[Note: Skip stuff in brackets if religious talk annoys or offends you]
(Why does everyone assume that this has to do with religion? If I was asking this about religion wouldn’t that already signify that I didn’t believe, I just wanted to? My belief comes from actual events that I have witnessed, and tested, and been unable to falsify. )
The example with the bleeding out was sort of a personal one because it happened to me. I cut my foot with an axe. I was far from help, and a helicopter wouldn’t pick me up for another 4 hours. If I had been off to the side by 3 mm I would have hit an artery and bled out, and nothing was going to stop it. I did tie it off, raise it up, and stop moving, but it was down to chance. At the time I believed I was going to die and it quite distressed me. If I was to be in the same situation again, lying on the ground, foot supported and tied off, even if I was going to die I would rather not know and believe I was going to make it. That might make me a sub-optimal rationalist, but at that point as there was nothing more to do it would have made me a happier person. (Gasp! Yes, a religious person said they didn’t want to die. It might sound like a logical fallacy, but it was in fact (if I recall correctly, it was sort of a traumatic experience) empathy for my father and mother, who I had just seen about half an hour before I cut my foot.)
(I will further note that either I was lied to a lot, or that there were several inconsistencies with the entire event. I was told that I should have been unconscious with the amount of blood I lost 6 hours later when I made it in to the hospital. I had of course been doing such activities such as hopping around on my one foot to go places, and didn’t feel in the slightest bit woozy. Nor did I have any symptoms of shock when it happened. Finally I never felt any pain from the wound, though this last I suspect was because I severed the nerve endings. Yet doing that in such a way that I never felt pain seems unlikely to me using something as unwieldy as an axe, and I have not come across similar stories. How does one interpret events? That the doctors lied to me or were mistaken? It’s possible. That a lot of things went just right? The likely hood of that happening falls well within the realm of the possible as well. On the other and there is another explication that does not require lies, mistakes or luck to be involved. I feel that how you see it strongly depends on your bias.(And then there is the possibility that I am lying. I know I’m not, but over the internet I’d be hard pressed to prove it))
As for the Nigerian prince example, I am specifically talking about situations where there is no long run, and you are not affecting other people with your decisions. I agree that in most cases trying to know the truth is better than not knowing it.
The sun going nova was just an example. Big asteroid hitting earth, thermal nuclear war, there are all sorts of stuff that falls into the category of things I can’t do anything about that will end my life.
[Note: Skip stuff in brackets if religious talk annoys or offends you]
I personally operate by Crocker’s Rules, but others may not be, so I appreciate the warning nonetheless.
Why does everyone assume that this has to do with religion?
It’s probably because you said you identify as a Christian, and Christians tend to advance this sort of argument more often than non-theists, regarding Christianity specifically. That said, your argument is general enough to apply to non-religious topics, as well.
At this point, I should mention that I didn’t mean to bring up your personal traumatic experience, and I apologize. If you think that discussing it would be too distressing, please stop reading beyound this point.
If I was to be in the same situation again, lying on the ground, foot supported and tied off...
If you truly believed you were about to die no matter what, why would you waste time on tying off your foot ? It sounds to me like you weighed the chances of you dying, and made a decision to spend some time on tying off the foot, instead of spending it in contemplation or something similar.
On the other and there is another explication that does not require lies, mistakes or luck to be involved.
What is it ?
I am specifically talking about situations where there is no long run, and you are not affecting other people with your decisions.
Can you describe some examples ? Your own experience with the bleeding foot is not one of them, because your death would’ve negatively affected quite a few people (including yourself).
The sun going nova was just an example. … there are all sorts of stuff that falls into the category of things I can’t do anything about that will end my life.
Understood. However, if everyone thought like you do, no one would be tracking near-Earth asteroids right now. Some people are doing just that, though, in the expectation that if a dangerous asteroid were to be detected, we’d have enough time to find a solution that does not involve all of us dying.
It’s probably because you said you identify as a Christian, and Christians tend to advance this sort of argument more often than non-theists, regarding Christianity specifically.
That tends so show that they don’t actually believe in Christianity. Rather they want to believe. I feel sorry for those people. Of course as I tend to sit on the other side of the fence I try to help them believe, but belief is a hard thing to cultivate and an easy thing to destroy. If you were in a group and you were shown a box with 5 dice in it for a brief moment, but later everyone agreed that there were only 4 dice, most people would start to doubt their memories. I know that I would. If the people were very smart and showed the box again, and this time it only had 4 dice in it many people would be very hard pressed not to doubt their memories and be convinced they remembered wrong. They might want to believe that they were right about 5 dice, but they would have a hard time believing it. They would want to believe in the truth, but wouldn’t.
Of course that is coming at it from a strictly religious point of view. Atheist would use the same argument in the exact opposite fashion with the proof of no god being the 5 dice and the religious people around them saying that there were 4.
If you truly believed you were about to die no matter what, why would you waste time on tying off your foot?
Because I wasn’t thinking about if I would live or die, I was thinking that to live I needed to do this. It was only after I had done everything that I could that I stopped and considered my chances and figured that I was probably going to die. Even so though I believe that it is my biological duty to do everything possible to survive no matter how hopeless the situation.
Honestly from this side of it, I don’t really have any post traumatic stress. I remember how I felt at the time, but the memories have no sting to them. Don’t worry about it. Generally I’m able to discuss anything that I bring up.
What is it ?
That something outside of what is generally accepted by science stepped in and helped me. Could have been anything, but it makes the most sense that since I was praying at the time it was God. Of course it could have been aliens that wiped my memory, or a host of other things, but the possibility exists that something stepped in, and it makes for a simpler explanation. However I am aware that simple explanations are not always the right ones.
Can you describe some examples ? Your own experience with the bleeding foot is not one of them, because your death would’ve negatively affected quite a few people (including yourself).
I could argue that if that hadn’t have saved my life (that I was going to die no matter what), than at that point my actions and thoughts would have very little meaning. I suppose honestly I could have written a note to my parents, but at the time I didn’t think of it. Other than that I could have believed, or done anything I wanted and not have really effected the outcome.
However the examples I was thinking of were extinction level events.
Understood. However, if everyone thought like you do, no one would be tracking near-Earth asteroids right now.
Fair point. And I hope that our leaders are wise enough to know that blowing up the world would be a bad idea. However if there was an asteroid going to hit tomorrow, I am not sure what help I could offer humanity even if I did know. Wouldn’t it just cause me pointless suffering? If no one else knew I could tell them about it, but after that I couldn’t really do anything about it. And I don’t know anything about this, but is there anything out there that shows that some people enjoy worrying? They would be perfect to do that sort of thing. I personally am happier not worrying about things I can’t change.
If you were in a group and you were shown a box with 5 dice in it for a brief moment, but later everyone agreed that there were only 4 dice...
This is a pretty standard example of reasoning under uncertainty. You have two possible events, “there were 5 dice” vs. “there were 4 dice”. You want to assign a probability to each event, because, not being omniscient, you don’t know how many dice there actually were. You have several percepts, meaning pieces of evidence: your memories and the claims of the other people. Each of these percepts has some probability of being true: your memories are not infallible, the other people could be wrong or lying, etc. You could run all these numbers through Bayes’ Rule, and determine which of the events (“5 dice” vs. “4 dice”) is more likely to be true.
It also helps to know that all humans have a bias when it comes to peer pressure; our memories become especially faulty when we perceive a strong group consensus that contradicts them. Knowing this can help you calibrate your probabilities.
Anyways, you say that “belief is a hard thing to cultivate”, but in your dice scenario, there’s no need to cultivate anything, because you don’t care about beliefs, you care about how many dice there were; i.e., you care specifically about the truth.
Even so though I believe that it is my biological duty to do everything possible to survive no matter how hopeless the situation.
I am not sure what “biological duty” means, but still, it sounds like you do care whether you live or die; i.e., you want to live. This is a goal, and you can take actions in order to further this goal, and you want to make sure your actions are as optimal as possible, right ?
However I am aware that simple explanations are not always the right ones.
It depends on what you mean by “simple”; according to Ockham’s Razor, “God did it” is a vastly less simple
explanation than most others, due to the number of implicit assumptions you will end up making. That said, it sounds like you have several possible events (“God did it”, “aliens did it”, “I got lucky”, etc.), and several pieces of evidence; so this scenario is similar to your example with the dice. If you cared about the truth, you could assign a probability to each event based on the evidence. Of course, you don’t have to care about the truth in this case; but if you did, there are ways you could approach it.
Other than that I could have believed, or done anything I wanted and not have really effected the outcome.
It’s possible that tying that tourniquet did save your life, so there’s at least one thing you did do which likely affected the outcome.
However if there was an asteroid going to hit tomorrow, I am not sure what help I could offer humanity even if I did know.
I think I see where you’re coming from: there’s no point in spending a lot of effort on worrying about low-probability events which you’d be powerless to affect even if they did happen. As you said, the Sun could die tomorrow, but I can safely ignore this fact. However, I think you’re making an unwarranted leap of faith when you precommit to never worrying about such events, regardless of circumstances.
For example, there’s nothing you could do about that asteroid today, and in fact it’s very likely not even coming. But if we knew that the asteroid was, indeed, heading for Earth, there could be lots of things you could do—you could donate money to the anti-asteroid fund, volunteer at the anti-asteroid missile factory, etc. If you had more information about the asteroid, you could re-evaluate your decisions, and determine the best course of action; but you can’t do that if you have committed yourself to not doing anything regardless of circumstances. You also can’t do that if you have no access to that information in the first place, which is why caring about the truth is sometimes important.
[Note: Skip stuff in brackets if religious talk annoys or offends you]
(Why does everyone assume that this has to do with religion? If I was asking this about religion wouldn’t that already signify that I didn’t believe, I just wanted to? My belief comes from actual events that I have witnessed, and tested, and been unable to falsify. )
The example with the bleeding out was sort of a personal one because it happened to me. I cut my foot with an axe. I was far from help, and a helicopter wouldn’t pick me up for another 4 hours. If I had been off to the side by 3 mm I would have hit an artery and bled out, and nothing was going to stop it. I did tie it off, raise it up, and stop moving, but it was down to chance. At the time I believed I was going to die and it quite distressed me. If I was to be in the same situation again, lying on the ground, foot supported and tied off, even if I was going to die I would rather not know and believe I was going to make it. That might make me a sub-optimal rationalist, but at that point as there was nothing more to do it would have made me a happier person. (Gasp! Yes, a religious person said they didn’t want to die. It might sound like a logical fallacy, but it was in fact (if I recall correctly, it was sort of a traumatic experience) empathy for my father and mother, who I had just seen about half an hour before I cut my foot.)
(I will further note that either I was lied to a lot, or that there were several inconsistencies with the entire event. I was told that I should have been unconscious with the amount of blood I lost 6 hours later when I made it in to the hospital. I had of course been doing such activities such as hopping around on my one foot to go places, and didn’t feel in the slightest bit woozy. Nor did I have any symptoms of shock when it happened. Finally I never felt any pain from the wound, though this last I suspect was because I severed the nerve endings. Yet doing that in such a way that I never felt pain seems unlikely to me using something as unwieldy as an axe, and I have not come across similar stories. How does one interpret events? That the doctors lied to me or were mistaken? It’s possible. That a lot of things went just right? The likely hood of that happening falls well within the realm of the possible as well. On the other and there is another explication that does not require lies, mistakes or luck to be involved. I feel that how you see it strongly depends on your bias.(And then there is the possibility that I am lying. I know I’m not, but over the internet I’d be hard pressed to prove it))
As for the Nigerian prince example, I am specifically talking about situations where there is no long run, and you are not affecting other people with your decisions. I agree that in most cases trying to know the truth is better than not knowing it.
The sun going nova was just an example. Big asteroid hitting earth, thermal nuclear war, there are all sorts of stuff that falls into the category of things I can’t do anything about that will end my life.
I personally operate by Crocker’s Rules, but others may not be, so I appreciate the warning nonetheless.
It’s probably because you said you identify as a Christian, and Christians tend to advance this sort of argument more often than non-theists, regarding Christianity specifically. That said, your argument is general enough to apply to non-religious topics, as well.
At this point, I should mention that I didn’t mean to bring up your personal traumatic experience, and I apologize. If you think that discussing it would be too distressing, please stop reading beyound this point.
If you truly believed you were about to die no matter what, why would you waste time on tying off your foot ? It sounds to me like you weighed the chances of you dying, and made a decision to spend some time on tying off the foot, instead of spending it in contemplation or something similar.
What is it ?
Can you describe some examples ? Your own experience with the bleeding foot is not one of them, because your death would’ve negatively affected quite a few people (including yourself).
Understood. However, if everyone thought like you do, no one would be tracking near-Earth asteroids right now. Some people are doing just that, though, in the expectation that if a dangerous asteroid were to be detected, we’d have enough time to find a solution that does not involve all of us dying.
That tends so show that they don’t actually believe in Christianity. Rather they want to believe. I feel sorry for those people. Of course as I tend to sit on the other side of the fence I try to help them believe, but belief is a hard thing to cultivate and an easy thing to destroy. If you were in a group and you were shown a box with 5 dice in it for a brief moment, but later everyone agreed that there were only 4 dice, most people would start to doubt their memories. I know that I would. If the people were very smart and showed the box again, and this time it only had 4 dice in it many people would be very hard pressed not to doubt their memories and be convinced they remembered wrong. They might want to believe that they were right about 5 dice, but they would have a hard time believing it. They would want to believe in the truth, but wouldn’t.
Of course that is coming at it from a strictly religious point of view. Atheist would use the same argument in the exact opposite fashion with the proof of no god being the 5 dice and the religious people around them saying that there were 4.
Because I wasn’t thinking about if I would live or die, I was thinking that to live I needed to do this. It was only after I had done everything that I could that I stopped and considered my chances and figured that I was probably going to die. Even so though I believe that it is my biological duty to do everything possible to survive no matter how hopeless the situation.
Honestly from this side of it, I don’t really have any post traumatic stress. I remember how I felt at the time, but the memories have no sting to them. Don’t worry about it. Generally I’m able to discuss anything that I bring up.
I could argue that if that hadn’t have saved my life (that I was going to die no matter what), than at that point my actions and thoughts would have very little meaning. I suppose honestly I could have written a note to my parents, but at the time I didn’t think of it. Other than that I could have believed, or done anything I wanted and not have really effected the outcome.
However the examples I was thinking of were extinction level events.
Fair point. And I hope that our leaders are wise enough to know that blowing up the world would be a bad idea. However if there was an asteroid going to hit tomorrow, I am not sure what help I could offer humanity even if I did know. Wouldn’t it just cause me pointless suffering? If no one else knew I could tell them about it, but after that I couldn’t really do anything about it. And I don’t know anything about this, but is there anything out there that shows that some people enjoy worrying? They would be perfect to do that sort of thing. I personally am happier not worrying about things I can’t change.
This is a pretty standard example of reasoning under uncertainty. You have two possible events, “there were 5 dice” vs. “there were 4 dice”. You want to assign a probability to each event, because, not being omniscient, you don’t know how many dice there actually were. You have several percepts, meaning pieces of evidence: your memories and the claims of the other people. Each of these percepts has some probability of being true: your memories are not infallible, the other people could be wrong or lying, etc. You could run all these numbers through Bayes’ Rule, and determine which of the events (“5 dice” vs. “4 dice”) is more likely to be true.
It also helps to know that all humans have a bias when it comes to peer pressure; our memories become especially faulty when we perceive a strong group consensus that contradicts them. Knowing this can help you calibrate your probabilities.
Anyways, you say that “belief is a hard thing to cultivate”, but in your dice scenario, there’s no need to cultivate anything, because you don’t care about beliefs, you care about how many dice there were; i.e., you care specifically about the truth.
I am not sure what “biological duty” means, but still, it sounds like you do care whether you live or die; i.e., you want to live. This is a goal, and you can take actions in order to further this goal, and you want to make sure your actions are as optimal as possible, right ?
It depends on what you mean by “simple”; according to Ockham’s Razor, “God did it” is a vastly less simple explanation than most others, due to the number of implicit assumptions you will end up making. That said, it sounds like you have several possible events (“God did it”, “aliens did it”, “I got lucky”, etc.), and several pieces of evidence; so this scenario is similar to your example with the dice. If you cared about the truth, you could assign a probability to each event based on the evidence. Of course, you don’t have to care about the truth in this case; but if you did, there are ways you could approach it.
It’s possible that tying that tourniquet did save your life, so there’s at least one thing you did do which likely affected the outcome.
I think I see where you’re coming from: there’s no point in spending a lot of effort on worrying about low-probability events which you’d be powerless to affect even if they did happen. As you said, the Sun could die tomorrow, but I can safely ignore this fact. However, I think you’re making an unwarranted leap of faith when you precommit to never worrying about such events, regardless of circumstances.
For example, there’s nothing you could do about that asteroid today, and in fact it’s very likely not even coming. But if we knew that the asteroid was, indeed, heading for Earth, there could be lots of things you could do—you could donate money to the anti-asteroid fund, volunteer at the anti-asteroid missile factory, etc. If you had more information about the asteroid, you could re-evaluate your decisions, and determine the best course of action; but you can’t do that if you have committed yourself to not doing anything regardless of circumstances. You also can’t do that if you have no access to that information in the first place, which is why caring about the truth is sometimes important.