The reason why saying “There is a God and He instilled...” is harder than saying “I believe that there is a God and He instilled...” is because the words “I believe that” are weasel words. The literal meaning of “I believe that” is irrelevant; any other weasel words would have the same effect. Consider the same sentence, but replace “I believe that” with “It is likely that”, or “Evidence indicates that”, or any similar phrase, and it’s just as easy.
Just because people are aware of a concept, and have words which ought to refer to that concept, does not mean that they consistently connect the two. The best example of this comes from the way people refer to things as [good] and [bad]. When people dislike something, but don’t know why, they generate exemplars of the concept “bad”, and call it evil, ugly, or stupid. This same mechanism lead to the widespread use of “gay” as a synonym for “bad”, and to racial slurs directed at anonymous online rivals who are probably the wrong race for the slur. I think that confidence markers are subject to the same linguistic phenomenon.
People think with sentences like “That’s a [good] car” or “[Weasel] God exists”. The linguistic parts of their mind expand them to “That’s a sweet car” and “I believe God exists” when speaking, and performs the inverse operation when listening. They don’t think about how the car tastes, and they don’t think about beliefs, even though literal interpretation of what they say would indicate that they do.
Ah, but the point is that “believe” is the weasliest of words. I know a few, and would guess there are quite a lot more, intelligent people who readily states “I believe that there is a God” but who would be very hesitant if you asked them to use “Evidence indicates that”.
I would say that what you call weasel words occupy a scale and that its not just as easy to use them all in any given context, at least not for reasonably intelligent people.
Weasel words, as you call them, are a necessary part of any rational discussion.
The scientific equivalent would be, “evidence indicates” or “statistics show”.
I’m afraid I must disagree kurige, for two reasons. The first is that they smack of false modesty, a way of insuring yourself against the social consequences of failure without actually taking care not to fail. The second is that the use of such terms don’t really convey any new information, and require the use of the passive voice, which is bad style.
“Evidence indicates an increase in ice cream sales” really isn’t good science writing, because the immediate question is “What evidence?”. It’s much better to say “ice cream sales have increased by 15%” and point to the relevant statistics.
On this we agree. If we have 60% confidence that a statement is correct, we would be misleading others if we asserted that it was true in a way that signalled a much higher confidence. Our own beliefs are evidence for others, and we should be careful not to communicate false evidence.
Stripped down to essentials, Eliezer is asking you to assert that God exists with more confidence than it sounds like you have. You are not willing to say it without weasel words because to do so would be to express more certainty than you actually have. Is that right?
Can you offer any evidence that weasel words are necessary to rational discussion?
I can imagine that weasel words are common to scientific discussions, as well as discussions regarding faith.
However, I don’t see any barriers to people eschewing them.
The reason why saying “There is a God and He instilled...” is harder than saying “I believe that there is a God and He instilled...” is because the words “I believe that” are weasel words. The literal meaning of “I believe that” is irrelevant; any other weasel words would have the same effect. Consider the same sentence, but replace “I believe that” with “It is likely that”, or “Evidence indicates that”, or any similar phrase, and it’s just as easy.
Just because people are aware of a concept, and have words which ought to refer to that concept, does not mean that they consistently connect the two. The best example of this comes from the way people refer to things as [good] and [bad]. When people dislike something, but don’t know why, they generate exemplars of the concept “bad”, and call it evil, ugly, or stupid. This same mechanism lead to the widespread use of “gay” as a synonym for “bad”, and to racial slurs directed at anonymous online rivals who are probably the wrong race for the slur. I think that confidence markers are subject to the same linguistic phenomenon.
People think with sentences like “That’s a [good] car” or “[Weasel] God exists”. The linguistic parts of their mind expand them to “That’s a sweet car” and “I believe God exists” when speaking, and performs the inverse operation when listening. They don’t think about how the car tastes, and they don’t think about beliefs, even though literal interpretation of what they say would indicate that they do.
Ah, but the point is that “believe” is the weasliest of words. I know a few, and would guess there are quite a lot more, intelligent people who readily states “I believe that there is a God” but who would be very hesitant if you asked them to use “Evidence indicates that”.
I would say that what you call weasel words occupy a scale and that its not just as easy to use them all in any given context, at least not for reasonably intelligent people.
There certainly is a right weasel word for a context.
Weasel words, as you call them, are a necessary part of any rational discussion. The scientific equivalent would be, “evidence indicates” or “statistics show”.
I’m afraid I must disagree kurige, for two reasons. The first is that they smack of false modesty, a way of insuring yourself against the social consequences of failure without actually taking care not to fail. The second is that the use of such terms don’t really convey any new information, and require the use of the passive voice, which is bad style.
“Evidence indicates an increase in ice cream sales” really isn’t good science writing, because the immediate question is “What evidence?”. It’s much better to say “ice cream sales have increased by 15%” and point to the relevant statistics.
On this we agree. If we have 60% confidence that a statement is correct, we would be misleading others if we asserted that it was true in a way that signalled a much higher confidence. Our own beliefs are evidence for others, and we should be careful not to communicate false evidence.
Stripped down to essentials, Eliezer is asking you to assert that God exists with more confidence than it sounds like you have. You are not willing to say it without weasel words because to do so would be to express more certainty than you actually have. Is that right?
Can you offer any evidence that weasel words are necessary to rational discussion? I can imagine that weasel words are common to scientific discussions, as well as discussions regarding faith. However, I don’t see any barriers to people eschewing them.