Wowww. How abjectly horrifying. o_o But of course, this does not preclude the existence of God. Mormons tend to believe in some form of evolutionary theory (varying degrees of strength, in other words) in addition to creationism; this is caused by a mutation, so it’s a natural side-effect of genetics.
Claiming God created the world does not equate to saying that this world is perfect. On the contrary, I know of no Christian religion who would claim that. This is explicitly a sub-perfect world, and has been since the fall of Adam.
The best of all logically-self-consistent worlds does not necessarily have every imaginable desirable feature. If you believe otherwise, please respond to the ontological argument for the existence of God.
The best of all logically-self-consistent worlds does not necessarily have every imaginable desirable feature.
That is true, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t notice that a truly omnibenevolent being could do a much better job than the world we find ourselves in. I would consider harlequin ichthyosis as evidence that our world is not perfect, as it seems way more likely given an uncaring universe than in a perfect universe in which some horrifying features are logically neccessary.
On the other hand, it’s not totally clear to me what a truly omnibenevolent being would do. An all-powerful being with ordinary human values would probably create a fairly unpleasant world for most other humans, and if we posit a value-system sufficiently alien not to become a cackling dictator, then I kind of feel like all bets are off.
Actually perfect worlds do not devolve into sub-perfect worlds.
Because a resistance to “devolution” is a necessary aspect of perfection? Surely if God exists, he can nudge a few things out of their resting places. :P
This is a common fallacy: “If God is omnibenevolent, He would not have such-and-such bad thing happen”. You presuppose His motives. If He wanted us to all exist in a state of eternal bliss, then there would have been no need to create the earth. No, His goal is to have His children become even as He is, which requires refining them through fire.
Surely if God exists, he can nudge a few things out of their resting places. :P
Ok, but why would he want to. A perfect God would not choose nudge a perfect world out of perfection.
This is a common fallacy: “If God is omnibenevolent, He would not have such-and-such bad thing happen”. You presuppose His motives.
No, I take the motives advocates of a god even existing ascribe to him, and show that assuming that produces predictions wildly different from our observations. If you want to approach it from the other direction, here is an investigation into what sort of god would explain our observations.
No, His goal is to have His children become even as He is, which requires refining them through fire.
It seems unlikely that some of his children would take so much more fire than others to refine. Or perhaps the supposedly perfect god has given some of these children suboptimal initial conditions or refining processes. It is unlikely even that a refining process is even better, a perfect god should get the children right when they are created.
Ok, but why would he want to. A perfect God would not choose nudge a perfect world out of perfection.
Again, presupposition of His motives; if He wanted us to become stronger, we must have had opposition, which could not have taken place in the paradisaical Garden of Eden.
No, I take the motives advocates of a god even existing ascribe to him, and show that assuming that produces predictions wildly different from our observations.
Unfortunately, you are using the arguments of other Christian sects against this one. Are you aware that many sects don’t even consider the LDS faith to be Christian, because we differ so wildly from the Established Truth?
If you want to approach it from the other direction, here is an investigation into what sort of god would explain our observations.
Ha! Yes, I’ve read it, and yes, it was well-written, as many of Eliezer’s posts are. I, unlike “other Christians”, do not deny that evolution is true.
It seems unlikely that some of his children would take so much more fire than others to refine. Or perhaps the supposedly perfect god has given some of these children suboptimal initial conditions or refining processes. It is unlikely even that a refining process is even better, a perfect god should get the children right when they are created.
Intelligence is no match for experience; He could have programmed robots to be perfect Gods, I suppose, but they wouldn’t be children, because they wouldn’t have the spark of life. (Yes, I know, my entire argument has as a predicate the existence of a non-physical (for certain definitions of “physical”) entity that controls the physical aspects of life.) As for “initial conditions”… I’m hesitant to answer this point, because the explanation may well exceed the inferential distance.
Again, presupposition of His motives; if He wanted us to become stronger, we must have had opposition, which could not have taken place in the paradisaical Garden of Eden.
Why?
Why would he want us to become stronger, if that strength is only needed to cope with adversity that didn’t have to be there?
Why would he put us in the Garden of Eden in the first place if it couldn’t give us the growth he intended for us?
Why couldn’t he just make us stronger and skip the adversity? Humans develop to resist negative stimuli when they’re exposed to them, and not when they aren’t, because such developments take biological resources. If, for instance, your body insisted on building up your muscles for optimal weight lifting capacity, you would be in big trouble if what you really needed was to survive in a hot desert. We strengthen ourselves in response to adversity because until very recently in our evolutionary history, like all other animals, we did not have the capacity to predict what sort of adversity we’d have to adapt to in advance. An all powerful and intelligent being creating a species could have done much better, and instead of going through all the nonsense of making us suffer so we could get stronger, could have made us stronger so we wouldn’t have to suffer.
Remember that every If or Maybe you offer up, every piece of information you propose about God’s intentions, qualities or character that is not itself sufficiently evidenced for people to believe it without first buying into your religious framework, is another burden on your hypothesis, something that should lower your estimate of your religion being true.
Ok, but why would he want to. A perfect God would not choose nudge a perfect world out of perfection.
Again, presupposition of His motives; if He wanted us to become stronger, we must have had opposition, which could not have taken place in the paradisaical Garden of Eden.
It seems that for every observation you might be called to explain, you can say “God could have done that”, and in response to any speculation of whether God would choose to do that you can accuse “presupposition of His motives”. What can your theory not explain?
Intelligence is no match for experience; He could have programmed robots to be perfect Gods, I suppose, but they wouldn’t be children, because they wouldn’t have the spark of life. (Yes, I know, my entire argument has as a predicate the existence of a non-physical (for certain definitions of “physical”) entity that controls the physical aspects of life.) As for “initial conditions”… I’m hesitant to answer this point, because the explanation may well exceed the inferential distance.
That is not at all a response to the first major criticism: “It seems unlikely that some of his children would take so much more fire than others to refine.”
Experience is not mysterious thing. It is a means of accumulating data that an agent could be designed to start with. It is a way of traing behaviors that an agent can be designed to start out executing. We would design an agent to grow more powerful from experience because we do not know now what data and behaviors to give it. A perfect God would know.
Got it! I’ve been racking my brain, and I’ve come up with an answer: my theory would be proven false by the discovery of sentient extraterrestrial life that did not look like us.
Ok, it is good that you are making this effort, but that is way too safe. In the near future, we wouldn’t even notice if there were such extraterrestrial life. A better answer should constrain your anticipated experience.
Thanks for noticing my effort. ;3 I know it’s weak; I’m working my way up. Umm… the dissolution of the state of Israel, the administrative dissolution of the Church...
I know that these are non-terminating tests. x_x I’ll look for one that constrains my present experience, but that’ll be pretty difficult. One of the tenets of Christian religions, as you should know to your dismay, is that God’s not going to give us any hard proof during our time here. At least, until the Second Coming, at which point Christianity should be pretty well into the 90% range. :P
You seem to be looking for one big decisive test, which as you note, your religion protects itself against. It may help to instead use lots of smaller test, and accumulate evidence. Ask of the things you observe, not if your religion allows it to happen, but how likely your religion says it is, and how likely other theories say it is.
One issue that can frustrate such a project is that if you have not assessed the relative probabilities in advance of your observation, it is tempting to skew them in favor of your favorite theory. So one thing I keep in mind when attempting this sort of thing is Conservation of Expected Evidence. The way I apply this is when I notice I want to call some observation evidence for my theory, I will imagine the observation going the other way and consider how indignant I would be if someone were to declare that evidence against my theory.
:3 Sounds complicated. I’ll work on that, thanks. In fact I have been, slowly, but it sounded like you were asking for a decisive test, so that’s what I tried to provide for you.
Experience is not mysterious thing. It is a means of accumulating data that an agent could be designed to start with. It is a way of traing behaviors that an agent can be designed to start out executing.
This follows from a non-soulist perspective, which means that we fundamentally differ in our opinions. Sorry. And I know it isn’t a response; the proper response, as I said, requires too great an inferential distance.
What can your theory not explain?
Here lies the key to my puzzle; the reason I’m attempting to instigate a crisis of faith. I don’t know the answer to this question, but I am searching desperately for it.
This follows from a non-soulist perspective, which means that we fundamentally differ in our opinions. Sorry. And I know it isn’t a response; the proper response, as I said, requires too great an inferential distance.
Can you explain how the predictions that a soulist perspective makes differ from the predictions that a non-soulist perspective makes? If you have particular beliefs about how the soul relates to experience, can you think of a test that could falsify those beliefs?
Ha! Yes, I’ve read it, and yes, it was well-written, as many of Eliezer’s posts are. I, unlike “other Christians”, do not deny that evolution is true.
You do however seem to rationalize evolution as a simulated process built for our sake so we could “discover” our own origins. I don’t doubt a super-intelligence could convince me of that but what i fail to understand is why you think that our preparedness to help with the celestial kingdom is determined by our faith in the Morman explanation. Why are devout Mormons given more responsibility in the next layer of reality then someone like Eliezer who wants to save the world and goes about it as rationally as he can? I fail to understand how you can say that someone who has never had any love of the Morman God due to semi-random environmental factors and genetics is somehow less valuable in the future kingdom then someone who believes with a good portion of their soul, but causes much damage to the future of the base layer of reality unknowingly.
It seems to me that the LDS church believes that people who believe in the LDS God somehow contribute more to the base layer of reality than people with skepticism of it or no knowledge at all and that clashes with everything i know and understand about the nature of consciousness.
Well, I’ll answer first your point, then your digression. First, I don’t believe that evolution is a “simulated” process; I believe that it’s entirely a natural byproduct of the mechanics of reproduction. It wasn’t put there for us to discover and be confused by (the way that Fundamentalists believe that “dinosaur bones exist to test our faith”); it’s the natural order of this type of world.
As far as just reward for non-Mormon good people, like Eliezer? Well, I personally believe that any sufficiently rational person should end up going to the Celestial Kingdom. We have been taught that during the Millennium—that time between when Jesus comes to establish His reign on earth, and the Final Judgement—the wicked will be cleansed from the earth, and the righteous will be here, doing the work of the Kingdom. However, there will still be those on the earth during that time who choose not to follow Jesus, even given all evidence.
What does this mean? Well, ethical non-Mormon rationalists, such as Eliezer (or, I presume, yourself!) are not Wicked People. I presume that they will remain on the earth during the Millennium. This means that y’all will have all the weight of evidence you could possibly hope for! I predict that this means that, when the Judgement comes, those who converted during the Millennium will have no disadvantage (minimal disadvantage? I don’t know for sure) compared to those who were Mormon during their natural lifetimes.
What about rationalists who die before the Millennium? If they were “good” (there’s a reason I don’t ever, ever judge whether someone is “good” or not; it takes a perfect ethical mind to do that, and I don’t have one!), they’ll come back for the Millennium. If not, they’ll hang out in the spirit world. But right now, spirits of those who have passed on are being taught the tenets (thank you, Alicorn!) of the Gospel, and being given the opportunity to receive or reject the gospel based upon the weight of evidence, which I can only imagine is somewhat greater on the other side than it is here, since they died but still exist, therefore proving some form of “soulism”.
So why be Mormon now if you can just join up later? Because, since the tenets of our religion are true, following them will lead to a greater degree of happiness here on Earth.
So why be Mormon now if you can just join up later? Because, since the tenets of our religion are true, following them will lead to a greater degree of happiness here on Earth.
Do you believe that it is a feature of every individual human that they will be happier Mormon than not-Mormon, or do you just think Mormons average better?
An interesting question, and I’ll have to go with the latter. It is true that adhering to the precepts of Mormonism will lead to short-term happiness (short-term = this life). It is not true that Mormonism is the only path to happiness; it is just the prescribed path. It is, however, the best (only) path for happiness in the next life. But again, taht doesn’t answer the “why now” question.
It is true that adhering to the precepts of Mormonism will lead to short-term happiness (short-term = this life).
I disagree that this is always true(i.e. the bisexual Morman teen). Sure she can go down another path, but what about when she decides to follow Mormonism and ends up with less short-term happiness because of it. I mean you can say that when she transcends to the next layer of reality she will be happier but you cant say there isn’t Epsilon chance that she wont in either.
I’ve been a bisexual Mormon teen. I’m currently reading a book on how on earth I’m to go about having a normal sex life with my wife, having had to deal with sexual addiction up to this point. So yes, I’m well and personally aware of the difference between short-term happiness, and “in this life” happiness.
And yes, I can say that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) is less than epsilon. “Happiness in the next life” is strictly dominated by “Mormonism”.
The problem is that you haven’t clearly outlined any particular reason to think that MatthewBaker is wrong, or even defined your terms unambiguously. Now, with the benefit of what your previous posts imply there’s a couple of plausible ways I can untangle this dispute, of which the most charitable is probably that MatthewBaker meant profession of Mormonism and you meant its literal truth (a common semantic failure mode in discussion between monotheists and nontheists), but I don’t know that for sure. Let’s be clear about what we’re accepting as axioms and what we’re disputing, and about the chains of reasoning we used to get there. Otherwise we’re just going to end up talking past each other—something that, if the comments below mine are anything to go by, we’ve done enough of already.
Given the predicate that “Toni” follows the tenets of Mormonism, those including but not limited to:
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
Repentance of sins committed upon this earth
Submission to the ordinances of the gospel, e.g. baptism, confirmation of the Holy Ghost;
Given also the predicate that the teachings of Mormonism are true, those including but not limited to:
The laws of Justice and Mercy
The atonement of Christ
The upcoming Judgement of souls:
I conclude with probability 1 that “Toni” will achieve happiness during the period of her existence postdating (or the analogous term, should time prove to be merely a terrestrial construct) the Judgement foretold, by the following reasoning:
We have been promised, by the laws of Justice and Mercy, that through the atonement of Christ, and by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, we may achieve “salvation” and eternal happiness.
According to the teachings of Mormonism (which are had in our givens), the above promise is accurate.
“Toni”, according to our givens, has through her life obeyed the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
Therefore, insofar as our givens are accurate, “Toni” will achieve eternal happiness. QED.
And; Thank you both for clarifying a post i was still rolling around my thoughts and having trouble understanding.
According to Aumann’s Agreement Theorem we may not share all the same priors but i appreciate that we can try to understand where the differences in our common knowledge lie.
..… I’m afraid I don’t see your point. I asserted that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) = 0; I didn’t assert that P(Mormonism) = 1. That would be folly. I also didn’t make any assertion about P(Mormonism | happiness in the next life).
I believe that P(Mormonism) is substantially less than 1 and probably closer to 1/42x10^6) and you believe that its somewhere above .1. My assertion is that if happiness in the next life isn’t completely dependent on Mormanism and that it could be dependent on other things Mormanism prevents many from seeking like cryonics. Then we should form a ratio of how much happiness in the next life matters to you as much as happiness in this life. If we share the prior that the next life is much longer and therefore more important then this life, then we should both seek to maximize our chances of happiness in the next life to the extent that it doesn’t negatively affect our happiness in this life.
Depending on how big or small our ratio is a rational agent would be driven towards Mormanism to the extent he thinks it is probable. I dont think its very probable at all but that’s influenced by the fact it would negatively affect my happiness in this life from what ive seen. You think its much more probable but it seems to also be a positive influence on you in this life.
Therefore do you accept the idea that you cannot look at the archeological evidence towards Mormanism fully rationally any more than i could because we are both predisposed by our happiness in this life and the other ratio of happiness in the next life? From my perspective the DNA evidence clearly supports the fact that the Book of Morman is a fictional tale so if we intend to disagree about it we should figure out which of our priors are different so we dont dance around it all day like we did with the previous issue of happiness in the next life.
Ooooh. *twitch* Please, let me correct your spelling: “Mormonism”. Now then.
That’s an interesting question, there. Let me see if I’ve got it phrased correctly:
“Each person who seeks to judge P(Mormonism) will have a strong bias in one direction, based upon their projection of the effect adherence to Mormonism would have on their happiness during this life.”
Is this the proposition I’m being asked to agree to?
EDIT: The above seems to boil down to: “We will assign a level of credence to P(“Mormonism”) directly proportional to the degree to which we believe that it would be beneficial for us to believe “Mormonism”.” Sounds familiar. So… this may be naive of me, but it seems to me that we’re both succumbing to this bias… o_o; Which is a Problem.
Interesting, I hadn’t connected that article to my idea but it definitely describes that bias pretty effectively. I wonder how Eliezer solved the direct effects rather than the Bayesian effects of this bias.
I desire to believe that a benevolent being exists outside of our simulation that will protect my consciousness when i die. However, i think its much more unlikely than
And to my benefit socially i will continue to believe that until more evidence is revealed to me by this upcoming return of our savior you think is going to happen, and i respect your right to follow the LDS doctrine even if i dont share your beliefs. I just dont respect a lot of other Mormons who believe as you do without the same scrutiny towards religion and politics.
I think that’s an entirely honorable and right way of thinking, and I respect you for it… which is why, given my belief system already in place, I earnestly hope (and am researching to see if this hope is consistent with my beliefs, otherwise I have some serious thinking to do about what I need to believe!) that all you who are looking for more evidence will have the chance to act on it when it’s given in the future. :3
But thank you for affording me the respect of recognizing my capability and predilection for rational thought.
Well i guess the plight of a female bisexual Mormon teen would be similar to your situation in some ways despite many of the opposite pressures they face from my perspective. I wish you luck in bridging your marriage with your past happily, but it seems you are in a happier place than my current romantic state at least xD.
And yes, I can say that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) is less than epsilon. “Happiness in the next life” is strictly dominated by “Mormonism”.
I don’t see how you ignore the Epsilon chance of the base layer of reality being something not consistent with your Mormon view of heaven though. If we ever break out of the simulation without destroying it then the layer beyond might not be dominated by Mormonism. Unless you think death is the only plausible way to access the next layer of reality in which case i refer you to the popular fiction Inception.
Thank you, you did, and i appreciate all the effort you spend explaining your position on Mormanism. Most people in your position have a lot of trouble with explanations when it comes to this area of discussion and this allows me to understand the mindset of a intelligent, yet religious person much better
..… I’m afraid I don’t see your point. I asserted that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) = 0; I didn’t assert that P(Mormonism) = 1. That would be folly. I also didn’t make any assertion about P(Mormonism | happiness in the next life).
So why be Mormon now if you can just join up later?
My question distills down to: Why is this specific belief system indicative of a greater degree of temporal happiness? If i gave you examples of people whose lives would be changed for the better if they rejected the LDS church and people whose lives would be enriched by it would you support the present day Mormans rejection of their faith if later when the Millennium comes they can realize how truly misguided they were? Because it seems to me in your position there exists a solid acausal trade that
Because, since the tenets of our religion are true, following them will lead to a greater degree of happiness here on Earth.
However if you encourage only one side of the spectrum (i.e. people joining Mormonism because there lives would be enlightened by it.) It seems like the Morman religion should encourage people to leave the church if they feel disillusioned by it rather than rationalizing the problems they find with the doctrine if it would benefit them positively.
Roko is one example of how believing your beliefs are true does not always cause a greater degree of happiness and i don’t know how you justify that your tenets (as they are interpreted by humans) are universally superior.
Wowww. How abjectly horrifying. o_o But of course, this does not preclude the existence of God. Mormons tend to believe in some form of evolutionary theory (varying degrees of strength, in other words) in addition to creationism; this is caused by a mutation, so it’s a natural side-effect of genetics.
Claiming God created the world does not equate to saying that this world is perfect. On the contrary, I know of no Christian religion who would claim that. This is explicitly a sub-perfect world, and has been since the fall of Adam.
Actually perfect worlds do not devolve into sub-perfect worlds.
The best of all logically-self-consistent worlds does not necessarily have every imaginable desirable feature. If you believe otherwise, please respond to the ontological argument for the existence of God.
That is true, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t notice that a truly omnibenevolent being could do a much better job than the world we find ourselves in. I would consider harlequin ichthyosis as evidence that our world is not perfect, as it seems way more likely given an uncaring universe than in a perfect universe in which some horrifying features are logically neccessary.
Well, yes.
On the other hand, it’s not totally clear to me what a truly omnibenevolent being would do. An all-powerful being with ordinary human values would probably create a fairly unpleasant world for most other humans, and if we posit a value-system sufficiently alien not to become a cackling dictator, then I kind of feel like all bets are off.
Because a resistance to “devolution” is a necessary aspect of perfection? Surely if God exists, he can nudge a few things out of their resting places. :P
This is a common fallacy: “If God is omnibenevolent, He would not have such-and-such bad thing happen”. You presuppose His motives. If He wanted us to all exist in a state of eternal bliss, then there would have been no need to create the earth. No, His goal is to have His children become even as He is, which requires refining them through fire.
Ok, but why would he want to. A perfect God would not choose nudge a perfect world out of perfection.
No, I take the motives advocates of a god even existing ascribe to him, and show that assuming that produces predictions wildly different from our observations. If you want to approach it from the other direction, here is an investigation into what sort of god would explain our observations.
It seems unlikely that some of his children would take so much more fire than others to refine. Or perhaps the supposedly perfect god has given some of these children suboptimal initial conditions or refining processes. It is unlikely even that a refining process is even better, a perfect god should get the children right when they are created.
Again, presupposition of His motives; if He wanted us to become stronger, we must have had opposition, which could not have taken place in the paradisaical Garden of Eden.
Unfortunately, you are using the arguments of other Christian sects against this one. Are you aware that many sects don’t even consider the LDS faith to be Christian, because we differ so wildly from the Established Truth?
Ha! Yes, I’ve read it, and yes, it was well-written, as many of Eliezer’s posts are. I, unlike “other Christians”, do not deny that evolution is true.
Intelligence is no match for experience; He could have programmed robots to be perfect Gods, I suppose, but they wouldn’t be children, because they wouldn’t have the spark of life. (Yes, I know, my entire argument has as a predicate the existence of a non-physical (for certain definitions of “physical”) entity that controls the physical aspects of life.) As for “initial conditions”… I’m hesitant to answer this point, because the explanation may well exceed the inferential distance.
Why?
Why would he want us to become stronger, if that strength is only needed to cope with adversity that didn’t have to be there?
Why would he put us in the Garden of Eden in the first place if it couldn’t give us the growth he intended for us?
Why couldn’t he just make us stronger and skip the adversity? Humans develop to resist negative stimuli when they’re exposed to them, and not when they aren’t, because such developments take biological resources. If, for instance, your body insisted on building up your muscles for optimal weight lifting capacity, you would be in big trouble if what you really needed was to survive in a hot desert. We strengthen ourselves in response to adversity because until very recently in our evolutionary history, like all other animals, we did not have the capacity to predict what sort of adversity we’d have to adapt to in advance. An all powerful and intelligent being creating a species could have done much better, and instead of going through all the nonsense of making us suffer so we could get stronger, could have made us stronger so we wouldn’t have to suffer.
Remember that every If or Maybe you offer up, every piece of information you propose about God’s intentions, qualities or character that is not itself sufficiently evidenced for people to believe it without first buying into your religious framework, is another burden on your hypothesis, something that should lower your estimate of your religion being true.
But then how could we teach our… future children… to be....
.… huh.
Ponderin’ time.
It seems that for every observation you might be called to explain, you can say “God could have done that”, and in response to any speculation of whether God would choose to do that you can accuse “presupposition of His motives”. What can your theory not explain?
That is not at all a response to the first major criticism: “It seems unlikely that some of his children would take so much more fire than others to refine.”
Experience is not mysterious thing. It is a means of accumulating data that an agent could be designed to start with. It is a way of traing behaviors that an agent can be designed to start out executing. We would design an agent to grow more powerful from experience because we do not know now what data and behaviors to give it. A perfect God would know.
Got it! I’ve been racking my brain, and I’ve come up with an answer: my theory would be proven false by the discovery of sentient extraterrestrial life that did not look like us.
Ok, it is good that you are making this effort, but that is way too safe. In the near future, we wouldn’t even notice if there were such extraterrestrial life. A better answer should constrain your anticipated experience.
Thanks for noticing my effort. ;3 I know it’s weak; I’m working my way up. Umm… the dissolution of the state of Israel, the administrative dissolution of the Church...
I know that these are non-terminating tests. x_x I’ll look for one that constrains my present experience, but that’ll be pretty difficult. One of the tenets of Christian religions, as you should know to your dismay, is that God’s not going to give us any hard proof during our time here. At least, until the Second Coming, at which point Christianity should be pretty well into the 90% range. :P
But yes, I’ll keep looking.
You seem to be looking for one big decisive test, which as you note, your religion protects itself against. It may help to instead use lots of smaller test, and accumulate evidence. Ask of the things you observe, not if your religion allows it to happen, but how likely your religion says it is, and how likely other theories say it is.
One issue that can frustrate such a project is that if you have not assessed the relative probabilities in advance of your observation, it is tempting to skew them in favor of your favorite theory. So one thing I keep in mind when attempting this sort of thing is Conservation of Expected Evidence. The way I apply this is when I notice I want to call some observation evidence for my theory, I will imagine the observation going the other way and consider how indignant I would be if someone were to declare that evidence against my theory.
:3 Sounds complicated. I’ll work on that, thanks. In fact I have been, slowly, but it sounded like you were asking for a decisive test, so that’s what I tried to provide for you.
This follows from a non-soulist perspective, which means that we fundamentally differ in our opinions. Sorry. And I know it isn’t a response; the proper response, as I said, requires too great an inferential distance.
Here lies the key to my puzzle; the reason I’m attempting to instigate a crisis of faith. I don’t know the answer to this question, but I am searching desperately for it.
Can you explain how the predictions that a soulist perspective makes differ from the predictions that a non-soulist perspective makes? If you have particular beliefs about how the soul relates to experience, can you think of a test that could falsify those beliefs?
I’m workin’ on one. :3 That’s the crux of my argument, the difficulty I’m having, the reason I’m questioning in the first place.
You do however seem to rationalize evolution as a simulated process built for our sake so we could “discover” our own origins. I don’t doubt a super-intelligence could convince me of that but what i fail to understand is why you think that our preparedness to help with the celestial kingdom is determined by our faith in the Morman explanation. Why are devout Mormons given more responsibility in the next layer of reality then someone like Eliezer who wants to save the world and goes about it as rationally as he can? I fail to understand how you can say that someone who has never had any love of the Morman God due to semi-random environmental factors and genetics is somehow less valuable in the future kingdom then someone who believes with a good portion of their soul, but causes much damage to the future of the base layer of reality unknowingly.
It seems to me that the LDS church believes that people who believe in the LDS God somehow contribute more to the base layer of reality than people with skepticism of it or no knowledge at all and that clashes with everything i know and understand about the nature of consciousness.
Well, I’ll answer first your point, then your digression. First, I don’t believe that evolution is a “simulated” process; I believe that it’s entirely a natural byproduct of the mechanics of reproduction. It wasn’t put there for us to discover and be confused by (the way that Fundamentalists believe that “dinosaur bones exist to test our faith”); it’s the natural order of this type of world.
As far as just reward for non-Mormon good people, like Eliezer? Well, I personally believe that any sufficiently rational person should end up going to the Celestial Kingdom. We have been taught that during the Millennium—that time between when Jesus comes to establish His reign on earth, and the Final Judgement—the wicked will be cleansed from the earth, and the righteous will be here, doing the work of the Kingdom. However, there will still be those on the earth during that time who choose not to follow Jesus, even given all evidence.
What does this mean? Well, ethical non-Mormon rationalists, such as Eliezer (or, I presume, yourself!) are not Wicked People. I presume that they will remain on the earth during the Millennium. This means that y’all will have all the weight of evidence you could possibly hope for! I predict that this means that, when the Judgement comes, those who converted during the Millennium will have no disadvantage (minimal disadvantage? I don’t know for sure) compared to those who were Mormon during their natural lifetimes.
What about rationalists who die before the Millennium? If they were “good” (there’s a reason I don’t ever, ever judge whether someone is “good” or not; it takes a perfect ethical mind to do that, and I don’t have one!), they’ll come back for the Millennium. If not, they’ll hang out in the spirit world. But right now, spirits of those who have passed on are being taught the tenets (thank you, Alicorn!) of the Gospel, and being given the opportunity to receive or reject the gospel based upon the weight of evidence, which I can only imagine is somewhat greater on the other side than it is here, since they died but still exist, therefore proving some form of “soulism”.
So why be Mormon now if you can just join up later? Because, since the tenets of our religion are true, following them will lead to a greater degree of happiness here on Earth.
Do you believe that it is a feature of every individual human that they will be happier Mormon than not-Mormon, or do you just think Mormons average better?
An interesting question, and I’ll have to go with the latter. It is true that adhering to the precepts of Mormonism will lead to short-term happiness (short-term = this life). It is not true that Mormonism is the only path to happiness; it is just the prescribed path. It is, however, the best (only) path for happiness in the next life. But again, taht doesn’t answer the “why now” question.
I disagree that this is always true(i.e. the bisexual Morman teen). Sure she can go down another path, but what about when she decides to follow Mormonism and ends up with less short-term happiness because of it. I mean you can say that when she transcends to the next layer of reality she will be happier but you cant say there isn’t Epsilon chance that she wont in either.
I’ve been a bisexual Mormon teen. I’m currently reading a book on how on earth I’m to go about having a normal sex life with my wife, having had to deal with sexual addiction up to this point. So yes, I’m well and personally aware of the difference between short-term happiness, and “in this life” happiness.
And yes, I can say that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) is less than epsilon. “Happiness in the next life” is strictly dominated by “Mormonism”.
No disrespect meant to your beliefs, but couching bare assertion in Bayesian terms doesn’t stop it from being bare assertion, you know.
No, it just helps formalize assertions, I know that. But I’m afraid I fail to see the problem with my assertion.
The problem is that you haven’t clearly outlined any particular reason to think that MatthewBaker is wrong, or even defined your terms unambiguously. Now, with the benefit of what your previous posts imply there’s a couple of plausible ways I can untangle this dispute, of which the most charitable is probably that MatthewBaker meant profession of Mormonism and you meant its literal truth (a common semantic failure mode in discussion between monotheists and nontheists), but I don’t know that for sure. Let’s be clear about what we’re accepting as axioms and what we’re disputing, and about the chains of reasoning we used to get there. Otherwise we’re just going to end up talking past each other—something that, if the comments below mine are anything to go by, we’ve done enough of already.
Ah, words, words. :3 Very well.
Given the predicate that “Toni” follows the tenets of Mormonism, those including but not limited to:
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
Repentance of sins committed upon this earth
Submission to the ordinances of the gospel, e.g. baptism, confirmation of the Holy Ghost;
Given also the predicate that the teachings of Mormonism are true, those including but not limited to:
The laws of Justice and Mercy
The atonement of Christ
The upcoming Judgement of souls:
I conclude with probability 1 that “Toni” will achieve happiness during the period of her existence postdating (or the analogous term, should time prove to be merely a terrestrial construct) the Judgement foretold, by the following reasoning:
We have been promised, by the laws of Justice and Mercy, that through the atonement of Christ, and by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, we may achieve “salvation” and eternal happiness.
According to the teachings of Mormonism (which are had in our givens), the above promise is accurate.
“Toni”, according to our givens, has through her life obeyed the laws and ordinances of the gospel.
Therefore, insofar as our givens are accurate, “Toni” will achieve eternal happiness. QED.
Thank you. That’s much clearer.
No; thank you for reminding me of a basic lesson of rational argument: agree beforehand on your terms.
And; Thank you both for clarifying a post i was still rolling around my thoughts and having trouble understanding. According to Aumann’s Agreement Theorem we may not share all the same priors but i appreciate that we can try to understand where the differences in our common knowledge lie.
So according to what seems to be our common knowledge and
I believe that P(Mormonism) is substantially less than 1 and probably closer to 1/42x10^6) and you believe that its somewhere above .1. My assertion is that if happiness in the next life isn’t completely dependent on Mormanism and that it could be dependent on other things Mormanism prevents many from seeking like cryonics. Then we should form a ratio of how much happiness in the next life matters to you as much as happiness in this life. If we share the prior that the next life is much longer and therefore more important then this life, then we should both seek to maximize our chances of happiness in the next life to the extent that it doesn’t negatively affect our happiness in this life.
Depending on how big or small our ratio is a rational agent would be driven towards Mormanism to the extent he thinks it is probable. I dont think its very probable at all but that’s influenced by the fact it would negatively affect my happiness in this life from what ive seen. You think its much more probable but it seems to also be a positive influence on you in this life.
Therefore do you accept the idea that you cannot look at the archeological evidence towards Mormanism fully rationally any more than i could because we are both predisposed by our happiness in this life and the other ratio of happiness in the next life? From my perspective the DNA evidence clearly supports the fact that the Book of Morman is a fictional tale so if we intend to disagree about it we should figure out which of our priors are different so we dont dance around it all day like we did with the previous issue of happiness in the next life.
Ooooh. *twitch* Please, let me correct your spelling: “Mormonism”. Now then.
That’s an interesting question, there. Let me see if I’ve got it phrased correctly:
“Each person who seeks to judge P(Mormonism) will have a strong bias in one direction, based upon their projection of the effect adherence to Mormonism would have on their happiness during this life.”
Is this the proposition I’m being asked to agree to?
EDIT: The above seems to boil down to: “We will assign a level of credence to P(“Mormonism”) directly proportional to the degree to which we believe that it would be beneficial for us to believe “Mormonism”.” Sounds familiar. So… this may be naive of me, but it seems to me that we’re both succumbing to this bias… o_o; Which is a Problem.
Interesting, I hadn’t connected that article to my idea but it definitely describes that bias pretty effectively. I wonder how Eliezer solved the direct effects rather than the Bayesian effects of this bias.
Ha! We should ask him. :P
I will if i see him when i visit the institute when i go back to school :)
You let me know how that turns out. In the meantime, I’ll try to ponder a way out of the puzzle.
Well really, the solution is to adopt the Litany of Tarski. But I suppose that’s easier said than done...
I desire to believe that a benevolent being exists outside of our simulation that will protect my consciousness when i die. However, i think its much more unlikely than
And to my benefit socially i will continue to believe that until more evidence is revealed to me by this upcoming return of our savior you think is going to happen, and i respect your right to follow the LDS doctrine even if i dont share your beliefs. I just dont respect a lot of other Mormons who believe as you do without the same scrutiny towards religion and politics.
I think that’s an entirely honorable and right way of thinking, and I respect you for it… which is why, given my belief system already in place, I earnestly hope (and am researching to see if this hope is consistent with my beliefs, otherwise I have some serious thinking to do about what I need to believe!) that all you who are looking for more evidence will have the chance to act on it when it’s given in the future. :3
But thank you for affording me the respect of recognizing my capability and predilection for rational thought.
Well i guess the plight of a female bisexual Mormon teen would be similar to your situation in some ways despite many of the opposite pressures they face from my perspective. I wish you luck in bridging your marriage with your past happily, but it seems you are in a happier place than my current romantic state at least xD.
I don’t see how you ignore the Epsilon chance of the base layer of reality being something not consistent with your Mormon view of heaven though. If we ever break out of the simulation without destroying it then the layer beyond might not be dominated by Mormonism. Unless you think death is the only plausible way to access the next layer of reality in which case i refer you to the popular fiction Inception.
Please see the cousin of this post; I have been induced to make my position much clearer.
Thank you, you did, and i appreciate all the effort you spend explaining your position on Mormanism. Most people in your position have a lot of trouble with explanations when it comes to this area of discussion and this allows me to understand the mindset of a intelligent, yet religious person much better
..… I’m afraid I don’t see your point. I asserted that P(~ happiness in the next life | Mormonism) = 0; I didn’t assert that P(Mormonism) = 1. That would be folly. I also didn’t make any assertion about P(Mormonism | happiness in the next life).
Number #1 Alicorn talent, saying what i’m thinking more efficiently than i could describe it in words. Go ninja author powers!
My question distills down to: Why is this specific belief system indicative of a greater degree of temporal happiness? If i gave you examples of people whose lives would be changed for the better if they rejected the LDS church and people whose lives would be enriched by it would you support the present day Mormans rejection of their faith if later when the Millennium comes they can realize how truly misguided they were? Because it seems to me in your position there exists a solid acausal trade that
However if you encourage only one side of the spectrum (i.e. people joining Mormonism because there lives would be enlightened by it.) It seems like the Morman religion should encourage people to leave the church if they feel disillusioned by it rather than rationalizing the problems they find with the doctrine if it would benefit them positively.
Roko is one example of how believing your beliefs are true does not always cause a greater degree of happiness and i don’t know how you justify that your tenets (as they are interpreted by humans) are universally superior.