It’s very rare that a precommitment to holding a belief in spite of the evidence is the best way to investigate a topic related to that belief.
What valid very rare cases of this do you think of? One that comes to my mind is that at least might be valid is that of “faking it ‘till you make it”. People precommit to holding a belief for a while in spite of the evidence in order to improve qualities that depend on them holding that belief. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find conclusive studies on whether “faking it ‘till you make it” works for psychological improvement in general with a quick search. The closest that I have found is a study linked to from the Wikipedia page on the placebo effect that shows a specific case in which placebo is shown to work without deception on the doctors’ part (i.e., they tell patients it’s a placebo).
In my hypothetical I imagine belief in ghosts to be a belief that is very harmful conditional on it being true and you holding it. Can you suggest a better way to investigate it or do you think that it isn’t a valid very rare case even though no such way exists?
(Also, in case this played some role in why my original comment got downvoted, I would like to clarify to I do not consciously hold the belief that “ghosts will try to scare you to death” or other beliefs contingent on the existence of ghosts in reality. My real belief is probably closer to “Entities that are only able to interact with people’s minds make for interesting fictional scenarios.”)
OK. In that scenario, the correct thing to do would be: 1) If I currently believe in ghosts (that is, if my confidence that ghosts exist rises above the threshold of belief), get the hell out of there. 2) Ask myself what I would differentially expect to observe if ghosts existed or didn’t, and look for those things (while continuing to follow #1), and modify my confidence that ghosts exist based on my observations. If at any point my confidence crosses the threshold of belief in either direction, re-evaluate rule #1.
I don’t see what value committing to a belief (either way) without reference to observed evidence would provide in that scenario.
2) Ask myself what I would differentially expect to observe if ghosts existed or didn’t, and look for those things
The tricky part about this is establishing how much weird stuff you’d expect to see in the absence of ghosts. There will always be unexplained phenomena, but how many is too many?
Establishing that would be helpful, but is not necessary to get started.
Either there’s more weird stuff in this house than outside of it, or there isn’t. If there is, that should increase my confidence that there’s something weird-stuff-related in this house. If there isn’t, that should decrease my confidence.
If I’m confident that ghosts are weird-stuff-related, the second case should decrease my confidence that there are ghosts in this house, and the first case should increase it.
What valid very rare cases of this do you think of? One that comes to my mind is that at least might be valid is that of “faking it ‘till you make it”. People precommit to holding a belief for a while in spite of the evidence in order to improve qualities that depend on them holding that belief. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find conclusive studies on whether “faking it ‘till you make it” works for psychological improvement in general with a quick search. The closest that I have found is a study linked to from the Wikipedia page on the placebo effect that shows a specific case in which placebo is shown to work without deception on the doctors’ part (i.e., they tell patients it’s a placebo).
In my hypothetical I imagine belief in ghosts to be a belief that is very harmful conditional on it being true and you holding it. Can you suggest a better way to investigate it or do you think that it isn’t a valid very rare case even though no such way exists?
(Also, in case this played some role in why my original comment got downvoted, I would like to clarify to I do not consciously hold the belief that “ghosts will try to scare you to death” or other beliefs contingent on the existence of ghosts in reality. My real belief is probably closer to “Entities that are only able to interact with people’s minds make for interesting fictional scenarios.”)
Edit: fixed links. Edit 2: spelling and extra ).
Just to clarify: is the above equivalent to “if ghost exist, belief in ghosts is very harmful to the believer”?
Yes.
OK. In that scenario, the correct thing to do would be:
1) If I currently believe in ghosts (that is, if my confidence that ghosts exist rises above the threshold of belief), get the hell out of there.
2) Ask myself what I would differentially expect to observe if ghosts existed or didn’t, and look for those things (while continuing to follow #1), and modify my confidence that ghosts exist based on my observations. If at any point my confidence crosses the threshold of belief in either direction, re-evaluate rule #1.
I don’t see what value committing to a belief (either way) without reference to observed evidence would provide in that scenario.
The tricky part about this is establishing how much weird stuff you’d expect to see in the absence of ghosts. There will always be unexplained phenomena, but how many is too many?
Establishing that would be helpful, but is not necessary to get started.
Either there’s more weird stuff in this house than outside of it, or there isn’t.
If there is, that should increase my confidence that there’s something weird-stuff-related in this house.
If there isn’t, that should decrease my confidence.
If I’m confident that ghosts are weird-stuff-related, the second case should decrease my confidence that there are ghosts in this house, and the first case should increase it.