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But still, WHY is torture better? What is even the problem with the speck dusts? Some of the people who get speck dust in their eyes will die in accidents caused by the dust particles? Is this why speck dust is so bad? But then, have we considered the fact that speck dust may save an equal amount of people, who would otherwise die? I really don´t get it and it bothers me alot.
Okeymaker, I think the argument is this:
Torturing one person for 50 years is better than torturing 10 persons for 40 years.
Torturing 10 persons for 40 years is better than torturing 1000 persons for 10 year.
Torturing 1000 persons for 10 years is better than torturing 1000000 persons for 1 year.
Torturing 10^6 persons for 1 year is better than torturing 10^9 persons for 1 month.
Torturing 10^9 persons for 1 month is better than torturing 10^12 persons for 1 week.
Torturing 10^12 persons for 1 week is better than torturing 10^15 persons for 1 day.
Torturing 10^15 persons for 1 day is better than torturing 10^18 persons for 1 hour.
Torturing 10^18 persons for 1 hour is better than torturing 10^21 persons for 1 minute.
Torturing 10^21 persons for 1 minute is better than torturing 10^30 persons for 1 second.
Torturing 10^30 persons for 1 second is better than torturing 10^100 persons for 1 millisecond.
Torturing for 1 millisecond is exactly what a dust speck does.
And if you disagree with the numbers, you can add a few millions. There is still plenty of space between 10^100 and 3^^^3.
Your stereotypical patterns don't work well in her case.
I'm not accusing Birkenbihl of peddling woo. The original comment posted by Roho does come from a book of woo, and Roho associated her name with the idea.
As I say, I'm not going to search two hours of video in a language I hardly know to find out what Birkenbihl said on the subject; so I do not know if Roho's attribution to Birkenbihl is accurate. I can imagine something of the sort being said in a popular exposition of the reception of quantum mechanics. But whether she said anything like it or not, the idea expressed in the quote is a poor one, especially so in the context it was quoted from.
Well, I don't want to argue about this too much, so just to clarify:
Birkenbihl quoted Bernie Siegel with "If you want to change somebody's beliefs, he acts like an addict.", in the context of the famous Max Planck quote that new scientific ideas prevail not because they are accepted, but because those who oppose them die out. In this context, I found the idea interesting, therefore I placed the quote here.
She did not mention that esoteric book. But I searched for the quote in order to provide a source, found it in that book, was mildly amused by it, but thought too little about it.
As it reads in the book, Bernie Siegel sounds somewhat sulky, too, that people do not accept his ideas about medicine. Me, I have no idea what they are. But in this context, the quote is indeed rather unhelpful (to put it politely).
The talk about quantum physics was OK, although nothing to write home about. She happily declares that she knows next to nothing about it, then claims that nobody understands it, which is of course wrong. She did not mention some very important concepts (decoherence, Feynman paths). At least, there was "many worlds" and no "wave function collapse", which is not so bad for a talk from the 1990s.
I first met this quote in a talk about quantum physics. Funny that it seems to come from an esoteric book.
If you can't get people to take something seriously, sometimes it's because it's plainly wrong. The concept of "addicted to their beliefs" relieves you of having to listen to them. "Addiction" is no more an explanation of anything than "emergence".
This is in a context of wondering why "Western science" (an absurd concept) "has devoted several centuries to not believing in the paranormal." I shall resist the tu quoque against the author and just say that I think that book is made of wrong.
The YouTube link is to a German-language presentation. I have only a fragment of German, but with Google Translate I gather that the speaker was (d.2011) a management trainer and motivational speaker. Not good qualifications for talking about quantum physics. "'Alles ist mit allem verbunden' ...ja ja und die Erde ist eine Scheibe," as the first comment says.
Yes, and right after that he goes on:
I am lucky. I have always known there was more to the world than is generally accepted. I grew up in a psychic family[...]
...and seems not to notice that he himself has never questioned the beliefs with which he grew up?
The talk about quantum mechanics was nice for non-mathy laymen, although it barely scratches the surface. After reading the quantum physics sequence here, I sometimes like to try out stuff like this and compare them to it.
I would not try to use "addiction" as an explanation. I just liked the comparison between trying to get somebody to change a long-held belief and trying to get him to stop smoking.
In response to
Rationality Quotes November 2014
In commenting on the resistance he experienced to his own unorthodox views on health, Yale surgeon Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, author of the best-selling book Love, Medicine, and Miracles, asserts that it is because people are addicted to their beliefs. Siegel says this is why when you try to change someone's belief they act like an addict.
Holographic Model of The Universe
I first met this quote in a talk about quantum physics. Funny that it seems to come from an esoteric book. Crisis of faith, a drug withdrawal?
In response to
[SEQ RERUN] The Opposite Sex
Is it just me, or has that article disappeared? I always get a "Forbidden" page: "You aren't allowed to do that."
PS: The Wayback Machine still has it.
In response to
Righting a Wrong Question
"Why does reality exist?"
I think the problem with this question is the use of the word "why." It is generally either a quest for intentionality (eg. "Why did you do that?) or for earlier steps in a causal chain (eg. Why is the sky blue?). So the only type of answer that could properly answer this question is one that introduced a first cause (which is, of course, a concept rife with problems) or one that supposed intentionality in the universe (like, the universe decided to exist as it is or something equally nonsensical). This is probably (part of) why answering this question with the non-explaination "God did it" feels so satisfactory to some--it supposes intentionality and creates a first cause. It makes you feel sated without ever having explained anything, but the question was a wrong one in the first place, because any answer would necessarily lead to another question, since the crux of the question is that of a causal chain.
I think a better question would be "How does reality exist?" as that seems a lot more likely to be answerable.
"Why does reality exist?"
I think the problem with this question is the use of the word "why."
Yes, I think with the question "Why does anything exist at all?", the technique would not go "Why do I think anything exists at all?", but rather: "Why do I think there is a reason for anything to exist at all?"
In response to
Meetup : First Meetup in Cologne (Köln)
What a pity I missed that! How did the meetup go? Is there another NRW meetup planned? Would anybody like to play a round of "Paranoid debating"?
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Yes, if this is the case (would be nice if Eliezer confirmed it) I can see where the logic halts from my perspective :)
Explanatory example if someone care:
I disagree. From my moral standpoint AND from my utility function whereas I am a bystander and perceive all humans as a cooperating system and want to minimize the damages to it, I think that it is better for 10^30 persons to put up with 1 second of intense pain compared to a single one who have to survive a whole minute. It is much, much more easy to recover from one second of pain than from being tortured for a minute.
And spec dust is virtually harmless. The potential harm it may cause should at least POSSIBLY be outweighted by the benefits, e.g. someone not being run over by a car because he stopped and scratched his eye.
Okay, so let's zoom in here. What is preferable?
Torturing 1 person for 60 seconds
Torturing 100 person for 59 seconds
Torturing 10000 person for 58 seconds
etc.
Kind of a paradox of the heap. How many seconds of torture are still torture?
And 10^30 is really a lot of people. That's what Eliezer meant with "scope insensitivity". And all of them would be really grateful if you spared them their second of pain. Could be worth a minute of pain?