attention, but that can cause damage to innocent bystanders.  In akrasia, your transgression is your failure of will - it's fine that you advocate going to the gym more often, you just need to live up to the principle yourself.  In hypocrisy, the transgression is claiming to care: you have no right to publicly advocate the moral principle, because (the accuser says) you don't believe in it yourself.