Hmm… I’m a bit confused about what was supposed to be predicted here. Were we supposed to predict whether Knox would be convicted, or predict whether Knox actually committed a murder? If I had been involved in the original conversations, I would have assigned a very low probability to Knox’s actual guilt, but a higher probability to her being found guilty. One is a question that specifically pertains to Knox herself, and the other is a commentary on the state of the Italian justice system.
JQuinton
Karma: 1,311
I started drawing at a very early age, probably around 5 (I stopped drawing when I was around 16 − 17). What I think helped me was that I would attempt to emulate the artists that I was most influenced by. First I would start by tracing comic book panels that I thought looked cool. After a couple of months of doing that, I moved up to attempting to recreate a panel that I liked in a comic book. After a couple years of that, I attempted to draw live, inanimate objects and then finally people.
In a way, I guess you could say I apprenticed myself under certain artists that I felt were good enough to emulate. This helped in my case and I eventually got a good reputation as a talented artist (I got accepted to LaGuardia HS and subsequently FIT in NYC, but went to neither in favor of Bx Science and Air Force, respectively). However, I’m not sure taking over a decade to learn how to draw would be an effective path in this context; especially as I was learning how to draw while learning other essential motor functions so I would say the skill was sort of hard-wired into my development. But who knows, this might still be good advice.
“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.”—Sir Francis Bacon
Hey everyone. I found out about Less Wrong via Common Sense Atheism a couple of months ago and I’ve been reading up on the Sequences and trying to learn more about Bayes’ Theorem so that I can think more like a Bayesian in everyday life. It was only recently that I decided to actually make an account and contribute a bit.
I’m a software engineer for the Army. I’m not uniformed military (I used to be, for the Air Force) but a government civilian. My hobbies include swing dancing, playing guitar (mostly metal), learning about religion and studying Koine Greek (I might try to get an MA and possibly even a PhD in religious studies eventually), working out, and of course studying rationalism.
Yeah, I think it’s probably a combination of both. Maybe somewhere down the road I’ll be sneaking in rationalism while talking or teaching about religion? That’s the goal, anyway.
The Likelihood Ratio and the Problem of Evil
“unfortunately it is obscured by your bad math.”
That’s what I’m hoping someone will explain
Teaching Bayesianism
This is a good point I hadn’t thought of. Maybe I’m really just priming people to get the right answer and my skills at thought experiments aren’t as good as I thought :/
JQuinton mentioned that he uses this to argue about falsifiability. I’d like to hear that explained more. I think the >example is meant to show that a hypothesis that “can explain anything” (the 8 sided die), should lose probability if >we obtain evidence that is “better explained” by the more specific hypothesis (the 3′s only die).
Yes, that’s correct. The thing I was trying to illustrate is that some hypotheses are more falsifiable than others. A hypothesis that can explain too much data (e.g. a 1,000 sided die) would lose probability to a more restricted hypothesis like a 6 sided die if the numbers 1 − 6 are rolled. The compliment to that is if the numbers 7 − 1,000 are rolled this refutes the idea that the 6 sided die was rolled. Accounting for too much data and falsifiability are two sides of the same coin; explaining too much data tends towards unfalsfiability.
I’m thinking there is a false dichotomy here. If Christianity is false it doesn’t mean that atheism is true. Both Christianity and atheism could be false. Christianity being true only depends on the resurrection of Jesus, and that depends on how regularly dead bodies come back from the dead, how many stories we have about dead bodies coming back from the dead, and how many times we have had verified stories of dead bodies coming back from the dead.
There are certainly Jews who think that the events in the NT generally happened (e.g. Toledot Yeshu), Muslims who think that the events in the NT generally happened, but still think that Christianity is false. I mean, Christianity could be false and yet you might still end up in hell because Islam was the “true religion”.
Availability Heuristic and Getting Stranded: Stay With Your Car Or Seek Help?
Maybe it’s just me, but the premise of this post rubs me the wrong way. “Thwarting” a conversion? It seems kinda… I don’t know. And I’m probably one of the most anti-theistic people that I know or have interacted with on the Internet. It’s not like you’re trying to prevent her from slipping into alcoholism. As long as she stays fundamentally the same person, I don’t see what the big deal is. People should be respected for how they treat others, not what they believe.
That said, I’ve read a few “convert back to Christianity” stories and a lot of them have similar hidden/leading indicators. There’s always some sort of family/significant other factor; it was usually a huge sticking point during their deconversion from religion. I don’t really know a lot of this blogger’s backstory, but are her family and/or significant other Catholics? That would explain the jump straight from atheism to Catholicism without some sort of intermediary stage (e.g. deism, generic Christianity, etc.) based on my own personal prior probability about how these things happen.
So if that’s the case, “thwarting” again seems sort of insensitive. At least to me it would be insensitive language in this context.
But as to the “I don’t see what the big deal is” point (which a number of people have raised), I do have some concern, because I know how seriously my friend takes integrated belief systems. Some have suggested that this may be a “belief in belief” issue, but that’s definitely not the case. She’s very much committed to there being a truth of the matter here, and my guess is that if she really did commit to Catholicism, she would be more like a “full-strength Catholic,” not a “pick and choose what feels nice and go on my way” Catholic.
This seems like a more substantial objection to her conversion. If she becomes a full-strength Catholic, do you see her arguing against abortion, homosexuality / same-sex marriage, responsible birth control, using condoms in Africa, etc. because she’ll see those acts as being against her ethics, since now her ethics are going to be that of the Catholic church? Those are actually harmful beliefs (and actually cause people to die in the case of anti-abortion legislation and condom use in Africa), and should be thwarted as strongly as possible. But then again, you might be able to just argue against those points and not so much her Catholicism.
I’m failing at Sweep Picking. When I attempt to do it at a high BPM I fail miserably. I can do it slowly, but that’s no fun. Related, I also failed at recording a heavy metal version of some video game music, namely the snow stage music from Ninja Gaiden II (NES version) which includes some sweep picking...
I would suggest tabooing the word “right”
For me, existential angst occurs in both a materialistic/reductionist world and a supernatural/theistic world. I’m not sure that objective morality would have made any difference on why god exists, and why god’s existence isn’t meaningless. And if god’s existence has no purpose, I reasoned, then neither does ours (under a theistic framework).
I might be remembering this wrong, but I read somewhere that if you want to get someone’s opinion about something, you should ask them what their friends think about the topic. The reasoning was that people will quite obviously try to guess your password if you ask them a question directly, but their close friends are much more likely to be closer to their true opinion than they let on, so you should ask them what their friends think about the topic. I can’t find where I read this at so take it with a grain of salt (anyone with better Google-fu able to find what I’m talking about?).
If true, this would seem to be a not-as-fallacious application of the typical mind fallacy.
Would you say, then, that “faith” as you’ve defined it (related to motivation and commitment) would also be related to the feeling of certainty ?