Should I continue this conversation? Is there anything to be had or learned here? The internet is a tricky place and it could be my mood tonight, but I feel that this seems to be headed down a volatile path. I don’t mind talking about it but I will get tired of dealing with comments that aren’t making much of an effort to do some quick thinking on their own.
The implication in this is more that this is a stupid, dead horse, argument circle that everyone has been around a few times. The implication is not that you aren’t thinking or that you should be writing small essays on prayer. This is just a big rabbit hole and I get the feeling that no one really wants to go there again.
Talking anyway...
If I asked any Christian I know if they prayed for a brand new car in their driveway tomorrow morning they would probably give an answer like, “Well, it could happen, but it’s not very likely.” I don’t see this as dodging experimental evidence before the test has happened. More than likely they already tried something like that when they were kids and it obviously failed.
My expectation of the experiments on intercessory prayer is that it would do about as well as a placebo. (I am guessing we are talking about prayer for health issues.) Perhaps a little better than placebos, but I don’t know the positive affects of visitors on patients. For some reason, I assume that being stuck alone in a hospital is bad for the average person’s mood which would probably affect their recovery. What I would find more telling is the affect of prayer without the patient hearing about it. In this case, I would expect no significant difference.
But I still ask God for stuff. It makes me feel better and it helps me think about the stuff as a problem to solve. It is a way for me to acknowledge that stuff. “God” could be replaced by a different term, and if I reject Theism it probably will be, but for now prayer has a use. I don’t see it the same way everyone sees it, but even in the case of a Traditional Christian, I don’t think it is a good example of someone making up excuses for an invisible dragon before the experiment happens.
As much as I believe in the power of people to delude and lie to themselves, this is a hard stretch for me. Again, I am not saying its impossible. I just haven’t seen it. It could be all around me, I suppose, but I still don’t see it.
I think that you are interpreting your religious fellows with too much charity. Some of them might be like you. Others won’t be, unless you’re hanging out with an exclusively Unitarian crowd.
Yeah, I see everyone with charity. I rarely run into truly stupid people. Most of them have stupid beliefs and stupid habits but they are intelligent enough to still be alive. These people are smart enough to understand the concepts at LessWrong. At least, smart enough to understand everything I have read so far. Maybe not the mathy particulars, but the high level concepts, sure.
The astrologer in your example is not stupid. He dodges because he already knows it will fail because he has seen it fail. I suspect he latches onto his belief for other reasons. I really don’t see how he could be following astrology and not see it fail from time to time. The appropriate question isn’t in the form of an experiment because you don’t know what the believer expects.
I get that this is belief in belief. What I don’t get is how this matches the dragon example. He isn’t dodging an experiment that he hasn’t seen yet. He sees it all the time. Trying to verify the accuracy of astrology is something these people do every day. You can watch in the same video as people ponder if a saying applies to them. Half of them reject it without feeling like their whole system crashed.
I am not defending astrology. I am not defending the beliefs in it. I am confused as to how this looks like the dragon example.
The closest dragon-esque example I have seen posted here was this:
Later I asked him about the efficacy of prayer and he said it worked as long as you weren’t doing a test to see if it worked.
I am starting to think I am misunderstanding the example.
Do you ever pray? Have you ever asked God, even in the silence of your heart, for something you truly wanted?
Have you ever looked at the experimental results for intercessory prayer? What do you expect them to show?
There ya go.
Really? That’s it?
Should I continue this conversation? Is there anything to be had or learned here? The internet is a tricky place and it could be my mood tonight, but I feel that this seems to be headed down a volatile path. I don’t mind talking about it but I will get tired of dealing with comments that aren’t making much of an effort to do some quick thinking on their own.
The implication in this is more that this is a stupid, dead horse, argument circle that everyone has been around a few times. The implication is not that you aren’t thinking or that you should be writing small essays on prayer. This is just a big rabbit hole and I get the feeling that no one really wants to go there again.
Talking anyway...
If I asked any Christian I know if they prayed for a brand new car in their driveway tomorrow morning they would probably give an answer like, “Well, it could happen, but it’s not very likely.” I don’t see this as dodging experimental evidence before the test has happened. More than likely they already tried something like that when they were kids and it obviously failed.
My expectation of the experiments on intercessory prayer is that it would do about as well as a placebo. (I am guessing we are talking about prayer for health issues.) Perhaps a little better than placebos, but I don’t know the positive affects of visitors on patients. For some reason, I assume that being stuck alone in a hospital is bad for the average person’s mood which would probably affect their recovery. What I would find more telling is the affect of prayer without the patient hearing about it. In this case, I would expect no significant difference.
But I still ask God for stuff. It makes me feel better and it helps me think about the stuff as a problem to solve. It is a way for me to acknowledge that stuff. “God” could be replaced by a different term, and if I reject Theism it probably will be, but for now prayer has a use. I don’t see it the same way everyone sees it, but even in the case of a Traditional Christian, I don’t think it is a good example of someone making up excuses for an invisible dragon before the experiment happens.
As much as I believe in the power of people to delude and lie to themselves, this is a hard stretch for me. Again, I am not saying its impossible. I just haven’t seen it. It could be all around me, I suppose, but I still don’t see it.
I think that you are interpreting your religious fellows with too much charity. Some of them might be like you. Others won’t be, unless you’re hanging out with an exclusively Unitarian crowd.
If you really want to see a straight-up case, http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lf/open_thread_january_2010/1es2
Yeah, I see everyone with charity. I rarely run into truly stupid people. Most of them have stupid beliefs and stupid habits but they are intelligent enough to still be alive. These people are smart enough to understand the concepts at LessWrong. At least, smart enough to understand everything I have read so far. Maybe not the mathy particulars, but the high level concepts, sure.
The astrologer in your example is not stupid. He dodges because he already knows it will fail because he has seen it fail. I suspect he latches onto his belief for other reasons. I really don’t see how he could be following astrology and not see it fail from time to time. The appropriate question isn’t in the form of an experiment because you don’t know what the believer expects.
I get that this is belief in belief. What I don’t get is how this matches the dragon example. He isn’t dodging an experiment that he hasn’t seen yet. He sees it all the time. Trying to verify the accuracy of astrology is something these people do every day. You can watch in the same video as people ponder if a saying applies to them. Half of them reject it without feeling like their whole system crashed.
I am not defending astrology. I am not defending the beliefs in it. I am confused as to how this looks like the dragon example.
The closest dragon-esque example I have seen posted here was this:
I am starting to think I am misunderstanding the example.
I would like to hear which part of this post gets downvotes. I could see either part deserving them.
I didn’t think it deserved a downvote, so I upvoted, FWIW.
If you want to know which part people are voting on, split it into two posts.