Yes, apparently we’re using the word “complexity” differently.
So, getting back to what I said that apparently surprised you: Yes, I think it is very plausible that the best theistic explanation for everything we observe around us is what I call “7 bits more complex” and you call “128x more complex” than the best non-theistic explanation; just to be clear what that means, I mean that if we could somehow write down a minimal-length complete description of what we see (compressing it via computer programs / laws of physics / etc.) subject to the constraint “must not make essential use of gods”, and another subject instead to the constraint “must make essential use of gods”, then my guess at the length of the second description is >= 7 bits longer than my guess at the length of the first. Actually I think the second description would have to be much longerer than that, but I’m discounting because this is confusing stuff and I’m far from certain that I’m right.
And you, if I’m understanding you correctly, are objecting not so much “no, the theistic description will be simpler” as “well, maybe you’re right that the nontheistic description will be simpler, but we should expect it to be simpler by less than one random ASCII character’s worth of description length”.
Of course the real diffiulty here is that we aren’t in a position to say what a minimal length theistic or nontheistic description of the universe would look like. We have a reasonable set of laws of physics that might form the core of the nontheistic description, but (1) we know the laws we have aren’t quite right, (2) it seems likely that the vast bulk of the complexity needed is not in the laws but in whatever arbitrary-so-far-as-we-know boundary conditions[1] need to be added to get our universe rather than a completely different one with the same laws, and we’ve no idea how much information that takes or even whether it’s finite. And on the theistic side we have at most a pious hope that something like “this is the best of all possible worlds” might suffice, but no clear idea of how to specify what notion of “best” is appropriate, and the world looks so much unlike the best of all possible worlds according to any reasonable notion that this fact is generally considered one of the major reasons for disbelieving in gods. So what hope have we of figuring out which description is shorter?
[1] On some ways of looking at the problem, what needs specifying is not so much boundary conditions as our location within a vast universe or multiverse. Similar problem.
Actually I think the second description would have to be much longerer than that, but I’m discounting because this is confusing stuff and I’m far from certain that I’m right.
It is confusing. I’m still not even convinced that the theist’s description would be longer, but my estimation is so vague and has such massively large error bars that I can’t say you’re wrong, even if what you’re saying is surprising to me.
And you, if I’m understanding you correctly, are objecting not so much “no, the theistic description will be simpler” as “well, maybe you’re right that the nontheistic description will be simpler, but we should expect it to be simpler by less than one random ASCII character’s worth of description length”.
More or less. I’m saying I would find it surprising if the existence of God made the universe significantly more complex. (In the absolutely minimal-length description, I expect it to work out shorter, but like I say above, there are massive error bars on my estimates).
the world looks so much unlike the best of all possible worlds according to any reasonable notion
While I’ve heard this argued before, I have yet to see an idea for a world that (a) is provably better, (b) cannot be created by sufficient sustained human effort (in an “if everyone works together” kind of way) and (c) cannot be taken apart by sustained human effort into a world vaguely resembling ours (in an “if there are as many criminals and greedy people as in this world”).
I’m not saying that there isn’t nasty stuff in this world. I’m just not seeing a way that it can be removed without also removing things like free will.
what hope have we of figuring out which description is shorter?
If we get seriously into discussing arguments from evil we could be here all year :-), so I’ll just make a few points and leave it.
(1) Many religious believers, including (I think) the great majority of Christians, anticipate a future state in which sin and suffering and death will be no more. I’m pretty sure they see this as a good thing, whether they anticipate losing their free will to get it or not.
(2) I don’t know whether I can see any way to make a world with nothing nasty in it at all without losing other things we care about, but it doesn’t seem difficult to envisage ways in which omnipotence in the service of perfect goodness could improve the world substantially. For instance, consider a world exactly like this one except that whenever any cell in any animal’s body (human or other) gets into a state that would lead to a malignant tumour, God magically kills it. Boom, no more cancer. (And no effect at all on anyone who wouldn’t otherwise be getting cancer.) For an instance of a very different kind, imagine that one day people who pray actually start getting answers. Consistently. I don’t mean obliging answers to petitionary prayers, I mean communication. Suddenly anyone who prays gets a response; the responses are consistent and, for some categories of public prayer, public. There is no longer any more scope for wars about whose vision of God is right than there is for wars about whose theory of gravity is right, and anyone who tries to recruit people to blow things up in the name of God gets contradicted by a message from God himself. There might still be scope for fights between people who think it’s God doing this and people who think it’s a super-powerful evil being, but I don’t think it’s credible that this wouldn’t decrease religious strife. And if you think that being badly wrong about God is a serious problem (whether just because it’s bad to be wrong about important things, or because it leads to worse actions, or because it puts one in danger of damnation) then I hope you’ll agree that almost everyone on earth having basically correct beliefs about God would be a gain. And no, it wouldn’t mean abolishing free will; do we lack free will because we find it difficult to believe the sky is green on account of seeing it ourselves?
(3) I think your conditions a,b,c are too strict, in that I see no reason why candidate better worlds need to satisfy them all in order to be evidence that our actual world isn’t the best possible. Perhaps, e.g., a better world is possible that could be created by sustained human effort with everyone working together but won’t because actually, in practice, in the world we’ve got, everyone doesn’t work together. So, OK, you can blame humanity for the fact that we haven’t created that world, and maybe doing so makes you feel better, but more than one agent can be rightly blamed for the same thing and the fact that it’s (kinda) our fault doesn’t mean it isn’t God’s. Do you suppose he couldn’t have encouraged us more effectively to do better? If not, doesn’t the fact that not even the most effective encouragement infinite wisdom could devise would lead us to do it suggest that saying we could is rather misleading? And (this is a point I think is constantly missed) whyever should we treat human nature, as it now is, as a given? Could your god really not have arranged for humanity to be a little nicer and smarter? In terms of your condition (c), why on earth should we, when considering what better worlds there might be, only consider candidates in which “there are as many criminals and greedy people as in this world”?
Many religious believers, including (I think) the great majority of Christians, anticipate a future state in which sin and suffering and death will be no more. I’m pretty sure they see this as a good thing, whether they anticipate losing their free will to get it or not.
I’ve heard arguments that we’ve already reached that state—think about if you go back in time about two thousand years and describe modern medical technology and lifestyles. (I don’t agree with those arguments, mind you, but I do think that such a future state is going to have to be something that we build, not that we are given.
it doesn’t seem difficult to envisage ways in which omnipotence in the service of perfect goodness could improve the world substantially.
It’s difficult to be certain.
For instance, consider a world exactly like this one except that whenever any cell in any animal’s body (human or other) gets into a state that would lead to a malignant tumour, God magically kills it. Boom, no more cancer.
Now I’m imagining a lot of scientists studying and trying to figure out why some cells just mysteriously vanish for no good reason—and this becoming the greatest unsolved question in medical science and taking all the attention of people who might otherwise be figuring out cures for TB or various types of flu. (In this hypothetical universe, they wouldn’t know about malignant tumours, of course).
And if someone would otherwise develop a LOT of cancer, then Sudden Cell Vanishing Syndrome could, in itself, become a major problem...
Mind, I’m not saying it’s certain that universe would be worse, or even that it’s probable. It’s just easy to see how that universe could be worse.
For an instance of a very different kind, imagine that one day people who pray actually start getting answers. Consistently. I don’t mean obliging answers to petitionary prayers, I mean communication
That would be interesting. And you raise a lot of good points—there would be a lot of positive effects. But, at the same time… I think HPMOR showed quite nicely that sometimes, having a list of instructions with regard to what to do is a good deal less valuable than being able to understand the situation, take responsibility, and do it yourself.
People would still have free will, yes. But how many people would voluntarily abdicate their decision-making processes to simply do what the voice in the sky tells them to do (except the bits where it says “THINK FOR YOURSELVES”)?
...this is something which I think would probably be a net benefit. But I can’t be certain.
I think your conditions a,b,c are too strict
...very probably.
Perhaps, e.g., a better world is possible that could be created by sustained human effort with everyone working together but won’t because actually, in practice, in the world we’ve got, everyone doesn’t work together.
That just means that a better world needs to be designed that can be created under the constraints of not everyone working together. It’s a hard problem, but I don’t think it’s entirely insoluble.
And (this is a point I think is constantly missed) whyever should we treat human nature, as it now is, as a given? Could your god really not have arranged for humanity to be a little nicer and smarter?
That is a good question. I have no good answers for it.
why on earth should we, when considering what better worlds there might be, only consider candidates in which “there are as many criminals and greedy people as in this world”?
...less criminals and greedy people would make things a lot easier, but I’m not quite sure how to arrange that without either (a) reducing free will or (b) mass executions, which could cause other problems.
I’ve heard arguments that we’ve already reached that state
Then I suggest that you classify the people making those arguments as Very Silly and don’t listen to them in future.
I do think that such a future state is going to have to be something that we build, not that we are given.
You’re welcome to think that; my point is simply that if such a thing is possible and desirable then either one can have a better world than this without abrogating free will, or else free will isn’t as important as theists often claim it is when confronted with arguments from evil.
(Perhaps your position is that the world could indeed be much better, but that the only way to make such a better world without abrogating free will is to have us do it gradually starting with a really bad world. I hope I will be forgiven for saying that that doesn’t seem like a position anyone would adopt for reasons other than a desperate attempt to avoid the conclusion of the argument from evil.)
I’m imagining a lot of scientists studying and trying to figure out why some cells just mysteriously vanish for no good reason
Again, you’re welcome to imagine whatever you like, but if you’re suggesting that this would be a likely consequence of the scenario I proposed then I think you’re quite wrong (and again wonder whether it would occur to you to imagine that if you weren’t attempting to justify the existence of cancer to defend your god’s reputation). Under what circumstances would they notice this? Cells die all the time. We don’t have the technology to monitor every cell—or more than a tiny fraction of cells—in a living animal and see if it dies. We don’t have the technology or the medical understanding to be able to say “huh, that cell died and I don’t know why; that’s really unusual”. Maybe some hypothetical super-advanced medical science would be flummoxed by this, but right now I’m pretty sure no one would come close to noticing.
(Also, you could combine this with my second proposal, and then what happens is that someone says “hey, God, would you mind telling us why these cells are dying?” and God says “oh, yeah, those are ones that were going wrong and would have turned into runaway growths that could kill you. I zap those just before they do. You’re welcome.”.)
And if someone would otherwise develop a LOT of cancer [...]
Please, think about that scenario for thirty seconds, and consider whether you can actually envisage a situation where having those cancerous cells self-destruct would be worse than having them turn into tumours.
sometimes, having a list of instructions with regard to what to do [...]
But that was no part of the scenario I described. In that scenario, it could be that when people ask God for advice he says “Sorry, it’s going to be better for you to work this one out on your own.”
without either (a) reducing free will [...]
So here’s the thing. Apparently “reducing free will” is a terrible awful thing so bad that its spectre justifies the Holocaust and child sex abuse and all the other awful things that bad people do without being stopped by God. So … how come we don’t have more free will than we do? Why are we so readily manipulated by advertisements, so easily entrapped by habits, so easily overwhelmed by the desire for food or sex or whatever? It seems to me that if we take this sort of “free will defence” seriously enough for it to work, then we replace (or augment) the argument from evil with an equally fearsome argument from un-freedom.
Then I suggest that you classify the people making those arguments as Very Silly and don’t listen to them in future.
...perhaps I have failed to properly convey that argument. I did not intend to say that our world now is in a state of perfection. I intended to point out that, if you were to go back in time a couple of thousand years and talk to a random person about our current society, then he would be likely to imagine it as a state of perfection. Similarly, if a random person in this era were to describe a state of perfection, then that might be a description of society a couple of thousand years from now—and the people of that time would still not consider their world in a state of perfection.
In short, “perfection” may be a state that can only be approached asymptotically. We can get closer to it, but never reach it; we can labour to reduce the gap, but never fully eliminate it.
my point is simply that if such a thing is possible and desirable then either one can have a better world than this without abrogating free will, or else free will isn’t as important as theists often claim it is when confronted with arguments from evil.
You mean, just kind of starting up the universe at the point where all the major social problems have already been solved, with everyone having a full set of memories of how to keep the solutions working and what happens if you don’t?
...I have little idea why the universe isn’t like that (and the little idea I have is impractically speculative).
Perhaps your position is that the world could indeed be much better, but that the only way to make such a better world without abrogating free will is to have us do it gradually starting with a really bad world.
The only way? No. Starting a universe at the point where the answers to society’s problems are known is a possible way to do that.
...the thing is, I don’t know what the goal, the purpose of the universe is. Free will is clearly a very important part of those aims—either a goal in itself, or strictly necessary in order to achieve some other goal or goals—but I’m fairly sure it’s not the only one. It may be that other ways of making a better world without abrogating free will all come at the cost of some other important thing that is somehow necessary for the universe.
Though this is all very speculative, and the argument is rather shaky.
Under what circumstances would they notice this? Cells die all the time. We don’t have the technology to monitor every cell—or more than a tiny fraction of cells—in a living animal and see if it dies.
Okay, if the cells just die and don’t vanish, then that makes it a whole lot less physics-breaking. (Alternatively, if they are simply replaced with healthy cells, then it becomes even harder to spot).
(Also, you could combine this with my second proposal, and then what happens is that someone says “hey, God, would you mind telling us why these cells are dying?” and God says “oh, yeah, those are ones that were going wrong and would have turned into runaway growths that could kill you. I zap those just before they do. You’re welcome.”.)
...you know, combining those would be interesting as well. (Then the next logical question asked would be “Why don’t you zap all diseases?”)
Please, think about that scenario for thirty seconds, and consider whether you can actually envisage a situation where having those cancerous cells self-destruct would be worse than having them turn into tumours.
No, I can’t. This guy’s in massive trouble either way.
But that was no part of the scenario I described. In that scenario, it could be that when people ask God for advice he says “Sorry, it’s going to be better for you to work this one out on your own.”
A fair point.
Some people would be discouraged by this, others would work harder...
So here’s the thing. Apparently “reducing free will” is a terrible awful thing so bad that its spectre justifies the Holocaust and child sex abuse and all the other awful things that bad people do without being stopped by God.
Yes, and I’m not quite sure that I get the whole of the why either.
So … how come we don’t have more free will than we do? Why are we so readily manipulated by advertisements, so easily entrapped by habits, so easily overwhelmed by the desire for food or sex or whatever?
...huh. That’s… that’s a very good question, really.
Hmmm. It seems logical that it must be possible to talk someone into (or out of) a course of action. “Here is some information that shows why it is to your benefit to do X” has to be possible, or there is no point to communication and we might as well all be alone.
And given that that is possible, advertising is an inevitable consequence—tell a million people to buy Tasty Cheese Snax or whatever, and some of them will listen. (More complex use of advertising is merely a refinement of technique). I don’t really see any logical alternative—either advertising, which is a special case of persuasion, has to work to some degree, or persuasion must be impossible. (If persuasion of a specific type proves impossible, advertisers will simply use a form of persuasion that is effective).
Habits… as far as I can tell, habits are a consequence of the structure of the human brain (we’re pattern-recognition machines, and almost all biases and problems in human thought come from this). A habit is merely a pattern of action; something that we find ourselves doing by default. Avoiding habits would require a pretty much total rewrite of the human brain. Which may be a good or a bad thing, but is a completely unknown thing.
Desires for food and stuff? …I have no idea. You could probably base an argument from unfreedom around that. (It’s clear enough where the desires come from—people without those desires would have been outcompeted by people with them, so there’s evolutionary pressure to have those biases. Is this an inevitable consequence of an evolutionary development?)
I realise that I said “I’ll just make a few points and leave it” and then, er, failed to do so. And lo, this looks like it could be the beginning of a lengthy discussion of evil and theism, for which LW probably really isn’t the best venue. So I’m going to ignore all the object-level issues aside from giving a couple of clarifications (see below) and make the following meta-point:
You seem to be basically agreeing with my arguments and conceding that your counterproposals are shaky and speculative; my point isn’t to declare victory nor to suggest you should be abandoning theism immediately :-) but just that I think this indicates that you agree with me that whether or not the world turns out to be somehow the best that omnipotence coupled with perfect wisdom and goodness can achieve, it doesn’t look much like it is. In which case I don’t think you can credibly make an argument of the form “the world is well explained by the hypothesis that it’s a morally-optimal world, which is a nice simple hypothesis, so we should consider that highly probable”. I’ve argued before that it’s not so simple a hypothesis, but it’s also a really terrible explanation for the world we actually see.
The promised clarifications: 1. The reason why my cancer-zapping proposal didn’t involve curing all diseases was that it’s easier to see that a change is a clear improvement if it’s reasonably small and simple. Curing all diseases is a really big leap, it probably makes a huge difference to typical lifespans and hence to all kinds of other things in society, it probably would get noticed which, for good or ill, could make a big difference to people’s ideas about science and gods and whatnot. I would in fact expect the overall effect to be substantially more positive than that of just zapping incipient cancers, but it’s more complicated and therefore less clear. I’m not trying to describe an optimal world, merely one that’s clearly better than this one. 2. My point about habits and advertising and the like wasn’t that if free will matters then those things should have no effect, still less that it’s a mystery why we have them; but that if our world is being optimized by a superbeing who values free will so much that, e.g., Hitler’s free will matters more than the murder of six million Jews, then we should expect much less impairment of our free will than we actually seem to have.
I realise that I said “I’ll just make a few points and leave it” and then, er, failed to do so.
...to be fair, I think I also deserve part of the blame for this digression. I have a tendency to run away with minor points on occasion.
whether or not the world turns out to be somehow the best that omnipotence coupled with perfect wisdom and goodness can achieve, it doesn’t look much like it is.
I agree that this is a position which can reasonably be held and for which very strong arguments can be made.
The reason why my cancer-zapping proposal didn’t involve curing all diseases was that it’s easier to see that a change is a clear improvement if it’s reasonably small and simple.
Makes sense. (It does raise the question of how we would know whether or not it is already happening for an even more virulent disease...)
if our world is being optimized by a superbeing who values free will so much that, e.g., Hitler’s free will matters more than the murder of six million Jews,
To be fair, it wasn’t just Hitler; there were a whole lot of people working under his command whose free will was also involved. And several million other people trying to help or hinder one side or the other...
I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over. Or killing him in childhood or letting his artistic career succeed better would probably suffice (maybe Germany would then have been taken over by different warmongers blaming their troubles on other groups, but is it really credible that in every such version of the world we get something as bad as Hitler?).
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something. But that’s an entirely different defence from the one we’re discussing here, and I can’t say it seems like a very credible one anyway. (If we really need those technological advances and the state of Israel, aren’t there cheaper ways for omnipotence to arrange for us to get them?)
I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over.
I, too, think that this is extremely likely. This would show that Hitler’s orders were necessary for the Holocaust, but it would not show that they were sufficient—there’s probably at least a half-dozen or so people whose orders were also necessary for the Holocaust, and then of course there’s a lot of ways to prevent the Holocaust by affecting more than one person in some or other manner.
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something.
I doubt the political ramifications had much to do with it. The effect of thousands of people being placed in difficult moral situations and having to decide what to do might have been a factor, though; a sort of a stress testing of thousands of peoples’ free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves (because they’re now well aware of how bad things get when others think for them).
It doesn’t need to. The more ways there are to prevent the Holocaust, the more morally unimpressive not doing so becomes. Or, at least, the better the countervailing reasons need to be.
a sort of a stress testing of thousands of people’s free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
(Or: It is very easy to think for yourself when you are dead because you have then transcended the confusions and temptations of this mortal life. But I don’t think anyone’s going to argue seriously that the Holocaust was a good thing because the people murdered in it were thereby enabled to make better decisions post mortem. The only reason for this paragraph is to forestall complaints that the one before it assumes atheism.)
So, um… to go back along this line of argument a few posts, then...
it wasn’t just Hitler; there were a whole lot of people working under his command whose free will was also involved.
...this means you’re in agreement with what I wrote here, right?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
And several million other people hid jews in their attics; attempted (at great personal risk) to smuggle jews to safe places; helped jews across the borders; or, on the other side, hunted jews down, deciding to obey evil orders; arrested people and sent them to death camps; ran or even built said camps… and were, in one or another way, put through the wringer.
I can’t find the reference now, but I do seem to recall reading—somewhere—that Holocaust survivors were significantly less likely to fall victim to the Milgram experiment or similar things.
(I’m not talking about the people who were killed at all.)
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
1. The Holocaust could probably have been prevented, with no extra adverse consequences of similar severity, by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will. 2. Therefore, a “free will” defence of (the compatibility of theism with) the world’s evil needs to consider that one person’s free will to be of comparable importance to all the suffering and death of the Holocaust. 3. If free will is that important, then in place of (or in addition to) the “problem of evil” we have a “problem of unfreedom”; we are all less free than we might have been, in many ways, and even if that unfreedom is only one millionth as severe as what it would have taken to stop the Holocaust, a billion people’s unfreedom is like a thousand Holocausts. 4. This seems to me to be a fatal objection to this sort of “free will” theodicy. (The real problem is clearly in step 2; we all know, really, that Hitler’s free will—or that of any of the other people whose different decisions would have sufficed to prevent the Holocaust—isn’t more important than millions of horrible deaths.)
And several million other people [...]
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million. And, please, actually think about this for a moment. Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil? And are you seriously suggesting that the fact that a whole lot of other Germans had the glorious opportunity to exercise their free will and decide to go along with the extermination of the Jews makes this better?
I think I recall reading of a Christian/atheist debate in which someone—Richard Swinburne? -- made a similar suggestion, and his opponent—Peter Atkins? Christopher Hitchens? -- was heard to growl “May you rot in hell”. I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian, but I agree with the overall sentiment.
...you know, a lot of what you’ve been saying over the past few days makes so much more sense now. In effect, you’re looking for the minimum intervention to prevent the Holocaust. (And it should have been possible to do that without taking control of Hitler’s actions; a sudden stroke, bolt of lightning, or well-timed meteor strike could have prevented Hitler from ever doing anything again without removing free will). Considering how much importance the universe seems to put on free will, this might be considered an even more minimal intervention (and no matter how much importance free will is assigned, one life is less than six million lives).
Which leads us directly to the question of why lightning doesn’t strike sufficiently evil people, preferably just before they do something sufficiently evil.
To which the answer, expressed in the simplest possible form, is “I don’t know”. (At best, I can theorise out loud, but it’s all going to end up circling back round to “I don’t know” in the end).
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million.
Well, if each one was helped by one person, refused help by one person, and arrested by one person, then that’s eighteen million moral dilemmas being faced. (Presumably one person could face several of these dilemmas).
Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil?
No. I don’t. I’m very sure that it’s nowhere near a complete picture of all the consequences of the Holocaust, but (2) is nowhere near (1).
...and neither (2) nor (1) (nor both of them together) are a complete accounting of all the consequences of the Holocaust.
I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian,
I have it on good authority (from a parish priests’ sermon, unfortunately he does not publish his sermons to the internet so I can’t link it) that the RCC agrees with you on this point.
by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will.
That implies the “great people” approach to human history (history is shaped by actions of individual great people, not by large and diffuse economic/social/political/etc. forces) -- are you willing to accept it?
I think it implies only a rather weak version of the “great people” approach: some things of historical significance are down to individual people. (Who might be “great” in some sense, but might instead simply have been in a critical place at a critical time.) And yes, I’m perfectly willing to accept that; is there a reason why you would expect me not to?
Without Hitler, Germany would still have been unstable and at risk of being swayed by some sort of extremist demagogue willing to blame its troubles on Someone Else. So I’d assign a reasonable probability to something not entirely unlike the Nazi regime arising even without Hitler. It might even have had the National Socialists in charge. But their rhetoric wouldn’t have been the same, their policies wouldn’t have been the same, their tactics in war (if a war happened) wouldn’t have been the same, and many things would accordingly have been different. The extermination of millions of Jews doesn’t seem particularly inevitable, and I would guess that in (so to speak) most possible worlds in which Hitler is somehow taken out of the picture early on, there isn’t anything very much like the Holocaust.
It’s not my fault if the nearest correct thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from my opinions happens not to be falsifiable. (It’s not even clear that strong forms of the “great people” theory are falsifiable, actually.)
Of course an opinion can be useful without being falsifiable. “Human life as we see it is not utterly worthless and meaningless,” is probably not falsifiable (how would you falsify it?), but believing it is very useful for avoiding suicide and the like.
Opinions are not falsifiable by their nature (well, maybe by revealed preferences). But, hopefully, core approaches to the study of history (e.g. “great people” vs “impersonal forces”) are more than mere opinions.
Quite possibly not. Is that a problem? (The way this conversation feels to me: You claim that X follows from my opinions. I say: no, only the much weaker X’ does. You then complain that X’ is unfalsifiable and useless. Quite possibly, but so what? I expect everyone has beliefs from which one can deduce unfalsifiable and useless things.)
A recap from my side: I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked if you subscribe to the theory. You said yes, to a weak version. I pointed out that the weak version is unfalsifiable and useless. You said “so what?”
I don’t think that a version of a theory that has been sufficiently diluted and hedged to be unfalsifiable and so useless can be said to be a meaningful version of a theory. It’s just generic mush.
I’m not trying to trap you. I was interested in whether you actually believe in the “great people” theory (homeopathic versions don’t count). It now seems that you don’t. That is perfectly fine.
I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked
Actually, you did both:
That implies the “great people” approach to human history [...] -- are you willing to accept it?
(An aside: where I come from, saying “Your opinion implies X; are you willing to accept X?” is a more adversarial move than simply saying “Your opinion implies X” since it carries at least a suggestion that maybe they believe things that imply X without accepting X, hence inconsistency or insincerity or something.)
It’s just generic mush.
My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that the nearest thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from anything I’ve said is what you are describing as “generic mush”. (Perhaps next time I will be less polite and just say “No, that’s bullshit, no such thing follows from anything I’ve said” rather than trying to find the nearest thing I can that does follow. I was hoping that you would either explain why it would be interesting if I accepted the “generic mush” or else explain why you think something stronger than the “generic mush” follows from what I wrote, and confess myself rather taken aback at the tack you have actually taken.)
As to the “great people” theory: I believe that some historical events are down to the actions of individuals (who may or may not be great in any other sense) while some are much more the result of large and diffuse phenomena involving many people. That isn’t a statement that has a lot of readily evaluable observable consequences, but it’s the best answer I can give to the question you asked. (As I said above, I’m not sure that the “great people” theory itself, even in strong forms, actually fares any better in terms of verifiability or falsifiability.)
Yes, apparently we’re using the word “complexity” differently.
So, getting back to what I said that apparently surprised you: Yes, I think it is very plausible that the best theistic explanation for everything we observe around us is what I call “7 bits more complex” and you call “128x more complex” than the best non-theistic explanation; just to be clear what that means, I mean that if we could somehow write down a minimal-length complete description of what we see (compressing it via computer programs / laws of physics / etc.) subject to the constraint “must not make essential use of gods”, and another subject instead to the constraint “must make essential use of gods”, then my guess at the length of the second description is >= 7 bits longer than my guess at the length of the first. Actually I think the second description would have to be much longerer than that, but I’m discounting because this is confusing stuff and I’m far from certain that I’m right.
And you, if I’m understanding you correctly, are objecting not so much “no, the theistic description will be simpler” as “well, maybe you’re right that the nontheistic description will be simpler, but we should expect it to be simpler by less than one random ASCII character’s worth of description length”.
Of course the real diffiulty here is that we aren’t in a position to say what a minimal length theistic or nontheistic description of the universe would look like. We have a reasonable set of laws of physics that might form the core of the nontheistic description, but (1) we know the laws we have aren’t quite right, (2) it seems likely that the vast bulk of the complexity needed is not in the laws but in whatever arbitrary-so-far-as-we-know boundary conditions[1] need to be added to get our universe rather than a completely different one with the same laws, and we’ve no idea how much information that takes or even whether it’s finite. And on the theistic side we have at most a pious hope that something like “this is the best of all possible worlds” might suffice, but no clear idea of how to specify what notion of “best” is appropriate, and the world looks so much unlike the best of all possible worlds according to any reasonable notion that this fact is generally considered one of the major reasons for disbelieving in gods. So what hope have we of figuring out which description is shorter?
[1] On some ways of looking at the problem, what needs specifying is not so much boundary conditions as our location within a vast universe or multiverse. Similar problem.
It is confusing. I’m still not even convinced that the theist’s description would be longer, but my estimation is so vague and has such massively large error bars that I can’t say you’re wrong, even if what you’re saying is surprising to me.
More or less. I’m saying I would find it surprising if the existence of God made the universe significantly more complex. (In the absolutely minimal-length description, I expect it to work out shorter, but like I say above, there are massive error bars on my estimates).
While I’ve heard this argued before, I have yet to see an idea for a world that (a) is provably better, (b) cannot be created by sufficient sustained human effort (in an “if everyone works together” kind of way) and (c) cannot be taken apart by sustained human effort into a world vaguely resembling ours (in an “if there are as many criminals and greedy people as in this world”).
I’m not saying that there isn’t nasty stuff in this world. I’m just not seeing a way that it can be removed without also removing things like free will.
Very little, really. There’s a lot of unknowns.
If we get seriously into discussing arguments from evil we could be here all year :-), so I’ll just make a few points and leave it.
(1) Many religious believers, including (I think) the great majority of Christians, anticipate a future state in which sin and suffering and death will be no more. I’m pretty sure they see this as a good thing, whether they anticipate losing their free will to get it or not.
(2) I don’t know whether I can see any way to make a world with nothing nasty in it at all without losing other things we care about, but it doesn’t seem difficult to envisage ways in which omnipotence in the service of perfect goodness could improve the world substantially. For instance, consider a world exactly like this one except that whenever any cell in any animal’s body (human or other) gets into a state that would lead to a malignant tumour, God magically kills it. Boom, no more cancer. (And no effect at all on anyone who wouldn’t otherwise be getting cancer.) For an instance of a very different kind, imagine that one day people who pray actually start getting answers. Consistently. I don’t mean obliging answers to petitionary prayers, I mean communication. Suddenly anyone who prays gets a response; the responses are consistent and, for some categories of public prayer, public. There is no longer any more scope for wars about whose vision of God is right than there is for wars about whose theory of gravity is right, and anyone who tries to recruit people to blow things up in the name of God gets contradicted by a message from God himself. There might still be scope for fights between people who think it’s God doing this and people who think it’s a super-powerful evil being, but I don’t think it’s credible that this wouldn’t decrease religious strife. And if you think that being badly wrong about God is a serious problem (whether just because it’s bad to be wrong about important things, or because it leads to worse actions, or because it puts one in danger of damnation) then I hope you’ll agree that almost everyone on earth having basically correct beliefs about God would be a gain. And no, it wouldn’t mean abolishing free will; do we lack free will because we find it difficult to believe the sky is green on account of seeing it ourselves?
(3) I think your conditions a,b,c are too strict, in that I see no reason why candidate better worlds need to satisfy them all in order to be evidence that our actual world isn’t the best possible. Perhaps, e.g., a better world is possible that could be created by sustained human effort with everyone working together but won’t because actually, in practice, in the world we’ve got, everyone doesn’t work together. So, OK, you can blame humanity for the fact that we haven’t created that world, and maybe doing so makes you feel better, but more than one agent can be rightly blamed for the same thing and the fact that it’s (kinda) our fault doesn’t mean it isn’t God’s. Do you suppose he couldn’t have encouraged us more effectively to do better? If not, doesn’t the fact that not even the most effective encouragement infinite wisdom could devise would lead us to do it suggest that saying we could is rather misleading? And (this is a point I think is constantly missed) whyever should we treat human nature, as it now is, as a given? Could your god really not have arranged for humanity to be a little nicer and smarter? In terms of your condition (c), why on earth should we, when considering what better worlds there might be, only consider candidates in which “there are as many criminals and greedy people as in this world”?
I’ve heard arguments that we’ve already reached that state—think about if you go back in time about two thousand years and describe modern medical technology and lifestyles. (I don’t agree with those arguments, mind you, but I do think that such a future state is going to have to be something that we build, not that we are given.
It’s difficult to be certain.
Now I’m imagining a lot of scientists studying and trying to figure out why some cells just mysteriously vanish for no good reason—and this becoming the greatest unsolved question in medical science and taking all the attention of people who might otherwise be figuring out cures for TB or various types of flu. (In this hypothetical universe, they wouldn’t know about malignant tumours, of course).
And if someone would otherwise develop a LOT of cancer, then Sudden Cell Vanishing Syndrome could, in itself, become a major problem...
Mind, I’m not saying it’s certain that universe would be worse, or even that it’s probable. It’s just easy to see how that universe could be worse.
That would be interesting. And you raise a lot of good points—there would be a lot of positive effects. But, at the same time… I think HPMOR showed quite nicely that sometimes, having a list of instructions with regard to what to do is a good deal less valuable than being able to understand the situation, take responsibility, and do it yourself.
People would still have free will, yes. But how many people would voluntarily abdicate their decision-making processes to simply do what the voice in the sky tells them to do (except the bits where it says “THINK FOR YOURSELVES”)?
...this is something which I think would probably be a net benefit. But I can’t be certain.
...very probably.
That just means that a better world needs to be designed that can be created under the constraints of not everyone working together. It’s a hard problem, but I don’t think it’s entirely insoluble.
That is a good question. I have no good answers for it.
...less criminals and greedy people would make things a lot easier, but I’m not quite sure how to arrange that without either (a) reducing free will or (b) mass executions, which could cause other problems.
Then I suggest that you classify the people making those arguments as Very Silly and don’t listen to them in future.
You’re welcome to think that; my point is simply that if such a thing is possible and desirable then either one can have a better world than this without abrogating free will, or else free will isn’t as important as theists often claim it is when confronted with arguments from evil.
(Perhaps your position is that the world could indeed be much better, but that the only way to make such a better world without abrogating free will is to have us do it gradually starting with a really bad world. I hope I will be forgiven for saying that that doesn’t seem like a position anyone would adopt for reasons other than a desperate attempt to avoid the conclusion of the argument from evil.)
Again, you’re welcome to imagine whatever you like, but if you’re suggesting that this would be a likely consequence of the scenario I proposed then I think you’re quite wrong (and again wonder whether it would occur to you to imagine that if you weren’t attempting to justify the existence of cancer to defend your god’s reputation). Under what circumstances would they notice this? Cells die all the time. We don’t have the technology to monitor every cell—or more than a tiny fraction of cells—in a living animal and see if it dies. We don’t have the technology or the medical understanding to be able to say “huh, that cell died and I don’t know why; that’s really unusual”. Maybe some hypothetical super-advanced medical science would be flummoxed by this, but right now I’m pretty sure no one would come close to noticing.
(Also, you could combine this with my second proposal, and then what happens is that someone says “hey, God, would you mind telling us why these cells are dying?” and God says “oh, yeah, those are ones that were going wrong and would have turned into runaway growths that could kill you. I zap those just before they do. You’re welcome.”.)
Please, think about that scenario for thirty seconds, and consider whether you can actually envisage a situation where having those cancerous cells self-destruct would be worse than having them turn into tumours.
But that was no part of the scenario I described. In that scenario, it could be that when people ask God for advice he says “Sorry, it’s going to be better for you to work this one out on your own.”
So here’s the thing. Apparently “reducing free will” is a terrible awful thing so bad that its spectre justifies the Holocaust and child sex abuse and all the other awful things that bad people do without being stopped by God. So … how come we don’t have more free will than we do? Why are we so readily manipulated by advertisements, so easily entrapped by habits, so easily overwhelmed by the desire for food or sex or whatever? It seems to me that if we take this sort of “free will defence” seriously enough for it to work, then we replace (or augment) the argument from evil with an equally fearsome argument from un-freedom.
...perhaps I have failed to properly convey that argument. I did not intend to say that our world now is in a state of perfection. I intended to point out that, if you were to go back in time a couple of thousand years and talk to a random person about our current society, then he would be likely to imagine it as a state of perfection. Similarly, if a random person in this era were to describe a state of perfection, then that might be a description of society a couple of thousand years from now—and the people of that time would still not consider their world in a state of perfection.
In short, “perfection” may be a state that can only be approached asymptotically. We can get closer to it, but never reach it; we can labour to reduce the gap, but never fully eliminate it.
You mean, just kind of starting up the universe at the point where all the major social problems have already been solved, with everyone having a full set of memories of how to keep the solutions working and what happens if you don’t?
...I have little idea why the universe isn’t like that (and the little idea I have is impractically speculative).
The only way? No. Starting a universe at the point where the answers to society’s problems are known is a possible way to do that.
...the thing is, I don’t know what the goal, the purpose of the universe is. Free will is clearly a very important part of those aims—either a goal in itself, or strictly necessary in order to achieve some other goal or goals—but I’m fairly sure it’s not the only one. It may be that other ways of making a better world without abrogating free will all come at the cost of some other important thing that is somehow necessary for the universe.
Though this is all very speculative, and the argument is rather shaky.
Okay, if the cells just die and don’t vanish, then that makes it a whole lot less physics-breaking. (Alternatively, if they are simply replaced with healthy cells, then it becomes even harder to spot).
...you know, combining those would be interesting as well. (Then the next logical question asked would be “Why don’t you zap all diseases?”)
No, I can’t. This guy’s in massive trouble either way.
A fair point.
Some people would be discouraged by this, others would work harder...
Yes, and I’m not quite sure that I get the whole of the why either.
...huh. That’s… that’s a very good question, really.
Hmmm. It seems logical that it must be possible to talk someone into (or out of) a course of action. “Here is some information that shows why it is to your benefit to do X” has to be possible, or there is no point to communication and we might as well all be alone.
And given that that is possible, advertising is an inevitable consequence—tell a million people to buy Tasty Cheese Snax or whatever, and some of them will listen. (More complex use of advertising is merely a refinement of technique). I don’t really see any logical alternative—either advertising, which is a special case of persuasion, has to work to some degree, or persuasion must be impossible. (If persuasion of a specific type proves impossible, advertisers will simply use a form of persuasion that is effective).
Habits… as far as I can tell, habits are a consequence of the structure of the human brain (we’re pattern-recognition machines, and almost all biases and problems in human thought come from this). A habit is merely a pattern of action; something that we find ourselves doing by default. Avoiding habits would require a pretty much total rewrite of the human brain. Which may be a good or a bad thing, but is a completely unknown thing.
Desires for food and stuff? …I have no idea. You could probably base an argument from unfreedom around that. (It’s clear enough where the desires come from—people without those desires would have been outcompeted by people with them, so there’s evolutionary pressure to have those biases. Is this an inevitable consequence of an evolutionary development?)
I realise that I said “I’ll just make a few points and leave it” and then, er, failed to do so. And lo, this looks like it could be the beginning of a lengthy discussion of evil and theism, for which LW probably really isn’t the best venue. So I’m going to ignore all the object-level issues aside from giving a couple of clarifications (see below) and make the following meta-point:
You seem to be basically agreeing with my arguments and conceding that your counterproposals are shaky and speculative; my point isn’t to declare victory nor to suggest you should be abandoning theism immediately :-) but just that I think this indicates that you agree with me that whether or not the world turns out to be somehow the best that omnipotence coupled with perfect wisdom and goodness can achieve, it doesn’t look much like it is. In which case I don’t think you can credibly make an argument of the form “the world is well explained by the hypothesis that it’s a morally-optimal world, which is a nice simple hypothesis, so we should consider that highly probable”. I’ve argued before that it’s not so simple a hypothesis, but it’s also a really terrible explanation for the world we actually see.
The promised clarifications: 1. The reason why my cancer-zapping proposal didn’t involve curing all diseases was that it’s easier to see that a change is a clear improvement if it’s reasonably small and simple. Curing all diseases is a really big leap, it probably makes a huge difference to typical lifespans and hence to all kinds of other things in society, it probably would get noticed which, for good or ill, could make a big difference to people’s ideas about science and gods and whatnot. I would in fact expect the overall effect to be substantially more positive than that of just zapping incipient cancers, but it’s more complicated and therefore less clear. I’m not trying to describe an optimal world, merely one that’s clearly better than this one. 2. My point about habits and advertising and the like wasn’t that if free will matters then those things should have no effect, still less that it’s a mystery why we have them; but that if our world is being optimized by a superbeing who values free will so much that, e.g., Hitler’s free will matters more than the murder of six million Jews, then we should expect much less impairment of our free will than we actually seem to have.
...to be fair, I think I also deserve part of the blame for this digression. I have a tendency to run away with minor points on occasion.
I agree that this is a position which can reasonably be held and for which very strong arguments can be made.
Makes sense. (It does raise the question of how we would know whether or not it is already happening for an even more virulent disease...)
To be fair, it wasn’t just Hitler; there were a whole lot of people working under his command whose free will was also involved. And several million other people trying to help or hinder one side or the other...
I think if you hypothetically let Hitler rise to power but then magically prevent him from giving orders to persecute Jews more severely than (say) requiring them to live in ghettos, you probably prevent the Holocaust without provoking a coup in which someone more viciously antisemitic takes over. Or killing him in childhood or letting his artistic career succeed better would probably suffice (maybe Germany would then have been taken over by different warmongers blaming their troubles on other groups, but is it really credible that in every such version of the world we get something as bad as Hitler?).
Of course it might turn out that WW2 was terribly beneficial to the world because it led to technological advances and the Holocaust was beneficial because it led to the establishment of the state of Israel, or something. But that’s an entirely different defence from the one we’re discussing here, and I can’t say it seems like a very credible one anyway. (If we really need those technological advances and the state of Israel, aren’t there cheaper ways for omnipotence to arrange for us to get them?)
I, too, think that this is extremely likely. This would show that Hitler’s orders were necessary for the Holocaust, but it would not show that they were sufficient—there’s probably at least a half-dozen or so people whose orders were also necessary for the Holocaust, and then of course there’s a lot of ways to prevent the Holocaust by affecting more than one person in some or other manner.
I doubt the political ramifications had much to do with it. The effect of thousands of people being placed in difficult moral situations and having to decide what to do might have been a factor, though; a sort of a stress testing of thousands of peoples’ free will, in a way which by and large strengthens their ability to think for themselves (because they’re now well aware of how bad things get when others think for them).
It doesn’t need to. The more ways there are to prevent the Holocaust, the more morally unimpressive not doing so becomes. Or, at least, the better the countervailing reasons need to be.
Six million Jews and six million others died in the Holocaust. It is not so easy to think for yourself when you are dead.
(Or: It is very easy to think for yourself when you are dead because you have then transcended the confusions and temptations of this mortal life. But I don’t think anyone’s going to argue seriously that the Holocaust was a good thing because the people murdered in it were thereby enabled to make better decisions post mortem. The only reason for this paragraph is to forestall complaints that the one before it assumes atheism.)
So, um… to go back along this line of argument a few posts, then...
...this means you’re in agreement with what I wrote here, right?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make.
And several million other people hid jews in their attics; attempted (at great personal risk) to smuggle jews to safe places; helped jews across the borders; or, on the other side, hunted jews down, deciding to obey evil orders; arrested people and sent them to death camps; ran or even built said camps… and were, in one or another way, put through the wringer.
I can’t find the reference now, but I do seem to recall reading—somewhere—that Holocaust survivors were significantly less likely to fall victim to the Milgram experiment or similar things.
(I’m not talking about the people who were killed at all.)
1. The Holocaust could probably have been prevented, with no extra adverse consequences of similar severity, by an intervention that didn’t interfere with more than one person’s free will. 2. Therefore, a “free will” defence of (the compatibility of theism with) the world’s evil needs to consider that one person’s free will to be of comparable importance to all the suffering and death of the Holocaust. 3. If free will is that important, then in place of (or in addition to) the “problem of evil” we have a “problem of unfreedom”; we are all less free than we might have been, in many ways, and even if that unfreedom is only one millionth as severe as what it would have taken to stop the Holocaust, a billion people’s unfreedom is like a thousand Holocausts. 4. This seems to me to be a fatal objection to this sort of “free will” theodicy. (The real problem is clearly in step 2; we all know, really, that Hitler’s free will—or that of any of the other people whose different decisions would have sufficed to prevent the Holocaust—isn’t more important than millions of horrible deaths.)
I’m pretty sure the number who hid Jews in their attics, helped them escape, etc., was a lot less than six million. And, please, actually think about this for a moment. Consider (1) what the Nazis did to the Jews and (2) what some less-corrupted Germans did to help the Jews. Do you really, truly, want to suggest that #2 was a greater good than #1 was an evil? And are you seriously suggesting that the fact that a whole lot of other Germans had the glorious opportunity to exercise their free will and decide to go along with the extermination of the Jews makes this better?
I think I recall reading of a Christian/atheist debate in which someone—Richard Swinburne? -- made a similar suggestion, and his opponent—Peter Atkins? Christopher Hitchens? -- was heard to growl “May you rot in hell”. I personally think hell is too severe a punishment even for the likes of Hitler, and did even when I was a Christian, but I agree with the overall sentiment.
Oh.
...you know, a lot of what you’ve been saying over the past few days makes so much more sense now. In effect, you’re looking for the minimum intervention to prevent the Holocaust. (And it should have been possible to do that without taking control of Hitler’s actions; a sudden stroke, bolt of lightning, or well-timed meteor strike could have prevented Hitler from ever doing anything again without removing free will). Considering how much importance the universe seems to put on free will, this might be considered an even more minimal intervention (and no matter how much importance free will is assigned, one life is less than six million lives).
Which leads us directly to the question of why lightning doesn’t strike sufficiently evil people, preferably just before they do something sufficiently evil.
To which the answer, expressed in the simplest possible form, is “I don’t know”. (At best, I can theorise out loud, but it’s all going to end up circling back round to “I don’t know” in the end).
Well, if each one was helped by one person, refused help by one person, and arrested by one person, then that’s eighteen million moral dilemmas being faced. (Presumably one person could face several of these dilemmas).
No. I don’t. I’m very sure that it’s nowhere near a complete picture of all the consequences of the Holocaust, but (2) is nowhere near (1).
...and neither (2) nor (1) (nor both of them together) are a complete accounting of all the consequences of the Holocaust.
I have it on good authority (from a parish priests’ sermon, unfortunately he does not publish his sermons to the internet so I can’t link it) that the RCC agrees with you on this point.
That implies the “great people” approach to human history (history is shaped by actions of individual great people, not by large and diffuse economic/social/political/etc. forces) -- are you willing to accept it?
I think it implies only a rather weak version of the “great people” approach: some things of historical significance are down to individual people. (Who might be “great” in some sense, but might instead simply have been in a critical place at a critical time.) And yes, I’m perfectly willing to accept that; is there a reason why you would expect me not to?
Without Hitler, Germany would still have been unstable and at risk of being swayed by some sort of extremist demagogue willing to blame its troubles on Someone Else. So I’d assign a reasonable probability to something not entirely unlike the Nazi regime arising even without Hitler. It might even have had the National Socialists in charge. But their rhetoric wouldn’t have been the same, their policies wouldn’t have been the same, their tactics in war (if a war happened) wouldn’t have been the same, and many things would accordingly have been different. The extermination of millions of Jews doesn’t seem particularly inevitable, and I would guess that in (so to speak) most possible worlds in which Hitler is somehow taken out of the picture early on, there isn’t anything very much like the Holocaust.
That, of course, is not a falsifiable statement :-)
It’s not my fault if the nearest correct thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from my opinions happens not to be falsifiable. (It’s not even clear that strong forms of the “great people” theory are falsifiable, actually.)
I am not talking about faults, but if it’s not falsifiable, can it be of any use?
Of course an opinion can be useful without being falsifiable. “Human life as we see it is not utterly worthless and meaningless,” is probably not falsifiable (how would you falsify it?), but believing it is very useful for avoiding suicide and the like.
Opinions are not falsifiable by their nature (well, maybe by revealed preferences). But, hopefully, core approaches to the study of history (e.g. “great people” vs “impersonal forces”) are more than mere opinions.
Quite possibly not. Is that a problem? (The way this conversation feels to me: You claim that X follows from my opinions. I say: no, only the much weaker X’ does. You then complain that X’ is unfalsifiable and useless. Quite possibly, but so what? I expect everyone has beliefs from which one can deduce unfalsifiable and useless things.)
A recap from my side: I didn’t claim that X follows from your opinions—I asked if you subscribe to the theory. You said yes, to a weak version. I pointed out that the weak version is unfalsifiable and useless. You said “so what?”
I don’t think that a version of a theory that has been sufficiently diluted and hedged to be unfalsifiable and so useless can be said to be a meaningful version of a theory. It’s just generic mush.
I’m not trying to trap you. I was interested in whether you actually believe in the “great people” theory (homeopathic versions don’t count). It now seems that you don’t. That is perfectly fine.
Actually, you did both:
(An aside: where I come from, saying “Your opinion implies X; are you willing to accept X?” is a more adversarial move than simply saying “Your opinion implies X” since it carries at least a suggestion that maybe they believe things that imply X without accepting X, hence inconsistency or insincerity or something.)
My point, in case it wasn’t clear, is that the nearest thing to the “great people” theory that actually follows from anything I’ve said is what you are describing as “generic mush”. (Perhaps next time I will be less polite and just say “No, that’s bullshit, no such thing follows from anything I’ve said” rather than trying to find the nearest thing I can that does follow. I was hoping that you would either explain why it would be interesting if I accepted the “generic mush” or else explain why you think something stronger than the “generic mush” follows from what I wrote, and confess myself rather taken aback at the tack you have actually taken.)
As to the “great people” theory: I believe that some historical events are down to the actions of individuals (who may or may not be great in any other sense) while some are much more the result of large and diffuse phenomena involving many people. That isn’t a statement that has a lot of readily evaluable observable consequences, but it’s the best answer I can give to the question you asked. (As I said above, I’m not sure that the “great people” theory itself, even in strong forms, actually fares any better in terms of verifiability or falsifiability.)