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Rationality Matters, part 1, page 1/2
Scripted by me, drawn by 
karno.
I feel that I've finally learned enough about Bayesian rationality to try talking about some of the fundamentals... and this comic was the first result.
karno.I feel that I've finally learned enough about Bayesian rationality to try talking about some of the fundamentals... and this comic was the first result.
Category All / Comics
Species Rat
Size 740 x 1106px
File Size 209.8 kB
Listed in Folders
It sounds a lot easier than it is. Human society has never really been all that proactive, we've always been too busy with survival. The problem is to get people to stop thinking about their appetites for the moment, and that only ever really happens if you light a fire under their ass. Frankly, even this post is just a momentary lapse before I return to my various distractions.
That's true as far as it goes - but even if society as a whole isn't proactive, certain individuals and subgroups within that overall society are teaching themselves how to overcome that particular cognitive bias, and many others as well. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences is a good reference that collects a lot of useful thought about that sort of thing.
To mangle a quote - if it is to be, it's up to thee. If what you want is to change lots of peoples' minds, when simple explanation of the rational facts seems insufficient... then you want to use what the Sequences (linked to above) call the 'Dark Arts', those actions which have the power to convince people that something is true whether or not it really is. And then apply them.
For example, the final panel of the next page of Rationality Matters is as blatant and obvious an invocation of the Dark Arts as I could come up with, directly linking 'changing your mind (based on evidence)' with the 'sexual success' instinct.
For example, the final panel of the next page of Rationality Matters is as blatant and obvious an invocation of the Dark Arts as I could come up with, directly linking 'changing your mind (based on evidence)' with the 'sexual success' instinct.
So, the end-goal is to build-up to and launch a Terran Pan-Spermia project.
Why then is it so important to convince everyone to abandon their own core philosophies and adopt your own?
If I'm broke-down on the side of the road, It is not necessary that I convince you of my position that private vehicle ownership ultimately trumps public transport when all I want you to do is turn the key while I fiddle under the hood.
Why then is it so important to convince everyone to abandon their own core philosophies and adopt your own?
If I'm broke-down on the side of the road, It is not necessary that I convince you of my position that private vehicle ownership ultimately trumps public transport when all I want you to do is turn the key while I fiddle under the hood.
The reason I think others should adopt my views on rationality is because those ideas are tied into the nature of truth itself, and the finding thereof. To mangle your example, it's as if we had to build a replacement wire from scratch - including figuring out what sorts of rocks can be smelted for metals. To build a self-supporting, self-replicating off-Earth colony, we need to acquire many pieces of knowledge that, currently, /no/body knows - and the Methods of Rationality which I try to promote, such as Bayesianism, are those mental tools that help acquire new pieces of knowledge the fastest.
But there is nothing about having some degree of irrationality as one's core philosophy which precludes the discovery of objective truth.
Let's stop beating around the bush and call a spade a spade, I/we are talking about the conflict between atheism and theism and the supposed conflict between religion and science here.
It's easy to assume given how loud certain factions of the religious camp are that they all conform to the strawman you were smacking with a stick in page two, but the numbers say that the majority of people in this country have some form of religious belief, and the majority of those are of an abrahamic religion... How then can things like gay marriage, abortion, and evolution/creationism in public schools even be up for debate?
The conclusion I would derive from that is that most of those who are on the side of theism are actually quite reasonable and rational people and not the walking thought-free-zones so many in the atheistic camp seem to assume they are. The fact that their interpretation of Subjective evidence has led them to a different conclusion than yours on the existence of God has no bearing on their ability to interpret Objective evidence, those that do have difficulty parsing objective evidence have problems that go beyond the presence of a Jesus-fish on their back bumper.
The conflict between Science and Religion is wholly artificial. God as a concept is un-testable and un-falsifiable, so Science's official stance on God should be a resounding, "Meh, not my problem." But conflict is manufactured by anti-theists trying to append to many scientific theories, "..and that's why Religion is Bullshit." where it need not be. It's a situation made more Ironic by the fact that for centuries the center for scientific knowledge in the western world was the Catholic Church, (Galileo wasn't censured by the Church for contradicting Catholic Dogma with his model of the solar system; but for responding to demands that he provide evidence, something anyone has a right to demand of any scientist, for his model by calling the Pope a doody-head. It was Copernicus, a lay priest in the Catholic Church, who later found and documented evidence proving the model Galileo theorized to be the correct one and it was accepted by the Church.)
TL;DR, it is entirely possible to be reasonable and rational And be Religious to some degree. Trying to dispose of all non-rational philosophies like Religion may even be counterproductive as there is some evidence that there is a psychological Need in most humans for some kind of mystic/magic element in their worldview, that we need Ritual as part of our social bonding experience.
To put it another way, try a perspective-flip.
You may be thinking, "As far as the evidence I can observe goes, Religion is nothing but brain-wasting nonsense based on empty air and superstition. It is right and good therefor that I do whatever I can to eliminate this wasteful thought before we get on with building a better society."
What they might be seeing and hearing, "Hello, I am representing a peer group that is intensely hostile to your own, and I am here to try and talk you into going against the peer-group which you have identified with possibly for your entire conscious life all on the behest of a complete stranger."
And so are sown the seeds of unnecessary conflict.
Thank you for your time.
P.S. If the branch of a tree is annoying you, the rational and reasonable course of action is to prune the branch... not up-root the tree.
Let's stop beating around the bush and call a spade a spade, I/we are talking about the conflict between atheism and theism and the supposed conflict between religion and science here.
It's easy to assume given how loud certain factions of the religious camp are that they all conform to the strawman you were smacking with a stick in page two, but the numbers say that the majority of people in this country have some form of religious belief, and the majority of those are of an abrahamic religion... How then can things like gay marriage, abortion, and evolution/creationism in public schools even be up for debate?
The conclusion I would derive from that is that most of those who are on the side of theism are actually quite reasonable and rational people and not the walking thought-free-zones so many in the atheistic camp seem to assume they are. The fact that their interpretation of Subjective evidence has led them to a different conclusion than yours on the existence of God has no bearing on their ability to interpret Objective evidence, those that do have difficulty parsing objective evidence have problems that go beyond the presence of a Jesus-fish on their back bumper.
The conflict between Science and Religion is wholly artificial. God as a concept is un-testable and un-falsifiable, so Science's official stance on God should be a resounding, "Meh, not my problem." But conflict is manufactured by anti-theists trying to append to many scientific theories, "..and that's why Religion is Bullshit." where it need not be. It's a situation made more Ironic by the fact that for centuries the center for scientific knowledge in the western world was the Catholic Church, (Galileo wasn't censured by the Church for contradicting Catholic Dogma with his model of the solar system; but for responding to demands that he provide evidence, something anyone has a right to demand of any scientist, for his model by calling the Pope a doody-head. It was Copernicus, a lay priest in the Catholic Church, who later found and documented evidence proving the model Galileo theorized to be the correct one and it was accepted by the Church.)
TL;DR, it is entirely possible to be reasonable and rational And be Religious to some degree. Trying to dispose of all non-rational philosophies like Religion may even be counterproductive as there is some evidence that there is a psychological Need in most humans for some kind of mystic/magic element in their worldview, that we need Ritual as part of our social bonding experience.
To put it another way, try a perspective-flip.
You may be thinking, "As far as the evidence I can observe goes, Religion is nothing but brain-wasting nonsense based on empty air and superstition. It is right and good therefor that I do whatever I can to eliminate this wasteful thought before we get on with building a better society."
What they might be seeing and hearing, "Hello, I am representing a peer group that is intensely hostile to your own, and I am here to try and talk you into going against the peer-group which you have identified with possibly for your entire conscious life all on the behest of a complete stranger."
And so are sown the seeds of unnecessary conflict.
Thank you for your time.
P.S. If the branch of a tree is annoying you, the rational and reasonable course of action is to prune the branch... not up-root the tree.
Please forgive the delay in my response; I've been having some computer troubles.
I honestly hadn't realized that the issue you were most concerned with was reasoning-from-evidence vs reasoning-from-faith, but since it is, I'm comfortable talking about it. As a preliminary, I would suggest that you take a quick look at http://atheismresource.com/wp-conte.....low-Chart1.jpg , and if you feel that there's some part of the discussion rules there you don't feel you can abide by, let me know, and we can see from there if there's any remaining common ground.
To respond to the points you raise - you range a bit widely, so I'm having a bit of trouble identifying which particular points you feel are most important; so I'll try grouping the general ideas you present into individuals and groups.
If any particular person comes up with a useful idea, I'm not going to throw away the idea just because of other ideas that person has. Depending on what those other ideas are, I may take them as evidence about that person's level of reasoning ability, and thus how much effort I should put into checking for supporting evidence, but I have no problem with religious individuals who do good science.
The problem I have comes more from religious groups taken as wholes. For example, to pick a dead-letter issue to avoid issue-specific controversy, let's say that there are a largish number of firebrand preachers who pound the pulpit in favour of chattel slavery, there is a vast majority of religious 'moderates' who pretty much remain silent on the issue, and there are a scant few individuals - so scant that they can almost all be noted by name - who argue against the issue. My current perspective is that, by their silence, the majority of those religious people are the ones who create the climate which allows the firebrand extremists to preach their hatred, bigotry; by not condemning such people, they give them the opportunity to rise in power, to shape the debate, and to get their way surprisingly often in the legislatures.
It gets even worse when the specific issues involved have one side that is based on evidence, and one side that isn't. In such cases, then in order to continue to argue for the anti-evidence side, people have to start arguing against the necessity for evidence to be used in reasoning at all - http://lesswrong.com/lw/uy/dark_side_epistemology/ is a handy essay on the troubles of that mode of arguing. (In fact, just about all of LessWrong is worth reading, especially the Sequences, http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences .)
And once there is a significant segment of religious people who argue against the value of using evidence-based reasoning at all... then there will be that many fewer people using such reasoning /to/ come up with valuable new ideas, thus slowing down the discovery thereof, thus pushing the date we can create self-sustaining off-Earth colonies later and later... perhaps just enough to be /too/ late.
The question of what /tactics/ can be used to minimize such an effect is another matter entirely - and one which I'm still working on an answer. I rather suspect that it may involve the use of the 'rationalist dark arts', those techniques which can persuade a person of an idea regardless of the truth of that idea, which brings in significant ethical questions even when applied in the service of true ideas. Whether any individual tactic helps or harms is a discussion worth having - though, perhaps, it might be better had on a forum dedicated to such things, rather than the comments page of a particular image on another subculture's website. :)
I honestly hadn't realized that the issue you were most concerned with was reasoning-from-evidence vs reasoning-from-faith, but since it is, I'm comfortable talking about it. As a preliminary, I would suggest that you take a quick look at http://atheismresource.com/wp-conte.....low-Chart1.jpg , and if you feel that there's some part of the discussion rules there you don't feel you can abide by, let me know, and we can see from there if there's any remaining common ground.
To respond to the points you raise - you range a bit widely, so I'm having a bit of trouble identifying which particular points you feel are most important; so I'll try grouping the general ideas you present into individuals and groups.
If any particular person comes up with a useful idea, I'm not going to throw away the idea just because of other ideas that person has. Depending on what those other ideas are, I may take them as evidence about that person's level of reasoning ability, and thus how much effort I should put into checking for supporting evidence, but I have no problem with religious individuals who do good science.
The problem I have comes more from religious groups taken as wholes. For example, to pick a dead-letter issue to avoid issue-specific controversy, let's say that there are a largish number of firebrand preachers who pound the pulpit in favour of chattel slavery, there is a vast majority of religious 'moderates' who pretty much remain silent on the issue, and there are a scant few individuals - so scant that they can almost all be noted by name - who argue against the issue. My current perspective is that, by their silence, the majority of those religious people are the ones who create the climate which allows the firebrand extremists to preach their hatred, bigotry; by not condemning such people, they give them the opportunity to rise in power, to shape the debate, and to get their way surprisingly often in the legislatures.
It gets even worse when the specific issues involved have one side that is based on evidence, and one side that isn't. In such cases, then in order to continue to argue for the anti-evidence side, people have to start arguing against the necessity for evidence to be used in reasoning at all - http://lesswrong.com/lw/uy/dark_side_epistemology/ is a handy essay on the troubles of that mode of arguing. (In fact, just about all of LessWrong is worth reading, especially the Sequences, http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences .)
And once there is a significant segment of religious people who argue against the value of using evidence-based reasoning at all... then there will be that many fewer people using such reasoning /to/ come up with valuable new ideas, thus slowing down the discovery thereof, thus pushing the date we can create self-sustaining off-Earth colonies later and later... perhaps just enough to be /too/ late.
The question of what /tactics/ can be used to minimize such an effect is another matter entirely - and one which I'm still working on an answer. I rather suspect that it may involve the use of the 'rationalist dark arts', those techniques which can persuade a person of an idea regardless of the truth of that idea, which brings in significant ethical questions even when applied in the service of true ideas. Whether any individual tactic helps or harms is a discussion worth having - though, perhaps, it might be better had on a forum dedicated to such things, rather than the comments page of a particular image on another subculture's website. :)
Please forgive my late reply as well.
Also, sorry for scooting all over the place with my earlier response, I seem to have committed the faux pas of rambling on a single clear point I was focused on... without letting you in on what that point was beforehand.
Now, on to the points...
"I honestly hadn't realized that the issue you were most concerned with was reasoning-from-evidence vs reasoning-from-faith, but since it is..."
Um, no.. no that's actually not what I was concerned about.
Disclosure time, I am not myself a religious person, my personal beliefs along those lines are more agnostic.. but I socially interact with a lot of religious people.
"If any particular person comes up with a useful idea, I'm not going to throw away the idea just because of other ideas that person has. Depending on what those other ideas are, I may take them as evidence about that person's level of reasoning ability, and thus how much effort I should put into checking for supporting evidence, but I have no problem with religious individuals who do good science."
Well thanks for that at least.
My baseline argument is more towards I guess you would call it Utilitarianism. If it is possible to encourage people to do things which are generally helpful and discourage them from doing things that are generally inconvenient or harmful without trying to convince them to give-up certain fundamentals of their personal philosophy then that should be pursued, and asking them to do so anyway is an unnecessary and even rude imposition.
The anti-theist argument as I understand it seems to be that the most general good that can be gained would be from convincing all or most of the people to become rational atheists who apply objective reasoning to every facet of their lives.
Two problems I have with that. 1) To my knowledge the majority of human minds just flat don't work that way nor were they intended to work that way.. ('That way' being 100% rational 100% of the time) 2) Religion as it relates to human beings is much more complex than that.
Religion is more than just 'that thing we plugged the gaps in our knowledge with before we knew we could do Science to them', it's a convenient social structure, it's a peer group, it's emotional comfort, all things mankind has needed throughout it's ascension from hunter-gatherers to what we call Modern Society.
Note: I am not saying that people can't find those things outside of Religion, what I am saying is that if people are finding that within religion and you're trying to take religion away from them you'd better have a very compelling reason for doing so.
"The problem I have comes more from religious groups taken as wholes."
Uh, no.. that's just.. no.
The problem with taking religious groups as a whole is, you can't. Within 'Religion as a whole', specific religions, even specific sects or sub-sects of a religion there are gonna be huge swaths of people that the rest will not pre-suppose to speak for. Blaming the moderates for the behavior of the firebrands paints a broad brush, like punishing someone on a certain street for decorating their house garishly and tastelessly by toilet-papering Every house on that street.. people who wouldn't react to their neighbor's poor behavior will be provoked by the blanket response to it. This contributes to an 'under-seige' mentality which only services the firebrands.
It also doesn't help that the general feeling is that the side that is against certain specific faults and flaws of a given religion or sect isn't going to just ask you to help stamp-out that specific flaw or fault but stamp-out the religion or sect along with it. It becomes a choice between abandoning their friends, family, and community and the glue which everyone is accustomed to binding all that together, and accepting Phred phelps, which is just cruel.
"It gets even worse when the specific issues involved have one side that is based on evidence, and one side that isn't. In such cases, then in order to continue to argue for the anti-evidence side, people have to start arguing against the necessity for evidence to be used in reasoning at all."
Is it? "If you argue based on faith against something based on evidence on one specific subject then you must abandon evidence in all your reasoning." Sure that sounds logical, but is it fact? To me it sounds dangerously like a straw-man, given the human brain's innate ability to harbor contradicting ideals in harmony with each other. If they argue from faith against evidence (which to me from my experience and observation is really more about arguing from Subjective evidence against Objective evidence) on one issue it does not follow that they see all evidence as a buncha hooba-joob.
It just occurred to me where a potential point of dissonance here might be. You might, and I'm not sure.. but you might; be arguing towards the end of winning debates. I'm arguing towards the end of influencing actions. Winning a debate is nice, but in the end if the other side doesn't change their behavior despite having lost the argument on all technical merits then the argument was pointless.
"The question of what /tactics/ can be used to minimize such an effect is another matter entirely - and one which I'm still working on an answer."
Not too long ago a big deal was made about a granite monument of the Ten Commandments being in an Alabama Courthouse, the end result of that was the removal of said monument from Inside the courthouse.. and the erecting of monuments Outside many courthouses throughout the south, including the one in my hometown.
Why was this? Remember what I said earlier about being 'Under Siege'? Perspective is important, more specifically Empathy is important, the ability to put yourself in someone else's head, or try to, and learn what something looks like from that point of view. I can't lay any claims to knowing what the ideal tactics could or should be, but I personally think better tactics can evolve from simply realizing that in most cases the Faith side may look like it's arguing...
"You're wrong, because God says so."
When actually it's arguing.
"You're attacking my faith and I'm not taking that lying down."
Take Evolution as an example. People of Faith have endured generations of secularists and atheists telling them that, "Evolution is..." and then getting out the cliff's-notes version of the theory of Evolution as taught in grade-school biology, appended with, "...and that's why your faith (which has guided and comforted you and everyone you love for as long as you can remember) is bullshit." So their natural reaction is to be antagonistic to it being taught to their children, because in their mind Evolution is a weapon wielded against their family.
But, Evolution only specifically invalidates a literalism interpretation of the Bible, and while there are those who do believe in that and getting them to come around will be next to impossible many more are comfortable with an Allegorical interpretation of the Bible.. pointing out that Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive concepts can go a long way towards cutting-off arguments for putting Creationism in science class.
(I've heard interesting arguments that it may well be that arguing against Creationism from a scientific perspective may actually embolden Creationists by making them feel their ideals have a certain scientific legitimacy they don't actually have, whereas a more productive path might be not arguing Scripture with Science but Scripture with Scripture.)
TL;DR
Religion and Faith represents a Very heavy Emotional Investment among those who ascribe to it, pick your battles and choose your targets carefully when you see yourself in conflict with it.
Also, sorry for scooting all over the place with my earlier response, I seem to have committed the faux pas of rambling on a single clear point I was focused on... without letting you in on what that point was beforehand.
Now, on to the points...
"I honestly hadn't realized that the issue you were most concerned with was reasoning-from-evidence vs reasoning-from-faith, but since it is..."
Um, no.. no that's actually not what I was concerned about.
Disclosure time, I am not myself a religious person, my personal beliefs along those lines are more agnostic.. but I socially interact with a lot of religious people.
"If any particular person comes up with a useful idea, I'm not going to throw away the idea just because of other ideas that person has. Depending on what those other ideas are, I may take them as evidence about that person's level of reasoning ability, and thus how much effort I should put into checking for supporting evidence, but I have no problem with religious individuals who do good science."
Well thanks for that at least.
My baseline argument is more towards I guess you would call it Utilitarianism. If it is possible to encourage people to do things which are generally helpful and discourage them from doing things that are generally inconvenient or harmful without trying to convince them to give-up certain fundamentals of their personal philosophy then that should be pursued, and asking them to do so anyway is an unnecessary and even rude imposition.
The anti-theist argument as I understand it seems to be that the most general good that can be gained would be from convincing all or most of the people to become rational atheists who apply objective reasoning to every facet of their lives.
Two problems I have with that. 1) To my knowledge the majority of human minds just flat don't work that way nor were they intended to work that way.. ('That way' being 100% rational 100% of the time) 2) Religion as it relates to human beings is much more complex than that.
Religion is more than just 'that thing we plugged the gaps in our knowledge with before we knew we could do Science to them', it's a convenient social structure, it's a peer group, it's emotional comfort, all things mankind has needed throughout it's ascension from hunter-gatherers to what we call Modern Society.
Note: I am not saying that people can't find those things outside of Religion, what I am saying is that if people are finding that within religion and you're trying to take religion away from them you'd better have a very compelling reason for doing so.
"The problem I have comes more from religious groups taken as wholes."
Uh, no.. that's just.. no.
The problem with taking religious groups as a whole is, you can't. Within 'Religion as a whole', specific religions, even specific sects or sub-sects of a religion there are gonna be huge swaths of people that the rest will not pre-suppose to speak for. Blaming the moderates for the behavior of the firebrands paints a broad brush, like punishing someone on a certain street for decorating their house garishly and tastelessly by toilet-papering Every house on that street.. people who wouldn't react to their neighbor's poor behavior will be provoked by the blanket response to it. This contributes to an 'under-seige' mentality which only services the firebrands.
It also doesn't help that the general feeling is that the side that is against certain specific faults and flaws of a given religion or sect isn't going to just ask you to help stamp-out that specific flaw or fault but stamp-out the religion or sect along with it. It becomes a choice between abandoning their friends, family, and community and the glue which everyone is accustomed to binding all that together, and accepting Phred phelps, which is just cruel.
"It gets even worse when the specific issues involved have one side that is based on evidence, and one side that isn't. In such cases, then in order to continue to argue for the anti-evidence side, people have to start arguing against the necessity for evidence to be used in reasoning at all."
Is it? "If you argue based on faith against something based on evidence on one specific subject then you must abandon evidence in all your reasoning." Sure that sounds logical, but is it fact? To me it sounds dangerously like a straw-man, given the human brain's innate ability to harbor contradicting ideals in harmony with each other. If they argue from faith against evidence (which to me from my experience and observation is really more about arguing from Subjective evidence against Objective evidence) on one issue it does not follow that they see all evidence as a buncha hooba-joob.
It just occurred to me where a potential point of dissonance here might be. You might, and I'm not sure.. but you might; be arguing towards the end of winning debates. I'm arguing towards the end of influencing actions. Winning a debate is nice, but in the end if the other side doesn't change their behavior despite having lost the argument on all technical merits then the argument was pointless.
"The question of what /tactics/ can be used to minimize such an effect is another matter entirely - and one which I'm still working on an answer."
Not too long ago a big deal was made about a granite monument of the Ten Commandments being in an Alabama Courthouse, the end result of that was the removal of said monument from Inside the courthouse.. and the erecting of monuments Outside many courthouses throughout the south, including the one in my hometown.
Why was this? Remember what I said earlier about being 'Under Siege'? Perspective is important, more specifically Empathy is important, the ability to put yourself in someone else's head, or try to, and learn what something looks like from that point of view. I can't lay any claims to knowing what the ideal tactics could or should be, but I personally think better tactics can evolve from simply realizing that in most cases the Faith side may look like it's arguing...
"You're wrong, because God says so."
When actually it's arguing.
"You're attacking my faith and I'm not taking that lying down."
Take Evolution as an example. People of Faith have endured generations of secularists and atheists telling them that, "Evolution is..." and then getting out the cliff's-notes version of the theory of Evolution as taught in grade-school biology, appended with, "...and that's why your faith (which has guided and comforted you and everyone you love for as long as you can remember) is bullshit." So their natural reaction is to be antagonistic to it being taught to their children, because in their mind Evolution is a weapon wielded against their family.
But, Evolution only specifically invalidates a literalism interpretation of the Bible, and while there are those who do believe in that and getting them to come around will be next to impossible many more are comfortable with an Allegorical interpretation of the Bible.. pointing out that Evolution and God are not mutually exclusive concepts can go a long way towards cutting-off arguments for putting Creationism in science class.
(I've heard interesting arguments that it may well be that arguing against Creationism from a scientific perspective may actually embolden Creationists by making them feel their ideals have a certain scientific legitimacy they don't actually have, whereas a more productive path might be not arguing Scripture with Science but Scripture with Scripture.)
TL;DR
Religion and Faith represents a Very heavy Emotional Investment among those who ascribe to it, pick your battles and choose your targets carefully when you see yourself in conflict with it.
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