Some non-fictional evidence/examples would be nice. I’m not confident “someone would have noticed” is a common argument against epistemological dissent. My sense is that this is just going to be ammunition for trolls who pattern match “someone would have noticed” onto more nuanced rebuttals.
Well you are in luck today, because I used to listen to a bunch of The Atheist Experience Podcast when I was more of a newly-minted atheist and still fairly pissed off. That’s a recording of a public access TV show in Texas, and they had a lot of religious people call in and argue with them. Many of these guys were just channel-surfing and called in on a whim. Here are the common categories of callers I can remember, and their common argument types:
Never thought about it, nor learned arguments. These guys usually had thick Texan accents and often had difficulty stringing words together into a coherent sentence. They had the most honest arguments, because they didn’t have a collection of intellectual-sounding arguments that they could trot out. Common arguments (paraphrased):
“So… y’all don’t believe in God?! [insert nervous laughter here, followed by scoffing and a promise to pray for you.]”
“Where do you think you’re going to go when you die?”
“Why aren’t you killing and raping and stealing people if there’s no God?”
“Why are you angry at God?”
“How can you look at a tree and think that Jesus didn’t die on a cross for your sins?” (It’s always trees. Always with the damn trees.)
Knows some standard arguments, uses those in lieu of thinking. These guys have learned some of the standard Christian Apologetics arguments, which they trot out when their religious views are challenged. Because they don’t know what’s wrong with the arguments—and haven’t looked very hard—they feel quite secure in the obvious rightness of their beliefs. Common arguments:
“Everything has a cause (except God, who is special). What caused the universe?”
“You can’t possibly think that we evolved from monkeys just by chance! The odds of that happening are one in eleventy bazillion! A math guy calculated it, and I read about it in a book by Lee Strobel, which I would like you to read!”
Freshman philosophy major type people. These are the ones who will actually try to do their own arguing. The problem is, they tend to suck at it. Every fallacy you can imagine gets trotted out, they might try to vanquish the heathen by explicitly using syllogisms, and the arguments get so vague and amorphous that it’s probably best to cut them off and just attack the faulty premises. Examples:
“A statement can be either true or false. [Insert a lot of really confused words here; at least a paragraph’s worth.] Therefore God is love and love is real and therefore you should go to church and pray for your immortal souls.”
“An actual infinite cannot exist. A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite. Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events. Therefore, praise Jesus.”
These are all common and totally non-fictional examples. Nobody that I can remember actually said “someone would have noticed”, but most of these people are coming from an insular religious worldview where everybody they know and associate with agrees with them. That colors their views, a lot.
All the examples you give are valid examples of bad reasoning. But they if anything underscore Jack’s point that engagement in the “someone would have noticed” heuristic seems pretty rare. None of these people said “If God didn’t exist wouldn’t someone have noticed?” which would be the roughly equivalent argument.
People tend to be more open to the idea of atheism if they know that it’s even an option. Have you noticed how, now that Dawkins and Harris and friends are arguing publicly for atheism, it’s become a more socially acceptable position? It’s not so much “somebody would have noticed” as “it’s unthinkable among everyone that I know”.
This applies to other things. There was an event around here last year where some of the more liberal religious leaders talked about evolution, and how it was possible to be religious and believe that evolution happened. The most common reaction from the people there—and it was a common reaction—was surprise that they were allowed to accept evolution.
If people are in an insular religious social group, they’re probably going to have a hard time even considering contrary views. I’m not sure that’s an example of the “someone would have noticed” heuristic, but it’s an important phenomenon.
The only hit I could find by googling both “someone would have noticed” and “somebody would have noticed” (what’s the difference, by the way… anyone? anybody?) and both phrases along with the word ‘implausible’ was this Twin Towers conspiracy site (which claims that someone would have noticed the odd explosions on the tape—so not quite what Alicorn was complaining about). This which makes the (I think resonable) point that someone would probably have noticed if Elizabeth I had ever been pregnant and given birth to a child. And this which explains that someone would have noticed if Paul had just suddenly made up the resurrection myth several months after the supposed resurrection without consulting any of the other apostles (which, to be fair, also seems pretty plausible to me).
I couldn’t find any more uses of the exact phrase (I realise there are dozens of plausible paraphrasings, but I couldn’t be bothered to think of all of them), so conclude that most of the time when people use this heuristic they are actually being reasonable (the person in the last link is very clearly wrong, but that doesn’t make his reasoning invalid).
Some non-fictional evidence/examples would be nice. I’m not confident “someone would have noticed” is a common argument against epistemological dissent. My sense is that this is just going to be ammunition for trolls who pattern match “someone would have noticed” onto more nuanced rebuttals.
Well you are in luck today, because I used to listen to a bunch of The Atheist Experience Podcast when I was more of a newly-minted atheist and still fairly pissed off. That’s a recording of a public access TV show in Texas, and they had a lot of religious people call in and argue with them. Many of these guys were just channel-surfing and called in on a whim. Here are the common categories of callers I can remember, and their common argument types:
Never thought about it, nor learned arguments. These guys usually had thick Texan accents and often had difficulty stringing words together into a coherent sentence. They had the most honest arguments, because they didn’t have a collection of intellectual-sounding arguments that they could trot out. Common arguments (paraphrased):
“So… y’all don’t believe in God?! [insert nervous laughter here, followed by scoffing and a promise to pray for you.]”
“Where do you think you’re going to go when you die?”
“Why aren’t you killing and raping and stealing people if there’s no God?”
“Why are you angry at God?”
“How can you look at a tree and think that Jesus didn’t die on a cross for your sins?” (It’s always trees. Always with the damn trees.)
Knows some standard arguments, uses those in lieu of thinking. These guys have learned some of the standard Christian Apologetics arguments, which they trot out when their religious views are challenged. Because they don’t know what’s wrong with the arguments—and haven’t looked very hard—they feel quite secure in the obvious rightness of their beliefs. Common arguments:
“Everything has a cause (except God, who is special). What caused the universe?”
“What if you’re wrong? Insert Pascal’s Wager here.”
“You can’t possibly think that we evolved from monkeys just by chance! The odds of that happening are one in eleventy bazillion! A math guy calculated it, and I read about it in a book by Lee Strobel, which I would like you to read!”
Freshman philosophy major type people. These are the ones who will actually try to do their own arguing. The problem is, they tend to suck at it. Every fallacy you can imagine gets trotted out, they might try to vanquish the heathen by explicitly using syllogisms, and the arguments get so vague and amorphous that it’s probably best to cut them off and just attack the faulty premises. Examples:
“A statement can be either true or false. [Insert a lot of really confused words here; at least a paragraph’s worth.] Therefore God is love and love is real and therefore you should go to church and pray for your immortal souls.”
“An actual infinite cannot exist. A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite. Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events. Therefore, praise Jesus.”
These are all common and totally non-fictional examples. Nobody that I can remember actually said “someone would have noticed”, but most of these people are coming from an insular religious worldview where everybody they know and associate with agrees with them. That colors their views, a lot.
All the examples you give are valid examples of bad reasoning. But they if anything underscore Jack’s point that engagement in the “someone would have noticed” heuristic seems pretty rare. None of these people said “If God didn’t exist wouldn’t someone have noticed?” which would be the roughly equivalent argument.
People tend to be more open to the idea of atheism if they know that it’s even an option. Have you noticed how, now that Dawkins and Harris and friends are arguing publicly for atheism, it’s become a more socially acceptable position? It’s not so much “somebody would have noticed” as “it’s unthinkable among everyone that I know”.
This applies to other things. There was an event around here last year where some of the more liberal religious leaders talked about evolution, and how it was possible to be religious and believe that evolution happened. The most common reaction from the people there—and it was a common reaction—was surprise that they were allowed to accept evolution.
If people are in an insular religious social group, they’re probably going to have a hard time even considering contrary views. I’m not sure that’s an example of the “someone would have noticed” heuristic, but it’s an important phenomenon.
The only hit I could find by googling both “someone would have noticed” and “somebody would have noticed” (what’s the difference, by the way… anyone? anybody?) and both phrases along with the word ‘implausible’ was this Twin Towers conspiracy site (which claims that someone would have noticed the odd explosions on the tape—so not quite what Alicorn was complaining about). This which makes the (I think resonable) point that someone would probably have noticed if Elizabeth I had ever been pregnant and given birth to a child. And this which explains that someone would have noticed if Paul had just suddenly made up the resurrection myth several months after the supposed resurrection without consulting any of the other apostles (which, to be fair, also seems pretty plausible to me).
I couldn’t find any more uses of the exact phrase (I realise there are dozens of plausible paraphrasings, but I couldn’t be bothered to think of all of them), so conclude that most of the time when people use this heuristic they are actually being reasonable (the person in the last link is very clearly wrong, but that doesn’t make his reasoning invalid).