This is one problems with the absurdity heuristic. Because of deliberately starting at a point with such a long inferential distance, It can be hard to see where the error has taken place.
Alia1d
Karma: 79
Sorry to be so long answering this. Not only was work busy but my husband was going through withdrawal again and that is always an all consuming time sink.
On Solomonoff induction: If we take a look at one of the facts this story proposes to explain, - We live in a world of decay, where humans and other animals have death as their destiny and the universe itself tends to disorder and destruction, but that this is bad and wrong and against the harmonies of logic and lawfulness and the timelessness of truth. This story’s proposal that the original and good state of the world was without any need for death, but that at one point one fundamental change was made, perhaps tweaking a law of conservation of information just enough so that its practical consequences are an ever increasing disorder, i.e. entropy, seems as elegantly simple answer as I can think of. This one rule change is more what I was thinking of, rather than swap out of the entire rule set, basically because it’s lower complexity. Yes, I am expecting that God re-cons the plant and animal world so that you get stable biology and ecosystems under this new rule, but i already had a sufficiently intelligent and powerful agent, with an established interest in having a sustained ecosystem, who could implement the needed changes. So I don’t see any new rules there. Nor do I think it should be surprising that quite a lot of surface changes could be occasioned by even a small change of one rule that was so fundamental.
On parallels: I can think of lots of reasons to give why Satan controlling the snake in called for by a Christological interpretation and other reasons, like dualism, that could also lead to the idea this was a good interpretation, but I’m getting the internal feeling that I’m starting to treat my arguments like soldiers on this one. People are influenced by the culture around them so I can see how a culture that finds the idea of talking snakes silly would be one of the contributing factors to the general theological preference for Satan as an external control on the snake. But this is such a subtle thing with so many dependencies that it will be hard to get even someone who has this assumption to focus on questioning the one dependency you want, the inerrancy of the Bible, rather than some other dependency, especially if you are trying to avoid a feeling of personal hostility that tends to harden people positions.
I agree that not being a Uniformitarian makes the makes the evidence harder to deal with and is generally a headache for everyone. But it should not be used to let a historical theory get away with anomaly without any hit to its plausibility, it should just reduce the size of the plausibility hit. Also several anomalies that are being explained by the same rule change only make up one plausibility hit rather than being additive.
On Christological interpretations, I agree it can get out of hand, and I’m not sure they are very valid here, But if “and He should crush your head” is going of be a prophesy about Jesus, well there isn’t a story of Him dramatically crushing a snake’s head, so it’s got to a general stamina out His victory of death, sin, and the devil, so I do think people are using that frame to identify Satan and the serpent.
It seems to me that one change at a fundamental level could have less Kolmogorov complexity then several special case exceptions at a surface level. And that is what the bringer change sounds like to me, something at a deep level, connected to death, propagating all through the system.
Since we are already talking about going from a legged animal to a legless one, I don’t see that doing it on a more massive animal can make a significant change in the complexity penalty.
I would agree that there are some Christians whose belief set could be vulnerable on the point of talking snakes. I can think of several different arguments depending on what other ideas they were holding in conjunction with their interpretation of Genesis. Using a blanket dismissal would have the advantage that you wouldn’t have to figure out which one would work on your target. But I think we would both agree it could also potentially backfire.
Concerning the issue you presented, that ”natural” snakes just can’t work like that. I think you have considerably underplayed your hand. Consider Gen 1:29-30:
Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so.
That’s right, in the Garden of Eden every single animal was vegan. And ecosystems just don’t work like that. And I would go further and say that all these animals had the capacity at this time to live forever. Death didn’t enter the world till the fall. Rom. 5:12-14:
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.
So we are dealing with quite a big discrepancy from known biology here, and that would be a problem if I were a (Uniformitarian.)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformitarianism] But fundamentalists tend to be much less Uniformitarian than main stream society. So the idea that God had a different biological system set up initially, and He changed the rules as part of the curse, seems not only plausible, but a nature part of the story.
Also it sort of seems you might be unconsciously assuming the traditional pictorial representation of a small to medium snake wrapped around a tree branch. But the text doesn’t say the serpent was in the tree or give any other reference to size. I tend to picture something more like a Chinese dragon standing on all fours, shoulder to shoulder with Eve. So I don’t get the “brain box obviously too small for speech” effect from my mental picture.
(Note on the preferences for Satan controlling the snake showing an awareness that the talking snake is silly, I think this is more about emphasizing Gen. 3:15 as a Christological prophesy and generally framing the whole story as part of a Christological arch where the first Adam brings san and death and the second Adam (Jesus) brings salvation and life. Having the Devil tempting Adam and Eve here makes a parallel with Christ’s temptation in the desert and with Judas Iscariot’s temptation to betray Jesus. Finding Christological interpretations is a big motivator of Christian Theology.)
Oops, thnks
These are more gut feelings, I had already considered a lot of evidence for and against these before I found out about Bayesian updating, so the bottom line was really already written. If I tried to do a numerically rigorous calculation now, I would just end up double counting evidence. This is just a ’if I had to make a hundred statements of this type that I was this confident about, how often would I be right guess.
Fairly typically fundamentalist, I believe in young earth creationism with a roughly estimated confidence level of 70%, a large fraction of the human race destined for eternal torment at about 85% and verbal plenary inspiration at about 90%.
I’m a little more theologically engaged then average but (as is typical in my circles) that mean’s I’m more theologically conservative, not less.
I’ve found the Welcome thread!
Hi, I’m Alia and I live with my husband in San Jose, California. I found this site via SlateStarCodex and having read Rationality:From AI to Zombies I think this is a fascinating and useful set of concepts and that using this type of reasoning more often is something to aspire to. I want to do more Bayesian calculations so I get more of a feel for them.
I’m also a fundamentalist* Christian. I’m perfectly ready to discuss and defend these beliefs, but I wouldn’t always bring up these beliefs in threads. I’m not trying to deceive or trick anyone, I just don’t want to derail a thread that is actually about something else. I do think it’s possible to be both a rationalist and a Christian as to stay reasonably intellectually consistent.
*(a note on why I choose the identification fundamentalist. Not long after American Christians split into mainline and fundamentalist groups, the fundamentalists got a bunch of bad press focused on certain sub-groups that were anti-intellectual. The other fundamentalists dealt with this by splitting off and re-branding themselves as evangelical. I’m not anti-intellectual and generally in the group that would self identify as evangelical, but I’m choosing to stick with the fundamentalist label for three reasons. 1) I don’t think changing the label or re-branding is a good way to deal with negative affect attached to a word. At best it just avoids the issue rather than solving the problem. 2) I don’t believe in disavowing people because they are unpopular with third parties. While I dis-agree with the anti-intellectuals on some things, the agreement on common core beliefs that lead to the fundamentalist label in the beginning is still there. 3) I think the fundamentalist label provides more clarity. The evangelicals worked hard and successfully to avoid getting over identified with and sub-group or coincidental characteristic. But as a result the label evangelical stayed vague, Individuals and groups that are more in the mainline tradition sometimes call themselves or get called evangelical. On the other hand opponents who wanted to hang on to the negative affect kept calling anything from the original fundamentalist tradition ‘fundamentalist.’ So on the I think fundamentalist will convey the most accurate idea of where I’m coming from theologically.)
When you are
striving to avoid arousing emotions that will hinder updating beliefs and truth discovery
And otherwise being diplomatic where do you draw the line between that and motte-and-baileying them or otherwise being rhetorically manipulative?
When I’m talking with a view very different from my view, if I offer a watered down version of my view (that I still believe is true) so that there will be less inferential distance, am I being collaborative or deceptive? I fine this question particularly troublesome on the internet where it’s hard to build up a deep understanding of someone’s position.
because there aren’t any talking animals
Biologically speaking humans are animals and we talk. And since evolution resulted in one type of animal that talks couldn’t it result in others, maybe even other that have since gone extinct? So there has to be an additional reason to dismiss the story other than talking animals being rationally impossible. You mention that the problem is the “magical” causation, which you see as a synonym for supernatural, whereas in Christian Theology it is closer to an antonym.
So let me tell you a story I made up:
Thahg and Zog are aliens in a faraway solar system study species of other planets. One day Thahg shows a pocket watch to Zog and says “Look, I think a human made this.” Zog says, “What’s a human?” “A human is a featherless biped from Earth” Zog thinks about what animals come from earth and the only one he can think of is a chicken. He laughs and says, “You think a plucked chicken made that? Boy, are you nuts!”
And of course Thahg would then look at Zog like he was nuts, because the absurdity Zog is seeing is coming from Zog’s own lack of appropriate reference categories rather than an actual problem with Thahg’s conjecture.
For another example suppose the Muslim woman Yvain was talking to had said “I don’t believe that evolution could work because alleles that sweep through populations more often then not reduce the kolmogorov complexity of the genes’ effect on phenotype.” Yvain may still think she is just as wrong, but she has demonstrated intellectual engagement with the subject rather then just demonstrating she had no mental concept for genetic change over time, like the ‘monkeys give birth to humans’ objection demonstrates.
So the problem is saying that talking snakes are magical and therefore ridiculous sound more like “My mental concepts are too limited to comprehend your explanation” than like “I understood your explanation and it has X, Y and Z logical problems.”
I would say CarlJ is right about general Christian belief in the past from Historical Theology by Gregg R. Allison
Protestant theologians in the post-Reformation period exhibited the tendency … to adhere closely to biblical teaching on the doctrine of angels, Satan, and demons.
For how this would apply to the snake in the garden see this: Jamieson
And also correct that the doctrine is important to many Christians today from Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem
It is important to insist on the historical truthfulness of the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve. … The serpent was no doubt, a real, physical serpent, but one that was talking because of the empowerment of Satan speaking through it.
So I think a successful attack on this point would be significant.
But I think Eliezer is correct there isn’t extra improbability in the snake than in other elements of the creation story. I don’t think most people would find absurd the possibility that an engineer could build a snake like robot that you could use a radio link to speak through, so, given the creation of entire planets and all the plant and animal life, someone talking through a snake in not an additional stretch.
But I think Yvain is getting at something additional here. The reason the snake in particular seems absurd is that talking animals pattern match to things like Kipling’s Just So Stories and Aesop’s Fables. But that connection is in the map, not the territory. Using that as your leading argument against Christianity makes it sound like you’ve used a lazy and flawed heuristic to dismiss the religion, rather than actually considered it rationally and found it wanting.
Keeping in mind that I’m not part of the group and might even be cynical about them, here is my definition of Social Justice Activism:
The idea that everyone should be equal in the social sphere, That everyone should have equal access to being cool, to being popular, to being the center of attention, to feeling liked, to feeling part of any group they want to belong to, to being liked by anyone else, to feeling comfortable and at ease in any situation. That everyone should be welcomed and accepted into any group they encounter, regardless of their race, gender, or any permeate aspect or demographic characteristic. Imagine a nice middle class kindergarten class were if a child comes to the teacher and says “I am sad, no one will play with me,” the teacher takes that child to a group and instructs them to include the lonely child. If someone’s feelings are hurt the teacher will go to the other student and explain that stupid, ugly, or scardy-cat are “just not words we use” and extract an apology. This is a sort of Social Justice Utopia were everyone is included, everyone is required to be nice, and no-one is allowed to hurt anyone else’s feelings. I can see how this would seem like a nice, safe society you would want to be part of, especially if you think that other people get to experience this sort of world as adults and you are being unfairly excluded because of the color of your skin or something else you can’t help. There is awareness that just going up to someone and demanding that they like you and/or your friend doesn’t work. But so many things from networking to find a job to getting peer awards can depend on social standing and whether people you meet like you and whether you feel comfortable and relaxed with them. So there is a feeling that anyone with any sort of authority or influences in a business, organization or semi-formal group (or even just officially sanctioned membership) needs to at least act like they like everyone ( at least individuals that might potentially be discriminated against) and behaves in ways that make them feel comfortable and welcome. And that the business or group as a duty to punish or expel anyone who doesn’t do this. The idea is especially relevant to college campuses were much social activity is at least some what connected to official groups that could in theory take the role of the kindergarten teacher.
To clarify I wouldn’t expect most people in a Christian country to help without an alterative motive either. ( this study comes to mind though I think my option was formed more from general experience.) I have met a few people how genuinely like to help for helping’s sake but I think a larger percentage need some additional motivation like an expectation of a likelihood of reciprocation or perceiving the person to be helped as in-group like.
Also, I apologize but my dyslexia kicked in and I mis-read 19th canter as 21st century. If you’re willing to settle for 21st century liberalism that is the intellectual foundation of social justice activism I have heard interesting things about “The Givingness of Things: Essay” though I haven’t read it.
I’m not saying that a little more rationality wouldn’t be helpful. I’m saying the pointing to this and saying it’s irrational and maybe stupid is not the most interesting thing that can be said about it. It is more fascinating to look for what is incentivizing the irrationality.
There’s a very rational (in the sence of effective for getting what you want) negotiating tactic I heard about in one of Eric Flint’s books. The negotiator points at Crazy Joe muttering to himself in the corner and says ‘He and his friends are saying that if you don’t double their salaries they are not only going to strike, they’re going to be throwing rotten eggs at you come into the office and showing up at your house at midnight with bullhorns. But I know these people and can talk their language. I can get them to calm down. But you have to give me something in exchange. A ten percent raise doesn’t sound so crazy compared to double the salaries, does it? And besides, if you don’t make a deal with me, you’ll end up having to negotiate with Crazy Joe.’ And the business manager is so aghast by Crazy Joe’s demands that he ends up agreeing that ten percent is not as extreme as he first thought.
The fact that there is a crazy extreme getting a lot of attention, can make the only rationally extreme seem moderate. This sort of tactic doesn’t have to be disingenuous, or even conscious. In fact, If you eject (or steam roll into moderation) too many people for being more extreme than you are, not only do you weaken your negotiating position, you can get evaporative cooling in the direction of agreeing with your opponent.
Of course the people of the extreme extreme don’t need to know, and certainly can’t admit in public, that they are just being used to make other positions look good. When you combine that with the fact the SJWs have trouble coming to terms with the fact you can’t make everyone happy all of the time, the extreme extreme can spiral out of control in a way that is very hard to stop.
Nor is the basic tactic of preference statement counter productive on its own, if there is a significant enough presence of preference utilitarians in the audience to produce a reasonable hit rate. The problem is a coordination one where with enough people pursuing that strategy they end on having to be shriller and more negative to compete with one another. So they have to dwell on their misery, increasing its impact, and he audience gets bombarded. So even though everyone started out just wanting to create a little happiness actually end up creating a fair amount of unhappiness. And that’s a much more complex problem solving situation then just pointing out that some people are being irrational.
That’s an interesting observation given that SJWs are very… forceful about separating everyone into sheep and goats. They have come to heavily depend upon the existence of “the enemy” fighting which constitutes most of their raison d’etre
Of course people of good will come to agree with them, isn’t it self evident that if any normal person realizes here is someone who as had a life accident and is doing the emotional equivalent of bleeding, of course they would stop and help, giving what ever validation and encouragement that want. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could think so callously. They must be down right evil and we don’t want them around. Of course it’s only a few people who are like that, most people just haven’t realized there is really someone hurting in their feelings here, they will gather round to help and kick the few bad people out of decent society.
Seriously, even though are plenty of instances of SJWs doing the normal human thing and lashing out with hurtful words and people they are angry at, I also think a lot of them would expect most people to agree with them, if only they understood. They see the specific small group they are targeting at the moment and think of that as the problem and don’t step back and view the SJM as a whole and realize how many people are targets or potential targets.
In a non-Christian country I would not expect the majority of people to stop and help me after an accident, though I would expect some. But I would expect more of the people who stopped to help to be think that I looked like a rich westerner at that either my high-status would boost theirs through even a brief association or that I was a good opportunity for a hustle.
As for the reference req request, I don’t know of any. This is possibly because I am not part of the SJM and don’t know as much as an insider. But I can think of a couple of reasons such a reference might not exist. One is that generally the people in the movement don’t want to examine their assumptions and open them up to criticism. Second is that, while from the outside the SJM is identifiable as a distinct thing, from within I think SJM just looks like the right way to act on liberalism writ large or the natural progression of progressivism.
I would also note that an emotional impulse to make someone who is sad feel better, however genuine, is not the same thing as an intellectual commitment understand the problem and find ways to solve it.
I have taken the survey
Do you think it was a sort of convergent evolution or there’s actually a traceable line of descent from this bit of Protestant theology to SJWs?
Yes, they weren’t the only influence but they were an influential and founding one. All the seven sisters have on going involvement with Social Justice today.
I read it as, basically, refusal to consider the consequences
There is certainly a lot of that, especially among the more extreme radicals, which Pham’s article is certainly part of. But the reason this can flourish in the discourse community is that it is being buttressed from the side by a sort of ‘men of good will can always come to a reasonable agreement’ article of faith. Even though Pham themself would reject this believe the fact that others in this community hold it enables Pham’s disregard of feasibility. This is one big contribution that Mainline Christianity has been making to Social Justice, providing cohesion with this sort of ballast.
this value is deeper and more ancient … As long at the cost is not high, sure, whatever makes you happy.
I would agree that this is an ancient value with regards to my family/my friends/my tribe , predicated on their continued acceptable behavior as members of the in group. But I’m doubtful about how far beyond that it would extend. In fact for those defiantly identified as out-group I would think it would be more “As long as the cost is not too high, whatever makes you miserable.”
Christianity, as part of its universalizing, had a founding goal of drawing all peoples, languages, and tribes into one family group. Treating everyone as brothers and sisters meant having a care for their happiness.
I agree that SJWs don’t seem very interested in making people happy (in fact I think this is one of those Moloch situations and everyone is actually producing unhappiness because of their incentives inside the situation) But SJWs do rely on general happiness goals in their audience. I do also think a lot of Social Justice thinking started out as a genuine desire to help people and make them happier, regardless of how that goal turned back on itself do to inconsistencies in other places in the philosophy.
You are right that there is commonly an implicate argument for action on someone else’s part that is irrational. There was originally an argument from Mainline Protestantism* that somewhat bridged the gap from. But most SJWs don’t want the rest of the baggage from Christianity and so don’t want to examine that foundation. But SJWs do commonly carry forward as assumptions ideas like “true” desires aren’t going to be contradictory and therefor don’t need to be put in a hierarchy:
This is not to say that there are many roles [sic] to be filled among those who resist, none of which should be placed in a hierarchy of value. People come from different places of knowledge, ability, and history which makes each person equipped to participate (if they so choose) based on their unique position in society.
In the meantime, the main audience that SJWs are talking to has the cultural value (inherited from Christianity) that we want to increase people’s happiness. So saying you want something, and therefore it would make you happy, is at least some small amount of weight in favor of that thing.
*(God loves all humans greatly and as imitators of Christ we should love all humans too. Also Christ has redeemed people from their sins and therefore they are going to be (and already are in some non-manifest way) made perfect. Since they are made perfect, their deepest and truest desires will partake of the Good. The Good is non-self-contradictory and innately desirable. Therefore these “true” desires, which are in the process of being brought out in them by the grace of God, should be catered to.)
It’s been may years since I first saw this question, so my memories may not be accurate, but I think my internal thoughts went something like this: ‘Well 1.10 minus 1 is .10, but wait I know this is a trick question so … Ah! I also need to divide by 2. The answer is .05.’ And then I checked my answer by doing 1.05 + .05 and 1.05 - .05. Introspecting now on why I leaped to the idea of dividing by two, I think what I was seeing was something like: In this context “costs $1.00 more than” means Exactly $1 more than, so it’s saying that without the $1 the two things are equal and you need to divide the cost between them.
This makes me think of ordinary real life contexts where I would say “costs $1.00 (or $20 or $100) more than.” It seems possible it might be clear to both me and my listener I meant ‘at least x more than,’ ‘as much as x more than,’ or ‘approximately x more than.’ I wonder if changing the wording to “The bat costs exactly $1.00 more than the ball” would help any.