There have been several openly religious people on this site, of varying flavours. You don’t (or shouldn’t) get downvoted just for declaring your beliefs; you get downvoted for faulty logic, poor understanding and useless or irrelevant comments. As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I’d love for more believers to come along. My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that’d just be rude. If you’re interested, though, drop me a PM, because I’m still considering the possibility I might have made the wrong decision.
The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it… Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it’s a risk?
Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you’ll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don’t do that.
As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I’d love for more believers to come along.
Uh-oh. LOL.
My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that’d just be rude.
Normally, I’m open to random debates about everything. I pride myself on it. However, I’m getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it. I suppose I still have to respond to a couple of people below, but I’m starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option. It’s my own fault for showing up here, but I’m starting to realize why “agree to disagree” was ever considered by anyone at all for anything given its obvious wrongness: you just can’t do anything if you spend all your time on a never-ending argument.
The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it… Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it’s a risk?
Haven’t been lurking long enough.
Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you’ll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don’t do that.
In the future I will not. See below. Thank you for calling me out on that.
Talk of Aumann Agreement notwithstanding, the usual rules of human social intercourse that allow “I am no longer interested in continuing this discussion” as a legitimate conversational move continue to apply on this site. If you don’t wish to discuss your religious beliefs, then don’t.
Ah, I didn’t know that. I’ve never had a debate that didn’t end with “we all agree, yay”, some outside force stopping us or everyone hating each other and hurling insults.
So, if I’m understanding you, you considered only four possible outcomes likely from your interactions with this site: everyone converts to Christianity, you get deconverted from Christianity, the interaction is forcibly stopped, or the interaction degenerates to hateful insults. Yes?
I’d be interested to know how likely you considered those options, and if your expectations about likely outcomes have changed since then.
Well, for any given conversation about religion, yes. (Obviously, I expect different things if I post a comment about HP:MoR on that thread.)
I expected the last one, since mostly no matter what I do, internet discussions on anything important have a tendency to do that. (And it’s not just when I’m participating in them!) I considered any conversions highly unlikely and didn’t really expect the interaction to be stopped.
My expectations have changed a lot. After a while I realized that hateful insults weren’t happening very much here on Less Wrong, which is awesome, and that the frequency didn’t seem to increase with the length of the discussion, unlike other parts of the internet. So I basically assumed the conversation would go on forever. Now, having been told otherwise, I realize that conversations can actually be ended by the participants without one of these things happening.
That was a failure on my part, but would have correctly predicted a lot of the things I’d experienced in the past. I just took an outside view when an inside view would have been better because it really is different this time. That failure is adequately explained by the use of the outside view heuristic, which is usually useful, and the fact that I ended up in a new situation which lacked the characteristics that caused what I observed in the past.
I think this rules out some and only some branches of Christianity, but more importantly it impels accepting behaviorist criteria for any difference in kind between “atheists” and “Christians” if we really want categories like that.
I’m starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option.
There isn’t a strong expectation here that people should never agree to disagree—see this old discussion, or this one.
That being said, persistent disagreement is a warning sign that at least one side isn’t being perfectly rational (which covers both things like “too attached to one’s self-image as a contrarian” and like “doesn’t know how to spell out explicitly the reasons for his belief”).
I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of
schizophrenia.
However, I’m getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it.
Then please feel free to ignore this comment. On the other hand, if you ever feel like responding then by all means do.
A lack of response to this comment should not be considered evidence that AspiringKnitter could not have brilliantly responded.
What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?
By nature of the reason, I mean something like these:
inductive inference: you believe adding a description of whatever you understand of God leads to a simpler explanation of the universe without losing any predictive power
intuitive inductive inference: you believe in god because of intuition. you also believe that there is an underlying argument using inductive inference, you just don’t know what it is
intuitive metaphysical: you believe in god because of intuition. you believe there is some other justification this intuition works
I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.
It’s weird, but I can’t seem to find everything on the thread from the main post no matter how many of the “show more comments” links I click. Or maybe it’s just easy to get lost.
What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?
None of the above, and this is going to end up on exactly (I do mean exactly) the same path as the last one within three posts if it continues. Not interested now, maybe some other time. Thanks. :)
Hi, AspiringKnitter!
There have been several openly religious people on this site, of varying flavours. You don’t (or shouldn’t) get downvoted just for declaring your beliefs; you get downvoted for faulty logic, poor understanding and useless or irrelevant comments. As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I’d love for more believers to come along. My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that’d just be rude. If you’re interested, though, drop me a PM, because I’m still considering the possibility I might have made the wrong decision.
The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it… Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it’s a risk?
Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you’ll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don’t do that.
Uh-oh. LOL.
Normally, I’m open to random debates about everything. I pride myself on it. However, I’m getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it. I suppose I still have to respond to a couple of people below, but I’m starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option. It’s my own fault for showing up here, but I’m starting to realize why “agree to disagree” was ever considered by anyone at all for anything given its obvious wrongness: you just can’t do anything if you spend all your time on a never-ending argument.
Haven’t been lurking long enough.
In the future I will not. See below. Thank you for calling me out on that.
Talk of Aumann Agreement notwithstanding, the usual rules of human social intercourse that allow “I am no longer interested in continuing this discussion” as a legitimate conversational move continue to apply on this site. If you don’t wish to discuss your religious beliefs, then don’t.
Ah, I didn’t know that. I’ve never had a debate that didn’t end with “we all agree, yay”, some outside force stopping us or everyone hating each other and hurling insults.
Jeez. What would “we all agree, yay” even look like in this case?
I suppose either I’d become an atheist or everyone here would convert to Christianity.
The assumption that everyone here is either an atheist or a Christian is already wrong.
Good point. Thank you for pointing it out.
There are additional possibilities, like everyone agreeing on agnosticism or on some other religion.
Can I vote Discordianism? Knowing how silly it all is is a property of the text, Isn’t that helpful?
Hm.
So, if I’m understanding you, you considered only four possible outcomes likely from your interactions with this site: everyone converts to Christianity, you get deconverted from Christianity, the interaction is forcibly stopped, or the interaction degenerates to hateful insults. Yes?
I’d be interested to know how likely you considered those options, and if your expectations about likely outcomes have changed since then.
Well, for any given conversation about religion, yes. (Obviously, I expect different things if I post a comment about HP:MoR on that thread.)
I expected the last one, since mostly no matter what I do, internet discussions on anything important have a tendency to do that. (And it’s not just when I’m participating in them!) I considered any conversions highly unlikely and didn’t really expect the interaction to be stopped.
My expectations have changed a lot. After a while I realized that hateful insults weren’t happening very much here on Less Wrong, which is awesome, and that the frequency didn’t seem to increase with the length of the discussion, unlike other parts of the internet. So I basically assumed the conversation would go on forever. Now, having been told otherwise, I realize that conversations can actually be ended by the participants without one of these things happening.
That was a failure on my part, but would have correctly predicted a lot of the things I’d experienced in the past. I just took an outside view when an inside view would have been better because it really is different this time. That failure is adequately explained by the use of the outside view heuristic, which is usually useful, and the fact that I ended up in a new situation which lacked the characteristics that caused what I observed in the past.
Beliefs should all be probabilistic.
I think this rules out some and only some branches of Christianity, but more importantly it impels accepting behaviorist criteria for any difference in kind between “atheists” and “Christians” if we really want categories like that.
There isn’t a strong expectation here that people should never agree to disagree—see this old discussion, or this one.
That being said, persistent disagreement is a warning sign that at least one side isn’t being perfectly rational (which covers both things like “too attached to one’s self-image as a contrarian” and like “doesn’t know how to spell out explicitly the reasons for his belief”).
I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.
Then please feel free to ignore this comment. On the other hand, if you ever feel like responding then by all means do.
A lack of response to this comment should not be considered evidence that AspiringKnitter could not have brilliantly responded.
What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?
By nature of the reason, I mean something like these:
inductive inference: you believe adding a description of whatever you understand of God leads to a simpler explanation of the universe without losing any predictive power
intuitive inductive inference: you believe in god because of intuition. you also believe that there is an underlying argument using inductive inference, you just don’t know what it is
intuitive metaphysical: you believe in god because of intuition. you believe there is some other justification this intuition works
It’s weird, but I can’t seem to find everything on the thread from the main post no matter how many of the “show more comments” links I click. Or maybe it’s just easy to get lost.
None of the above, and this is going to end up on exactly (I do mean exactly) the same path as the last one within three posts if it continues. Not interested now, maybe some other time. Thanks. :)
See here.