Is your original point that people are reluctant to steelman “LW-unpopular” positions? I have seen steelmen (of varying quality..) of frequentism, deathism, conservativism, etc.
I think the problem with young earth creationism is that it’s just kind of a stupid position, along the lines of “pi is exactly 3!” Creationism you can steelman (I think smart Catholics try to).
I am not sure what I mean. I don’t think there is a sharp dividing line between a stupid and a non-stupid position, regardless of how generous you are willing to be.
An easy example of a stupid position is one that is logically inconsistent (pi=3). There are a number of reasons to think young earth creationism is stupid:
(a) Outside reason: no one remotely smart agrees.
(b) Bayesian reason: the posterior is tiny given our data, for any reasonable setup.
(c) Historical reason: looking at the origins and evolution ( :) ) of young earth creationism, what it’s trying to get done, etc.
One kind of position that I think you should consider reasonable is one that differs from another one you consider reasonable but for questions of taste (e.g. if you think Everett interpretation is reasonable, you should also think Copenhagen is reasonable). Similarly for atheism vs certain kinds of Deism, etc.
I think arguments about taste are stupid (content-free) arguments to have.
“Creationism,” “conservativism”, etc. are so broad that they are reasonable, I think.
I have been told that William R. Wade, a mathematician at the University of Tennessee and the author of a well-regarded textbook on analysis, is a young-earth creationist who believes that the evidence supporting the standard scientific view of geology, biology etc. was planted by the devil to test our faith.
My source for this is admittedly not a public one, but note that on his homepage, Wade states that he teaches a Sunday school class in an evangelical church, which should increase the plausibility. (Not all evangelicals are YECs, but most YECs, at least in the U.S., are evangelicals.)
Actually, I wouldn’t say that this is correct. Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Musem, I would say is considerably smarter than the great majority of the population.
In that light, Young Earth Creationism makes a somewhat interesting case study in how wrong fairly intelligent people can be given enough motivated reasoning.
Trying to steelman your “just kind of a stupid position” point :)
As I mention elsewhere, YEC stems from an extreme level of motivated cognition, uncompartmentalized belief in biblical literalism. A “smart” YEC follower would argue for taking the Bible as literally true in every way, or at least selecting the parts of the scripture which must be taken literally and argue why they should be. Pushing one single consequence of just one implicit idea in the whole text is not a smart way to convince others. Of course, a smart (and honest) YEC follower would probably abandon YEC pretty quickly.
I don’t know, the kinds of YECists I see say things like “dinosaurs did not evolve into birds.” I don’t think these folks understand testability well enough to avoid looking silly (unlike smart Catholics, who understand testability very well indeed).
The kinds of Deists I had in mind aren’t really opposed to the scientific method, and will generally go about establishing “theories” in a way no scientist would find objectionable. They just prefer to live in a world with a God. This, to me, is a question of taste, and I am willing to respect their tastes enough to not press them on this.
YECists don’t really understand what science is about, I think. There is an enormous gap between deists and YECists.
The most obvious example of YECism that doesn’t disagree with atheism on substantive testable questions is coming up with a philosophical or theological justification for God creating a universe 6,000 years ago that in every measurable way looks like it began to exist with a big bang 15 billion years ago, and that hypothesis would say “dinosaurs did not evolve into birds” because the only dinosaurs that ever existed were created as fossils 6,000 years ago.
The problem with that is that YEC of the biblical literalist type (e.g. most of “Answers in Genesis”) doesn’t limit itself to the claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. It has to argue that the entire Genesis creation narrative—spirit of God walked upon the face of the waters, Adam and Eve, global flood, and so forth—is at least accurate enough that a tortured but in some sense literal interpretation of the Bible can be said to describe factual events. That’s a much taller order, and rules out a lot of reasoning of the “God added dinosaur fossils as a test of faith” type.
I don’t think so, because to approximate how YECists behave out in the wild you would have to, for instance, create a “YECist Bayesian” with a prior so strong it effectively ignored arbitrary mountains of data. This is not how, for instance, the Catholic Church behaved historically.
The problem is this: “the stupid is conserved under sensible transformations.”
If you are not concerned with approximating the YECist behavior, you will set up an actual Bayesian who will just move away from their weird prior fairly quickly (many folks from that background do precisely this, it’s called “deconversion.”)
Is your original point that people are reluctant to steelman “LW-unpopular” positions? I have seen steelmen (of varying quality..) of frequentism, deathism, conservativism, etc.
I think the problem with young earth creationism is that it’s just kind of a stupid position, along the lines of “pi is exactly 3!” Creationism you can steelman (I think smart Catholics try to).
Catholics accept the theory of evolution and have for a long time now.
Yes, but Catholics have no problem with the idea that God can manifest his will via seemingly natural processes that play out over a long timespan.
What do you mean by stupid position? And how to we tell which positions are stupid? Do you think deathism or conservatism are stupid? Why or why not?
I am not sure what I mean. I don’t think there is a sharp dividing line between a stupid and a non-stupid position, regardless of how generous you are willing to be.
An easy example of a stupid position is one that is logically inconsistent (pi=3). There are a number of reasons to think young earth creationism is stupid:
(a) Outside reason: no one remotely smart agrees.
(b) Bayesian reason: the posterior is tiny given our data, for any reasonable setup.
(c) Historical reason: looking at the origins and evolution ( :) ) of young earth creationism, what it’s trying to get done, etc.
One kind of position that I think you should consider reasonable is one that differs from another one you consider reasonable but for questions of taste (e.g. if you think Everett interpretation is reasonable, you should also think Copenhagen is reasonable). Similarly for atheism vs certain kinds of Deism, etc.
I think arguments about taste are stupid (content-free) arguments to have.
“Creationism,” “conservativism”, etc. are so broad that they are reasonable, I think.
I have been told that William R. Wade, a mathematician at the University of Tennessee and the author of a well-regarded textbook on analysis, is a young-earth creationist who believes that the evidence supporting the standard scientific view of geology, biology etc. was planted by the devil to test our faith.
My source for this is admittedly not a public one, but note that on his homepage, Wade states that he teaches a Sunday school class in an evangelical church, which should increase the plausibility. (Not all evangelicals are YECs, but most YECs, at least in the U.S., are evangelicals.)
Actually, I wouldn’t say that this is correct. Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Musem, I would say is considerably smarter than the great majority of the population.
In that light, Young Earth Creationism makes a somewhat interesting case study in how wrong fairly intelligent people can be given enough motivated reasoning.
Trying to steelman your “just kind of a stupid position” point :)
As I mention elsewhere, YEC stems from an extreme level of motivated cognition, uncompartmentalized belief in biblical literalism. A “smart” YEC follower would argue for taking the Bible as literally true in every way, or at least selecting the parts of the scripture which must be taken literally and argue why they should be. Pushing one single consequence of just one implicit idea in the whole text is not a smart way to convince others. Of course, a smart (and honest) YEC follower would probably abandon YEC pretty quickly.
Which kinds of deism?
The kind that does not disagree with atheism on any substantive testable question.
Not disagreeing with atheism on any substantive testable question, I think, includes some forms of YECism.
(If so, you may have just suggested a better way to steelman YECism than I ever could’ve come up with...)
I don’t know, the kinds of YECists I see say things like “dinosaurs did not evolve into birds.” I don’t think these folks understand testability well enough to avoid looking silly (unlike smart Catholics, who understand testability very well indeed).
The kinds of Deists I had in mind aren’t really opposed to the scientific method, and will generally go about establishing “theories” in a way no scientist would find objectionable. They just prefer to live in a world with a God. This, to me, is a question of taste, and I am willing to respect their tastes enough to not press them on this.
YECists don’t really understand what science is about, I think. There is an enormous gap between deists and YECists.
The most obvious example of YECism that doesn’t disagree with atheism on substantive testable questions is coming up with a philosophical or theological justification for God creating a universe 6,000 years ago that in every measurable way looks like it began to exist with a big bang 15 billion years ago, and that hypothesis would say “dinosaurs did not evolve into birds” because the only dinosaurs that ever existed were created as fossils 6,000 years ago.
The problem with that is that YEC of the biblical literalist type (e.g. most of “Answers in Genesis”) doesn’t limit itself to the claim that the earth is 6,000 years old. It has to argue that the entire Genesis creation narrative—spirit of God walked upon the face of the waters, Adam and Eve, global flood, and so forth—is at least accurate enough that a tortured but in some sense literal interpretation of the Bible can be said to describe factual events. That’s a much taller order, and rules out a lot of reasoning of the “God added dinosaur fossils as a test of faith” type.
But if we’re steelmanning, couldn’t we build a better YEC?
I don’t think so, because to approximate how YECists behave out in the wild you would have to, for instance, create a “YECist Bayesian” with a prior so strong it effectively ignored arbitrary mountains of data. This is not how, for instance, the Catholic Church behaved historically.
The problem is this: “the stupid is conserved under sensible transformations.”
If you are not concerned with approximating the YECist behavior, you will set up an actual Bayesian who will just move away from their weird prior fairly quickly (many folks from that background do precisely this, it’s called “deconversion.”)