Spike has been tasked with cataloging every nook, cranny, and dark corner in his and Twilight's new home, thanks to Twilight constantly getting lost. However, while messing around with one of the walls in the dungeons he finds a book, far nicer than any other he's ever seen, and written by an author he doesn't recognize despite all the years spent retrieving books for Twilight from all over Canterlot. With Twilight out of the castle for the next few days, and no desire to continue looking for hidden passages, he decides to give it a read. The knowledge contained within will change him forever.
A.N. A story about learning Rationalism.
The blog posts the book is based on can be found at http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality:_From_AI_to_Zombies and are free to read, if you're interested. Everything will be paraphrased because I have to understand something before I can convey it.
>link to a LessWrong page in description
ih1.redbubble.net/image.11075763.9218/fc,550x550,white.jpg
The Methods of Rationality or How to make anypony believe in your Bull Pucky 101.
the sky is purple
6111648 I don't know why, but this comment makes me laugh. Thanks for that.
I must say that this is hitting home, and I Am looking forward to the change along with our dear spike! Tally Ho and once more unto the breach my good drake!
Please tell me this is mocking the Harry Potter fanfic of the same name
Anyone have that clip with the "Wa wa wa woooaaaah" sound effect? It would fit HPMOR nicely.
Well it's interesting... I'll watch this story.
6111807
No offense was intended, in all honesty. I've just had some bad experiences with people from that website or that ascribe to its beliefs.
That said, you have a few typos in the newest chapter, and copy/pasting large chunks of the text from the website is kinda... Well, it's not wrong, but it's kinda cheating.
6113269
I don't think it has any real beliefs to ascribe to other than "read these cog psych books and tell other people to read them."
Most of the stuff that tends to freak people out were things that were mandatory topics in my philosophy of computer science courses so I'm always surprised by the reactions.
6113269 Fair enough, I will cut down on such things in the future.
6113512
I refer specifically to the section on that website where they claim that anyone who believes in God is either insane or stupid. Furthermore, when LessWrong ascribers have explains to me why God "doesn't make sense," and I answer their claims, explaining how I answer them through scripture, they laugh at me and tell me I'm not reading the Bible right. To clarify, they try to tell me how to read the Book they say I shouldn't be reading in the first place.
To put a closer point on it, in the "Raising the Sanity Waterline" discussion on that site, the author mocks any scientist who believes in God, all but stating that they are clearly not competent scientists in their respective fields, merely because they believe in a higher power. That kind of superiority and sense of "high-grounding" does not exactly endear me to the concept.
But this has little to do with the story as it stands, although it seems that the same kind of thinking will appear in a story that seeks to explain and explore the LessWrong philosophy.
6113590 I'm a Catholic. Practicing. Those people treat Rationality almost like a religion, and I have already stated that is not the case in this story.
6113560
A better way to do it would be having the narration paraphrase the passages instead of pasting them. It will get a bit wordy, yes, but with your stated intent, that's kind of unavoidable.
Still, paraphrasing would let us both explore the concepts and let us see Spike work through it.
Let it never be said that I am unwilling to help any story be the best it can be, even if I disagree with it.
6113595 I did paraphrase, actually. If you look at the original I linked to you would see very different things. Plus if I had copy-pasted the chapter would be about 1000 words longer. He's a bit verbose.
6113590
I'm from a country with 80% non-religious 5% christian views so I'll admit all of that is pretty invisible to me.
6113590
Yeah, the guys who run Less Wrong are surprisingly fundamentalist in their anti-religious bias (as even my militantly atheist friends readily agree!). If you can look past that, though, the site is the best resource for Rationality out there. For my 2 cents, I find that Rationalism is great at telling you how to achieve an end but not why you should or shouldn't, while Religion can tell you what ends to strive for but doesn't help so much on the how.
6114727 I have never heard this before, but it fits and it's awesome.
6113590
once upon a time, god created a man who was going to save the world.
you see, this was at a time when the rest of humanity was just starting to realize just how valuable life was. trouble is, god created the leaders of these great kingdoms with such greed in their hearts that it overcame their love. they couldn't trust eachother, couldn't just have faith that if they all stood together as brothers against the evils in this world god created, one wouldn't betray the rest. and so, they made a solution: mutually assured destruction.
they built a bomb so big, none of them would survive it going off, and the shockwaves from its fury would be felt for centuries to come. but time is a cruel bitch, and soon failsafe after failsafe designed to stop the bomb from ever being used failed one by one.
luckily, god saw this, and sent this man. made him an ambassador for one of the kingdoms. and when war came to his doorstep, he plied his trade well. soon, he and the one who would have been his enemy. together they laughed and drank into the night, finally sitting to sign the treaty which would save the world when... the man had a heart attack. luckily, god saw it coming and stopped it for only a day, for no one can be allowed to escape their final fate.
...if only. in reality, the man fell. the final failsafe failed. the bomb went off. all the people who built it saw everything they ever loved destroyed in front of them before they died. the first blast killed 37 million innocent people. but the sins of the father are visited to the third generation, and a generation later, the second blast claimed somewhere between 50 and 80 million. a generation later, a third claimed 54 thousand.
around that time, I was born. born into a land like unto a crater. a world nursing a sucking chest wound that just wouldn't heal; the bomb was still going off, fitfully, a few thousand here and there. a place covered in scars commemorating unimaginable pain and sorrow. a world just barely starting to get back on its feet.
my parents told me about god, about some all-powerful, all-loving being that was looking out for us. and I believed them because I didn't know how the world got its scars- I just assumed they were always there. then I learned different. then I learned that god had the chance to not just heal those scars, but make them never happen in the first place. ...and he did nothing.
and I took a quote to heart; an anonymous message left by some nameless victim of the horrors of the bomb's second blast: "if there is a god, he will have to answer to me."
6117504
Here's an alternate possibility that plays into utilitarianism.
What if there's a god that could interfere, but won't because he's a Utility Monster, and the utility he derives from observing the free civilizational development of a planet is such that allowing nuclear wars to happen surpasses by many orders of magnitude the sum total of the utility lost by all those who perished plus all those who could have lived but never will?
In this scenario, and following standard utilitarian reasoning, said god is as much justified in doing nothing as, for comparison's sake, we are in doing any kind of excruciatingly painful experimentation on animals. They live, they suffer, they die. For the animals, a tragedy. For us, useful data.
And the utilitarians among the survivors, once they confronted said god, and were presented the utility calculation by him, would have to stop, look at it, and finally nod in agreement, for yes, their suffering, no matter how huge it was, is, and will continue being until the eventual extinction of their species, is, above any shadow of doubt, and in a purely objective way, worth it.
Notice this is no different a scenario than that of Yudkowsky's example of 3^^^3 specks of dust vs. a single lifetime of torture. At some point, a calculation might in fact turn out something that's so important that a planet, a universe, or even multiple universes of repeatedly nuclear-blasted civilizations will be "worth it".
And we might well be in that case.
Which might still be just the average case...
6136688
I think you will agree that the god you described is not the god the bible describes.
but honestly it kinda misses my pont: this world just doesn't look remotely anything like a world with a god in it.
in a world which had a good god, WWI never happened. in a would which had an evil (or morally justified, but forced to do necessary evils as you described) god, science never happened (if we cast a spell that requires us to torture a planet to save a thousand planets, we can't have them curing ebola and breaking the spell, can we? similarly, if we deliberately intend to hurt as many people as possible, we can't have science running around saving people, can we?)
god's existence would have huge and far-reaching effects. and here in science, we see effects to believe in causes; we see smoke, and believe in fire.
so, yes. I laugh at scientists who believe in god. because if you can't correctly discern something with that many easily observable effects, how can you do your job as a scientist and discern things that have very few, difficult to observe effects?
if you believe the forest is on fire, despite not seeing any smoke, how on earth can I trust you to find a cinder in a broken campsite?
6139303 Early Christianity was very much a rationalist religion. People got healed, and then converted and gained the power to heal themselves. Miracles were demonstrated, and then they believed, NOT the other way around. The problem with a large portion of modern Christianity is that the role of miracles is greatly downplayed, to the point that most Christians have never experienced one personally.
This is not God's world. This is the Devil's world, and God tolerates him the way an exasperated parent would tolerate a rebellious teenager, and doesn't kill him for the same reason you don't chuck your child off a cliff if he sneaks out without permission. That's a simplification, but it works along those lines.
Also, thank you for filling my comments section with lively discussion. As long as this doesn't turn into a flame war, I am a very happy author.
I think you've maybe missed the mark a little translating the virtues, particularly the fifth one, which you seem to have gotten outright backwards. I would summarize the fifth virtue as "agreement is not truth", myself.
As for the story itself, I think you're overselling it a bit. I don't think the Twelve Virtues in and of themselves are that awe-worthy, in that way. I'd be wary of undercutting your own premise, and avoid that kind of thing until Spike's progess actually runs smack into something important in his worldview. The power of the teachings is not to be found in another competing set of conclusions. It is not the answer key, it's not even the textbook, it's the ability to read at all.
The relevant kind of awe is the kind of awe you'd feel upon first gaining literacy when before you didn't even have a concept of written language.
6139626 Fair enough. I doubt I'll actually use them that much after this, since I've got a whole bunch of more relevant material to draw from. Their point was to shock Spike, toss something at him that didn't fit in with his worldview to shake him up, and that only needed to happen once.
I'll see what I can do about fitting in that other awe type.
As for something that destroys his worldview, take "reality is what still exists after you stop believing in it," and combine it with facing painful truths.
"Agreement is not truth" could work quite well as well, and alternate conclusions like that are why I linked the original text.
6139329
whether or not miracles happened thousands of years ago to cause Christianity is as suspect as it is irrelevant.
because now? the miracles have dried up. if the bible is to be believed, god healed people, smote cities, raised the very dead! stopping a heart attack for one day should have been child's play. and he had every incentive to do so.
let me set the stage again: in case you haven't noticed, my first post was true, but coated in metaphor. historians call it "the seminal tragedy" seminal, because it defines our world, down to being responsible for practically every problem our society faces today. and tragic both because of its obvious negative effects, and because of how incredibly, almost comically unlikely it was. seriously, all the tale's missing is iambic pentameter and it could have been written by shakespear.
sot, to set the stage: satan has tricked humanity into building the bomb (a metaphor for the complex system of treaties that caused WWI) and is now sure that the stupid humans are sure to push such a big, shiny red button. but humanity mounts a valiant defense, putting forward heroes that, through their own virtue, resist the bomb. satan snarls and starts cutting them down one by one as god watches, proud of humanity's successes. satan is about to strike the final blow, a heart attack on a certain ambassador, when god does one, single intervention and saves him for merely a day. satan is defeated, not by god, but by the virtues of mankind with just a little bit of help. and better yet, he did it secretly- to paraphrase futurama's version of god, he did things right, so that nobody was sure he did anything at all. all in all, it was a perfect example of everything god stands for.
...but that's not how it actually happened.
but let's pick on god directly through the bible. I grew up jewish, and as such, was required to have a barmitzvah. during one, you are required to read a passage directly from the torah itself. my passage was jokingly referred to by the rabbi who trained me as "cooking with god-" it detailed, and by 'detailed,' I mean "went into stupid amounts of detail," how to ritually prepare a sacrifice to be burnt in god's honor.
assuming that god had limited communication with mankind, wouldn't those stupid amount of pages be better spent on a vaccination ritual than god's vanity?
it t wouldn't even be hard! take sick person/animal. draw blood from them. boil for some time. smear on open wound. smoke and mirrors, work in a few "god is great"s boom! saved literally billions of lives. instead, we get "this is how you properly worship me, peasants. oh? what's that? save several generations of innocent people by doing the slightest miracle? sorry, can't be bothered." ...and the best part is, literally nobody does that ritual anymore! not even the strictest of the strict judaic sects practice that ritual! so for all the good it does us, it might as well just be "look at me, I'm so great" for ten pages. ...which it basically is!
6140355
You're right that God could have interfered as you noted and saved the entire human race, and he should have done so. He probably would have done so too if this wasn't a story written to discredit religion, and needed the plot to go the other way. It's a thought provoking story, to be certain, but it's still just a story, and we don't know what would actually if such an event came to pass. However, if it goes down as the story tells it, I will be first in line at His throne asking what he thought he was doing.
The bible does in fact have a bunch of stuff about preventing disease. Where did you think all that clean/unclean rhetoric came from? It's quarantine. If someone is sick, don't go near them. A ritual can be botched, or tweaked to be more "religious," something that would destroy a good medicinal practice. Quarantine is much easier to keep straight.
I will pick on the bible a bit myself though. The book of numbers (which I've read), is not so much a holy text as it is a massive census of everything the Jews took with them to the promised land. There's no other reason to record the exact number of sheep, goats, and cattle on the journey, and if it wasn't already part of the bible I doubt anyone would add it. That part you read probably should have stayed in the priests's logs, for them to read and no-one else, unless only part of the offering was to be burned, and the rest to be eaten by the person giving the offering. In that case, it's a social gathering that God just happens to be participating in.
Miracles aren't gone, they're just sent to the front lines. They win a key convert here, stop a disaster there, that sort of thing. The whole Pentecostal movement a few decades back was made of people who got hit with the Holy Spirit and started performing miracles again. This caused a lot of tension in the church, especially from those who believed that miracles were a thing of the past (I don't remember what denomination they were, so I won't name them), and most of those who got blessed left to form their own churches. You might not be able to find communion or regular scripture readings in a Pentecostal service, but they're still one of the more reliable places to look for someone speaking in tongues.
I am an INTP personality type. If you can show I am wrong, I will change my mind, and I've already changed a bit from what you've said previously. We're practicing virtue #5 here, and it is glorious.
6139303
Not necessarily. I don't believe in the Christian god, but as a subject it can be worked so as to fit what I described. I've read old Christian authors who analyze in great detail why eternal punishment in Hell is a perfectly moral concept, as is that of the saved in Heaven being able to watch the punished in Hell suffering eternally, and feeling infinite pleasure in the contemplation of their infinite torture etc. Those rationalizations are usually made in light of virtue ethics (crazy, I know), but they'd work much better and easier under utilitarian reasoning.
So, adapting from my previous argument, it'd suffice to say that a world of minimal divine intervention, followed by infinite punishment for some (who are changed so as to derive some utility from their infinite suffering) plus infinite rewards for others (who are changed so as to derive infinite utility from sadism), results in also infinite utility for said god, and therefore, having a sum total of infinite utility and zero disutility, is valid under utilitarian assumptions. This world is clearly consistent with those premises.
Given the above, building a utilitarian theology to your proposed scenarios would be more or less trivial.
Now, in regards to theistic scientists, they don't have a problem with this because of what Yudkowsky call separate magisteriums. He's a critic of these, evidently, and rightfully so, but as far as real world scientists are concerned, it works. Besides, any minimally competent theistic philosopher would be able to break arguments from causality by asking, first, which causality you're referring to (there are four: material, formal, efficient and final -- answer: efficient); and second, why and how you believe that the other three can be reduced to this one (wrong answer: because of this and that -- correct answer, after several looong posts: they can't). This would then in turn become an even longer, and still fully rational (yes, really) philosophical debacle that wouldn't even touch on any idea or concept of god until the very end, if at all.
End result after dozens of pages of very, VERY long posts: after reaching several layers above the scientific method, you'd find a bayesian inferential probability of 50% (1:1) that theism is correct. In other words, that the subject is literally undecidable.
So, let's just not go there.
Ugh, those things.
The fundamental problem with TMOR is that there is no reason to observe, or respect them. To want to uphold the twelve virtues is irrational. There is no evidence that they are virtues, and the definition of virtue itself is ...suspiciously nebulous. Sure we read "Treat all evidence and all ideas as equal." and we think "Yeah, that's a good thing!" But that's because we've been told that treating things as equal is a good thing, and are biased without evidence to warm up to that sort of concept. Our bias just because of the pretty stories that have been written about how these virtues are a good thing, and few on how dangerous or silly they are, makes TMOR a questionable methodology at best.
This is to say nothing about the independent flaws in reasoning of the virtues themselves. For example, certain ideas have very little information in them, and some are downright malicious. A Rationalist would gladly watch a 24 hour infomercial about a Shamwow, because the ideas in that are as equally worth considering as TMOR itself. A lifetime of information overload later and... well, its status as a virtue is questionable at best. And Perfectionism fails to include a clause about how much effort to expend on perfecting onesself. The Terrible Trivium hides behind this law, where in trying to better yourself you may end up endlessly picking at a mountain with a toothpick when you could have just gone around, because both methods lead towards perfection, and TMOR have already told you it is a "never ending war" so you won't find your slow progress through the mountain as unexpected or alarming.
Also being irrational is fun. Yay!
6140779
oh... I thought I was clear. the story is true, less some metaphor. namely, "the bomb" is a metaphor for the complex system of treaties that caused WWI. the man was Nicholas Hartwig. some historic accounts even go as far as to claim that he died with the pen in his hand.
and, of course, the detonations were wars. WWI claimed 37 million, and without the treaty of versailles, WWII wouldn't have happened, 50-80 million there. and without WWII, no cold war. no cold war, no 'nam, desert storm, iraqi freedom, etc.
practically every problem our current society faces can be traced right back to WWI, and so, this man's death.
if miracles had moved to the front lines, as you say, saving this man for a single day would have been a poster child for that exact policy.
6140948
you're making it too complicated- belief in god is a basic mistake, like failing a calculus test because of a division error.
so, to review the basics:
science does not quiet tell you what is True, (capital T) that's impossible. instead, it tells you which theories (that is, models of how the universe works) make the most accurate predictions. this has the disadvantage of not being strictly "True" (what if we're in the matrix? *gaaaasp!*) but it has the distinct advantage of being provable.
to do this, it takes two competing theories, takes an aspect in which they differ, creates the conditions and sees which prediction comes true. if this sounds familiar, that's because it's the scientific method.
so, your first mistake: science takes two competing theories. there are current;y four floating around: "christian god", "utility monster god". "adapted god", and "no god" to parse this, we need to compare them to each other one by one. but you don't seem to be working in theories- you seem to be just labeling all of the theories besides "no god" "god" and calling it a day, despite them making wildly different predictions
your second, but larger mistake is the entire concept of "adapted god": "Given the above, building a utilitarian theology to your proposed scenarios would be more or less trivial. " that's true, but it also doesn't make any predictions- instead, it's taking what happens, and building a theory to explain it. how can a theory make accurate predictions if it doesn't make any predictions at all? of course a theory like that would be always right! it would also be always useless!
your third mistake is forgetting this fact: for any two theories, they can either deviate from each other, and so be testable using the scientific method, or they do not deviate from each other in which case, they're functionally the same theory. thus, there is literally no such thing as an undecidable theory: if they differ, test for that difference and go with the one that predicted more accurately. if they do not differ, they are the same and the question is silly.
so... suppose two-face from batman catches a god-fearing family. he flips his coin. if it comes up with the ruined heads, he kills them in a sufficiently brutal manner. if it comes up with the good heads, he lets them go and gives them a cookie,
according to the "god doesn't exist" theory, the family has a 50% chance at that cookie, allowing for outside cases not considered (the coin lands on its edge. two-face stares at it in shocked silence "...welp :I")
according to your theory... what exactly?
if you say exactly the same thing, why do you care?
if you say exactly the same thing buuuuut there's another manner in which they deviate, by all means, elaborate.
if you say anything else, we can now (unethically) test your theory with a revolver, a church and two coins.
as for me, whatever your response, I will still bet cash money that the predictions presented by the "there is no god" theory will be accurate.
6141481 I see. I'll need to ask him about that, then. It's possible that he did try to stop that heart attack, and was foiled, (as in he sent angel to do the work for him, and that angel was delayed by a demon attack), although I have no idea why that might be. You got me, I have no answer.
However, there is an indisputable reason to follow A religion, if not one in particular: afterlife insurance.
Take this game theory square:
You believe You don't believe
There is an afterlife you go to heaven you go to hell
There is not an afterlife nothing happens nothing happens
This is why it logical to believe in something. If you believe, the outcomes are 1. positive, and 2. neutral. If you don't believe, the outcomes are 1. negative, and 2. neutral.
It should be obvious which has the preferable outcome. You could plan on living forever, but the Planning Fallacy should warn you not to assume it. Follow something, just in case.
6141481
LOL, you're supposing I disagree with you. Nah, nevermind. I used to study these things in Philosophy of Science I and II back in the day and have since moved on. But if you'd like to acquire a deeper understanding of what you're trying do describe, check this.
6141551
Not really.
See, atheists can be said to be followers of the ancient and sacred Professorial religion. According the Professorial faith, all atheists are rewarded with Heaven after they die, for they exercised the Three Major Virtues of Skepticism, Free Thinking and Atheism, thanks to the fact its deity, the Professor God, a really nice fellow who dislikes worship, really, really, REALLY valuing those.
As for the theists, they're left in Limbo to dwell into the non-utility of their several faiths until they too learn to properly Disbelieve. When that happens, they themselves finally having turned atheists, they're finally approached by the Professor God and welcomed into His Heaven.
Therefore, all those who want to reach the Professor God's Heaven should strive to be full fledged atheists, even if they feel an impulse to believe. After all, doing anything different, in particular believing any religion other than the Professorial one, leads only to the suffering of Limbo.
The decision being this clear cut, by simple game theory we conclude no one should believe in anything, ever.
6141481 I just realized something. One very good, very important thing came out of the Cold War: the space race. Without the competition between the USSR and the USA to put satellites in orbit and a man on the moon, our space program would not as far along as it is today. Since the pentagon just announced that it's going to try to "weaponize" space, it's possible that we're about to enter another boom in space-faring technologies. I don't know what could be so important about getting humanity into space, but it's a large enough outcome that it might be partially responsible.
6141558
yes, you do disagree. I believe that any theory that contains god is either testable or irrelevant, and that the christian god in particular is easily testable, and has tested false. you believe, in your own words, that the problem has "a bayesian inferential probability of 50% (1:1) that theism is correct. In other words, that the subject is literally undecidable."
even now, you claim there is deeper meaning, where I claim it is one of science's simplest exercises. if you've read wheel of time, it's like aes sedai being able to be immune to temperature- it's an unofficial rite of passage that isn't really taught, but just happens when you've reached a sufficient level of mastery.
if that is not your belief, and your belief is identical to my belief, why did you misrepresent reality?
6141551
from the start, I have said that the question of god is a relatively simple matter. if there is indeed an all-powerful, all-knowing immortal being running around randomly do-gooding... well, even if he was trying to hide it, statistics would catch him out- we'd notice a lot of good being mysteriously done.
instead, it seems like all the people who want nothing more than their own greed get lucky breaks that grant them easy lives, while the people who want to help, the people who's hearts ache for a better world rage in vain against the problems left over from wars they had nothing to do with. but I digress.
so, suppose I flipped a coin and it landed heads. and I said to you "if you bet tails, and it comes up tails, I'll give you a million dollars. if you bet tails, and it comes up heads, nothing happens. if you beat heads, and it comes up tails, I shoot you. if you bet heads and it comes up heads, nothing happens. game theory says you should bet tails- you have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, while heads has everything to lose and nothing to gain." do you actually bet tails?
in short, pascal's wager is not a wager because the results are visible- sure if there was any question in my mind, that would be the optimal option, but there's really not.
as for the space race, I will tell you a scary secret:
there is a concept, fermi's paradox, it basically says "even with life being incredibly rare, we've explored a LOT of space. we should have found something by now." one response is that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself, that life passes certain milestones, and if it fails to pass a milestone before a certain time, it dies. (for example, if they fail to be capable of deflecting a large asteroid before one hits their planet)
one such milestone is the destruction of evil, and we are rapidly approaching the deadline. you see, if something large enough to contain a human moving near light speed hit the earth, it would destroy all life on it. if we reach the capability to move at near light speed before the complete destruction of evil, all it would take is one evil person to end our race.
to advance our science, then, while crippling our society is probably one of the worst things possible.
ever hear of the Em-drive? ever wonder why it was first built in '01, but nobody's shipped it to space to test yet? someone who knows this concept is suppressing the technology, and for good reason- our society is not ready.
6143526
There's the key. For you, the coin has already landed. For me, it's still in the air, and can't actually land until I die and can see for myself. I can make guesses based on evidence before that happens, but they will still be guesses and still subject to being wrong.
Wouldn't having no god mean that it was a mixed bag, with some good being rewarded and some bad being punished at random, but not all of either? Having evil thrive while good suffers doesn't sound like there is no god. It sounds like an evil God.
No, I've never heard of an Em-drive.
6143526
Which level of it?
Look, the problem with all these arguments is that they're naive. There are at least three concepts of "god". From them, the only one your points defeat is the simple, which I nickname "comic books deity", think Thor in the Avengers movies. Above it there are the (actual) pagan deities, which are conceptually one and the same with phenomena of nature, so that pointing at nature and saying "this is how it works" neither affirms nor deny any of them. And above that there is the god of advanced philosophy, which is also a step above mathematical reasoning.
If you try to apply this method of reasoning to the third kind of "god", the end result is as nonsensical as arguing like this: "Can you falsify numbers? No, anything you say contains numbers. And since numbers are unfalsifiable, no scientific theory should include any."
Metaphysics, one of whose concepts is the "third kind of god" above, deals with why we can say anything about anything at all. It tries to answer how stuff such as logic, math, falseabilism etc. are possible, and their limits.
Then you move one step below, and use the above things that were proven to work to build methodologies, such as the scientific method.
Then you move one step below, and use the above methodologies to study physical stuff happening around you, building all the different specific sciences.
So, for a theist (who knows what he's talking about), "god" is the unified core of the math, the logic, the deductions, the falsifiability, the method etc. that in turn are used to explain the world.
Atheists don't usually dwell in the above problems. They're quite happy refuting gods below the level of sciences (the so called "god of the gaps"), to notice that none of these arguments deal with the "god of the plenum" shown by systematic metaphysical reasoning to be above logic and thus to be the reason logic itself works at all.
Now, does this third kind of god actually exist? Is the argument strong enough to prove that no logic can exist, that no method can exist, that no science can exist or even make sense, except by its presence guaranteeing the fundamental consistency of the laws, that govern the laws, that govern the laws, that govern nature? I don't know. But knowing how it works, I can say it's a damned strong argument. And I know of no strong atheistic counterargument to it.
Still, I want to believe it to be wrong. So I give it only a 50% chance of being right. Which, to anyone who actually knows bayesian inference, will seem quite fair, since it means I'm open to moving in either direction, provided the actual point is addressed.
And no, Dawkins is so below analysis level required to begin addressing the above it's not even fun.
6144825
the level in which you claimed to believe what I believe, then claimed something completely different from what I believe.
...
Lady Justice is blind- only able to feel the weight of her scales and judge based on that. Lady Liberty is deaf- unable to respond to the desperate cries of those outside the light of her great torch. and the youngest of the three, Lady Science is mute- able to see all the people Lady Justice inadvertently hurts with her judgement, able to hear the cries for help Lady Liberty can't, but unable to speak a single word to send the other two to their aid.
Lady Science has an older brother, Sir Philosophy, and he's... a bit of a mess. today, she finds him pacing, wearing a track into the rug with his agitation. she stops him with a gentle hand on his chest and a cock of her head.
"I'm upset," said Philosophy, so used to his sister's questioning gaze that she did not need to speak to ask "because I just realized there's no proof that the world I think I exist in exists. not only that, but there's clear proof that there can't be any proof that this world exists! what if I'm just a brain in a jar? what if I'm... I'm... like a zombie! only pretending to feel, when I don't really? what if-"
his sister cut him off with a serene finger on his lips and a giggle. she opened her notebook, sat down, opened her notebook and gave him that look. that magic, magic look which meant 'what do you think you know, and why do you think you know it?'
Philosophy started to explain, as Science carefully wrote in her notebook, nodding along and listening to her brother.
"...and so because a recursive process has to begin somewhere," Philosophy fretted "we'll never really know! ...well? what do you think? let me see what you got."
Science turned her notebook around. on it was a huge amount of clearly bored doodles around a large message taking up most of both pages: "WHY DO YOU CARE?"
"why do I care?" exclaimed Philosophy "why do I care!? I could not exist! that sounds pretty important to me!"
Science raised her eyebrow in an expression which said 'considering you're standing in front of me, I'm fairly certain you exist'
Philosophy sighed "ok, ok... think of it this way: supposed you were trapped in a simulation, and you fell in love and married and then suddenly were yanked out and someone told you 'haha, none of that was real you're actually a brain in a jar' how would that make you feel?"
Science jotted down "bad. but in that case it'd be fairly obvious which world was real"
"aghhhhhh!" Philosophy growled in frustration "you'r missing the point!"
Science gave him a stern look and an eyeroll, jotting her reply on a page, ripping it out and handing it to him. "I'm not missing the point, I'm ignoring it because it's silly. none of your scenarios has you experiencing anything different. you're stressing out over nothing. ...again. calm your tits.
"I'm not stressing out over nothing! why does nobody else even seem to care about this stuff?"
Science gave him an eyeroll clearly meant to convey 'yes, clearly everyone else is the problem, because you're so perfect.' only to get a pillow to the face in response.
...
remember when I said that science doesn't tell us what's True, only what makes accurate predictions? well, I left out that it then takes a rubber stamp marked "True" and stamps anything that makes accurate predictions. I disagree with this practice, I find it inaccurate.
why? because philosophy has bound up so many different meanings in "True," or "real." is a the chair I'm sitting on real? yes. is the number 2 real? yes. can you prove the number 2 exists with science? well, no. clearly, we're dealing with different things using the same word, and when you do that, confusion abound!
so, this "third-type god" business... it's called a metaphor.
when we say "Poseidon raged against the plucky sailors," we don't mean that a fish-tailed god literally came down (err... swam up?) and started banging on the captain's door to tell them to keep it down; he's trying to sleep and has work in the morning, we mean that the seas were very rough.
so does Poseidon, as a type-three god, exist? iiiin the same way any other literary tool exists.
one thing is clear: any type-three god has exactly the same claim to existence as the gods of liberty, justice, science and philosophy I literally just made up.
sure we could say that all of those things and my chair exists, but once again, we're binding too many meanings to one word. we need one word which means "proved acc. science" and another which means "only exists in the heads of humans, but is still a dead useful thing to keep around"
the first describes things like fish and chairs and molecules, the second describes things like numbers and methods and metaphors (which means yes, type-three gods)
whether to call that second one "exists" or "real" or not is a silly question: so long as we are on the same page of what it is, what we call it is irrelevant; we could call it "waffleburg" for all I care, with one caveat- we shouldn't call it the same thing as the first one.
6143829
I may have been a bit overly bleak. as I like to say, my heart aches for a better world, so I like to wax poetic about the troubles of this one.
to be more accurate... well, I won't sugar-coat it, it is pretty bad. I think I put it best when I first described it: we live in a world just starting to get back on its feet after WWI gave it a near-fatal wound.
so yes, the world is wounded, and no it's not fair, but the good news is, it's healing! ...at a frustratingly slow pace, but it's healing!
how slow? well, think about it like smoking: if your parents are smokers, you probably are. if your parents aren't smokers, you definitely aren't. we start off with the mistake, and almost everyone smokes. we realize it's stupid, and a portion fall off. next generation, nobody who had non-smoker parents smoke, and only a portion of those who had smoker parents smoke. next generation, same. the total number shrinks by the generation
it's so dumb because we've literally known its stupid for generations, and it still exists because people are just that stubborn! it makes me want to start a non-profit who's mission statement is "deliver tough love on an individual basis, and yes, that means slapping the stupid out, if need be"
overall, I take a quote from HPMOR to heart (which I assume you're aware of) "There is no justice in the laws of Nature, Headmaster, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! We care! There is light in the world, and it is us! "
6140041
Um.
Okay, let me put it this way. Were you Awed By The Revelation when you read the Virtues, sans context? If you feel the need to ascribe wooooo mysterious significance to any of this stuff, well, that's a blazing neon sign that you've gone wrong before you even started.
It's just, kind of painfully obvious that you're trying to write this cool story about this cool thing, but have so little understanding of the cool thing that you don't even notice when you make something up to cover the gaps in your own comprehension. Which would be... not fine, but at least excusable, if you were writing a story about anything else, but not noticing that is another blazing neon sign that you've gone wrong before you even started, here.
6147743
It's the same distinction there is between "whole" and "part". My philosophical outlook contains bayesianism, but doesn't reduce to it.
About your allegorical story and the explanation, I find it... cute... how you move up and down from Occam's (the real one) Nominalism, through Descartes, down to Kant, and back again, crossing over Pragmatism with a few touches of Existentialism and Mathematical Anti-Realism, all the while not noticing you're doing Philosophy all along. Oh, and asking me to accept your specific Philosophical school acritically because... well, just because. Also, to ignore all the criticisms to every single one of them because, meh, questions, who needs questions!
Look, here's what Philosophy is for: questioning. Finding all the sacred cows and destroying them. Making people confused (and remember, being able to say "I'm confused" is a virtue), and willing to search for the answer. Is it a mess? Of course it's a mess. Which pioneer at anything is at the same time the one guy who also did the best work on that same thing? Philosophers notice a problem and, lacking a ready vocabulary (which hasn't been developed yet) try do describe it in the existing, inadequate language they have access to, by providing tentative partial solutions. Two thousand years later, with luck, someone else found the correct solution. Maybe.
Anyone who looks at philosopher's questioning and thinks it silly is a fool. Weren't for this questioning and there'd be no scientific method, because no one would have felt uncomfortable with what they thought they knew, and no one would have looked for a good solution. It's been 2,400 years since Aristotle, and nowadays we managed to answer 20% of his book "Questions". Care to imagine how many of those questions we would have solved if he hadn't asked them?
Now, feel free to stay with your comfortable certainties and ask "WHY YOU CARE?" to anyone who isn't comfortable with them. I prefer to question. That's how I'm securing the added comfortable certainties of those living 10k years from now with these questions solved.
Who, of course, will be asking the philosophers of then "why they care" about the questions we ourselves cannot even imagine, because the first philosopher able to articulate it hasn't been born yet, won't be for 9.8k years, and will need all the developments happened until then to be able to have the insight needed to ask any of it.
6147767 Not particularly, no. It could be because they're not that good, or because the initial shock I got from reading HPMOR has worn off and I can't feel it anymore. I'll be looking over a variety of things to replace it with alongside the next chapter update. I should have started simpler. Maybe it would make a good closing statement instead.
Part of the reason I'm writing this cool thing about a cool thing, as you put it, is that it's likely that I would never actually get around to reading all this stuff and truly improving myself without writing about it. This is a learning process for me as much as it is for Spike, and your input has helped immensely.
6147743 You're right, the world sucks. There's nothing I can say to that.
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Which is cool. I seriously don't mean to discourage you. I do think what you're trying to do is pretty dang neat, I just think you're underestimating the task.
The rational arts are often compared to the martial arts, and there are very valid parallels. Learning about it and learning it are two vastly different things, the the first only leads to the second with hard practice, and just like a martial art, it is dangerously easy to practice wrong, especially since its much harder for a teacher to spot your mistakes when they can only see the end result.
And the analogy is very literal here, actual, difficult-to-get-right mental exercises that are actually literal exercises repeated enough to physically move neurons around in your brain into new paths, the same way you'd train muscle memory. Only, you're... well, I'd describe it as "training your intuition" in almost literally the same way a martial artist trains in new reflexes and trains out bad habits.
So yes, you can sort of move orthogonally to sanity a little, the same way you can hurt yourself by physically exercising wrong or learning a move wrong and then trying to use it, but you will not Go Mad From The Revelation any more than you'll pull a muscle just from reading a book about kung fu.
6151773 Here, I tossed out the old chapter and wrote something better. Does this work?
Much more compelling, if a bit shorter than the first version. I hope the next chapter is coming soon?
6153179 It's about a third of the way written. I'll have some free time next week, and will be updating ALL my stories then. Also, it's about 60 words longer.
6153183 I look forward to it!
A bit shorter, but it gives a pretty good explanation of why the book was kept in secret and why Spike will continue to read and keep it a secret from everyone.
Please don't stop
Words cannot describe it, so my mustache will have to do the talking.
Awesome!
This story is great so far. Always preferred knowledge is power over ignorance is bliss, myself.