I've put together a website, "New Atheist Survival Kit" at atheistkit.wordpress.com

The idea is to help new atheists come to terms with their change in belief, and also invite them to become more than atheists: rationalists.

And if it helps theists become atheists, too, and helps old atheists become rationalists, more the better.

The bare bones of it are all in place now. Once a few people have gone over it, for editing, and for advice about what to include, leave out, improve, re-organize, whatever, I'll ask a bunch of atheist and rationalist communities to write up their own blurb for us to include in a list of communities that we'll point people to in the "Atheist Communities" or "Thinker's Communities" sections on the main menu.

It includes my rough draft attempt to basically bring down the Metaethics sequence to a few thousand words and make it stylistically and conceptually accessible to a mass audience, which I could especially use some help with.

So, for now, I'm here to ask that anyone interested check it out, and message me any improvements they think worth making, from grammar and spelling all the way up to what content to include, or how to present things.

Thanks to all for any help.

I'm playing around with an article on Motivated Cognition for general consumption

I think it's one of the most important things to teach someone about rationality (any other suggestions? Confirmation bias, placebo, pareidolia, and the odds of coincidences come to mind...)

So, I've taken the five kinds of motivated cognition I know of 

(Motivated skepticism)

(Motivated stopping)

(Motivated neutrality)

(Motivated credulity)

(Motivated continuation)

added a counterpart to "neutrality," and then renamed neutrality.

The end result being six kinds of motivated cognition, three pairs of two kinds each, which are opposites of each other. Also, each pair has one kind that beings with an S and the other that begins with a C, which is good for mnemonic purposes.

So, I've got

Stopping and Continuation - Controls WHICH arguments you put in front of yourself (Do you continue because you haven't found what supports you yet, or do you stop because you have?)

Self-deprecation and Conceit - these control WHETHER you judge an argument in front of you (Do you refuse to judge ("Who am I to judge?") clear arguments that oppose your side or do you judge arguments you have no capacity to understand (the probability of abiogenesis, for example) because it lets you support your side?)

Skepticism and Credulity - Controls HOW you judge arguments (Do you demand higher evidence for ideas you don't like, and less for ideas you do? Do you scrutinize ideas you don't like more than ideas you do? Do you ask if the evidence forces you to accept, or if it allows you to accept an idea?)

I'm thinking of introducing them in that order, too, with the "Which/Whether/How you judge" abstraction.

Anybody see better abstractions, better explanations, better mnemonic techniques? Any advice of any kind on how to teach this effectively to people? Other fundamentals to rationality? (Maybe the beliefs as probabilities idea?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exmjlc4PfEQ

Anthony Magnabosco does what he calls Street Epistemology, usually applying it to supernatural (usually religious) beliefs.

The great thing about his method (and his manner, guy's super personable) is that he avoids the social structure of a debate, of two people arguing, of a zero-sum one game where person wins at the other's loss.

I've struggled with trying to figure out how to let people save face in disputes (when they're making big, awful mistakes), even considering including minor errors (that don't affect the main point) in my arguments so that they could point them out and we could both admit we were wrong (in their case, about things which do affect the main point) and move on.

But this guy's technique manages to invite people to correct their own errors (people are SOOOO much more rational when they're not defensive) and they DO it. No awkwardness, no discomfort, and people pointing out the flaws in their own arguments, and then THANKING him for the talk afterwards and referring him to their friends to talk. Even though they just admitted that their cherished beliefs might not deserve the certainty they've been giving them.

This is applied to religion in this video, but this seems to me to be a generally useful method when you confront someone making an error in their thinking. Are you forcing people to swallow their pride a little (over and over) when they talk with you? Get that out, and watch how much more open people can be.

Discussion article for the meetup : Bay City Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Bay City Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Bay City Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Bay City Meetup

I wrote an article for mass consumption on the biases which are at play in a hot-button social issue, namely, how people feel about their beauty.

skepticexaminer.com/2016/05/dont-think-youre-beautiful/

and

intentionalinsights.org/why-you-dont-think-youre-beautiful

It's supposed to be interesting to people who wouldn't normally care a whit for correcting their biases for the sake of epistemology.

EDIT: Text included below

Long-time friends Amy, Bailey, and Casey are having their weekly lunch together when Amy says “I don’t think I’m very beautiful.”


Have you ever seen something like this? Regardless, before moving on, try to guess what will happen next. What kind of future would you predict?


I’ve often seen such a scene. My experience would lead me to predict... 


“Of course you’re beautiful!” they reassure her. Granted, people sometimes say that just to be nice, but I’ll be talking about those times when they are sincere.


How can Bailey and Casey see Amy as beautiful when Amy doesn’t? Some great insight into beauty, perhaps?


Not at all! Consider what typically happens next.


“I only wish I was as beautiful as you, Amy,” Bailey reassures her.


The usual continuation of the scene reveals that Bailey is just as self-conscious as Amy is, and Casey’s probably the same. All people have this natural tendency, to judge their own appearance more harshly than they do others’.


So what’s going on?


If you were present, I’d ask you to guess what causes us to judge ourselves this way. Indeed, I have so asked from time to time, and found most people blame the same thing.


Think about it; what does everybody blame when people are self-conscious about their beauty?


We blame…


The media! The blasted media and the narrow standard of beauty it imposes.
There are two effects; the media is responsible for only one, and not the one we’re talking about.


Research suggests that the media negatively affects how we judge both ourselves and others. We tend to focus on how it affects our perception of ourselves, but the media affects how we judge others, too. More to the point, that’s not the effect we were talking about!


We were talking about a separate effect, where people tend to judge themselves one way and everyone else another. Is it proper to blame the media for this also? 


Picture what would happen if the media were to blame.


First, everyone assimilates the media’s standard of beauty. They judge beauty by that standard. That’s the theory. So far so good.


What does this cause? They look themselves over in the mirror. They see that they don’t fit the standard. Eventually they sigh, and give up. “I’m not beautiful,” they think.


Check. The theory fits.


But what happens when they look at other people?


Bailey looks at Amy. Amy doesn’t (as hardly anybody does) fit the standard of beauty. So…Bailey concludes that Amy isn’t beautiful?


That’s not what happens! Amy looks fine to Bailey, and vice versa! The media effect doesn’t look like this one. We might get our standard of beauty from the media, but the question remains, why do we hold ourselves to it morethan we do everyone else?


We need something that more fully explains why Amy judges herself one way and everyone else another, something mapping the territory of reality.


The Explanation


A combination of two things.


1. Amy’s beauty is very important to her.
2. She knows her looks better than others do.


Amy’s beauty affects her own life. Other people’s beauty doesn’t affect her life nearly as much.


Consider how Amy looks at other people. She sees their features and figure, whatever good and bad parts stand out, a balanced assessment of their beauty. She has no special reason to pay extra attention to their good or bad parts, no special reason to judge them any particular way at all. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t much matter to her how other people look.


Contrast that to how much her appearance matters to her. How we look affects how people perceive us, how we perceive ourselves, how we feel walking down the street. Indeed, researchers have found that the more beautifulwe are, the more we get paid, and the more we are perceived as honest and intelligent.


Like for most people, Amy’s beauty is a big deal to her. So which does she pay attention to, the potential gains of highlighting her good points, or the potential losses of highlighting her bad points? Research suggests that she will focus on losses. It’s called loss aversion.


Reason 1: Loss Aversion


We hate losing even more than we love winning. Loss aversion is when we value the same thing more or less based on if you’re going to gain it or if you risk losing it.


Say someone gives you $1000. They say you can either lose $400 of it now, or try to hold on to it all, 50-50 odds to keep it all or lose it all. What would you do?


Well, studies show about 61% of people in this situation choose to gamble on keeping everything over a sure loss.


Then suppose you get a second deal. You can either keep $600 of your $1000 now, or you can risk losing it all, 50-50 odds again. What would you do?


People tend to like keeping the $600 more in this deal, only 43% tend to gamble.


Do you see the trick?


Losing $400 out of $1000 is the same thing as keeping $600 out of $1000! So why do people like the “keeping” option over the “losing” option? We just tend to focus on avoiding losses, even if it doesn’t make sense.


Result for Amy? Given the choice to pay attention to what could make her look good, or to what could make her look bad…


Amy carefully checks on all her flaws each time she looks in the mirror. The balanced beauty assessment that Amy graciously grants others is lost when she views herself. She sees herself as less beautiful than everyone else sees her. 


Plus, whatever has your attention seems more important than what you’re not paying attention to. It’s calledattentional bias. It’s a natural fact that if you spend most of the time carefully examining your flaws, and only very little time appreciating your good points, the flaws will tend to weigh heaviest in your mind.


Now, the second reason Amy judges her own beauty under a harsher gaze.


Reason 2: Familiarity


Amy doesn’t just have more cause to look at her flaws, she has more ability to do so.
Who knows you like you? If you paid someone to examine flaw after flaw in you, they wouldn’t know where to look! They’d find one, and then hunt for the next one while all the beautiful parts of you kept getting in the way. There’s that balanced assessment we have when we judge each others beauty; there’s a limit to how judgmental we can be even if we’re trying!


Indeed, it takes years, a lifetime, even, to build up the blind spots to beauty, and the checklist of flaws Amy knows by heart. She can jump from one flaw to the next and to the next with an impressive speed and efficiency that would be fantastic if it wasn’t all aimed at tearing down the beauty before her.


Your intimate knowledge of your beauty could just as easily let you appreciate your subtle beauties as your subtle flaws, but thanks to loss aversion, your attention is dialed up to to ten and stuck on ruthless judgment.


Review


And so it is. Amy’s loss aversion focuses her attention on flaws. This attentional bias makes her misjudge her beauty for the worse, the handiwork of her emotional self. Then her unique intimacy with her appearance lets her unforgiving judgments strike more overwhelmingly and more piercingly than could her worst enemy. Indeed, in this, she is her own worst enemy.


Since others don’t have the ability to criticize us like we can, and they don’t have any reason to pay special attention to our faults, their attention towards us is more balanced. They see the clearest good and bad things.


The Fix


How can Amy achieve a more natural, balanced view of her beauty? It’s a question which has troubled me at times, as even the most beautiful people I know are so often so down about their looks. How can it be? I’ve often been in that scene offering my assurances, and know well the feeling when my assurances are rejected, and my view of another’s beauty is knocked away and replaced with a gloomier picture. A sense of listless hopelessness advances as I search for a way to show them what I see. How can I say it any better than I already have? How can I make them see...?


If we can avoid the attentional bias on flaws, then we can make up for our loss aversion. We’ll always see ourselves more deeply than most, but we can focus on the good and bad. For every subtle flaw we endure a subtle loveliness we can turn to.


Next time examining her form and features in the mirror, Amy intentionally switches her attention to the appreciation of what she likes about herself. She spends as much time on her good points as her bad. She is beginning to see herself with the balance others naturally see her with.


All people can do the same. A balanced attention will counter our natural loss aversion, and let us see ourselves as others already do.


As you practice seeing with new eyes, let the perspective of others remind you what you’re looking for. Allow yourself to accept their perspective of you as valid, and probably more balanced than your own. Your goal to have a balanced perspective may take time, but take comfort in each of the little improvements along the way.


Questions to consider
• What would happen if only the effects of the media were in play without the effects of loss aversion? Or vice versa?
• How can you remember to balance your attention when you look in the mirror?
• What other mistakes might our loss aversion lead us to?
• How else might you achieve a more balanced perspective of yourself?
• Whom do you know that might benefit from understanding these ideas?

Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup

Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup

I'm practicing dissolving questions. For some of these questions, there's no dispute as to the nature of the facts, and people are just arguing about what frame to hang life's picture in, what words to use to describe it. For others, there are real factual disputes hiding behind these semantic squabbles, and this technique lets us get past disputing definitions and graduate to mapmaking.

Most of these questions are *actually argued* in prominent venues, and my intention is to give a response that if presented in such a venue, would leave the combatants with nothing to say, or if not, with a concrete and tractable problem. Potential for progress.

Please comment any other controversies this technique would benefit.

The key in every case is to look at reality as it is, and then dispute *that* if there's disagreement, letting fade into obscurity the relatively trivial question of what words to use to describe the piece of reality in question (at least until that greater problem is given its due).

The tree in the forest question seems to me a good place to demonstrate the principle at first since it's not politicized. Perhaps in real venues, it would be useful to give an uncontroversial example of the technique before applying it to the controversy at hand.

1. If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a "sound?"

Some say sound is a series of vibrations, others that it is an auditory experience. Regardless of which word you use, the reality of the situation is that the tree will fall over, make vibrations, and there will not be any auditory experiences. That is the entirety of the situation, there is no disagreement. Now, you can argue about whether or not we should describe this with the word “sound” or “noise,” or “fershizzleplumf,” but let’s all be aware that we’re arguing about which word to use to describe reality; we’re not arguing about what reality is truly like.

2. Is Islam a "religion of peace?"

This simply depends on what you mean by religion of peace, an ambiguous term, to be sure. The fact of the matter is that Islam’s teachings include some which can be interpreted to encourage peace, and other interpreted to encourage violence. Some adherents of the religion are violent, or support violence, and some do not. These are the facts, beyond dispute. If you want precise numbers, you can look into polling data, or per capita incidents of violence, or other pieces of information, but at the end of the day, you’re going to have this total picture of what Islam is like as a religion. At that point, it doesn’t matter what you call it; you know what it is. Then call it "a religion of peace" or not, but be aware that you’re not adding any information. And if people want to argue about what word to call this picture, this piece of reality, I humbly submit, that arguments about such trivial semantics are better reserved for after we’ve dedicated our brainpower to solving real problems.

3. Is there a "wall of separation between Church and State" in the US?

The United States laws allow for many kinds of religion practice. Other laws forbid doing certain things with religion, like requiring that the president believe certain dogmas. On the spectrum of total integration of church and state to total segregation, America lies somewhere in the middle, and we could find out exactly where if we prepared careful measures and looked hard enough. But at the end of the day, whatever we find, whatever we know, will be the totality of reality. We can argue about whether that degree of segregation should be called “a wall of separation between Church and State,” but we’re not actually arguing about what the reality is. Such semantic discussions are rather less interesting and useful than what we should expect of concerned citizens, or elected officials.

4. Is America a "Christian nation?"

America is what it is. It has a certain historic and modern relationship with Christianity. That relationship could have been—could be stronger than it has been—than it is, for example, had every citizen been a fervent Christian. At the end of the day, these are the bare facts, which no one disputes. The totality of these facts you may call what you wish: a Christian nation—or not. But what you call it is of little import. Such arguments would be not about what reality consists of, but about what technical term people should use to describe it: the kind of dry, pedantic discussion not worthy to divert our attention from more pressing matters.

5. Are Catholics/Mormons/Jehovah's Witnesses/etc "Christian?"

Every person on earth, identify as whatever religion they might or mightn’t, holds certain beliefs, and doesn’t hold others. Many of them hold similar beliefs to others, such as self-identified Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventist’s, etc. To understand these people as they are, you might carefully examine, among other things, their beliefs. At that point of understanding, you might wish to call them by some label or another, such as Christian, or you might not. But at that point, you’re not saying anything new about these people. The full nature of their beliefs is already examined. What you call them is of little import, and, according to every religion creed I know, has nothing to do with how God will think of them, or treat them, in this life, or in the next.

6. "Should" women take preventative measures against sexual assault?

Sometimes people say “should” and mean it is a moral duty to do something, such as when we say, “You should help others when you can.” Other times people say “should” when they mean it would be convenient or beneficial to do something, such as when we say, “You should exercise.”
Should women take preventative measures against sexual assault? It depends on which should you mean. They don’t have a moral duty to do so, they hold no guilt or responsibility for assaults committed against them. At the same time, they might find it convenient or beneficial to take such measures, if they are effective. Certainly I would hope my loved ones would, as I myself would. These are both bare facts; they are true. Neither contradicts the other. If you wish to say “should” or “shouldn’t” at this point, remember that it is only a question of words; the reality of the situation has already been described and does not change by your naming it. Anyone who spends excessive time deciding what word to use to describe the previously mentioned reality might be encouraged to dedicate their extra time to something more helpful, for themselves, or for their fellow human beings.
*note: framing an issue may affect how people think about it and be a worthwhile battle sometimes*

7. Is atheism a "religion?"

Atheism is the lack of belief in theism, or sometimes, the belief that theist ideas are false. This is the nature of it. Understanding that, you may wish to call it a religion or not, but it is a comparatively trivial matter. How much does it matter what you call something, compared to actually understanding what that thing is?

8. What is the "meaning of life?"

This one is harder to prepare in advance like this, because it's a non-binary question; there could be many possible meanings to the question. But the same strategy applies: Ask the questioner to pose the question in non-ambiguous terms. This is a classic "deep/hard" question more because *the questioner doesn't know what they're asking* than because of any ignorance on the part of the questioned.

So, I'd ask: "What do you mean by the meaning of life?"

If you mean whatever brings the most happiness, then I don't know what will produce the maximum possible happiness, but there are some good studies on what other qualities correlate with happy people that may be of use to you.

If you mean was life created for the sake of some goal, in the same way that we create things for the sake of some goal/purpose, then I think the answer is no. But even if you don't believe me, if you want to ask some religion or another, this has still ceased to be a deep or difficult question. It's positively mundane once dissolved, just take whatever religious answer you're willing to trust, or see if life looks created by a mind with a purpose.

If you have other possible interpretations of the question, I'd also like to hear those.