Placebo effects area a real thing. If one truly takes Bob’s grounding then it is not obvious that it is factually incorrect. If “dark matter” means “whatever causes this expansion” then “whatever causes this healing” probably hits a whole bunch of aspects of reality.
But if we’re being honest with each other, we both know that Bob’s grounding is factually incorrect, right? It’s not trivial to lay out the justification for this knowledge that we both possess, it requires training in epistemology and Occam’s razor. But a helpful intuition pump is Marshall Brain’s question: Why won’t God heal amputees? This kind of thought experiment shows the placebo effect to be a better hypothesis than Bob’s God.
In your example of an unfairly-written dialogue, when Slider says at the end “Seems contradictory and crazy”, it feels like the most unfair part is when you don’t let Aaron respond one more time. I think the single next line of dialogue would be very revealing:
Aaron: Here’s a precise mathematical definition of “wave” that I think you’ll agree is coherent and even intuitive, but doesn’t have any “medium”. Light waves are similarly mathematical objects that we can call waves without reference to a medium. Where’s the contradiction in that?
If you think that I have written a dialogue where you can add just one line of dialogue to make a big difference to the reader’s takeaway, feel free to demonstrate it, because I consider this to be a sign of an unfairly-written dialogue.
You claim that my questions to Stephanie were overly vague, but if that were the case, then Stephanie could simply say “The way your questions are constructed seems vague and confusing to me. I’m confused what you’re specifically trying to ask me.” But that wouldn’t fit in the dialogue because my questions weren’t the source of vagueness; Stephanie’s confusion was the source of vagueness.
The patience of discussion-liron runs out pretty fast and is likely because of preconceptions that “higher purpose” is likely to be empty.
I purposely designed a dialogue where Stephanie really is pure belief-in-belief. I think this accurately represents most people in these kinds of discussions. I could write a longer dialogue where I give Stephanie more opportunity to have subtle coherent beliefs reveal themselves, but given who her character is, they won’t.
In your analogy with a dialogue about Stephanie-the-many-worlds-believer, I would expect Stephanie to sharply steer the discussion in the direction of Occam’s razor and epistemology, if she knew what she was talking about. Similarly, she could have sharply steered somewhere if she had a coherent meaning about believing in God beyond trivial belief-in-belief.
How can groundings be correct or incorrect? If it walks like a duck, eats like a duck, swims like a duck and I call it God it’s a duck by different name. It might be that Bobs god is placebo. To the extent opened in the example dialogue it is synonymous. Any additonal facets are assumed and when the point of the exchance was to disambiguate what we mean great weight must be placed on what was actually said. If someone is not believing but only beliefs in belief as an external person it would be an inaccurate belief to think they belief.
It would seem in the text that the given definition of god would lay out enough information that the existence of impact on healing factors could be checked for and the text claims such a check would show no impact. Now if you believe that pacebo is a thing you would probably think that a setup where some patients are visited by their doctors vs one where they ar not visited by their doctor would show impact. If the test for healing was to have the prayer by their medside it would seem mostly analogous to the doctor visit and should have comparable impact. Such a test would show impact. In arguing why the impact result is wrong one needs to argue how the test setup did not test for the correct hypothesis. What bob gave us wasn’t exactly rocket science “I pray—they heal” (I think I assumed that a “pray campaign” would involve visiting but it was not infact mentioned). If the procedure involved artificial hiding or no contact prayer that could be significantly different how it would happen “in the wild”. An a prayer might geniunely be a practise that differ which would perform differently. Depression medication is warranted enough for having impact comparable to placebo, then deploying a prayer campaign to a patient that would not get placebo benefits otherwise would be medically warranted.
I have trouble evaluating what giving such a definition would look like. Most definitions i can find care to get the mathematics represented. And while it doesn’t have an explicit medium reference it’s unclear whether the mathematical device connected with physical theory avoids forming a medium at all. That you avoid physics at the mathematics level is not surprising at all. And just like a duck can’t avoid being a duck for beign called God that the theory doesn’t have an explicit part called “medium” doesn’t mean it doesn’t sport one. I would probably benefit from actually receiving such a definition and going over the question for reals. But in any case it refers back to more entrenched beliefs were things rely on other things and simple point changes to the theories are unlikely.
Stephanie: No, having a higher purpose makes me have more spring in my step in my daily life. Having a higher purpose is not just empty words.
It might not be the most insightful thing but it could be a thing that is associable even if the theory is hazy and might be typical of how such belief systems funciton within a psychology. It would still be very vague and would warrant closer inspection.
I get that you are trying to target folks that are very neglient in their belief details. But I think it risk falsely processing a lot of different kinds of folks as that type. If you start talking to a person and they have some grasp of their concepts or they do have meaning in their words it would be prudent to catch on that even if the beliefs were strange, wrong or vaguely expressed. It might also be that the sanity waterline is geniunely different in different environments. In my experience faith-healers are looked down upon by religious people and they try to mitigate it. That is it’s not the faith that is seen as the problem but that they are unironically trying to use magic.
That discussion strategy for many-worlds would try to dodge having to be specific. The start-up idea did not receive an out for trying to sharply direct the discussion but was counted as being not specific.
Thanks for trying my “write one more line of the dialogue” challenge. I think that our two attempts are quite different and sufficiently illustrate my point.
You’re having Stephanie admit to dialogue-Liron’s claim that she possesses mere belief-in-belief, i.e. her term “God” isn’t grounded in anything outside of her own mind.
Well that is a good contrast on what kind of difference is seeked.
I thought not being grounded was about having only theory that has no implications for anything.
If I claim “I am sad” that is not empty just becuase it refers to my mind. I could be wrong about that and sadness is grounded.
In a similar way “that axe is sharp” could be construed to mean about intentions to use the axe. In an extreme interpretation it doesn’t specify any physical properties about the axe because the same axe could appear dull to another person. It could mean something “I am about to use that axe to chop down some wood” which would be solely about psychological stances towards the future. So this would be an argument line to say that “that axe is sharp” is not grounded. While the absurdity is strong with “sharp” consider “hotness” as in sexyness. Trying to ground it out into particular biological or physical features isn’t a trivial thing at all.
If an axe can groundedly be good for cutting then an environment can be suitable for living and saying that the universe is suitable for prospering expresses a similar kind of “fit for use” property.
You usually justify the existence of a concept althought it can often take the form that some particular species appears in the ontology. There are real cases when you want to justify entities for example whether a particular state should exist or not. Then you are not just arguing whether it should be understood in the terms of a state or some other organizational principle but what actually happens in the world.
But if we’re being honest with each other, we both know that Bob’s grounding is factually incorrect, right? It’s not trivial to lay out the justification for this knowledge that we both possess, it requires training in epistemology and Occam’s razor. But a helpful intuition pump is Marshall Brain’s question: Why won’t God heal amputees? This kind of thought experiment shows the placebo effect to be a better hypothesis than Bob’s God.
In your example of an unfairly-written dialogue, when Slider says at the end “Seems contradictory and crazy”, it feels like the most unfair part is when you don’t let Aaron respond one more time. I think the single next line of dialogue would be very revealing:
If you think that I have written a dialogue where you can add just one line of dialogue to make a big difference to the reader’s takeaway, feel free to demonstrate it, because I consider this to be a sign of an unfairly-written dialogue.
You claim that my questions to Stephanie were overly vague, but if that were the case, then Stephanie could simply say “The way your questions are constructed seems vague and confusing to me. I’m confused what you’re specifically trying to ask me.” But that wouldn’t fit in the dialogue because my questions weren’t the source of vagueness; Stephanie’s confusion was the source of vagueness.
I purposely designed a dialogue where Stephanie really is pure belief-in-belief. I think this accurately represents most people in these kinds of discussions. I could write a longer dialogue where I give Stephanie more opportunity to have subtle coherent beliefs reveal themselves, but given who her character is, they won’t.
In your analogy with a dialogue about Stephanie-the-many-worlds-believer, I would expect Stephanie to sharply steer the discussion in the direction of Occam’s razor and epistemology, if she knew what she was talking about. Similarly, she could have sharply steered somewhere if she had a coherent meaning about believing in God beyond trivial belief-in-belief.
How can groundings be correct or incorrect? If it walks like a duck, eats like a duck, swims like a duck and I call it God it’s a duck by different name. It might be that Bobs god is placebo. To the extent opened in the example dialogue it is synonymous. Any additonal facets are assumed and when the point of the exchance was to disambiguate what we mean great weight must be placed on what was actually said. If someone is not believing but only beliefs in belief as an external person it would be an inaccurate belief to think they belief.
It would seem in the text that the given definition of god would lay out enough information that the existence of impact on healing factors could be checked for and the text claims such a check would show no impact. Now if you believe that pacebo is a thing you would probably think that a setup where some patients are visited by their doctors vs one where they ar not visited by their doctor would show impact. If the test for healing was to have the prayer by their medside it would seem mostly analogous to the doctor visit and should have comparable impact. Such a test would show impact. In arguing why the impact result is wrong one needs to argue how the test setup did not test for the correct hypothesis. What bob gave us wasn’t exactly rocket science “I pray—they heal” (I think I assumed that a “pray campaign” would involve visiting but it was not infact mentioned). If the procedure involved artificial hiding or no contact prayer that could be significantly different how it would happen “in the wild”. An a prayer might geniunely be a practise that differ which would perform differently. Depression medication is warranted enough for having impact comparable to placebo, then deploying a prayer campaign to a patient that would not get placebo benefits otherwise would be medically warranted.
I have trouble evaluating what giving such a definition would look like. Most definitions i can find care to get the mathematics represented. And while it doesn’t have an explicit medium reference it’s unclear whether the mathematical device connected with physical theory avoids forming a medium at all. That you avoid physics at the mathematics level is not surprising at all. And just like a duck can’t avoid being a duck for beign called God that the theory doesn’t have an explicit part called “medium” doesn’t mean it doesn’t sport one. I would probably benefit from actually receiving such a definition and going over the question for reals. But in any case it refers back to more entrenched beliefs were things rely on other things and simple point changes to the theories are unlikely.
It might not be the most insightful thing but it could be a thing that is associable even if the theory is hazy and might be typical of how such belief systems funciton within a psychology. It would still be very vague and would warrant closer inspection.
I get that you are trying to target folks that are very neglient in their belief details. But I think it risk falsely processing a lot of different kinds of folks as that type. If you start talking to a person and they have some grasp of their concepts or they do have meaning in their words it would be prudent to catch on that even if the beliefs were strange, wrong or vaguely expressed. It might also be that the sanity waterline is geniunely different in different environments. In my experience faith-healers are looked down upon by religious people and they try to mitigate it. That is it’s not the faith that is seen as the problem but that they are unironically trying to use magic.
That discussion strategy for many-worlds would try to dodge having to be specific. The start-up idea did not receive an out for trying to sharply direct the discussion but was counted as being not specific.
Thanks for trying my “write one more line of the dialogue” challenge. I think that our two attempts are quite different and sufficiently illustrate my point.
The difference is not obvious to me. How they are relevantly different? You just seem to favour lore from one magisterium.
You’re having Stephanie admit to dialogue-Liron’s claim that she possesses mere belief-in-belief, i.e. her term “God” isn’t grounded in anything outside of her own mind.
Well that is a good contrast on what kind of difference is seeked.
I thought not being grounded was about having only theory that has no implications for anything.
If I claim “I am sad” that is not empty just becuase it refers to my mind. I could be wrong about that and sadness is grounded.
In a similar way “that axe is sharp” could be construed to mean about intentions to use the axe. In an extreme interpretation it doesn’t specify any physical properties about the axe because the same axe could appear dull to another person. It could mean something “I am about to use that axe to chop down some wood” which would be solely about psychological stances towards the future. So this would be an argument line to say that “that axe is sharp” is not grounded. While the absurdity is strong with “sharp” consider “hotness” as in sexyness. Trying to ground it out into particular biological or physical features isn’t a trivial thing at all.
If an axe can groundedly be good for cutting then an environment can be suitable for living and saying that the universe is suitable for prospering expresses a similar kind of “fit for use” property.
To put it another way, “grounding” is pretty ambiguous between defining a term and justifying the existence of an entity.
I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of grounding
You usually justify the existence of a concept althought it can often take the form that some particular species appears in the ontology. There are real cases when you want to justify entities for example whether a particular state should exist or not. Then you are not just arguing whether it should be understood in the terms of a state or some other organizational principle but what actually happens in the world.