There are different standards for what to consider sane. At least among ourselves, we should raise the sanity waterline. But as the word is normally used, informed and rational theists are considered possible.
I would like you to elaborate more. I gave an argument in favor of being a theist. I have seen few good ones in favor of being an atheist.
I’m not at all convinced that atheism is the best epistemic position (most epistemically rational). I’m an atheist for purely methodological reasons, since I’m a philosopher, and dead dogma is dangerous. I could see someone being a theist for purely instrumental reasons, or by default since it’s not a very important question.
“I have seen few good ones in favor of being an atheist.”
That misses the point. Atheism is the null hypothesis; it’s the default. In the complete absence of evidence, non-commitment to any assertion is required.
They key point is that when you do the p value test you are determining p(data | null_hyp). This is certainly useful to calculate, but doesn’t tell you the whole story about whether your data support any particular non-null hypotheses.
Chapter 17 of E.T. Jaynes’ book provides a lively discussion of the limitations of traditional hypothesis testing, and is accessible enough that you can dive into it without having worked through the rest of the book.
The Cohen article cited below is nice but it’s important to note it doesn’t completely reject the use of null hypotheses or p-values:
.. null hypothesis testing complete with power analysis can be useful if we abandon the rejection of point nil hypotheses and use instead “good-enough” range null hypotheses
I think it’s funny that the observation that it’s “non-Bayesian” is being treated here as a refutation, and got voted up. Not terribly surprising though.
Could you be more explicit here? I would also have considered that if the charge of non-Bayesianness were to stick, that would be tantamount to a refutation, so if I’m making a mistake then help me out?
The charge was not that the idea is not useful, nor that it is not true, either of which might be a mark against it. But “non-Bayesian”? I can’t unpack that accusation in a way that makes it seem like a good thing to be concerned about. Even putting aside that I don’t much care for Bayesian decision-making (for humans), it sounds like it’s in the same family as a charge of “non-Christian”.
One analogy: non-mathematical, not formalized, not written in English, and attempts to translate generally fail.
See [*] for a critique of null hypothesis and related techniques from a Bayesian perspective. To cite:
My work in power analysis led be to realize that the nil hypothesis is always false. [...] If it is false, even to a tiny degree, it must be the case that a large enough sample will produce a significant result and lead to its rejection. So if the null hypothesis is always false, what’s the big deal about rejecting it?
[*] J. Cohen (1994). `The Earth Is Round (p < .05)’. American Psychologist 49(12):997-1003. [pdf].
But atheism isn’t actually the default. A person must begin study at some point in his life—you start from where you actually are. Most people I’m aware of begin their adult lives as theists. Without a compelling reason to change this belief, I wouldn’t expect them to.
Well… yes, it is. I do not know of any theistic infants. Actually, I’m not aware that infants have any beliefs as such.
Young children seem predisposed to attribute things to powerful but non-present entities, but I’m fairly certain there are logical fallacies involved.
The fact that many people accept certain concepts as given without questioning them thoroughly—or at all—does not constitute a justification for believing those things. I have often heard the claim that philosophy does not attempt to examine premises but only to project and study the consequences of the premises people bring to it; I consider that to be one of the reasons why ‘philosophy’ is without merit.
It seems that Annoyance and thomblake are using different definitions of “default”.
Annoyance uses it the same as null hypothesis, the theory with the smallest complexity and therefore the best prior probability, that any other theory needs evidence to compete with. In this sense, atheism is the default position, supposing that the universe follows mindless laws of nature without the need for initial setup or continuous intervention by any sort of intelligent power is simpler than supposing the universe acts the same way because some unexplained deity wills it. This definition is useful to figure out what our beliefs ought to be.
Thomblake seems to mean by “default”, the belief one had when achieving their current level of rationality, that they will keep until they find a reason to change it. For most people, who are introduced to a religion at young age before they get a chance to learn much about anything approaching rationality, some sort of theism would be this default. This definition is useful to figure out why people believe what they believe, and how to convince them to change their beliefs.
Now, I am not sure what we mean by “sanity”, but I think someone who maintains a default position (in thomblake’s sense) that they would not have adopted if first presented in their current level of rationality, while they may benifet from achieving an even higher level of rationality (or simply haven’t reviewed all their default positions), they are not necessarily incapable of achieving the higher level.
You keep doing this. Simply stating the opposite of another statement is not helping. Even if you clarify a little later it seems to be indirectly and without a solid response to the original point.
Well… yes, it is. I do not know of any theistic infants. Actually, I’m not aware that infants have any beliefs as such.
Infants without beliefs do not last long. They get beliefs eventually. Trying to argue this point just pushes the relevant stuff up the tree and makes the argument about semantics that are not particularly useful for the topic at hand.
And… are you saying that the null hypothesis is whatever an infant believes? How is that useful? I think it degrades definitions of things like “atheism” by saying that if you make no choice it is the same as making the correct choice. Coming to the correct conclusion for the wrong reason is the wrong solution.
Young children seem predisposed to attribute things to powerful but non-present entities, but I’m fairly certain there are logical fallacies involved.
The null hypothesis could be wrong. Logical fallacies are irrelevant.
The fact that many people accept certain concepts as given without questioning them thoroughly—or at all—does not constitute a justification for believing those things. I have often heard the claim that philosophy does not attempt to examine premises but only to project and study the consequences of the premises people bring to it; I consider that to be one of the reasons why ‘philosophy’ is without merit.
This is irrelevant to the topic. So, at the end, I spent my time telling you your comment was mostly irrelevant. I should just downvote and bury it like I did the other one.
I just noticed that “-1 points” is plural. Is that correct for negative numbers?
Yes, that’s one of the odd things about plurality, and why I argue that it’s a silly thing to encode in so much of our language. Singular means exactly one, plural means any other number. Sometimes we use the singular and “of a” for fractions, like “one quarter of a pie”, but “0.25 pies” is also correct.
“That wasn’t a loaded question. That was asking for clarification.”
No, clarification is when you have an imprecise idea and ask someone to provide more content to make it clearer. What you did was ask about something that was neither said nor implied.
I have no interest in denying the infinite number of meanings I don’t express in any given post, only in discussing the meanings I do express. Feel free to ask questions about those.
I am frankly amazed that so simple and evident an assertion should receive so many negative votes. (Not surprised, merely amazed. It would have to violate my expectations to be a surprise.)
Can I assert that Santa Claus does not exist and cannot be rationally considered to exist without receiving similar votes, or do I need to review the demonstration of why such is the case to avoid the wrath of the voters?
A more pertinent question: why should any of us care about negative votes when they’re given out so poorly?
I didn’t vote the post in question up or down, but I would speculate that it was received negatively simply because the tone came across as rude.
There’s sometimes a tendency in rationalists to observe (accurately) that our society overemphasizes politeness over frankness, and then to take it upon ourselves to correct this. Unfortunately, being human, we tend to do this selectively: by being ruder to others, sometimes to an overcompensating extent, while still reacting poorly to the rudeness of others. At least, that’s an issue I’ve had in the past. Your mileage may vary.
My personal take on it is that keeping to the standard level of etiquette is less trouble than the alternative, especially when trying to function in a conversational setting with a wide range of people. The metaphor of apparently unnecessary politeness as a “social lubricant” of sorts has been helpful to me in this regard.
But as I said, I’m only guessing here. I think you’d be within your rights to simply stop caring about the votes you get, be they positive or negative. Just be aware that you may be giving up on useful feedback information that way.
There’s sometimes a tendency in rationalists to observe (accurately) that our society overemphasizes politeness over frankness, and then to take it upon ourselves to correct this.
Great comment, agreed on all points. One of my mottos is “As polite as possible; as rude as necessary”.
I can’t see anything in Annoyance’s writings that could not be conveyed with less rudeness except their urge to ensure we all understand the contempt they hold us all in.
I like that motto a lot. Another one that bears on this is Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.”
In the case of wanting to deemphasize politeness, this would suggest being more lenient in the amount of rudeness you allow from others, but not increasing it in your output. Sort of the principle behind Crocker’s Rules.
My downvote (along with most others I presume) is not about agreement, but about whether you are adding anything useful to the discussion. Argument by repeated assertion is not supposed to be a staple of rationalist discourse. Either it’s worth your time to provide some links to an actual argument or it isn’t.
Do you really expect points for needing to get in the last word?
Your statement was simply wrong, by most commonly used definitions of sanity. Try pleading insanity in court based purely on a belief in god. Your comment also added nothing of value to the discussion.
The rational thing to do when you get downvoted would be to at least consider the possibility that your own judgement is at fault rather than assuming it is proof that negative votes are given out without good reason.
The assumption of both above comments is that there can be multiple commonly-used definitions of a word. Annoyance is using one of the commonly-used definitions that doesn’t fit into the ‘most’ above. He asserts that the other definitions are not only incorrect but insane, and I think this answers your question—a definition can be incorrect in the case that it is insane. Though I think calling a definition ‘insane’ is an odd use of the word.
I think you have to remember that saying something obvious is not the same as saying something useful. If someone came by and said “It is rational to believe in Santa Claus” it does not help to say “No it isn’t. Sorry, can’t elaborate.”
I would have to write an entire post—and a quite lengthy one at that—to do justice to the demonstration, and it’s already common knowledge.
If repeating something short and simple that’s already been said is so undesirable, why in the world would I wish to post something large, complex, and cumbrous that’s already widely known? Why would any of you wish me to do so?
Sorry, I deleted my comment because two other people basically said the same thing. I was hoping to get it out before you responded. My bad.
I am not necessarily saying I would rather you post a huge wall of text. Personally, I would just link to a good summary of the material and say, “This has been covered before.”
Another way to respond would be to play coy and ask for more details. This, at the very least, encourages more dialogue.
Another solution is to just not respond at all.
None of these are particularly fun, but I like to think you can at least avoid the negative response from the community.
“No, but one can be fairly informed, sane, and a theist.”
No.
I wish I could elaborate more, but your statement is simply wrong. In our world, with our evidence, sanity and being informed rule out theism.
There are different standards for what to consider sane. At least among ourselves, we should raise the sanity waterline. But as the word is normally used, informed and rational theists are considered possible.
Not sure I disagree with your position, but I voted down because simply stating that your opponent is wrong doesn’t seem adequate.
I would like you to elaborate more. I gave an argument in favor of being a theist. I have seen few good ones in favor of being an atheist.
I’m not at all convinced that atheism is the best epistemic position (most epistemically rational). I’m an atheist for purely methodological reasons, since I’m a philosopher, and dead dogma is dangerous. I could see someone being a theist for purely instrumental reasons, or by default since it’s not a very important question.
“I have seen few good ones in favor of being an atheist.”
That misses the point. Atheism is the null hypothesis; it’s the default. In the complete absence of evidence, non-commitment to any assertion is required.
The idea of a null hypothesis is non-Bayesian.
A null hypothesis in Bayesian terms is a theory with a high prior probability due to minimal complexity.
I’m not sure it’s so clear cut.
They key point is that when you do the p value test you are determining p(data | null_hyp). This is certainly useful to calculate, but doesn’t tell you the whole story about whether your data support any particular non-null hypotheses.
Chapter 17 of E.T. Jaynes’ book provides a lively discussion of the limitations of traditional hypothesis testing, and is accessible enough that you can dive into it without having worked through the rest of the book.
The Cohen article cited below is nice but it’s important to note it doesn’t completely reject the use of null hypotheses or p-values:
I think it’s funny that the observation that it’s “non-Bayesian” is being treated here as a refutation, and got voted up. Not terribly surprising though.
Could you be more explicit here? I would also have considered that if the charge of non-Bayesianness were to stick, that would be tantamount to a refutation, so if I’m making a mistake then help me out?
The charge was not that the idea is not useful, nor that it is not true, either of which might be a mark against it. But “non-Bayesian”? I can’t unpack that accusation in a way that makes it seem like a good thing to be concerned about. Even putting aside that I don’t much care for Bayesian decision-making (for humans), it sounds like it’s in the same family as a charge of “non-Christian”.
One analogy: non-mathematical, not formalized, not written in English, and attempts to translate generally fail.
See [*] for a critique of null hypothesis and related techniques from a Bayesian perspective. To cite:
[*] J. Cohen (1994). `The Earth Is Round (p < .05)’. American Psychologist 49(12):997-1003. [pdf].
Being non-Bayesian is one particular type of being untrue.
Now, what does this mean? Sounds horribly untrue.
But atheism isn’t actually the default. A person must begin study at some point in his life—you start from where you actually are. Most people I’m aware of begin their adult lives as theists. Without a compelling reason to change this belief, I wouldn’t expect them to.
“But atheism isn’t actually the default.”
Well… yes, it is. I do not know of any theistic infants. Actually, I’m not aware that infants have any beliefs as such.
Young children seem predisposed to attribute things to powerful but non-present entities, but I’m fairly certain there are logical fallacies involved.
The fact that many people accept certain concepts as given without questioning them thoroughly—or at all—does not constitute a justification for believing those things. I have often heard the claim that philosophy does not attempt to examine premises but only to project and study the consequences of the premises people bring to it; I consider that to be one of the reasons why ‘philosophy’ is without merit.
It seems that Annoyance and thomblake are using different definitions of “default”.
Annoyance uses it the same as null hypothesis, the theory with the smallest complexity and therefore the best prior probability, that any other theory needs evidence to compete with. In this sense, atheism is the default position, supposing that the universe follows mindless laws of nature without the need for initial setup or continuous intervention by any sort of intelligent power is simpler than supposing the universe acts the same way because some unexplained deity wills it. This definition is useful to figure out what our beliefs ought to be.
Thomblake seems to mean by “default”, the belief one had when achieving their current level of rationality, that they will keep until they find a reason to change it. For most people, who are introduced to a religion at young age before they get a chance to learn much about anything approaching rationality, some sort of theism would be this default. This definition is useful to figure out why people believe what they believe, and how to convince them to change their beliefs.
Now, I am not sure what we mean by “sanity”, but I think someone who maintains a default position (in thomblake’s sense) that they would not have adopted if first presented in their current level of rationality, while they may benifet from achieving an even higher level of rationality (or simply haven’t reviewed all their default positions), they are not necessarily incapable of achieving the higher level.
I’m not even entirely sure that we’re all using the word ‘atheism’ to refer to the same things.
This highlights the problems that arise when people use the same terminology for different concepts.
You keep doing this. Simply stating the opposite of another statement is not helping. Even if you clarify a little later it seems to be indirectly and without a solid response to the original point.
That’s why you need to read the sentences following the one you quoted.
Infants without beliefs do not last long. They get beliefs eventually. Trying to argue this point just pushes the relevant stuff up the tree and makes the argument about semantics that are not particularly useful for the topic at hand.
And… are you saying that the null hypothesis is whatever an infant believes? How is that useful? I think it degrades definitions of things like “atheism” by saying that if you make no choice it is the same as making the correct choice. Coming to the correct conclusion for the wrong reason is the wrong solution.
The null hypothesis could be wrong. Logical fallacies are irrelevant.
This is irrelevant to the topic. So, at the end, I spent my time telling you your comment was mostly irrelevant. I should just downvote and bury it like I did the other one.
“And… are you saying that the null hypothesis is whatever an infant believes? ”
Yes, I have stopped beating my wife, thank you for asking.
I think you need to review what the concept of the null hypothesis actually is.
That wasn’t a loaded question. That was asking for clarification.
(PS) I just noticed that “-1 points” is plural. Is that correct for negative numbers?
Oddly enough, yes. “0 points” is also the standard. The singular only applies for 1.
Yes, that’s one of the odd things about plurality, and why I argue that it’s a silly thing to encode in so much of our language. Singular means exactly one, plural means any other number. Sometimes we use the singular and “of a” for fractions, like “one quarter of a pie”, but “0.25 pies” is also correct.
ETA citation
“That wasn’t a loaded question. That was asking for clarification.”
No, clarification is when you have an imprecise idea and ask someone to provide more content to make it clearer. What you did was ask about something that was neither said nor implied.
I have no interest in denying the infinite number of meanings I don’t express in any given post, only in discussing the meanings I do express. Feel free to ask questions about those.
I am frankly amazed that so simple and evident an assertion should receive so many negative votes. (Not surprised, merely amazed. It would have to violate my expectations to be a surprise.)
Can I assert that Santa Claus does not exist and cannot be rationally considered to exist without receiving similar votes, or do I need to review the demonstration of why such is the case to avoid the wrath of the voters?
A more pertinent question: why should any of us care about negative votes when they’re given out so poorly?
Downvoted because it adds nothing to what you said before. Repetition of bald assertions, even true ones, is one habit we want to avoid.
I didn’t vote the post in question up or down, but I would speculate that it was received negatively simply because the tone came across as rude.
There’s sometimes a tendency in rationalists to observe (accurately) that our society overemphasizes politeness over frankness, and then to take it upon ourselves to correct this. Unfortunately, being human, we tend to do this selectively: by being ruder to others, sometimes to an overcompensating extent, while still reacting poorly to the rudeness of others. At least, that’s an issue I’ve had in the past. Your mileage may vary.
My personal take on it is that keeping to the standard level of etiquette is less trouble than the alternative, especially when trying to function in a conversational setting with a wide range of people. The metaphor of apparently unnecessary politeness as a “social lubricant” of sorts has been helpful to me in this regard.
But as I said, I’m only guessing here. I think you’d be within your rights to simply stop caring about the votes you get, be they positive or negative. Just be aware that you may be giving up on useful feedback information that way.
Great comment, agreed on all points. One of my mottos is “As polite as possible; as rude as necessary”.
I can’t see anything in Annoyance’s writings that could not be conveyed with less rudeness except their urge to ensure we all understand the contempt they hold us all in.
I like that motto a lot. Another one that bears on this is Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.”
In the case of wanting to deemphasize politeness, this would suggest being more lenient in the amount of rudeness you allow from others, but not increasing it in your output. Sort of the principle behind Crocker’s Rules.
That comment could equally well have gone in “The ideas you’re not ready to post,” come to think of it.
And, then again, some people just enjoy being obnoxious.
My downvote (along with most others I presume) is not about agreement, but about whether you are adding anything useful to the discussion. Argument by repeated assertion is not supposed to be a staple of rationalist discourse. Either it’s worth your time to provide some links to an actual argument or it isn’t.
Do you really expect points for needing to get in the last word?
Your statement was simply wrong, by most commonly used definitions of sanity. Try pleading insanity in court based purely on a belief in god. Your comment also added nothing of value to the discussion.
The rational thing to do when you get downvoted would be to at least consider the possibility that your own judgement is at fault rather than assuming it is proof that negative votes are given out without good reason.
“Your statement was simply wrong, by most commonly used definitions of sanity.”
True, but not useful. The most commonly-used definitions of sanity are not only incorrect but insane.
“Your comment also added nothing of value to the discussion.”
That’s very useful feedback, indeed. Now I appreciate your thoughts and votes much more accurately.
How can a definition be incorrect?
If you find the common usage incoherent or otherwise not useful, don’t use it. To do otherwise is to lie.
The assumption of both above comments is that there can be multiple commonly-used definitions of a word. Annoyance is using one of the commonly-used definitions that doesn’t fit into the ‘most’ above. He asserts that the other definitions are not only incorrect but insane, and I think this answers your question—a definition can be incorrect in the case that it is insane. Though I think calling a definition ‘insane’ is an odd use of the word.
I think you have to remember that saying something obvious is not the same as saying something useful. If someone came by and said “It is rational to believe in Santa Claus” it does not help to say “No it isn’t. Sorry, can’t elaborate.”
I would have to write an entire post—and a quite lengthy one at that—to do justice to the demonstration, and it’s already common knowledge.
If repeating something short and simple that’s already been said is so undesirable, why in the world would I wish to post something large, complex, and cumbrous that’s already widely known? Why would any of you wish me to do so?
Sorry, I deleted my comment because two other people basically said the same thing. I was hoping to get it out before you responded. My bad.
I am not necessarily saying I would rather you post a huge wall of text. Personally, I would just link to a good summary of the material and say, “This has been covered before.”
Another way to respond would be to play coy and ask for more details. This, at the very least, encourages more dialogue.
Another solution is to just not respond at all.
None of these are particularly fun, but I like to think you can at least avoid the negative response from the community.