If reviewers anonymity is abolished, how many would dare to submit a negative review, knowing that eventually their own work might be refereed by the author?
cleonid
Karma: 304
The seeming irrationality of the customers choice may disappear after the cost of decision-making is taken into account.
In our daily life we are constantly required to estimate trade-offs between things that are very difficult to quantify (e.g. pleasure of wearing a new jacket—money that has to be paid – extra hours of work to earn this money - …). Hence using simple subconscious heuristics (such as “improving the trade-off by 50% is worthy of your time, 5% is not”) is very helpful. A constant search for an optimal solution would make a nightmare out of our every decision, which is hardly worth an occasional 5$ saving.
In this specific example, I believe that increasing the price differentials would have justified an additional mental effort, leading more people to the “optimal choice”.
All people have a marked preference to believe what they want to believe, especially when there are no direct costs associated with the false belief. The majority therefore prefers the belief in a charitable high power to the uncaring universe guided solely by the laws of physics.
The fact that a minority made by the self-declared rationalists can get by without this belief may have less to do with their rationalism than with the warm feeling of the superiority they feel towards the rest of the mankind. This can at least in part console them for giving up religion. Personally I get my consolation from feeling superior to both groups.
You don’t have to mix Calvinism into this problem.
Determinism (a rationalist term for pre-destination) follows naturally from the laws of physics. Quantum mechanics throws a tiny element of chance into the play, but since you have no conscious control over the quantum effects anyway, it seems that all your future actions have already been taken out of your control.
With this additional indulgence from science, you can now embark on a life a sin. However, I am afraid that you may find it no more gratifying than the life of self-denial chosen by the Chosen.
I believe this is not quite correct. Predestination does not imply that actions do not predetermine the consequences (i.e. “no righteous man can be saved without the grace of God”). Rather it implies that actions themselves are predetermined (i.e. “no man can become righteous without the grace of God”).
To quote Luther: ” God is said to hate men before they are born, because, He foreknows that they WILL DO that which WILL MERIT hatred”.
Rational Defense of Irrational Beliefs
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I must admit that even though I expected that some “rationalists” would be just as defensive as religious folks about their views, looking at my karma now I realize that I grossly underestimated their number. That’s a good lesson to me for lecturing other people about overconfidence.
″ For certain types of problems that require high intelligence to solve, the views of the masses will indeed be worthless on average. ”
I generally share your opinion in case the debated issues at stake are devoid of emotional charge. However, once we move to our deeply cherished views high IQ people can be just as good at self-deception as anybody else, if not better. As Orwell said, “some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.”
“You’re using rationalist methods to support religion”
Thank you very much for the compliment. However, it is totally undeserved. Being essentially an atheist (well, agnostic to be precise), supporting religion was the last thing on my mind. What I really wanted to do is to test how rational and intelligent people, which I hoped would be overrepresented on this forum, would react to arguments that go against their preferred view.
It is interesting that everyone seems to assume that I am a religious person myself, though I thought the contrary should be pretty obvious from the post title. Personally, I have yet to meet people who would call their beliefs “irrational”.
″ I think theism is wrong. ”
I believe you are likely to be right.
“I think it can be demonstrated to be wrong on logical grounds.”
I’m really intrigued. How?
Thanks for your comment.
1) The infinity seems unlikely to be a problem. Our own three-dimensional space can be subdivided into an infinite number of two-dimensional subspaces. That does not mean we would want to move into them, even if we could.
2) My own personal opinion is that all talks about things on the Planck scale, rarely amount to more than a wild speculation, even if we restrict ourselves to our own “unreal” three-dimensional world. I would not presume even to speculate how an additional dimension might affect this problem.
“I disagree with this “axiom”. Most VR games that exist today simulate or model a 3D environment. ”
I suppose what I had in mind are games that model entire civilizations, rather than track the movements of one or several protagonists. In the latter case the “horizon” of the protagonists is very limited, allowing 3-D, but at the price of limiting the available space. However, if you want your protagonists to avoid bumping into the wall (remember “Truman Show”?), you might still need to give up one dimension.
Carl and Michael,
I certainly had no intention to claim that I invented the underlying idea of Simulism. It certainly has been around for many years. My immediate motivation for posting was to discuss whether “talking snakes” from the previous post could have rational explanations, which can not be easily dismissed. I did not want to spell this outright lest I immediately provoke the flame of some people here.
“Do you head down to the nearest church for a baptism? Or do you admit that even if believing something makes you happier, you still don’t want to believe it unless it’s true?”
I believe that God’s existence or non-existence can not be rigorously proven. Likewise there is no rigorous protocol for estimating the chances. Therefore we are forced to rely on our internal heuristics which are extremely sensitive to our personal preferences for the desired answer. Consequently, people, who would be happier believing in God, mostly likely already do so. The same principle applies to people with “rationality-shaped holes”. It’s possible that one group is on average happier than the other. However, becoming happier simply by switching sides may not be possible without a profound personality change. In other words you need to become somebody else than you are now. Since this seems little different from being erased and replaced by another person, it’s hardly an appealing choice for most people.
On the other hand, we seem to be little concerned about the gradual change of our personalities (compare yourself now and twenty years ago). Hence, it’s quite possible for the same physical person at different points of life to be comfortable in totally different camps.
It is the latter (I’m an agnostic). However, I don’t see why the concept has no meaning. Would you say that axioms in math are meaningless?
“It’s possible to decide which axioms are in effect from the inside of a sufficiently complex mathematical system (such as this universe), however.”
I don’t think I understand what you mean.
“For that matter, it would be possible to deduce the existence of a god, too; you just have to die.”
When you meet a god, how can you be sure it’s not a hallucination?
“They distinguish one hypothetical world from another.”
Just like different religions.
“Furthermore, some of them can be empirically tested. ”
Empirical tests do not prove a proposition, but increase the odds of its being correct (just like “miracles” would raise the odds in favor of religion).
The assumption that a work of art has an independent value, which is linked to its enjoyment by the consumer, is out of date. In the modern world the art has also an important social function. It separates the cultural elite, who find the art’s “colors and patterns exceptionally beautiful”, from the philistines, “who are unfit for their office or unpardonably stupid”.
I’m very doubtful about the validity of the IAT test. Their procedure requires you to declare your ethnicity prior to the testing. Depending on the answer they change the test ordering. When I declared an incorrect ethnicity, the test results claimed that I hate my own ethnic group.
While this may not be enough to invalidate the whole idea, it makes me wonder why they did not design the test in a way that would be totally insensitive to the subjects race. Too often I see sociologists design the tests in a way that will ensure the final results.
Politically charged fields are known to produce lots of contradictory studies. For instance, different studies of correlation between genes and intelligence often produce numbers anywhere in the range 0.2-1. So before debating the significance of implicit associations, it would be nice to know how robust are the numbers cited in this post.
Voltaire, using rationalist arguments, concluded that “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. So could it be that adhering to facts in all situations is essentially an irrational position?
Consider the following statements:
1) Rational humans (unlike rational AI) should aim to be happy.
2) Rational humans should not believe fanciful notions unsupported by empirical evidence.
3) Empirical studies (e.g. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08031807.html) suggest that humans who believe in such notions are more likely to be happier.
The consequence of the above statements seems to be that a rational human should reject rationality.
Does anyone see flaws in this reasoning?