Or, to put it another way, some people believe in God because they have seen evidence of God.
Yes. Exactly.
Also, climbing them.
Religious people have a similarly intricate web of self-reinforcing evidence for their beliefs. The “evidence” of God’s handiwork is all around you, even in the trees. In fact, it is so difficult to see why all of the intricacies of nature are not evidence of an intelligent designer that it took humans many millennia to figure it out, and it is considered a major intellectual accomplishment. Evolution is only obvious in retrospect.
I think I’d be more interested in trying to convince them that the other side of the canyon exists
OK, but now consider this question: what evidence could your blind peers offer that would convince you that what you think you are seeing is not in fact real, but is actually just an epiphenomenon of some neurobiological process going on entirely inside your brain?
OK, but now consider this question: what evidence could your blind peers offer that would convince you that what you think you are seeing is not in fact real, but is actually just an epiphenomenon of some neurobiological process going on entirely inside your brain?
Hmmmm. Tricky.
I can see it. Without trees on this side—and specifically, without wood—I presumably can’t build a bridge over to the other side. (And if I could, then I’d have plenty of proof that it exist and I break the metaphor) So, we can’t go over there and observe it directly (by means of touch, a sense that everyone shares). The only evidence I have for the existence of the other side of the canyon is sight—I can see it.
I imagine that if the blind people could somehow convince me that sight is really hallucination—that is to say, what I “see” is entirely an internal process within the brain and not at all related to external reality in any way (except perhaps insofar that I only “see” what I expect to “see”) - then that would be sufficient to make me question the reality of the other side of the canyon.
...I guess I could throw a rock at it and listen for the impact
Note that it is not necessary for all of your visions (sic!) to be hallucinations to sustain this puzzle. It’s enough that faraway things are illusory. Maybe you’re living in a “Truman Show”-style virtual reality, where the far side of the canyon is actually a projected image. (A mirage is a real-world example of something that looks very different from its true nature when viewed from far away.)
Note that it is not necessary for all of your visions (sic!) to be hallucinations to sustain this puzzle. It’s enough that faraway things are illusory. Maybe you’re living in a “Truman Show”-style virtual reality, where the far side of the canyon is actually a projected image.
Hmmm. True, but now we’re talking about a world specifically designed to produce the appearance of the opposite side of the canyon even when it doesn’t exist. I think that we can, at least tentatively, discount active malevolence as an explanation for why I see the opposite side of the canyon.
Mind you, I’m not saying it can’t be a mirage. If I’m short-sighted—so that everything beyond a certain distance is blurry and unrecognisable—and there just happens to be a large reflective surface partway across the canyon—then I may see the reflection of this side of the canyon, fail to recognise it due to the blurring, and claim that there is an opposite side to the canyon. (This can be recognised by a simple test, should anyone manage to produce prescription spectacles).
But let us say that my blind peers bring me incredibly convincing evidence for the idea that there is no other side of the canyon. They are very persuasive in that this “sight” business is a brain disease caused by being out and about in the heat of the day, making my brain overheat, and only in the coolness of night, when all is dark, am I sane. (And, sure enough, when it’s dark then it’s too dark to see the other side of the canyon).
But none of this is evidence that there is no other side. The other side could still be there—even if every argument advanced by my blind peers is true—and while I am sitting here questioning my sanity, the other side continues to sit there, perhaps visible to me alone, but nonetheless visible, and I should not throw that evidence away.
but now we’re talking about a world specifically designed to produce the appearance of the opposite side of the canyon even when it doesn’t exist
Not necessarily. That just happened to be the case in “The Truman Show.” We actually have a real-world version of this scenario going on in cosmology right now. There are two “trees” on the far side of the canyon: dark matter and dark energy, both of which are just labels for “the mysterious unknown thing that causes the observed data to not match up with the currently best available theories”. (Note that in the tree scenario you would not have the word “tree” in your vocabulary, or if you did, it could not possibly mean anything other than “The mysterious unknown thing on the far side of the canyon that looks completely unlike anything nearby.”)
BTW, have you ever seen a mirage? They look very convincing at a distance, even with sharp vision.
Not necessarily. That just happened to be the case in “The Truman Show.”
Yes, but if the universe is an intentional simulation, then someone is running it. (I haven’t seen the film myself, but I understand that someone was actually running the Truman Show). The atheist hypothesis is that there is no-one running the universe—claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
We actually have a real-world version of this scenario going on in cosmology right now. There are two “trees” on the far side of the canyon: dark matter and dark energy, both of which are just labels for “the mysterious unknown thing that causes the observed data to not match up with the currently best available theories”.
Not quite the same thing. There’s no debate on whether or not those trees exist, there’s merely debate on exactly what those trees are.
BTW, have you ever seen a mirage? They look very convincing at a distance, even with sharp vision.
Yes, the type where you look along a long, straight road on a hot day and the more distant portion of the road appears to vanish, leaving the sides of the road apparently delimiting a patch of sky. Mirages can be convincing, but they can’t look like anything, and they’re very dependent on where the observer stands and the air temperature on the day, so they can be tested for.
if the universe is an intentional simulation, then someone is running it
I think you’re conflating the features of a hypothetical universe that I conjured up to make a point with what I believe to be the case in the world we live in. In the world we live in, there is no evidence that we are in an intentional simulation. All the evidence is that everything we can see arises from simple processes (where “simple” is meant in the technical sense of having low Kolmogorov complexity ).
claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone
I’m not sure that’s really what you meant to say, but that is not the “atheist hypothesis.” The atheist hypothesis is that the appearance of design can come about in ways other than having a designer (like natural selection or anthropic bias), and so the appearance of design is not slam-dunk proof of the existence of a Designer.
Okay, I can see that I was unclear. Let me clarify my point. Well, two points and a conclusion.
Point 1) The Truman Show Hypothesis is that the world has been intentionally designed to appear, in some way, to be something that it is not, and any new attempts to discover the true nature of the universe will be foiled by an active opposing intelligence which is running said universe.
Point 2) The “atheist hypothesis” is that there is no-one running the universe.
Conclusion, taking both point 1 and point 2 into account: Claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
This does not imply that the universe could appear to be different to how it is. It merely states that if there is no-one running the universe, then the universe can not be run in such a way as to actively prevent every possible means to find its true nature—the universe, in that case, must be running entirely on natural laws without an active intelligence behind them.
...I hope that’s clearer.
Now, if we are living in a universe that we merely fail to properly understand, then eventually someone will figure it out, because there is not an active intelligence preventing that figuring out.
Oh, I see. When I brought up the Truman Show I didn’t mean for the intentionality of it to be relevant. I just brought it up as an illustrative example of how distant things could have a fundamentally different cause (not necessarily an intentional one) than nearby things.
Let me try this again: there are subjective experiences that some people have and other people don’t (seeing trees, hearing the Voice of God). To those who have them, those subjective experiences feel like they are caused by external factors (real trees, actual deities). For various reasons (canyons, the desire of deities to preserve human free will or whatever) the question of whether those subjective experiences are actually caused by trees or deities, or whether they are simple neurobiological phenomena (i.e. illusions), resists experimental inquiry. Under those circumstances, how do you decide whether these subjective experiences are actually evidence of trees or deities, or whether they are illusions?
The point is that this is not necessarily an easy question to answer. The fact that God doesn’t talk to you is not slam-dunk evidence that God does not exist, just as the fact that the blind people can’t see the tree on the other side of the canyon is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree isn’t real. Likewise, the fact that many people hear the Voice of God is not slam-dunk evidence that He does exist, just as the fact that you can see the tree is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree exists.
Oh, I see. When I brought up the Truman Show I didn’t mean for the intentionality of it to be relevant.
...oh, right. My apologies for misunderstanding you, then. So, what you were suggesting was basically some form of mirage, then.
The point is that this is not necessarily an easy question to answer.
Completely agreed. If it was an easy question to answer, then there would not be nearly so many debates about it.
Mind you, in the case of the tree, there is an experiment that can prove its existence, or lack thereof—one merely needs to find a way to get close enough to touch it. (Similarly, it is possible to prove God exists, if He agrees—if He pushes some clouds aside and says “Look, everybody, here I am!”, then that’ll be pretty convincing evidence, for anyone who happens to see it at least). Of course, these experiments are at least difficult and perhaps impossible to set up...
So, what you were suggesting was basically some form of mirage, then.
It was supposed to be ambiguous, that’s the whole point. It’s a thought experiment designed to get a non-believer to understand what it’s like to be someone who believes in God because they have had a subjective experience that, to them, is indistinguishable from hearing the Voice of God. Non-believers seem to have a really hard time imagining that (outside the context of mental illness), so I thought it might be easier to imagine being someone who believes in trees because you have had a subjective experience that is indistinguishable to you from seeing a real tree, but under circumstances where you cannot share that experience with anyone else except through testimony.
one merely needs to find a way to get close enough to touch it
Yes. Hence the canyon.
if He pushes some clouds aside and says “Look, everybody, here I am!”, then that’ll be pretty convincing evidence
Yes, if God wanted to prove Her existence She certainly could. But the theory is that She chooses to remain hidden because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe. (Unless you’re a Calvinist, in which case you deny that humans have free will and things get rather bizarre.)
It was supposed to be ambiguous, that’s the whole point.
Quite, yes. The thought experiment was that I saw what looked like a tree on the other side of the canyon. It could be a tree, it could be a mirage—my sight is telling me it’s a tree, but there are a lot of blind people around who are telling me there’s no such thing as trees, and I have no evidence beyond that of my sight.
It’s a really good analogy, and I like it very much.
Yes, if God wanted to prove Her existence She certainly could. But the theory is that She chooses to remain hidden because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe.
Well—we know that She (male pronouns are often used, but I’m pretty sure God is genderless) chooses to remain hidden—currently, at least. (Interestingly, if one looks at certain parts of the Old Testament—particularly much of Exodus—it seems that God wasn’t always so cagey. Parting the Red Sea and dropping it on Pharoah’s army was hardly a subtle miracle. And then there was the manna in the desert...)
But whether that’s because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe or for some other reason, I can’t really offer an opinion on. It’s possible that She’d be willing to cooperate in an experiment if we could find the right experiment, for whatever reason—but it’s also possible, given current behaviour, that God will simply refuse to cooperate with any experiment intended to prove Her existence beyond doubt...
It’s a really good analogy, and I like it very much.
Thank you! You just made my day.
Parting the Red Sea and dropping it on Pharoah’s army was hardly a subtle miracle.
Yeah, but those good old days are apparently behind us. It’s a shame that God didn’t think to make a video. Now that would have been cool!
it’s also possible, given current behaviour, that God will simply refuse to cooperate with any experiment intended to prove Her existence beyond doubt...
One of the things that I’ve often heard Christians say is, “God could do X and Y and Z (because He (they never refer to God as She) is omnipotent) but He chooses not to.” The idea of an omnipotent deity whose behavior is reliably predictable by mere mortals has always struck me as logically incoherent. But what do I know? ;-)
Yeah, but those good old days are apparently behind us. It’s a shame that God didn’t think to make a video. Now that would have been cool!
It would have, yes!
...probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to be usable in modern video players, though. I don’t think there’s many physical media that can manage a few thousand years in the desert, short of a miracle.
One of the things that I’ve often heard Christians say is, “God could do X and Y and Z (because He (they never refer to God as She) is omnipotent) but He chooses not to.” The idea of an omnipotent deity whose behavior is reliably predictable by mere mortals has always struck me as logically incoherent. But what do I know? ;-)
Well, the argument goes that “God could do X and Y and Z, and no other force could prevent God from doing X and Y and Z, because omnipotence. Yet I observe that X and Y and Z are not, in fact, done. Assuming that my observations are not in error, this means that X and Y and Z were not done; I know that the only reason why God might not do X and Y and Z is by choosing not to, since no force can stop God. Therefore, God must have chosen not to do X and Y and Z.”
So it’s not really prediction as much as it is observation (and fitting those observations into existing ideas about reality).
I don’t think there’s many physical media that can manage a few thousand years in the desert, short of a miracle.
The desert is actually quite good at preserving all manner of things. But this is neither here nor there. If God had wanted a video of the parting of the Red Sea so survive to modern times He could surely have arranged it because, well, that’s kind of what it means to be omnipotent.
I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still. I’m a little surprised that anyone here on LW would find this remarkable.
I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still.
On the basis of what? (no, I’m not asking you to quote me the appropriate chapter and verse)
There is an old theological debate about constraints on God. Is He really omnipotent, literally, or there are things He is unable to do? I don’t think this debate has a satisfactory resolution.
Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?
I don’t think this debate has a satisfactory resolution.
Really? If you are willing to seriously entertain the possibility that the answer could be “no”, why is that not a satisfactory resolution? It seems to me to be consistent with all the data.
Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?
I guess I’m surprised to find religious people here. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. I’ve never understood how anyone can maintain faith in the face of rational scrutiny. Maybe someone here will be able explain it to me.
I didn’t say you [sc. Lumifer] were [sc. religious].
Hmm. I don’t see how else to make sense of the exchange you and Lumifer have just had. Let me follow the steps backward, and you can tell me what I’ve got wrong. (Unless all you mean is that you only implied Lumifer is religious by saying things that don’t make sense on other assumptions, and didn’t explicitly say he is. In which case I agree but I’m not sure why it’s relevant: Lumifer’s denial of religiosity is just as relevant if you merely implied its contrary as if you explicitly stated it.)
You said “I guess I’m surprised to find religious people here”.
That was in response to Lumifer’s question “Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?”.
I infer that you were surprised about finding “this attitude” here because doing so amounts to finding religious people.
I infer that you consider that “this attitude” indicates that its holder is a religious person.
OK, so what’s “this attitude”? Lumifer asked that question in response to your saying “I’m a little surprised that anyone here on LW would find this remarkable.” (That wasn’t the whole content of your comment, but I don’t think any other part of it can reasonably be thought to be what Lumifer was referring to.)
So “this attitude” is evidently “find[ing] this remarkable”. What’s “this”?
You said that in response to Lumifer’s statement “For a mere mortal you seem to be very sure of what God will or will not ever do.”
I don’t see how to take all this other than as saying that (1) you (reasonably) interpret that remark of Lumifer’s as finding your confidence about what God will do remarkable, and (2) consider that attitude—i.e., finding your confidence remarkable—to indicate that its holder—i.e., Lumifer—is a religious person.
It could, I guess, be that “this attitude” was expressed by someone else other than Lumifer and you were commenting on them rather than Lumifer. But no one other than Lumifer replied to your comment about what God would not ever do.
I can’t figure out any explanation of the conversation you and Lumifer have just had that doesn’t involve you (mis)identifying Lumifer as a religious person.
My surprise at finding religious people on LW was not specifically a reaction to anything Lumifer said, it was more general than that. I guess my surprise was triggered more by something ChristianKi said in another branch of this discussion than anything Lumifer said. But this has become a very long and branchy discussion so it’s very likely that any attempt on my part to reconstruct my past mental states will have some errors.
I tentatively concluded that Lumifer was religious because that seemed like the most charitable interpretation of his remarks to that point. When he told me he wasn’t, I update my Bayesian posteriors and concluded that he’s probably a troll. But I didn’t want to say so because my Bayesian estimate on the possibility that he might have something worthwhile to teach me is not yet indistinguishable from zero. But it’s getting damn close.
OK, I’m getting a little confused about what point you’re trying to make. Most of the time when people talk about what God can and cannot do it’s because they believe God is real. But you said you’re not religious, so you don’t believe God is real. So what does it even mean for a non-real God to be omnipotent?
The reason I’m confident that God is constrained by the laws of physics is that I believe that God is a fictional character. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, it means that He exists in a different ontological category than people who believe in God think He’s in. Fictional characters are subject to the laws of physics insofar as they can only do things that their authors can describe, and so they are subject to the limitations of computability theory. God cannot tell us the value of Chaitin’s Omega to more precision than we ourselves can compute it.
Fictional characters can have effects in the real world. People alter their behavior because of things that fictional characters are reported to have said. But those kinds of effects are still limited by the laws of physics, and generally do not extend to making radical changes in the angular velocity of a planet, hence my confident prediction.
So what does it even mean for a non-real God to be omnipotent?
Generally speaking, if you are discussing things like attributes of God, there are two positions you might take.
One position is that God is not real, so discussing His attributes is no better than debating patterns on wings of fairies. At this point we’re done, there is nothing else to say.
Another position is to add an implicit “conditional on God being real” to statements. That allows you to discuss e.g. theology without necessarily being religious.
I thought we are operating in the second mode, but if we’re not, there isn’t really anything to talk about, is there? And when you said “I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still” what you meant was simply “it did not happen”—right? The “again” was an unnecessary flourish?
Fictional characters are subject to the laws of physics insofar as they can only do things that their authors can describe
Fictional characters are subject to fictional laws of physics in the fictional worlds the authors create. If you just want to say that gods do not exist, the question of whether they are subject to (real) laws of physics is a nonsensical question.
Fictional characters can have effects in the real world.
Not quite. People’s beliefs (which might or might not involve fictional characters) do have effects in reality via actions of these people. But that’s a trivial observation, so I’m not sure of the point you’re making.
Another position is to add an implicit “conditional on God being real” to statements.
OK, but that begs the question of which god (lower-case g) you’re conditioning on. This was actually the mode I was arguing in when I cited the story of Rabbi Eliezer and the carob tree.
Fictional characters are subject to fictional laws of physics in the fictional worlds the authors create.
That too, but they are also subject to constraints imposed by the theory of computation on their authors (at least so long as their authors are Turing machines). That actually rules out omnipotent gods even in fiction. Simply saying that something is omnipotent doesn’t make it omnipotent even in a fictional world.
But that’s a trivial observation
It might be a trivial observation, but it has very profound consequences that are not immediately apparent. Specifically, there’s a positive feedback loop where certain beliefs produce effects which provide evidence that support those beliefs. Such beliefs can become self-sustaining even in cases where the beliefs themselves are objectively false. But because they are self-sustaining, they can be very hard to dislodge.
Ironically, an example of such a self-sustaining but objectively false belief is the belief that rationalism will win the battle of ideas, or even that it’s a better way to live your life, simply because, well, it’s rational. (I’m not saying you believe this, but many people do.)
but that begs the question of which god (lower-case g) you’re conditioning on.
Since the context of the discussion involved quotes from Torah/Bible, I thought it was apparent.
so long as their authors are Turing machines
Speaking of ontological categories… Humans are not Turing machines.
a positive feedback loop where certain beliefs produce effects which provide evidence that support those beliefs
Sure, but I still don’t see it as particularly profound. It happens all the time and is the mechanism involved in some well-known biases. I understand your point that “personal experience” of a believer is suspect as evidence and that point has some validity, but this is a complex discussion involving interpretations, cultural expectations, philosophy of qualia, etc. etc. :-)
Since the context of the discussion involved quotes from Torah/Bible, I thought it was apparent.
It isn’t apparent. Genesis is part of three different religious traditions with radically different theologies. For example, there’s a rich tradition in Judaism of arguing with God, and even winning sometimes (e.g. Exo32:9-14), something which would be unthinkable in Christianity or Islam.
Humans are not Turing machines.
The software processes running on human brains can, as far as anyone can tell, be modeled by a Turing machine, so if a TM can’t do it, neither can a human, and hence neither can any fictional character a human can describe.
I still don’t see it as particularly profound
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about that.
But let us say that my blind peers bring me incredibly convincing evidence for the idea that there is no other side of the canyon.
Your blind peers can’t bring you convincing evidence that there’s no other side to the canyon unless there actually is no other side to the canyon. It’s like asking “what if homeopaths provided you with incredibly convincing evidence that homeopathy worked, would you still cling to what science says?” (The answer is that if it was possible to produce incredibly convincing evidence for homeopathy, we would be in a very different world than we are now, and science would be saying different things.)
Your blind peers can’t bring you convincing evidence that there’s no other side to the canyon unless there actually is no other side to the canyon.
On the contrary, it is quite possible to come up with some very convincing arguments for something that is false. There are many ways to do this, either by means of flawed argument, logical fallacy, carefully selecting only the evidence that supports a given theory, and so on. If I am sufficiently cautious in examining the arguments, I may identify the flaws and expose them—but it is also possible that I may fail to notice the flaws, because I am not perfect.
It’s like asking “what if homeopaths provided you with incredibly convincing evidence that homeopathy worked, would you still cling to what science says?”
A homeopath can provide a convincing argument by providing a very long list of people who were ill, took a homeopathic remedy, and then recovered; and accompanying it with a very long list of people who were ill, took no homeopathic remedy, and got worse.
Anyone who notices the cherry-picking of evidence will see the flaw in that argument, but it will nonetheless convince many people.
I don’t consider “evidence which would convince at least some people” to be “incredibly convincing evidence”. Even poorly convincing evidence will convince someone—poorly convincing evidence isn’t the same as nonconvincing evidence.
Ah, I think we have the point of disconnect here. I consider “incredibly convincing evidence” to be any evidence which would convince me. I am aware that this includes some flawed evidence that would convince me of incorrect things, but I can’t provide a good example, because if I knew how it was flawed then it would not convince me (and if it has convinced me, then I don’t know that it is flawed). Thus, yes, my examples were only vaguely convincing, in order to make the flaws clearer.
Yes. Exactly.
Religious people have a similarly intricate web of self-reinforcing evidence for their beliefs. The “evidence” of God’s handiwork is all around you, even in the trees. In fact, it is so difficult to see why all of the intricacies of nature are not evidence of an intelligent designer that it took humans many millennia to figure it out, and it is considered a major intellectual accomplishment. Evolution is only obvious in retrospect.
OK, but now consider this question: what evidence could your blind peers offer that would convince you that what you think you are seeing is not in fact real, but is actually just an epiphenomenon of some neurobiological process going on entirely inside your brain?
Hmmmm. Tricky.
I can see it. Without trees on this side—and specifically, without wood—I presumably can’t build a bridge over to the other side. (And if I could, then I’d have plenty of proof that it exist and I break the metaphor) So, we can’t go over there and observe it directly (by means of touch, a sense that everyone shares). The only evidence I have for the existence of the other side of the canyon is sight—I can see it.
I imagine that if the blind people could somehow convince me that sight is really hallucination—that is to say, what I “see” is entirely an internal process within the brain and not at all related to external reality in any way (except perhaps insofar that I only “see” what I expect to “see”) - then that would be sufficient to make me question the reality of the other side of the canyon.
...I guess I could throw a rock at it and listen for the impact
Cool, then you get it.
Note that it is not necessary for all of your visions (sic!) to be hallucinations to sustain this puzzle. It’s enough that faraway things are illusory. Maybe you’re living in a “Truman Show”-style virtual reality, where the far side of the canyon is actually a projected image. (A mirage is a real-world example of something that looks very different from its true nature when viewed from far away.)
Hmmm. True, but now we’re talking about a world specifically designed to produce the appearance of the opposite side of the canyon even when it doesn’t exist. I think that we can, at least tentatively, discount active malevolence as an explanation for why I see the opposite side of the canyon.
Mind you, I’m not saying it can’t be a mirage. If I’m short-sighted—so that everything beyond a certain distance is blurry and unrecognisable—and there just happens to be a large reflective surface partway across the canyon—then I may see the reflection of this side of the canyon, fail to recognise it due to the blurring, and claim that there is an opposite side to the canyon. (This can be recognised by a simple test, should anyone manage to produce prescription spectacles).
But let us say that my blind peers bring me incredibly convincing evidence for the idea that there is no other side of the canyon. They are very persuasive in that this “sight” business is a brain disease caused by being out and about in the heat of the day, making my brain overheat, and only in the coolness of night, when all is dark, am I sane. (And, sure enough, when it’s dark then it’s too dark to see the other side of the canyon).
But none of this is evidence that there is no other side. The other side could still be there—even if every argument advanced by my blind peers is true—and while I am sitting here questioning my sanity, the other side continues to sit there, perhaps visible to me alone, but nonetheless visible, and I should not throw that evidence away.
Not necessarily. That just happened to be the case in “The Truman Show.” We actually have a real-world version of this scenario going on in cosmology right now. There are two “trees” on the far side of the canyon: dark matter and dark energy, both of which are just labels for “the mysterious unknown thing that causes the observed data to not match up with the currently best available theories”. (Note that in the tree scenario you would not have the word “tree” in your vocabulary, or if you did, it could not possibly mean anything other than “The mysterious unknown thing on the far side of the canyon that looks completely unlike anything nearby.”)
BTW, have you ever seen a mirage? They look very convincing at a distance, even with sharp vision.
Yes, but if the universe is an intentional simulation, then someone is running it. (I haven’t seen the film myself, but I understand that someone was actually running the Truman Show). The atheist hypothesis is that there is no-one running the universe—claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
Not quite the same thing. There’s no debate on whether or not those trees exist, there’s merely debate on exactly what those trees are.
Yes, the type where you look along a long, straight road on a hot day and the more distant portion of the road appears to vanish, leaving the sides of the road apparently delimiting a patch of sky. Mirages can be convincing, but they can’t look like anything, and they’re very dependent on where the observer stands and the air temperature on the day, so they can be tested for.
I think you’re conflating the features of a hypothetical universe that I conjured up to make a point with what I believe to be the case in the world we live in. In the world we live in, there is no evidence that we are in an intentional simulation. All the evidence is that everything we can see arises from simple processes (where “simple” is meant in the technical sense of having low Kolmogorov complexity ).
I’m not sure that’s really what you meant to say, but that is not the “atheist hypothesis.” The atheist hypothesis is that the appearance of design can come about in ways other than having a designer (like natural selection or anthropic bias), and so the appearance of design is not slam-dunk proof of the existence of a Designer.
Of course. Analogies are never perfect.
Okay, I can see that I was unclear. Let me clarify my point. Well, two points and a conclusion.
Point 1) The Truman Show Hypothesis is that the world has been intentionally designed to appear, in some way, to be something that it is not, and any new attempts to discover the true nature of the universe will be foiled by an active opposing intelligence which is running said universe.
Point 2) The “atheist hypothesis” is that there is no-one running the universe.
Conclusion, taking both point 1 and point 2 into account: Claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
This does not imply that the universe could appear to be different to how it is. It merely states that if there is no-one running the universe, then the universe can not be run in such a way as to actively prevent every possible means to find its true nature—the universe, in that case, must be running entirely on natural laws without an active intelligence behind them.
...I hope that’s clearer.
Now, if we are living in a universe that we merely fail to properly understand, then eventually someone will figure it out, because there is not an active intelligence preventing that figuring out.
Oh, I see. When I brought up the Truman Show I didn’t mean for the intentionality of it to be relevant. I just brought it up as an illustrative example of how distant things could have a fundamentally different cause (not necessarily an intentional one) than nearby things.
Let me try this again: there are subjective experiences that some people have and other people don’t (seeing trees, hearing the Voice of God). To those who have them, those subjective experiences feel like they are caused by external factors (real trees, actual deities). For various reasons (canyons, the desire of deities to preserve human free will or whatever) the question of whether those subjective experiences are actually caused by trees or deities, or whether they are simple neurobiological phenomena (i.e. illusions), resists experimental inquiry. Under those circumstances, how do you decide whether these subjective experiences are actually evidence of trees or deities, or whether they are illusions?
The point is that this is not necessarily an easy question to answer. The fact that God doesn’t talk to you is not slam-dunk evidence that God does not exist, just as the fact that the blind people can’t see the tree on the other side of the canyon is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree isn’t real. Likewise, the fact that many people hear the Voice of God is not slam-dunk evidence that He does exist, just as the fact that you can see the tree is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree exists.
...oh, right. My apologies for misunderstanding you, then. So, what you were suggesting was basically some form of mirage, then.
Completely agreed. If it was an easy question to answer, then there would not be nearly so many debates about it.
Mind you, in the case of the tree, there is an experiment that can prove its existence, or lack thereof—one merely needs to find a way to get close enough to touch it. (Similarly, it is possible to prove God exists, if He agrees—if He pushes some clouds aside and says “Look, everybody, here I am!”, then that’ll be pretty convincing evidence, for anyone who happens to see it at least). Of course, these experiments are at least difficult and perhaps impossible to set up...
It was supposed to be ambiguous, that’s the whole point. It’s a thought experiment designed to get a non-believer to understand what it’s like to be someone who believes in God because they have had a subjective experience that, to them, is indistinguishable from hearing the Voice of God. Non-believers seem to have a really hard time imagining that (outside the context of mental illness), so I thought it might be easier to imagine being someone who believes in trees because you have had a subjective experience that is indistinguishable to you from seeing a real tree, but under circumstances where you cannot share that experience with anyone else except through testimony.
Yes. Hence the canyon.
Yes, if God wanted to prove Her existence She certainly could. But the theory is that She chooses to remain hidden because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe. (Unless you’re a Calvinist, in which case you deny that humans have free will and things get rather bizarre.)
Quite, yes. The thought experiment was that I saw what looked like a tree on the other side of the canyon. It could be a tree, it could be a mirage—my sight is telling me it’s a tree, but there are a lot of blind people around who are telling me there’s no such thing as trees, and I have no evidence beyond that of my sight.
It’s a really good analogy, and I like it very much.
Well—we know that She (male pronouns are often used, but I’m pretty sure God is genderless) chooses to remain hidden—currently, at least. (Interestingly, if one looks at certain parts of the Old Testament—particularly much of Exodus—it seems that God wasn’t always so cagey. Parting the Red Sea and dropping it on Pharoah’s army was hardly a subtle miracle. And then there was the manna in the desert...)
But whether that’s because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe or for some other reason, I can’t really offer an opinion on. It’s possible that She’d be willing to cooperate in an experiment if we could find the right experiment, for whatever reason—but it’s also possible, given current behaviour, that God will simply refuse to cooperate with any experiment intended to prove Her existence beyond doubt...
Thank you! You just made my day.
Yeah, but those good old days are apparently behind us. It’s a shame that God didn’t think to make a video. Now that would have been cool!
One of the things that I’ve often heard Christians say is, “God could do X and Y and Z (because He (they never refer to God as She) is omnipotent) but He chooses not to.” The idea of an omnipotent deity whose behavior is reliably predictable by mere mortals has always struck me as logically incoherent. But what do I know? ;-)
It would have, yes!
...probably wouldn’t have survived long enough to be usable in modern video players, though. I don’t think there’s many physical media that can manage a few thousand years in the desert, short of a miracle.
Well, the argument goes that “God could do X and Y and Z, and no other force could prevent God from doing X and Y and Z, because omnipotence. Yet I observe that X and Y and Z are not, in fact, done. Assuming that my observations are not in error, this means that X and Y and Z were not done; I know that the only reason why God might not do X and Y and Z is by choosing not to, since no force can stop God. Therefore, God must have chosen not to do X and Y and Z.”
So it’s not really prediction as much as it is observation (and fitting those observations into existing ideas about reality).
The desert is actually quite good at preserving all manner of things. But this is neither here nor there. If God had wanted a video of the parting of the Red Sea so survive to modern times He could surely have arranged it because, well, that’s kind of what it means to be omnipotent.
No, it really is prediction: God will never again reveal Himself unambiguously the way he once did. He will forever be the god of the gaps, hiding in the fringes of statistical distributions and the private subjective experiences of believers.
For a mere mortal you seem to be very sure of what God will or will not ever do.
I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still. I’m a little surprised that anyone here on LW would find this remarkable.
On the basis of what? (no, I’m not asking you to quote me the appropriate chapter and verse)
There is an old theological debate about constraints on God. Is He really omnipotent, literally, or there are things He is unable to do? I don’t think this debate has a satisfactory resolution.
Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?
Um… physics?
Really? If you are willing to seriously entertain the possibility that the answer could be “no”, why is that not a satisfactory resolution? It seems to me to be consistent with all the data.
I guess I’m surprised to find religious people here. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. I’ve never understood how anyone can maintain faith in the face of rational scrutiny. Maybe someone here will be able explain it to me.
God is not constrained by physics, is He?
Which data?
I am not religious.
One obvious answer is reliance on personal experience.
I’m pretty sure He is.
Oh my goodness, where to begin? How about here.
I didn’t say you were.
That’s usually a mistake.
Hmm. I don’t see how else to make sense of the exchange you and Lumifer have just had. Let me follow the steps backward, and you can tell me what I’ve got wrong. (Unless all you mean is that you only implied Lumifer is religious by saying things that don’t make sense on other assumptions, and didn’t explicitly say he is. In which case I agree but I’m not sure why it’s relevant: Lumifer’s denial of religiosity is just as relevant if you merely implied its contrary as if you explicitly stated it.)
You said “I guess I’m surprised to find religious people here”.
That was in response to Lumifer’s question “Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?”.
I infer that you were surprised about finding “this attitude” here because doing so amounts to finding religious people.
I infer that you consider that “this attitude” indicates that its holder is a religious person.
OK, so what’s “this attitude”? Lumifer asked that question in response to your saying “I’m a little surprised that anyone here on LW would find this remarkable.” (That wasn’t the whole content of your comment, but I don’t think any other part of it can reasonably be thought to be what Lumifer was referring to.)
So “this attitude” is evidently “find[ing] this remarkable”. What’s “this”?
You said that in response to Lumifer’s statement “For a mere mortal you seem to be very sure of what God will or will not ever do.”
I don’t see how to take all this other than as saying that (1) you (reasonably) interpret that remark of Lumifer’s as finding your confidence about what God will do remarkable, and (2) consider that attitude—i.e., finding your confidence remarkable—to indicate that its holder—i.e., Lumifer—is a religious person.
It could, I guess, be that “this attitude” was expressed by someone else other than Lumifer and you were commenting on them rather than Lumifer. But no one other than Lumifer replied to your comment about what God would not ever do.
I can’t figure out any explanation of the conversation you and Lumifer have just had that doesn’t involve you (mis)identifying Lumifer as a religious person.
What am I missing?
My surprise at finding religious people on LW was not specifically a reaction to anything Lumifer said, it was more general than that. I guess my surprise was triggered more by something ChristianKi said in another branch of this discussion than anything Lumifer said. But this has become a very long and branchy discussion so it’s very likely that any attempt on my part to reconstruct my past mental states will have some errors.
I tentatively concluded that Lumifer was religious because that seemed like the most charitable interpretation of his remarks to that point. When he told me he wasn’t, I update my Bayesian posteriors and concluded that he’s probably a troll. But I didn’t want to say so because my Bayesian estimate on the possibility that he might have something worthwhile to teach me is not yet indistinguishable from zero. But it’s getting damn close.
When you say “God is constrainted by physics”, what do you mean by the word “God”? The God of Abraham, being omnipotent, doesn’t seem to be.
Not sure, what a link to Wikipedia on theodicy is doing here.
As to not relying on personal experience, well, it calls to mind “Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?” X-)
OK, I’m getting a little confused about what point you’re trying to make. Most of the time when people talk about what God can and cannot do it’s because they believe God is real. But you said you’re not religious, so you don’t believe God is real. So what does it even mean for a non-real God to be omnipotent?
The reason I’m confident that God is constrained by the laws of physics is that I believe that God is a fictional character. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, it means that He exists in a different ontological category than people who believe in God think He’s in. Fictional characters are subject to the laws of physics insofar as they can only do things that their authors can describe, and so they are subject to the limitations of computability theory. God cannot tell us the value of Chaitin’s Omega to more precision than we ourselves can compute it.
Fictional characters can have effects in the real world. People alter their behavior because of things that fictional characters are reported to have said. But those kinds of effects are still limited by the laws of physics, and generally do not extend to making radical changes in the angular velocity of a planet, hence my confident prediction.
Generally speaking, if you are discussing things like attributes of God, there are two positions you might take.
One position is that God is not real, so discussing His attributes is no better than debating patterns on wings of fairies. At this point we’re done, there is nothing else to say.
Another position is to add an implicit “conditional on God being real” to statements. That allows you to discuss e.g. theology without necessarily being religious.
I thought we are operating in the second mode, but if we’re not, there isn’t really anything to talk about, is there? And when you said “I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still” what you meant was simply “it did not happen”—right? The “again” was an unnecessary flourish?
Fictional characters are subject to fictional laws of physics in the fictional worlds the authors create. If you just want to say that gods do not exist, the question of whether they are subject to (real) laws of physics is a nonsensical question.
Not quite. People’s beliefs (which might or might not involve fictional characters) do have effects in reality via actions of these people. But that’s a trivial observation, so I’m not sure of the point you’re making.
I disagree. People can (and do) have interesting and constrained discussions and even debates about fictional characters all the time.
OK, but that begs the question of which god (lower-case g) you’re conditioning on. This was actually the mode I was arguing in when I cited the story of Rabbi Eliezer and the carob tree.
That too, but they are also subject to constraints imposed by the theory of computation on their authors (at least so long as their authors are Turing machines). That actually rules out omnipotent gods even in fiction. Simply saying that something is omnipotent doesn’t make it omnipotent even in a fictional world.
It might be a trivial observation, but it has very profound consequences that are not immediately apparent. Specifically, there’s a positive feedback loop where certain beliefs produce effects which provide evidence that support those beliefs. Such beliefs can become self-sustaining even in cases where the beliefs themselves are objectively false. But because they are self-sustaining, they can be very hard to dislodge.
Ironically, an example of such a self-sustaining but objectively false belief is the belief that rationalism will win the battle of ideas, or even that it’s a better way to live your life, simply because, well, it’s rational. (I’m not saying you believe this, but many people do.)
Since the context of the discussion involved quotes from Torah/Bible, I thought it was apparent.
Speaking of ontological categories… Humans are not Turing machines.
Sure, but I still don’t see it as particularly profound. It happens all the time and is the mechanism involved in some well-known biases. I understand your point that “personal experience” of a believer is suspect as evidence and that point has some validity, but this is a complex discussion involving interpretations, cultural expectations, philosophy of qualia, etc. etc. :-)
It isn’t apparent. Genesis is part of three different religious traditions with radically different theologies. For example, there’s a rich tradition in Judaism of arguing with God, and even winning sometimes (e.g. Exo32:9-14), something which would be unthinkable in Christianity or Islam.
The software processes running on human brains can, as far as anyone can tell, be modeled by a Turing machine, so if a TM can’t do it, neither can a human, and hence neither can any fictional character a human can describe.
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about that.
“But it’s not true!”
That would run contrary to omnipotence.
Indeed it would.
Your blind peers can’t bring you convincing evidence that there’s no other side to the canyon unless there actually is no other side to the canyon. It’s like asking “what if homeopaths provided you with incredibly convincing evidence that homeopathy worked, would you still cling to what science says?” (The answer is that if it was possible to produce incredibly convincing evidence for homeopathy, we would be in a very different world than we are now, and science would be saying different things.)
On the contrary, it is quite possible to come up with some very convincing arguments for something that is false. There are many ways to do this, either by means of flawed argument, logical fallacy, carefully selecting only the evidence that supports a given theory, and so on. If I am sufficiently cautious in examining the arguments, I may identify the flaws and expose them—but it is also possible that I may fail to notice the flaws, because I am not perfect.
A homeopath can provide a convincing argument by providing a very long list of people who were ill, took a homeopathic remedy, and then recovered; and accompanying it with a very long list of people who were ill, took no homeopathic remedy, and got worse.
Anyone who notices the cherry-picking of evidence will see the flaw in that argument, but it will nonetheless convince many people.
I don’t consider “evidence which would convince at least some people” to be “incredibly convincing evidence”. Even poorly convincing evidence will convince someone—poorly convincing evidence isn’t the same as nonconvincing evidence.
Ah, I think we have the point of disconnect here. I consider “incredibly convincing evidence” to be any evidence which would convince me. I am aware that this includes some flawed evidence that would convince me of incorrect things, but I can’t provide a good example, because if I knew how it was flawed then it would not convince me (and if it has convinced me, then I don’t know that it is flawed). Thus, yes, my examples were only vaguely convincing, in order to make the flaws clearer.