Benedict

• BenedictAug 10, 2014, 4:23 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: A Suite of Prag­matic Con­sid­er­a­tions in Fa­vor of Niceness

  I imagine they’d be visually distracting and take up page space, but if it’s considered that the civility benefits of having available faces attached to names are significant, there’s ways to mitigate that- have a user’s avatar or profile picture appear when rolling over a user’s name, for example, instead of being displayed on every comment whether you want to see it or not. Or some similar solution for making them immediately available but unobtrusive.

• BenedictFeb 7, 2013, 9:00 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: taelor’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Fe­bru­ary 2013

  Doc Scratch isn’t exactly the best source for rationality quotes- a guy who already knows the truth has little need to overcome flawed cognitive processes for arriving at it. Which isn’t to say the guy doesn’t say some relevant stuff:

  Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. … If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to your fate, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions. One can make either true statements or false statements about reality.

Evolu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy as “the truth-kil­ler”

• BenedictJul 22, 2012, 7:52 PM

  26 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong! (2012)

  Hey, I’m -name withheld-, going by Benedict, 18 years old in North Carolina. I was introduced to Less Wrong through HPMoR (which is fantastic) and have recently been reading through the Sequences (still wading through the hard science of the Quantum Physics sequence).

  I’m here because I have a real problem- dealing with the consequences of coming out as atheist to a Christian family. For about a year leading up to recent events, I had been trying to reconcile Christian belief with the principles of rationalism, with little success. At one point I settled into an unstable equilibrium of “believing in believing in belief” and “betting” on the truth of religious doctrine to cover the perceived small-but-noteworthy probability of its veracity and the proposed consequences thereof. I’d kept this all secret from my family, putting on a long and convincing act.

  This recently fell apart in my mind, and I confronted my dad with a shambling confession and expression of confusion and outrage against Christianity. I’m… kinda really friggin’ bad at communicating clearly through spoken dialogue, and although I managed to comport myself well enough in the conversation, my dad is unconvinced that the source of my frustrations is a conflicting belief system so much as a struggle with juvenile doubts. This is almost certainly why I haven’t yet faced social repercussions, as my dad is convinced he can “fix” my thinking. He’s a paid pastor and theologian, and has connections to all the really big names in contemporary theology- having an apostate son would damage both his pride and social status, and as such he’s powerfully motivated to attempt to “correct” me.

  After I told him about this, he handed me a book (The Reason for God by Timothy Keller) and signed himself up as a counselor for something called The Clash, described as a Christian “worldview conference”. Next week, from July 30 to August 3, he’s going to take me to this big huge realignment thing, and I’m worried I won’t be able to defend myself. I’ve been reading through the book I mentioned, and found its arguments spectacularly unconvincing- but I’m having trouble articulating why. I haven’t had enough experience with rationalism and debate to provide a strong defense, and I fear I’ll be pressured into recanting if I fail.

  That’s why I’m here- in the upcoming week, I need intensive training in the defense of rationality against very specific, weak but troubling religious excuses. I really need to talk to people better trained than me about these specific arguments, so that I can survive the upcoming conference and assert my intellectual independence. Are there people I can be put in touch with, or online meetups where I can talk to people and arm myself? Should I start a discussion post, or what? I’m unfamiliar with the site structure here, so I could use some help.

  Oh but dang if there aren’t like over a thousand comments here, jeez i don’t want to sound like i’m crying for attention but i’m TOTALLY CRYING FOR ATTENTION, srsly i need help you dudes