I assume a significant amount of them were. I also tried subtly using God/Fate, God/Freewill, God/Physics, God/Universe, God/ConsciousMultiverse, and God/Chance, as interchangeable “redefinitions” (of course, on different samples each time) and was similarly called on it.
Incidentally, I can’t confirm if this suggests a pattern (it probably does), but in one church I tried, for fun, combining all of them and just conflating all the meanings of all the above into “God”, and then sometimes using the specific terms and/or God interchangeably when discussing a specific subset or idea. The more confused I made it, the more people I convinced and got to engage in self-reinforcing positive-affect dialogue. So if this was the only evidence available, I’d be forced to tentatively conclude: The more confused your usage of “God” is, the more it matches the religious usage, and the more it passes ideological turing tests!
(Spoiler: It does. The rest of my evidence confirms this.)
This ought not be surprising. The more confused a concept is, the more freedom my audience has to understand it to mean whatever suits their purposes. In some audiences, this means it gets criticized more. In others, it gets accepted more uncritically.
Hmm. I’m pretty sure that if I renamed some other confused idea “God” it wouldn’t work so well. Or do you mean confusing?
I assume a significant amount of them were.
On it’s own, that sounds like your assumption is based on the fact that they were religious, which is on the face of it absurd, so I’m guessing you have some evidence you declined to mention.
Incidentally, where does the term “ideological turing test” come from? I’ve never heard it before.
Hmm. I’m pretty sure that if I renamed some other confused idea “God” it wouldn’t work so well. Or do you mean confusing?
Yes, sorry. I was using the term “confused” in a slightly different manner from the one LWers are used to, and “confusing” fits better. Basically, “meaninglessly mysterious and deep-sounding” would be the more LW-friendly description, I think.
On it’s own, that sounds like your assumption is based on the fact that they were religious, which is on the face of it absurd, so I’m guessing you have some evidence you declined to mention.
Ah, yes. Mostly the conversations and responses I got themselves gave me very strong impressions of creationism, and also some (rather unreliable, however, but still sufficient bayesian evidence) small-scale, local, privately-funded survey statistics about religion and beliefs.
To top that, most of the religious places and forums/websites I was visiting were found partially through the help of my at-the-time-girlfriend, whose family was very religious (and dogmatic) and creationist, so I suspect there probably was some effect there. I don’t count this, though, because that would be double-counting (it’s overridden by the “conversations with people” evidence)
Incidentally, where does the term “ideological turing test” come from? I’ve never heard it before.
No clue. I first saw it on LessWrong, and I think someone linked me to a wiki page about it when I asked what it meant, but I can’t remember or find that instance.
I assume a significant amount of them were. I also tried subtly using God/Fate, God/Freewill, God/Physics, God/Universe, God/ConsciousMultiverse, and God/Chance, as interchangeable “redefinitions” (of course, on different samples each time) and was similarly called on it.
Incidentally, I can’t confirm if this suggests a pattern (it probably does), but in one church I tried, for fun, combining all of them and just conflating all the meanings of all the above into “God”, and then sometimes using the specific terms and/or God interchangeably when discussing a specific subset or idea. The more confused I made it, the more people I convinced and got to engage in self-reinforcing positive-affect dialogue. So if this was the only evidence available, I’d be forced to tentatively conclude: The more confused your usage of “God” is, the more it matches the religious usage, and the more it passes ideological turing tests!
(Spoiler: It does. The rest of my evidence confirms this.)
This ought not be surprising. The more confused a concept is, the more freedom my audience has to understand it to mean whatever suits their purposes. In some audiences, this means it gets criticized more. In others, it gets accepted more uncritically.
This reminds me a lot of Spinoza’s proof of God in Ethics, although I recognize that is probably partially due to personal biases of mine.
Hmm. I’m pretty sure that if I renamed some other confused idea “God” it wouldn’t work so well. Or do you mean confusing?
On it’s own, that sounds like your assumption is based on the fact that they were religious, which is on the face of it absurd, so I’m guessing you have some evidence you declined to mention.
Incidentally, where does the term “ideological turing test” come from? I’ve never heard it before.
The term was coined by Brian Caplan here
Ah, cool. That’s actually a really good idea, someone should set that up. An empirical test of how well you understand a position/ideology.
Yes, sorry. I was using the term “confused” in a slightly different manner from the one LWers are used to, and “confusing” fits better. Basically, “meaninglessly mysterious and deep-sounding” would be the more LW-friendly description, I think.
Ah, yes. Mostly the conversations and responses I got themselves gave me very strong impressions of creationism, and also some (rather unreliable, however, but still sufficient bayesian evidence) small-scale, local, privately-funded survey statistics about religion and beliefs.
To top that, most of the religious places and forums/websites I was visiting were found partially through the help of my at-the-time-girlfriend, whose family was very religious (and dogmatic) and creationist, so I suspect there probably was some effect there. I don’t count this, though, because that would be double-counting (it’s overridden by the “conversations with people” evidence)
No clue. I first saw it on LessWrong, and I think someone linked me to a wiki page about it when I asked what it meant, but I can’t remember or find that instance.
Thanks for explaining! Shame about the ITT though.