Personally I would discount “believed by a large number of clever people” if there are memetic effects. There are traits of beliefs that are well-known to increase the number of believers for reasons unrelated to their truth. For any belief that has such traits, whether it’s shooting unbelievers, teaching them to your children before they reach the age when they are likely to think rationally, or sending out missionaries, the large number of people who believe it is not much use in assessing its truth.
I would also discount anything which fits into certain patterns known to take advantage of flaws in human thought processes, particularly conspiracy theories.
There are just too many ways to fool oneself here. I could talk for quite a while about “memetic effects” that make e.g. atheism appeal to (a certain group of) people independent of its truth. Typically one only notices these “memetic effects” in ideas one already disagrees with.
I think for standard outside view reasons, it’s better to have an exceptionless norm that anything believed by billions of people is worth taking seriously for at least 5 minutes.
I think that it’s fairly obvious that there wouldn’t be even the relatively small percentage of seriously Christian scientists there are today if it had not been for centuries of proselytization, conversion by the sword, teaching Christianity to children from when they could talk, crusades, etc. I think it’s also fairly obvious that this is not true of the percentage of scientists who are atheists. I also think it’s obvious that it’s not true for the percentage of scientists who think that, for instance, there are an infinite number of twin primes.
Typically one only notices these “memetic effects” in ideas one already disagrees with.
Really? I haven’t heard anyone say “nobody would think there are infinitely many twin primes if they hadn’t been taught that as a 4 year old and forced to verbally affirm the infinity of twin primes every Sunday for the next few decades”. It just is not something that is said, or can sensibly be said, for any idea that one disagrees with.
Your choice of twin primes as an example is kind of odd; implicitly, we are discussing the cluster of ideas that are controversial in some ideological sense.
To be clear, I agree that ideas often spread for reasons other than their truth. I agree that because of this, if you are careful, you can use the history of religion as ancillary evidence against theism.
But in general, you have to be really, really careful not to use “memetic effects” as just another excuse to stop listening to people (LessWrong’s main danger is that it is full of such excuses). Sometimes true ideas spread for bad reasons. Sometimes what looks like a bad reason appears so because of your own ideology.
I’m not saying become a theist, or read huge treatises on theology. I’m saying give theism the 5 minutes of serious consideration (e.g., listening to a smart proponent) owed a belief held by a very large fraction of the planet.
This sort of thing is exactly why I don’t think the argument in question is correct and why I’m comfortable with my own Pr(God) being orders of magnitude smaller than the fraction of theists in the educated population.
However, simplicio is right that by taking this sort of view one becomes more vulnerable to closed-mindedness. The price of being more confident when right is being less persuadable when wrong. I think simplicio’s second paragraph has it pretty much exactly right: in cases where you’re disagreeing starkly with a lot of smart people, don’t adjust your probabilities, adjust your behaviour and give the improbable hypothesis more consideration and more time than your current estimate of its probability would justify on its own.
Personally I would discount “believed by a large number of clever people” if there are memetic effects. There are traits of beliefs that are well-known to increase the number of believers for reasons unrelated to their truth. For any belief that has such traits, whether it’s shooting unbelievers, teaching them to your children before they reach the age when they are likely to think rationally, or sending out missionaries, the large number of people who believe it is not much use in assessing its truth.
I would also discount anything which fits into certain patterns known to take advantage of flaws in human thought processes, particularly conspiracy theories.
There are just too many ways to fool oneself here. I could talk for quite a while about “memetic effects” that make e.g. atheism appeal to (a certain group of) people independent of its truth. Typically one only notices these “memetic effects” in ideas one already disagrees with.
I think for standard outside view reasons, it’s better to have an exceptionless norm that anything believed by billions of people is worth taking seriously for at least 5 minutes.
I think that it’s fairly obvious that there wouldn’t be even the relatively small percentage of seriously Christian scientists there are today if it had not been for centuries of proselytization, conversion by the sword, teaching Christianity to children from when they could talk, crusades, etc. I think it’s also fairly obvious that this is not true of the percentage of scientists who are atheists. I also think it’s obvious that it’s not true for the percentage of scientists who think that, for instance, there are an infinite number of twin primes.
Really? I haven’t heard anyone say “nobody would think there are infinitely many twin primes if they hadn’t been taught that as a 4 year old and forced to verbally affirm the infinity of twin primes every Sunday for the next few decades”. It just is not something that is said, or can sensibly be said, for any idea that one disagrees with.
Your choice of twin primes as an example is kind of odd; implicitly, we are discussing the cluster of ideas that are controversial in some ideological sense.
To be clear, I agree that ideas often spread for reasons other than their truth. I agree that because of this, if you are careful, you can use the history of religion as ancillary evidence against theism.
But in general, you have to be really, really careful not to use “memetic effects” as just another excuse to stop listening to people (LessWrong’s main danger is that it is full of such excuses). Sometimes true ideas spread for bad reasons. Sometimes what looks like a bad reason appears so because of your own ideology.
I’m not saying become a theist, or read huge treatises on theology. I’m saying give theism the 5 minutes of serious consideration (e.g., listening to a smart proponent) owed a belief held by a very large fraction of the planet.
This sort of thing is exactly why I don’t think the argument in question is correct and why I’m comfortable with my own Pr(God) being orders of magnitude smaller than the fraction of theists in the educated population.
However, simplicio is right that by taking this sort of view one becomes more vulnerable to closed-mindedness. The price of being more confident when right is being less persuadable when wrong. I think simplicio’s second paragraph has it pretty much exactly right: in cases where you’re disagreeing starkly with a lot of smart people, don’t adjust your probabilities, adjust your behaviour and give the improbable hypothesis more consideration and more time than your current estimate of its probability would justify on its own.