I was aiming for “funny” rather than “rude”; I’m sorry if I missed.
OK, I’m sorry if I was being humor-impaired.
Deafness, like colour-blindness, involves an objectively measurable loss of sensory function.
You’ll have to take this up with someone in the deaf community because I’m on your side of this particular issue. Nonetheless, the fact is that there exist deaf people who vehemently disagree with both of us on this.
So let’s consider why not having empathy
You’re getting too far into the weeds here. I brought up empathy not because it’s exactly the same as spiritual experience sensitivity (I’m going to start abbreviating that as SES) but because it’s a purely internal subjective experience and not relatable to anything that is objectively measurable outside the individual brain that is experiencing it. Of course many of the salient details are different, that’s why I didn’t choose it as my primary example.
religious people have these experiences, skeptics don’t have them
I’m not sure whether you wrote that as a statement of your position or a re-statement of what you think my position is, but either way I don’t agree with this statement. In fact, I rather belabor the point that I am a skeptic who has spiritual experiences, so I myself am a counterexample.
I also think that a fair number of religious people don’t have spiritual experiences. Mother Theresa, for example, probably never had one.
But you were perfectly happy to use its opposite, “normal”, in a way that makes it clear you consider Those Who Do Not Have The Experiences to be not-normal
No, that really is an unjustified extrapolation on your part. Being heterosexual is normal. It does not follow that being homosexual is abnormal.
Saying “group A lacks a normal part of the human brain” may not use the word “abnormal”, but it most certainly uses the concept.
Again, no. Some people are lactose intolerant. They lack the ability to produce the enzyme that digests lactose. This is actually the “normal” state of affairs; the ability to digest lactose arose very late in human evolutionary history. But the ability to digest dairy products is not “abnormal.”
You really are reading more into these words than I intend or that is justified by common patterns of usage.
If you don’t intend such a value judgement, then I am at a loss to understand why even when you say you are trying to avoid loaded terms you are so insistent on, er, using loaded terms.
Because English doesn’t have enough value-neutral words. How would you describe lactose intolerance without using words that make implicit value judgements? The very name “lactose intolerance” has a value judgement built into it: intolerance.
What, specifically, did Richard Dawkins deny?
I was on an Antarctic cruise with him so we had a lot of conversations over the course of about three weeks. I got to know him quite well on a personal level. He specifically denied a lot of things. The overall tenor of his denials was to make clear that he didn’t believe any concession whatsoever should be made to the proposition that some people have firsthand subjective experiences that cause them to believe in the supernatural, even if those beliefs have a net benefit to them. For example: at one point I argued that belief can have demonstrable benefits through the placebo effect. So even if God wasn’t real, the idea of God was real and had real and potentially beneficial effects for some people, and so dissuading them of these beliefs was not necessarily a good thing to do. His response was (and these are his exact words—I will never forget them): “But it’s not true.” Meaning: it doesn’t matter if dissuading people from their belief might send them into existential despair or even cause them actual harm; allowing someone to believe in something that is not objectively true is the greater evil.
you’ve misrepresented exactly what the Copenhagen interpretation says
Well, there is no universally agreed upon definition of what the Copenhagen interpretation is. But there is no question that the elements I presented are commonly associated with the Copenhagen brand, even if that’s not what Motl thinks of when he uses the term.
and have made a mistake about polarization of light
What mistake would that be?
being attacked from both sides is no guarantee of being right
Certainly true, but when one of those attacks is, “What you’re saying is so obvious it’s insulting for you to think we didn’t already know this” and the other is, “What you’re saying is so obviously false that it’s not even worth a respectful debunking” then I actually feel pretty good about having had something worthwhile to say, even if I might not be right.
I’m not sure whether you wrote that as a statement of your position or a re-statement of what you think my position is
Actually, not quite either; it’s intended as a restatement not of your explicitly taken position (which I know it is contrary to) but of what seems to me to be implicit in how you write about these things. You say (and I agree) that some skeptics have “spiritual experiences” and some religious people don’t; but I think no one reading the rest of what you write would get that impression.
Being heterosexual is normal. It does not follow that being homosexual is abnormal.
I am not saying “lisper says X is normal; therefore lisper says not-X is abnormal”. Not at all. I am pointing at an instance where you wrote something more specific. I quoted it before; let me quote it again. “it might be an indication of a normal part of the wiring of the human brain that is missing from their brains”. (Emphasis yours.) What would count as “abnormal”, if having a normal part of the wiring of the human brain missing from your brain doesn’t?
But the ability to digest dairy products is not “abnormal”.
Again it seems that you’re taking me to argue that if you think something is normal then you have to think its opposite is abnormal. I agree that you needn’t do any such thing, and that is not the argument I was making. (See above.)
How would you describe lactose intolerance without using words that make implicit value judgements?
“Some people get sick when they consume dairy products” would do pretty well. If more detail is required: “Children’s bodies produce an enzyme called lactase that breaks down one of the constituents in milk. Many adults’ bodies don’t, and if those people drink milk or eat things made from milk they feel ill afterwards. Some adults’ bodies do, especially in Western Europe and places colonized by Western Europeans. Those people can digest milk products without feeling bad.”
Or, if we need a brief technical-sounding term: “lactase nonpersistence”.
He specifically denied a lot of things.
You know, I was hoping you might be specific. (I see that you give one specific example below, on which I will comment in a moment; it doesn’t seem to me that it actually supports what you’re saying.)
he didn’t believe any concession whatsoever should be made to the proposition that some people have firsthand subjective experiences that cause them to believe in the supernatural
I hope you won’t be offended by my saying this, but given your apparent inability in this discussion to state your thesis without using terms that (so it seems to me, and so it might plausibly have seemed to Richard Dawkins if you did the same in conversation with him) represent these believers as being better than skeptics who don’t share their experiences, it seems plausible to me that what Dawkins actually took exception was those value judgements, rather than the bare assertions that, e.g., religious people sometimes have religious experiences and see those as evidence for their religion.
The specific example you give seems, actually, quite clearly not a matter of Dawkins disagreeing with the factual statements you’ve been making about spiritual experiences (as opposed to the value judgements you’ve been making, which as I already said are not obvious and uncontroversial). He didn’t—at least, those words you will never forget didn’t—deny that the idea of God can have beneficial effects. He just indicated that, as you put it, “allowing someone to believe in something that is not objectively true is the greater evil”.
I wonder whether I’ve failed to communicate effectively what it is in what you’re saying that I think is commonplace and obvious. I suggest that you’re saying two main things. (1) Some religious people have religious experiences, and these are part of why they believe what they do, and the experiences are real experiences and very important to those people, and non-religious people talking to religious people should bear all that in mind. (2) These experiences are valuable and positive, and people who have them are normal and people who don’t have them are not normal and have something missing from their brains and are like colour-blind or deaf people.
I think #1 is obvious and commonplace. I think #2 is a matter of values and definitions more than of facts, and I do not think you have given us good reason to agree with it.
The specific thing you quote Richard Dawkins as saying contradicts neither #1 nor #2 as such (though I bet he disagrees with #2) but a further claim you haven’t explicitly made in this discussion (though you’ve made some gestures in its direction): that belief (as opposed to spiritual experiences) can have sufficiently positive consequences to make it a good thing even when incorrect. I think that’s a more plausible claim than #2 and a more controversial one (especially around here) than #1. But it isn’t what you’ve been saying here so far.
[...] Copenhagen interpretation [...]
I have the impression I didn’t make it clear enough that I am not endorsing any of Motl’s criticisms. I haven’t watched your Google talk and therefore have no opinion about the correctness of any specific claims you made there, and I think Motl is a buffoon.
What mistake would that be?
The one Motl claims you made in the blog post you linked to. (Again, for the avoidance of doubt, the only thing I am saying about his claim is that it’s consistent with the “opposite” criticisms you say you’ve received. I have no idea whether any of the criticisms from either side are correct because, again, I don’t know any of the details of what you have said about quantum physics.)
when one of those attacks is [...] and the other is [...]
… you should consider the possibility that they are addressing different things you’ve said. Compare the old joke: “There is much in X’s book that is new, and much that is correct. Unfortunately, the new parts are not correct and the correct parts are not new.”
I repeat that I have no idea what you’ve said about quantum physics, and therefore no idea whether any complaint of that sort has any validity. But I might level a similar complaint at what you’ve been saying here about spiritual experiences.
First, I want to thank you for continuing to engage on this. Your feedback is very much appreciated. But we may need to agree to disagree on this.
“Some people get sick when they consume dairy products” would do pretty well.
Some people derive a net benefit from believing in deities, notwithstanding that their beliefs are objectively false. How’s that?
Dawkins
If you want to formulate a question to direct to Dawkins that is phrased in a way that you would accept his answer as definitive, I will forward it to him, thought it’s possible that his recent health issues might prevent him from replying in a timely manner.
In my conversations with him he more than once disagreed categorically with statements that were essentially equivalent (though not word-for-word identical) with the formulation I just gave.
Some people derive a net benefit from believing in deities [...]
Aha, a much more objectively stated thesis. It seems quite different from the one we started out discussing, though. This one I agree is neither obviously true nor obviously false. Since it still has the value-dependent word “benefit” in, disagreement about it might stem mostly from differences in values—e.g., how to trade off being happier against having more accurate beliefs. (FWIW I think I would agree with the statement, but I suspect my estimate of what fraction of religious people really are better off on net because of their beliefs would be lower than yours.)
his recent health issues
Yeah, I think he has other more important things on his plate than clearing up a side-issue in our discussion.
It seems quite different from the one we started out discussing
It is different, and I argued with myself over whether to include the explanation of how to get from A to B, but decided not to because the waters were muddy enough already. It’s one of these things that I thought would be obvious, but obviously (!) my intuitions about what is obvious are failing me in this case.
In any case, if you want to pursue this, I’m happy to elaborate. (Maybe I should write a followup post?) But this thread is already pretty long, maybe we should call it a day. Your call.
I have no trouble seeing a connection. If you think there’s more—an actual implication—then I may be missing something. (Or we may merely disagree, which I think is more likely.)
Feel free to elaborate or not as you please. I have no objection to calling it a day.
OK, I’m sorry if I was being humor-impaired.
You’ll have to take this up with someone in the deaf community because I’m on your side of this particular issue. Nonetheless, the fact is that there exist deaf people who vehemently disagree with both of us on this.
You’re getting too far into the weeds here. I brought up empathy not because it’s exactly the same as spiritual experience sensitivity (I’m going to start abbreviating that as SES) but because it’s a purely internal subjective experience and not relatable to anything that is objectively measurable outside the individual brain that is experiencing it. Of course many of the salient details are different, that’s why I didn’t choose it as my primary example.
I’m not sure whether you wrote that as a statement of your position or a re-statement of what you think my position is, but either way I don’t agree with this statement. In fact, I rather belabor the point that I am a skeptic who has spiritual experiences, so I myself am a counterexample.
I also think that a fair number of religious people don’t have spiritual experiences. Mother Theresa, for example, probably never had one.
No, that really is an unjustified extrapolation on your part. Being heterosexual is normal. It does not follow that being homosexual is abnormal.
Again, no. Some people are lactose intolerant. They lack the ability to produce the enzyme that digests lactose. This is actually the “normal” state of affairs; the ability to digest lactose arose very late in human evolutionary history. But the ability to digest dairy products is not “abnormal.”
You really are reading more into these words than I intend or that is justified by common patterns of usage.
Because English doesn’t have enough value-neutral words. How would you describe lactose intolerance without using words that make implicit value judgements? The very name “lactose intolerance” has a value judgement built into it: intolerance.
I was on an Antarctic cruise with him so we had a lot of conversations over the course of about three weeks. I got to know him quite well on a personal level. He specifically denied a lot of things. The overall tenor of his denials was to make clear that he didn’t believe any concession whatsoever should be made to the proposition that some people have firsthand subjective experiences that cause them to believe in the supernatural, even if those beliefs have a net benefit to them. For example: at one point I argued that belief can have demonstrable benefits through the placebo effect. So even if God wasn’t real, the idea of God was real and had real and potentially beneficial effects for some people, and so dissuading them of these beliefs was not necessarily a good thing to do. His response was (and these are his exact words—I will never forget them): “But it’s not true.” Meaning: it doesn’t matter if dissuading people from their belief might send them into existential despair or even cause them actual harm; allowing someone to believe in something that is not objectively true is the greater evil.
Well, there is no universally agreed upon definition of what the Copenhagen interpretation is. But there is no question that the elements I presented are commonly associated with the Copenhagen brand, even if that’s not what Motl thinks of when he uses the term.
What mistake would that be?
Certainly true, but when one of those attacks is, “What you’re saying is so obvious it’s insulting for you to think we didn’t already know this” and the other is, “What you’re saying is so obviously false that it’s not even worth a respectful debunking” then I actually feel pretty good about having had something worthwhile to say, even if I might not be right.
Actually, not quite either; it’s intended as a restatement not of your explicitly taken position (which I know it is contrary to) but of what seems to me to be implicit in how you write about these things. You say (and I agree) that some skeptics have “spiritual experiences” and some religious people don’t; but I think no one reading the rest of what you write would get that impression.
I am not saying “lisper says X is normal; therefore lisper says not-X is abnormal”. Not at all. I am pointing at an instance where you wrote something more specific. I quoted it before; let me quote it again. “it might be an indication of a normal part of the wiring of the human brain that is missing from their brains”. (Emphasis yours.) What would count as “abnormal”, if having a normal part of the wiring of the human brain missing from your brain doesn’t?
Again it seems that you’re taking me to argue that if you think something is normal then you have to think its opposite is abnormal. I agree that you needn’t do any such thing, and that is not the argument I was making. (See above.)
“Some people get sick when they consume dairy products” would do pretty well. If more detail is required: “Children’s bodies produce an enzyme called lactase that breaks down one of the constituents in milk. Many adults’ bodies don’t, and if those people drink milk or eat things made from milk they feel ill afterwards. Some adults’ bodies do, especially in Western Europe and places colonized by Western Europeans. Those people can digest milk products without feeling bad.”
Or, if we need a brief technical-sounding term: “lactase nonpersistence”.
You know, I was hoping you might be specific. (I see that you give one specific example below, on which I will comment in a moment; it doesn’t seem to me that it actually supports what you’re saying.)
I hope you won’t be offended by my saying this, but given your apparent inability in this discussion to state your thesis without using terms that (so it seems to me, and so it might plausibly have seemed to Richard Dawkins if you did the same in conversation with him) represent these believers as being better than skeptics who don’t share their experiences, it seems plausible to me that what Dawkins actually took exception was those value judgements, rather than the bare assertions that, e.g., religious people sometimes have religious experiences and see those as evidence for their religion.
The specific example you give seems, actually, quite clearly not a matter of Dawkins disagreeing with the factual statements you’ve been making about spiritual experiences (as opposed to the value judgements you’ve been making, which as I already said are not obvious and uncontroversial). He didn’t—at least, those words you will never forget didn’t—deny that the idea of God can have beneficial effects. He just indicated that, as you put it, “allowing someone to believe in something that is not objectively true is the greater evil”.
I wonder whether I’ve failed to communicate effectively what it is in what you’re saying that I think is commonplace and obvious. I suggest that you’re saying two main things. (1) Some religious people have religious experiences, and these are part of why they believe what they do, and the experiences are real experiences and very important to those people, and non-religious people talking to religious people should bear all that in mind. (2) These experiences are valuable and positive, and people who have them are normal and people who don’t have them are not normal and have something missing from their brains and are like colour-blind or deaf people.
I think #1 is obvious and commonplace. I think #2 is a matter of values and definitions more than of facts, and I do not think you have given us good reason to agree with it.
The specific thing you quote Richard Dawkins as saying contradicts neither #1 nor #2 as such (though I bet he disagrees with #2) but a further claim you haven’t explicitly made in this discussion (though you’ve made some gestures in its direction): that belief (as opposed to spiritual experiences) can have sufficiently positive consequences to make it a good thing even when incorrect. I think that’s a more plausible claim than #2 and a more controversial one (especially around here) than #1. But it isn’t what you’ve been saying here so far.
I have the impression I didn’t make it clear enough that I am not endorsing any of Motl’s criticisms. I haven’t watched your Google talk and therefore have no opinion about the correctness of any specific claims you made there, and I think Motl is a buffoon.
The one Motl claims you made in the blog post you linked to. (Again, for the avoidance of doubt, the only thing I am saying about his claim is that it’s consistent with the “opposite” criticisms you say you’ve received. I have no idea whether any of the criticisms from either side are correct because, again, I don’t know any of the details of what you have said about quantum physics.)
… you should consider the possibility that they are addressing different things you’ve said. Compare the old joke: “There is much in X’s book that is new, and much that is correct. Unfortunately, the new parts are not correct and the correct parts are not new.”
I repeat that I have no idea what you’ve said about quantum physics, and therefore no idea whether any complaint of that sort has any validity. But I might level a similar complaint at what you’ve been saying here about spiritual experiences.
First, I want to thank you for continuing to engage on this. Your feedback is very much appreciated. But we may need to agree to disagree on this.
Some people derive a net benefit from believing in deities, notwithstanding that their beliefs are objectively false. How’s that?
If you want to formulate a question to direct to Dawkins that is phrased in a way that you would accept his answer as definitive, I will forward it to him, thought it’s possible that his recent health issues might prevent him from replying in a timely manner.
In my conversations with him he more than once disagreed categorically with statements that were essentially equivalent (though not word-for-word identical) with the formulation I just gave.
At least we can agree on that! :-)
Indeed :-).
Aha, a much more objectively stated thesis. It seems quite different from the one we started out discussing, though. This one I agree is neither obviously true nor obviously false. Since it still has the value-dependent word “benefit” in, disagreement about it might stem mostly from differences in values—e.g., how to trade off being happier against having more accurate beliefs. (FWIW I think I would agree with the statement, but I suspect my estimate of what fraction of religious people really are better off on net because of their beliefs would be lower than yours.)
Yeah, I think he has other more important things on his plate than clearing up a side-issue in our discussion.
It is different, and I argued with myself over whether to include the explanation of how to get from A to B, but decided not to because the waters were muddy enough already. It’s one of these things that I thought would be obvious, but obviously (!) my intuitions about what is obvious are failing me in this case.
In any case, if you want to pursue this, I’m happy to elaborate. (Maybe I should write a followup post?) But this thread is already pretty long, maybe we should call it a day. Your call.
I have no trouble seeing a connection. If you think there’s more—an actual implication—then I may be missing something. (Or we may merely disagree, which I think is more likely.)
Feel free to elaborate or not as you please. I have no objection to calling it a day.