In response to Questions on Theism
Comment author: gjm 08 October 2014 10:24:09PM 28 points [-]

So, a few observations on miracles.

  1. There are miracle stories in every religious tradition and plenty of not-exactly-religious traditions. Unless there's some big difference in credibility -- which I'm not aware of any reason to think there is -- if you think "no smoke without fire" about one set then you should think the same about the others too. Which means you either have to believe in lots of different gods, or believe in one god and lots of evil spirits (or something) that just happen to do more or less the same sorts of miracle. (Or, I guess, believe that miraculous things happen but they're brought about by people's latent psychic powers or something, but that's pretty far from any religion's account of these things.)

  2. When miraculous stories are investigated carefully, they consistently seem to evaporate. This happens even when the people doing the investigation belong to the religion that claims responsibility for the alleged miracle. For instance, consider something commonly cited as evidence for miracles: the shrine at Lourdes, to which pilgrims in their millions trek in the hope of miraculous healing. The Roman Catholic Church has a process -- to its credit, not a completely ridiculous one -- by which it certifies some healings there as miraculous. Although the process isn't completely ridiculous, it's far from obviously bulletproof; the main requirement is that a bunch of Roman Catholic doctors declare that the alleged cure is inexplicable according to current medical knowledge. As an example, the most recent case is of someone who had a tumour that went away after she bathed at Lourdes. (My understanding is that this is a thing that occasionally happens, miracle or no.) So, anyway, they appear to certify about one miracle per two million pilgrims, and I think pretty much all the pilgrims are there in hope of healing. One per two million! (If you think the alleged cures are so improbable that they couldn't happen naturally one time in two million, I have a bridge to sell you.)

  3. In some situations (those in which a lot of these miraculous healings tend to occur) it really isn't difficult to get people to think more has happened than really has. Consider, for instance, the case of Peter Popoff. Lots of miraculous healings at his meetings -- but the whole thing was a fraud.

  4. In general, unfortunately, people do lie. And make mistakes. And see what they hope or expect to see. And tales "grow in the telling", so that after a few steps of Chinese Whispers something sounds far more inexplicable and impressive than it ever really was.

You might try the following experiment: Talk to some of your Christian friends, and ask them for the most impressive examples they have personally experienced of miraculous interventions by God. If in fact there are no miracles, what you should expect is that (1) the things they cite won't, on the whole, be all that impressive; (2) the more careful and intelligent of them will have less impressive experiences; (3) the most impressive experiences will be the least verifiable.

In response to comment by gjm on Questions on Theism
Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 09 October 2014 03:03:18AM 7 points [-]

I have done this. The most impressive-sounding one happened to a friend of mine who had formerly been an athlete. She had to withdraw from sports for a year because of an unexpected muscular condition. (If this is obviously medically wrong, it's probably because I changed details for privacy.) As you probably expect, that year involved plenty of spiritual growth that she attributes to having had to quit sports.

At the end of that time, a group of church people laid hands on her and prayed, she felt some extreme acceleration in her heart rate, and her endurance was back the next time she tested it. A doctor confirmed that the muscular thing was completely gone, and she's been physically active ever since.

Now obviously this isn't bulletproof. You just need her to spontaneously recover at some point before the laying on of hands. (I have no idea how likely this would be; probably not very.) The rest is exactly the sort of thing that might happen regardless of whether there's a miracle. But it still sounds really impressive. If I weren't actively trying not to spin it to sound even more miraculous, it'd sound even more impressive.

But this is just the most miraculous-sounding story I've heard from a source I trust. I only know so many people. This account is probably well within the distribution of how miraculous anecdotes can get. I'd feel weird saying "you spontaneously got better a few months earlier, and so did anyone else with a similar story."

In response to Questions on Theism
Comment author: advancedatheist 09 October 2014 01:53:03AM *  0 points [-]

Speaking of miracles, I've never gotten a good explanation from a christian about what happened to this Lazarus person Jesus raised from the dead, especially in the context of the often-quoted verse Hebrews 9:27, " And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."

Assuming this resurrection happened historically, then what happened to Lazarus afterwards? He just disappears from the story like a character in a play who has one thing to do in the plot and then he walks off the stage.

So either Lazarus died again later, but without leaving a record of his mortality that has survived down to our time. So how could he have died twice, despite what Hebrews 9:27 says?

Or else we have to take Hebrews 9:27 and the resurrection account literally, and postulate that in October of 2014, Lazarus in his deathless body still wanders the earth like a character from Highlander or something.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 09 October 2014 02:40:59AM 6 points [-]

It's appointed. Doesn't mean the guy who did the appointing can't make exceptions if he feels like it.

Comment author: Punoxysm 23 September 2014 08:58:49PM *  0 points [-]

I was pondering the whole mass-downvote kerfuffle a while back, and even though I generally agree with the end result from gut instinct reasoning, I'm struck by the following:

The downvoter had an objective, and rationally used the tool of downvoting to achieve it rather than constraining himself arbitrarily. If HPJEV were a forum-dweller instead of a wizard, he would do the very same.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 23 September 2014 09:17:58PM 1 point [-]

Well no, because I doubt he'd share the downvoter's objective. (I assume. I wasn't following the kerfuffle.) To conclude that he would, you have to transplant his methods onto a forum setting but not his goals. Which is a weird level to model at.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 22 August 2014 07:43:54AM 2 points [-]

So my mind state is more likely in a five-sibling world than a six-sibling one, but using it as anthropic evidence would just be double-counting whatever evidence left me with that mind state in the first place.

Yep; in which case the anthropic evidence isn't doing any useful explanatory work, and the thesis 'Anthropics doesn't explain X' holds.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 23 August 2014 06:33:55PM 2 points [-]

Anthropics fails to explain King George because it's double-counting the evidence. The same does not apply to any extinction event, where you have not already conditioned on "I wouldn't exist otherwise."

If it's a non-extinction nuclear exchange, where population would be significantly smaller but nonzero, I'm not confident enough in my understanding of anthropics to have an opinion.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 22 August 2014 04:04:52AM 4 points [-]

I still don't think George VI having more siblings is an observer-killing event.

Since we now know that George VI didn’t have more siblings, we obtain

Probability(You exist [and know that George VI had exactly five siblings] | George VI had more than five siblings) = 0

I assume you mean "know" the usual way. Not hundred percent certainty, just that I saw it on Wikipedia and now it's a fact I'm aware of. Then P(I exist with this mind state | George VI had more than five siblings) isn't zero, it's some number based on my prior for Wikipedia being wrong.

So my mind state is more likely in a five-sibling world than a six-sibling one, but using it as anthropic evidence would just be double-counting whatever evidence left me with that mind state in the first place.

Comment author: Mestroyer 01 April 2014 08:20:23PM 17 points [-]

This quote seems like it's lumping every process for arriving at beliefs besides reason into one. "If you don't follow the process I understand and is guaranteed not to produce beliefs like that, then I can't guarantee you won't produce beliefs like that!" But there are many such processes besides reason, that could be going on in their "hearts" to produce their beliefs. Because they are all opaque and non-negotiable and not this particular one you trust not to make people murder Sharon Tate, does not mean that they all have the same probability of producing plane-flying-into-building beliefs.

Consider the following made-up quote: "when you say you believe something is acceptable for some reason other than the Bible said so, you have completely justified Stalin's planned famines. You have justified Pol Pot. If it's acceptable for for you, why isn't it acceptable for them? Why are you different? If you say 'I believe that gays should not be stoned to death and the Bible doesn't support me but I believe it in my heart', then it's perfectly okay to believe in your heart that dissidents should be sent to be worked to death in Siberia. It's perfectly okay to believe because your secular morality says so that all the intellectuals in your country need to be killed."

I would respond to it: "Stop lumping all moralities into two classes, your morality, and all others. One of these lumps has lots of variation in it, and sub-lumps which need to be distinguished, because most of them do not actually condone gulags"

And likewise I respond to Penn Jilette's quote: "Stop lumping all epistemologies into two classes, yours, and the one where people draw beliefs from their 'hearts'. One of these lumps has lots of variation in it, and sub-lumps which need to be distinguished, because most of them do not actually result in beliefs that drive them to fly planes into buildings."

The wishful-thinking new-age "all powerful force of love" faith epistemology is actually pretty safe in terms of not driving people to violence who wouldn't already be inclined to it. That belief wouldn't make them feel good. Though of course, faith plus ancient texts which condone violence can be more dangerous, though as we know empirically, for some reason, people driven to violence by their religions are rare these days, even coming from religions like that.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 02 April 2014 01:30:26PM *  3 points [-]

I don't think it's lumping everything together. It's criticizing the rule "Act on what you feel in your heart." That applies to a lot of people's beliefs, but it certainly isn't the epistemology of everyone who doesn't agree with Penn Jillette.

The problem with "Act on what you feel in your heart" is that it's too generalizable. It proves too much, because of course someone else might feel something different and some of those things might be horrible. But if my epistemology is an appeal to an external source (which I guess in this context would be a religious book but I'm going to use "believe whatever Rameses II believed" because I think that's funnier), then that doesn't necessarily have the same problem.

You can criticize my choice of Rameses II, and you probably should. But now my epistemology is based on an external source and not just my feelings. Unless you reduce me to saying I trust Rameses because I Just Feel that he's trustworthy, this epistemology does not have the same problem as the one criticized in the quote.

All this to say, Jillette is not unfairly lumping things together and there exist types of morality/epistemology that can be wrong without having this argument apply.

Comment author: V_V 15 March 2014 09:44:53PM 1 point [-]

Harvard selects students with higher expected earnings.

Given the statistics, that's almost a tautology.

Harvard selects students from families who are already wealthy (more than other top schools: the wealthy alumni are not self-made). Students who aspire to make a lot of money choose Harvard (over other top schools). Going to Harvard increases students' earning power (more than other top schools), for example, through better networking opportunities.

All these things may work together: rich kids who value money a lot go to Harvard, which gladly accepts them, in order to network with other greedy rich kids.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 17 March 2014 05:14:34AM 3 points [-]

What we need to do is convince Harvard to perform a double-blind test. Accept half their students as normal, and the other half at random from their applicants. We'll have an answer within a couple decades.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 15 February 2014 02:46:11AM 0 points [-]

I always do. Mentally but not muscularly, and I can kind of suppress it if I consciously try. It is indeed the limiting factor on my reading speed.

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 04 January 2014 12:03:32AM 2 points [-]

Is it possible for a tulpa to have skills or information that the person doing the emulating doesn't? What happens if you play chess against your tulpa?

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 26 November 2013 11:40:42PM 5 points [-]

I just realized it's possible to explain people picking dust in the torture vs. dust specks question using only scope insensitivity and no other mistakes. I'm sure that's not original, but I bet this is what's going on in the head of a normal person when they pick the specks.

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