Based on our rational approach we are at a disadvantage for discovering these truths.
As I argued, assigning accurate (perhaps low, perhaps high) probabilities to the truth of such claims (of the general category which lucid dreaming falls into) does not make it harder—not even a little harder—to discover the truth about lucid dreaming. What makes it hard is the large number of similar but bogus claims to sift through, as well as the difficulty of lucid dreaming itself. Assigning an appropriate probability based on past experience with these sorts of claims only helps us because it allows us to make good decisions about how much of our time to spend investigating such claims.
What you seem to be missing (maybe?) is that we need to have a general policy which we can be satisfied with in “situations of this kind”. You’re saying that what we should really do is trust our friend who is telling us about lucid dreaming (and, in fact, I agree with that policy). But if it’s rational for us to ascribe a really low probability (I don’t think it is), that’s because we see a lot of similar claims to this which turn out to be false. We can still try a lot of these things, with an experimental attitude, if the payoff of finding a true claim balances well against the number of false claims we expect to sift through in the process. However, we probably don’t have the attention of looking at all such cases, which means we may miss lucid dreaming by accident. But this is not a flaw in the strategy; this is just a difficulty of the situation.
I’m frustrated because it seems like you are misunderstanding a part of the response Kindly and I are making, but you’re doing a pretty good job of engaging with our replies and trying to sift out what you think and where you start disagreeing with our arguments. I’m just not quite sure yet where the gap between our views is.
I don’t think there is a gap. I am pointing towards a difficulty. If you are acknowledging the difficulty (which you are) then we are in agreement. I am not sure why it feels like a disagreement, Don’t forget that at the start you had a reason for disagreeing which was my erroneous use of the word rationality. I have now corrected that so maybe we are arguing from the momentum of our first disagreement :P
As I argued, assigning accurate (perhaps low, perhaps high) probabilities to the truth of such claims (of the general category which lucid dreaming falls into) does not make it harder—not even a little harder—to discover the truth about lucid dreaming. What makes it hard is the large number of similar but bogus claims to sift through, as well as the difficulty of lucid dreaming itself. Assigning an appropriate probability based on past experience with these sorts of claims only helps us because it allows us to make good decisions about how much of our time to spend investigating such claims.
What you seem to be missing (maybe?) is that we need to have a general policy which we can be satisfied with in “situations of this kind”. You’re saying that what we should really do is trust our friend who is telling us about lucid dreaming (and, in fact, I agree with that policy). But if it’s rational for us to ascribe a really low probability (I don’t think it is), that’s because we see a lot of similar claims to this which turn out to be false. We can still try a lot of these things, with an experimental attitude, if the payoff of finding a true claim balances well against the number of false claims we expect to sift through in the process. However, we probably don’t have the attention of looking at all such cases, which means we may miss lucid dreaming by accident. But this is not a flaw in the strategy; this is just a difficulty of the situation.
I’m frustrated because it seems like you are misunderstanding a part of the response Kindly and I are making, but you’re doing a pretty good job of engaging with our replies and trying to sift out what you think and where you start disagreeing with our arguments. I’m just not quite sure yet where the gap between our views is.
I don’t think there is a gap. I am pointing towards a difficulty. If you are acknowledging the difficulty (which you are) then we are in agreement. I am not sure why it feels like a disagreement, Don’t forget that at the start you had a reason for disagreeing which was my erroneous use of the word rationality. I have now corrected that so maybe we are arguing from the momentum of our first disagreement :P
I think so, sorry!