irrational

Karma: 213

irrational Dec 7, 2013, 5:42 AM
6 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Reasons to believe
That’s the standard scientific point of view, certainly. But would an Orthodox Bayesian agree?:) Isn’t there a very strong prior?

irrational Dec 7, 2013, 5:40 AM
0 points
in reply to: KnaveOfAllTrades’s comment on: Reasons to believe

if cognitive biases/sociology provide a substantial portion of or even all of the explanation for creationists talking about irreducible organs, then their actual counterarguments are screened off by your prior knowledge of what causes them to deploy those counterarguments; you should be less inclined to consider their arguments than a random string generator that happened to output a sentence that reads as a counterargument against natural selection.

I’ve just discovered Argument Screens Off Authority by EY, so it seems I’ve got an authority on my side too:) You can’t eliminate an argument even if it’s presented by untrustworthy people.

irrational Dec 4, 2013, 9:57 PM
2 points
in reply to: Rixie’s comment on: Initiation Ceremony
It only goes to show how we are all susceptible to power of stories, rather than able to examine them dispassionately, like a rationalist presumably should.

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 5:30 AM
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Reasons to believe
As the person who asked the question, I’d like to say that I don’t particularly care about what creationists believe either.

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 4:18 AM
5 points
in reply to: ialdabaoth’s comment on: Failing to update
Well then,
1. you should want to be powerful yourself—so certainly go and exploit the society:)
2. the powerful are really not paying for it, and if they are it’s completely peanuts to them. If you are screwing up anyone by so-called leeching, it’s the middle class:) You are not bad to “them”, they don’t care about you one way or another.
3. I am rich and powerful (compared to you, at least), and I hereby command you to do it:)

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 3:59 AM
0 points
in reply to: ialdabaoth’s comment on: Failing to update
I really don’t see what your usefulness/uselessness to powerful people has to do with you being bad. I can’t even imagine what premises you are relying on for such a statement.

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 3:41 AM
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I think it better be true that both of these are falsifiable (and they both are). I agree that the former is overwhelmingly likely and no one I’d care to talk to disputes it. In any event I am only talking about the latter. The fact that it completely explains the variety of life on Earth is the very thing I am accepting on faith, and that’s what I don’t like.

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 3:35 AM
2 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Reasons to believe
Essentially none. I have a lot of evidence of science being right (at least as far as I can reasonably tell) in some other subject areas such as parts of physics, chemistry, cognitive science, etc.

I’ve read some FAQs on both, but it doesn’t count as verification. I suppose I can look at the map of S. America and Africa and see coastlines roughly match, that is some evidence for plate tectonics. Also, as I mentioned in reply to other comments, it seems correct that with genetics being right (that I strongly believe), natural selection would certainly work to cause some species to change. I think even creationists nowadays are forced to agree with this.

irrational Dec 3, 2013, 3:28 AM
1 point
in reply to: KnaveOfAllTrades’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I think you are interpreting my comments with too much emphasis on specific examples I give. Sure, Earth being 1 million years old is unlikely, but there could be some equally embarrassing artifact or contradictory evidence. I can’t give a realistic example because I haven’t studied the problem—that’s my whole point. You seem to be saying that the Theory of Evolution is unfalsifiable, at least in practice. That would be a bad thing, not a good thing. Besides, surely, if someone runs cryptological analysis software on the DNA of E. Coli, and get back “(C) Microsoft Corp.”, that would rather undermine the theory?:)

In actuality, for me it comes down to trust: I expect if there was important contradictory evidence, someone would report it. Creationists think that biologists are all in on a conspiracy to hide the truth and would not change their mind if they see such evidence—that is rather unlikely from my point of view. That is to say, like you, I am not spending a lot of time evaluating the underlying facts because I think one side is reliable and the other is not. But it feels wrong to me to ignore evidence because of who says it. I understand your argument that you expect some evidence to be presented by them and that makes it unnecessary to examine it, but I think you are wrong. You do have to examine it in case it turns out that their evidence is in fact overwhelming your prior. They could be right in a specific case even if it’s unlikely. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 10:25 PM
0 points
in reply to: KnaveOfAllTrades’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I agree that certainly some evolution would follow from your premises (1) and (2). But imagine that we also have independent evidence that Earth is 1 million years old. In that case, I’d be forced to say that the Theory of Evolution can’t account for the evidence of life we observe, given mutation rates, etc. This is the sort of thing I am worried about when I say I haven’t looked at the evidence. As far as I know there isn’t any contradictory evidence of this sort, but there may be specific challenges that aren’t well-explained. Creationists like to cite irreducible organs and claim that those exist (i.e. where it can’t evolve from anything that has any evolutionary advantage) and are contrary to the theory. I know about this objection, but it would be a lot of work to truly evaluate it in depth.

As far as having an alternative: this isn’t necessary. I’d be reluctant to go with “God did it”, so I’d be fine with “the theory explains 95% of the evidence, and about the other 5% we don’t know yet, and we have no better theory”.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 9:39 PM
0 points
in reply to: scientism’s comment on: Reasons to believe
That’s very useful, actually. I think I have a tendency to just accept the latest medical theory/practice as being the best guess that the most qualified people made with the current state of evidence. Which may be really suboptimal if they don’t have a lot of evidence for it, and perhaps it should be independently examined if it concerns you personally. I am not sure what degree of belief to assign such things, though, because I have no experience with them.

Do you, or anyone, have an idea of how trustworthy such things generally are, in the modern age? Are there statistics about how often mainstream approaches are later proven to be harmful (and how often merely suboptimal)?

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 6:34 PM
0 points
in reply to: scientism’s comment on: Reasons to believe

If you’d deferred to the leading authorities over the past 100 years, you would have been an introspectionist, then a behaviourist, then a cognitive scientist and now you’d probably be a cognitive neuroscientist.

I think you are right, but is it so bad? If I were living at the time of the introspectionists, was there a better alternative for me? I suspect that unless I personally worked out some other theory (unlikely), I’d have to either take that one or something equally bad. Maybe it’s slightly different around boundaries of these paradigm shifts where I could possibly adopt the new ideas before the mainstream did, but most of the time it wouldn’t happen. I am far from being confident that I’d do a better job personally then the general consensus, even if that tends to be very conservative.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 5:54 PM
3 points
in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Reasons to believe
What you are talking about is a lay sense of evolution. Sure, things change, and the more adapted thing should survive with higher frequency, this much is obvious even to creationists. It is also obvious to me (as it was to Aristotle), that things which are in motion tend to come to rest. Turns out, it’s not really true. Just because a theory is intuitive, doesn’t mean that’s how the world really works. You only need to think about Heliocentrism, let alone something like quantum physics.

One problem that Darwin had was the lack of mechanism for evolution (i.e. genetics). If I were alive at the time he wrote his books, I would have liked his theory, but would have been forced to acknowledge that it does not truly explain how the world works. I am told that now this is all solved, but have been taking that largely on faith.

It also may be that the theory is wrong, but there is no better theory to replace it, a la physics in 1900. If that were the case, I’d like to know that too.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 5:44 PM
2 points
in reply to: solipsist’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing as well. There are lots of books published by creationists and I am sure they are quite compelling (I haven’t actually read those either), otherwise they wouldn’t write those. Essentially, reading someone’s summary is again putting yourself into the hands of whoever wrote it. If they have an agenda, you’ll likely end up believing it. So, really, you need to read both sides, compare their arguments, etc. Lots of work.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 5:41 PM
0 points
in reply to: JQuinton’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I don’t think I can have “knowledge” in Science. It’s done by humans, therefore it makes errors. For any given proposition, if I examine the evidence and find it compelling, sure. But my whole point is whether I can rely on it without specifically examining it.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 7:38 AM
2 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Reasons to believe
That’s a good point. I suppose it has no practical implications for me, except that I’d like to have an accurate model of how the Universe works. Although if I were a young-earth creationist, it would have mattered a lot.

But let’s take global warming. That one does matter in a practical sense.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 6:56 AM
0 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Reasons to believe
I am not sure I got that. Is “the question I am asking now” referring to a theory whose truthfulness I am evaluating? And “the asked in past” the ones whose truthfulness I have verified? It’s confusing because chronologically it’s the other way around: most of these theories are old and were accepted by me on faith since school days, and I could only verify a few of them as I grew older.

irrational Dec 2, 2013, 6:45 AM
2 points
in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Reasons to believe
Thanks, that was interesting, although didn’t specifically address my question.

irrational 2 Dec 2013 5:55 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013
I think the whole experience is also interesting on a meta-level. Since programming is essentially the same as logical reasoning, it goes to show that humans are very nearly incapable of creating long chains of reasoning without making mistakes, often extremely subtle ones. Sometimes finding them provides insight (especially in multi-threaded code or with memory manipulation), although most often it’s just you failing to pay attention.

Reasons to believe

irrational2 Dec 2013 5:44 UTC

12 points

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irrational

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Reasons to believe