You say you want to convince people “without having to shorten all of the freaking Inferential Distance”. Yet you seem not to realize that to do so would be to practice a Dark Art.
Yes, exactly. Telling someone that the experiences which have convinced them of their religious beliefs aren’t actually strong evidence for those beliefs requires explaining at minimum* Occam’s Razor and Bayesian statistics. I’ve tried shortcuts, such as saying “it’s just like how a patient is usually less qualified to diagnose their symptoms than a doctor,” but that has never succeeded in conveying the message. If someone doesn’t actually understand why entities shouldn’t be multiplied beyond necessity and how to use evidence to evaluate claims, they’re not going to accept what you say about their claims. We can keep trying to explain these concepts, and I do, but they have to decide they want to learn them.
*It’s usually much more than just that, because religious people tend to come from a very anthropocentric worldview, where morality is objective, life has inherent meaning, human beings have souls, etc. We might speak the same language, but we’re using very different systems of thought.
Edit to add: Eliezer has a very good post on this subject which makes the point better than I did: it’s not enough just to cite Occam’s Razor, Bayes’ Theorem, etc.; there has to be understanding. Importantly, developing that understanding requires taking doubt seriously.
Even when it’s explicitly pointed out, some people seemingly cannot follow the leap from the object-level “Use Occam’s Razor! You have to see that your God is an unnecessary belief!” to the meta-level “Try to stop your mind from completing the pattern the usual way!”
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If “Occam’s Razor!” is your usual reply, your standard reply, the reply that all your friends give—then you’d better block your brain from instantly completing that pattern, if you’re trying to instigate a true crisis of faith.
Better to think of such rules as, “Imagine what a skeptic would say—and then imagine what they would say to your response—and then imagine what else they might say, that would be harder to answer.”
Or, “Try to think the thought that hurts the most.”
And above all, the rule:
“Put forth the same level of desperate effort that it would take for a theist to reject their religion.”
Yes, exactly. Telling someone that the experiences which have convinced them of their religious beliefs aren’t actually strong evidence for those beliefs requires explaining at minimum* Occam’s Razor and Bayesian statistics.
Empirically many people deconvert for reasons that have nothing to do with Bayesianism. Indeed most former theists I know don’t even know what Bayesianism is. If this is what it would take then almost no one would ever deconvert. People can deconvert for many different reasons. Occam’s Razor or Bayesianism can be reasons, but there are a lot of other reasons that people deconvert, such as realizing that their holy texts are full of contradictions, or deciding the only reasonable interpretations of the texts are literalist ones which contradict the physical evidence.
That’s all true. My statement was intended to apply only to those people who have had “religious experiences” and are convinced because of those. In general, people become convinced of religious beliefs for a variety of reasons, and similarly can become unconvinced for a variety of reasons.
Occam’s Razor has never even been a factor in my turning: I was never looking for “the simplest theory”, only “the most consistent theory”. It is religion’s inconsistencies and predictive uselessness that did the trick for me. Perhaps Occam is implicit in that?
Consistency and predictive ability are also important for beliefs, and recognizing that religion lacks them may help turn away someone who is already feeling unsteadiness. The people about whom I’m talking are those who are absolutely convinced of their beliefs by subjective experiences (because, in my experience, these are the most difficult people against whom to argue). We can’t deny the fact of the experience, but we can deny the explanation it is claimed to support.
Yes, exactly. Telling someone that the experiences which have convinced them of their religious beliefs aren’t actually strong evidence for those beliefs requires explaining at minimum* Occam’s Razor and Bayesian statistics. I’ve tried shortcuts, such as saying “it’s just like how a patient is usually less qualified to diagnose their symptoms than a doctor,” but that has never succeeded in conveying the message. If someone doesn’t actually understand why entities shouldn’t be multiplied beyond necessity and how to use evidence to evaluate claims, they’re not going to accept what you say about their claims. We can keep trying to explain these concepts, and I do, but they have to decide they want to learn them.
*It’s usually much more than just that, because religious people tend to come from a very anthropocentric worldview, where morality is objective, life has inherent meaning, human beings have souls, etc. We might speak the same language, but we’re using very different systems of thought.
Edit to add: Eliezer has a very good post on this subject which makes the point better than I did: it’s not enough just to cite Occam’s Razor, Bayes’ Theorem, etc.; there has to be understanding. Importantly, developing that understanding requires taking doubt seriously.
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Empirically many people deconvert for reasons that have nothing to do with Bayesianism. Indeed most former theists I know don’t even know what Bayesianism is. If this is what it would take then almost no one would ever deconvert. People can deconvert for many different reasons. Occam’s Razor or Bayesianism can be reasons, but there are a lot of other reasons that people deconvert, such as realizing that their holy texts are full of contradictions, or deciding the only reasonable interpretations of the texts are literalist ones which contradict the physical evidence.
That’s all true. My statement was intended to apply only to those people who have had “religious experiences” and are convinced because of those. In general, people become convinced of religious beliefs for a variety of reasons, and similarly can become unconvinced for a variety of reasons.
Occam’s Razor has never even been a factor in my turning: I was never looking for “the simplest theory”, only “the most consistent theory”. It is religion’s inconsistencies and predictive uselessness that did the trick for me. Perhaps Occam is implicit in that?
Consistency and predictive ability are also important for beliefs, and recognizing that religion lacks them may help turn away someone who is already feeling unsteadiness. The people about whom I’m talking are those who are absolutely convinced of their beliefs by subjective experiences (because, in my experience, these are the most difficult people against whom to argue). We can’t deny the fact of the experience, but we can deny the explanation it is claimed to support.