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I feel I should also point out that I was, and am, well aware that Sam Harris is an anti-theist in philosophy, and my indicated source was supposed to be Harris's "Letter To a Christian Nation," indicated by my use of his name and Letter. The source I provided might cause confusion, but the Letter is provided in full and was the source I meant to indicate. There's no mistake that it's meant to be an atheist perspective, but if I somehow implied otherwise instead of leaving the point unaddressed as I thought than that's my fault as an inexperienced writer. If there are any more structure, grammar, spelling, or syntax errors, I can only hope it doesn't hopelessly obscure the actual point I was trying to make.
I'm pretty sure it's because nominally the article is a review of Harris's Letter to a Christian nation -- though, like many book reviews of the more intellectual sort, the book ostensibly being reviewed serves more as an excuse for the author to write about things he wants to write about than as an actual object of review.
Admittedly accurate. I was reading the letter and re-imagined Russell's teapot thought experiment and thought I would share my source.
In response to
Teapots and Soda Cans
The trouble is, the soda can people are clearly physical. God is somehow simultaneously spiritual and capable of bending the physical to his will. The Soda can people seems like a more philosophically sound (and less trollish) version of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. No theologian with any credentials is going to argue that we could find God with a telescope, other than a few who are only taken seriously when they show a church mailing list a pretty picture of the Hubble Deep Field and write some religious poetry on it.
Theism nowadays is mostly like the philosophical zombies concept, except the claim is that God actually does things and hides them to test everyone's faith. (Based on my extremely loose reading of the obscure elements of theology, this implies that there was a backstory where God went through a lot of suffering to become wise, which probably drove him insane. So basically, God is MoR Dumbledore, but also nonphysical somehow.)
"Spiritual" in this case is, of course, a semantic stopsign. I suppose if one wrote a very contrived map of the universe, it could include God without contradicting reality, but I'd only be impressed if it offered more predictive power than Traditional Chinese Medicine. (I think of TCM as where spiritualism and science meet without one annihilating the other; the qi concept has gone through variations that are sorta-kinda loose approximations of some concepts like thermodynamics and conservation of energy, vaguely like alchemy, which makes it subject to refinement through experimentation, until we get to today and the people who use the concept predictively admit that there's no magic and it's a way of modeling reality that just uses pretty semantic shortcuts. God appears to be a purely psychosocial concept; maybe a scientific study of tulpas can dissolve it?)
ETA: This does not go against the core of your argument, though--the God concept proposes something complex that hasn't been observed ever, and treats it as not only as valid as things that have been observed, but many times more so.
Consider whether your belief is making things clearer for you, or if you're stuck on point Z in an "A->B" discussion. Start by asking yourself, since God in your proposed philosophy is nonphysical, comprised of no readable patterns or energies and exerts no predictable, tangible effect on reality; What is the ontological difference between a universe WITH this strictly conceptual god and a universe with no god at all. Think about it for at least a minute... Okay, you're back? Now, if your answer is anything like "Well, there wouldn't be any difference we could see" then you might have to wonder who you're really arguing against, why you're arguing it and whether you're willing to give your perspective a real new start. Eliezer Yudkowsky's resources cover all of that much more eloquently, including an editorial that essentially gets across that sometimes agreeing to disagree is just a way to avoid having to reexamine one's beliefs, so just a pat reminder to review the sequences if needs be. I'll do my part by entertaining the idea of a non-physical form for a god: We should still be able to observe some kind of pattern that could indicate an outside influence, like binary flashes from the stars that contain all of god's blueberry tart recipes, or predictable and repeatable inspirations in at least one person claiming to be a prophet, or some statistically or psychologically significant distinction between the health, sanity or safety of practitioners of different faiths and similar living conditions. Lacking this, I can still see how my aluminum can people are argumentum ad absurdium, but that was sort of the whole original point of the thought experiment by my interpretation.
In response to
Teapots and Soda Cans
He claims that God, so much grander and more complex than a teapot, cannot be banished with such a simplistic comparison,
I think Sam has changed his mind on how "grand" the Almighty is, and has largely become an antitheist in Hitchens' sense.
See his comments from his debate with Craig. Terms like "evil" and "psychopathy" get thrown about, justifiably, IMO.
Yes, I didn't mean to imply that Harris was purposefully writing as a theist, but rather that he seemed to be trying to defend the position of a theist due to some cached thoughts and possibly a jealous desire to believe despite not actually believing... It seems like a headache inducing way to think, and I just wanted to remark on the apparent cognitive dissonance in his article.
Planets capable of interstellar travel form an accord that treats less advanced civilizations as nature preserves and agree not to contact or help them.
Sounds similar to the Federation's Prime Directive in Star Trek.
Most rationalists will likely agree that we would trade slightly more homogenized art and culture for cures to disease and death
I'm uncomfortable with the resemblance of this to an argument by definition. It also ignores the more reasonable view that "slightly more homogenized art and culture" isn't usually the worst consequence of more a powerful (I won't say "advanced") society trying to "help" a less powerful one. (Not that that increases the prior probability of space aliens.)
Glad you called me out. There are much worse possible outcomes for encountering advanced intelligence, or at least more varied possibilities, and I note that I need to work on adjusting my expectations down. Still, I suppose what I should have stated is, if there are benevolent aliens out there that are aware of us I'd sure like them to make with the "we come in peace" already and just cross my fingers that their first contact doesn't play out like The Day The Earth Stood Still. But then I have to follow my own advice from the beginning of this comment and be more pessimistic, so it would be exactly like TDTESS, except that Gort would just follow through and blow us up. Hmm... Okay, the Prime Directive (or Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact as in my original example) makes much more sense to me now. Thank you for helping me notice my confusion, Document!
In response to
Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
The video game Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time has a model of interstellar society that tries to solve Fermi's conundrum. Planets capable of interstellar travel form an accord that treats less advanced civilizations as nature preserves and agree not to contact or help them. This model does have several problems, such as communication wavelengths would still be visible to us (they have some undiscovered form of communication?) and sufficiently advanced societies should have an ethical dilemma with allowing intelligent species to go through dark ages and protracted suffering for the sake of "not interfering in the development of their unique culture." Most rationalists will likely agree that we would trade slightly more homogenized art and culture for cures to disease and death. an absence of evidence is still stronger evidence of absence, with the only alternative being a series of suspiciously convenient excuses.
In response to
Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
This reminds me of a thought experiment where perfect averages skew towards one extreme when you eliminate one radical. It makes mathematical sense. Apparently, a village can come extremely close to guessing the weight of an ox by taking all of their guesses and averaging them, even if some indivuals are radically under or over. But change the scope and you may change the median's accuracy (or sanity, as the articles metaphor) Lock the village in a room with no clocks or windows and wait until 6 am, just before any hint of sunlight, then show them the sky and take their guesses. The radicals that guess 'midnight' won't change, but the ones who would have said 'noon' will, so your average would slide to ever more inaccurately early. Just a thought model though, I've never read this precise test being done.
In response to
To Lead, You Must Stand Up
Reading the comments, I saw it somehow turned into a discussion on whether or not Eliezer Yudkowski elects biased favor for cryonics, transhumanism, etc. Didn't read far enough to see anyone hurl any accusations of Nazism or Hitler-likeness, but I'll weigh in and say that I'm new to Lesswrong and enjoy a good amount of Eliezer's articles and find them to be good tools for learning clear thought, and I also have almost no familiarity with any of his theories (or opinions as it may be) that fall outside the scope of heuristics, fallacies, statistics or decision. So far I've only managed to read a smattering of Bayesian statistics and Feynman (still struggling with both), but I would concider the whole thing a wasted effort if elected any human to a level beyond question. If I read Eliezer's articles on the Affect Heuristic and think "I'll just accept this as true because Mr Yudkowski says it's true. Phew! Thank goodness someone smarter than me did all that heavy thinking for me" than CLEARLY I need to reread it
In response to
Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable
My apology, it's a long post but they are my final thoughts.
Eliezer: "Robin, I would indeed put someone who called themselves a Unitarian in a different class from someone who called themselves a Zoroastrian or Christian. It's still a big blatant mistake, but so long as the person is willing to take strict personal responsibility for their own moral judgments, it's a less urgent matter."
I'm not really clear as to why? Do you not think Unitarian has some affiliation to Zoroastrian or Christianity? Where do you think moral judgements come from? The laws written in any given literature are clear interpretations as to what was going on in that particular time frame, that does not mean they where right or wrong, it means they exist for a reason.
Eliezer, I believe you are a smart, highly inquisitive individual but your expertise does not reach the realm of belief as you clearly demonstrate an ignorance in regards to religion, spirituality, enlightment or such pretense. Please read more thoughts in regards to religion within history, scriptures, books, psalms, philosophy, psychology, etc., before judging the belief of belief. Your video example of the Jesus Camp was an awakening for me as I acknowledged that not all individuals are aware of the science behind religion and in fact, religion may be used as a source of irrationalism. The bias approach you took was in only refering to the "kooks" of religion instead of realizing that there exists many that are religious that don't exhibit that behavior. Within the context of kooks, I understand the need to promote Atheism but that does not mean that Atheists are more rational than the Christians if both have not done the research to understand the possibilities within the religious context.
Anyhow, it's been a pleasure. Thanks Robin (and many fascinating contributors) for creating Overcoming Bias. It might not appear but I have learned a great deal about bias. If your intention was to teach, you are doing a great job. At first, it was hard to grasp the concept but with time i've learned quite a lot.
It's time for me to go as I can't possibly stay and listen to people talk about overcoming bias and yet reply "your not smart enough to undertstand", that kinda contradicts the whole idea.
Without being aware, thanks to the many that have aided in my education.
Take care and I wish you well, Anna
It may not seem fair to respond to something that was meant to be a 'closing', but it also shouldn't be an excuse for making your argument... well, a seperate magisterium. If you had taken the time to read the basics (assuming you ever read this, fully 5 years after claiming to leave, still others may benefit) you would know that Eliezer isn't claiming that all religious people are characteristically insane. That hypothesis would be easily falsifiable by presenting any responsible, educated person who espouses a religious belief (and there are plenty.) The actual point, right in the article's title, is that those beliefs, -Even If- they're shared by really nifty, otherwise good people, are factually falsifiable.
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Can you be more specific about the behaviors that come off as rude? It looks like you've identified an important problem (and one that many people fail to notice-- congratulations!), but in a very abstract way.
Yes, I made another short post which was about Russell's teapot, but was ostensibly framed around a letter by Sam Harris, and I was more snarky than cooperative with the comments. Well, recognize your errors and move forward, yeah? Thank you for asking for clarification.