scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/4bivel.md

## Do you need to be an atheist to be a rationalist?

* Author: u/trekie140 *
* URL: http://lesswrong.com/lw/gv/outside_the_laboratory/
* Score: 0

* Created: 2016-03-22T19:08:22

### Post:

[Link to content](http://lesswrong.com/lw/gv/outside_the_laboratory/)

### Comments:

> **u/castleborg** [+10]  (33 minutes later)
> 
> Its a side effect, not a prerequisite

> **u/None** [+14]  (22 minutes later)
> 
> No, but it does tend to sort of happen in the process of becoming a rationalist.

> **u/eaglejarl** [+12]  (54 minutes later)
> 
> Why is this listed on a site for rational **fiction**?

>> **u/gabbalis** [+15]  (2 hours later)
>> 
>> Probably because we didn't call it /r/rationalfiction.
>> 
>> I mean if we're just literally hypothesizing the causation behind these sorts of posts, that's probably the reason.

> **u/None** [+3]  (2 hours later)
> 
> Does your "belief in God" constrain your expectations?  If yes, then yes, otherwise no.  But you may find that you care more about "beliefs" that *do* constrain expectations, find them more emotionally weighty.

> **u/SkeevePlowse** [+7]  (55 minutes later)
> 
> I would suggest that if you're a rationalist and still religious, you're either not a very good rationalist, or you know something the rest of us don't.

>> **u/BadGoyWithAGun** [+3]  (2 hours later)
>> 
>> I'm a religious rationalist and I agree with this statement. A healthy dose of non-overlapping magisteria helped in the beginning, but it's not even necessary at this point.

>>> **u/protagnostic** [+2]  (13 hours later)
>>> 
>>> ...so are you saying you're not a very good rationalist, or you know something the rest of us don't?
>>> 
>>> If the former, I'm very confused as to how your brain works.
>>> If the latter, what's the secret?

>>>> **u/PeridexisErrant** [+1]  *put aside fear for courage, and death for life* (16 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> "Respectively 'Yes' and 'Not telling'"

>>>> **u/BadGoyWithAGun** [+1]  (19 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> No secret. It's not in my instrumental interests to profess alignment with the atheist tribe.
>>>> 
>>>> Or, as Hanson would say: Belief in God isn't about whether you believe God exists.

>> **u/LiteralHeadCannon** [+1]  (an hour later)
>> 
>> I'm quite satisfied with this dichotomy, but that's probably because you haven't actually said anything.

> **u/Alphanos** [+3]  *The Bright Powers* (2 hours later)
> 
> Though I don't expect this to be popular here, I think there's a point on this topic oft-ignored by atheism.  Perhaps the rational community will be more open to considering it.  The problem is that of experimental controls.
> 
> The linked page discusses "spirit speaking" as a hypothetical event in reality that can be tested like any other.  This brings to mind stories of tests involving MRI scans attempting to determine parts of the brain that indicate spiritual or religious perceptions.  However, there is a great flaw in the methodology here.  The successful application of science requires reducing variables to test one or at least few things at a time.  We try our best to use controls in order to only test what we are seeking to answer at present.  But this requires humans to have the requisite level of power or control over the thing being tested.
> 
> When people talk about it being difficult to impossible to test spiritual or religious matters, it is not because we have applied those labels to them.  It is because we are discussing intelligent actors who, hypothetically, have vastly more power and intellect than the tester, and so will only show up reliably on the tests if they desire to.  This is not some inert law of nature which we can test in myriad ways at our leisure.  We aren't able to establish proper experimental controls because we have no control over the thing we're trying to test.
> 
> Imagine that a group of ants decides that they want to runs observations and tests in order to understand human behaviour.  While far easier a task than humans trying to test for God, this would still be exceedingly difficult.  The ants may try to set up different scenarios - one ant nearby to the human's door, or three ants.  100 ants watching the human's house, or no ants watching.  The ants may then observe different results in each of these scenarios!  Yet the observed differences in human behaviour truly bore no relation to what the ants were doing.  The human had motivations and interests beyond the comprehension of the ants (going to work, or to get groceries, etc).  Nothing the ants did prompted the human to return home with groceries.  The human likely wasn't even aware of what the ants were doing.
> 
> Suppose that the human became aware that the ants were trying to run such tests, and it was a common expected behaviour of ants.  The human might choose to play along with the tests for a while, or ignore them, or purposefully confound them for fun.  But nothing the ants did would control that human's choice in the matter.  It is especially unlikely that the human would, from that point forward, prioritize the ants' goals and motivations above its own and always play along with any tests they wanted to run indefinitely.
> 
> Of course, in this example the ants have a far easier time in their testing efforts than we do.  The hypothetical ants can easily perceive the existence of the human, and can clearly identify which acts it is responsible for when in close proximity to them.  Yet despite these massive advantages compared to our attempted tests of God, it seems their efforts will be doomed to failure, no matter how good their science.  The ants will not discover jobs, money, or grocery stores.  The ants could not even guess as to these things, which are far beyond their capability to observe.  The only realistic chance of the ants getting even a vague understanding of such matters would be for the human to somehow use ant language to try to explain concepts in parables and metaphors.  Ant language, of course, would not have the true words or concepts involved, but this way things far beyond the ants' capabilities to observe could be at least partially explained.
> 
> I am sure there are flaws in this off-the-cuff analogy, and surely atheists have other arguments on such matters.  But I hope this helps to illustrate the difficulty of performing science given the complete lack of ability to establish proper experimental controls.

>> **u/Jiro_T** [+4]  (2 hours later)
>> 
>> Ants don't have a concept of testing hypotheses.  This metaphor only "works" because the audience is supposed to think of the ants as doing things that ants can't do, but still only having the success at them that actual ants have.
>> 
>> Consider why you didn't use rocks instead of ants.  The ability of rocks to comprehend us is the same as the ability of ants to comprehend us, after all.  Except if you use rocks, the trick you're playing becomes obvious.
>> 
>> Also, nobody who uses this argument should ever claim that God is good.

>>> **u/Alphanos** [+4]  *The Bright Powers* (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> You seem to be identifying possible flaws in my analogy rather than the underlying point I was attempting to illustrate.  If you can think of a better analogy, then great!  Please tell me what it is and I'll be happy to use it in the future.  If you disagree with my underlying point for some reason, then you'll need to be more specific about why that is =).
>>> 
>>> Whether or not God is good is not addressed by my analogy, and really has no bearing on the question of experimental controls.  That's a completely different discussion from the topic at hand.

>>>> **u/Krozart** [+4]  (3 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> One of the underlying flaws in your argument is that if the relationship between god and humans is similar to how you portray it, then we would have evidence of gods existence.
>>>> 
>>>> Its not a requirement of science that something has to be constant or even easily observable. Sure its easier to understand, thats one of the reasons gravity was better explored before quantum mechanics. But its certainly not a requirement. 
>>>> 
>>>> The problem for the argument of god is that there just isn't any proof, and contrary to a popular saying, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
>>>> 
>>>> Currently the only arguments that I see nowadays regarding god that is consistent with the absence of evidence all have the look of the story of the invisible dragon. This includes your analogy of the ants. The ant analogy has all the signs of an hypothesis generated to prove a belief is true, instead of being generated to explain reality.

>>>> **u/Jiro_T** [+1]  (19 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> I can think of better analogies, but the better analogies I can think of would show that your point is wrong.  For instance, a politician tells people "trust me, this policy is for the greater good, you just don't understand it".  Many of the population really don't understand it--nevertheless, the fact that the politician brings this up is a good reason to be suspicious of him.

>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (21 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I first explained my point using the more accurate terms of the concepts of science.  Then I provided an analogy to illustrate that point for those who found the more precise explanation too abstract to grasp.  The analogy was off-the-cuff; I certainly don't claim it to be perfect, and would welcome any improvements or superior replacements.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So far, you've simply insisted that I'm wrong but haven't provided any sort of explanation as to why you think so.

>>>>>> **u/Jiro_T** [+1]  (2 days later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I can't improve your analogy and still have it demonstrate the point you were using it to make.  (After all, I don't think this point is valid.  Why do you think I'd be able to demonstrate something that as far as I know, isn't valid?)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I could improve your analogy and have it not demonstrate your point, but I already did that.

>>>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (2 days later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> It would help if you would stop talking about the bad analogy and start explaining what you perceive to be wrong with the point =).  So far you've repeatedly claimed that the point is bad.  Why?  What flaw do you perceive?

>>>>>>>> **u/Jiro_T** [+1]  (5 days later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> >Why? What flaw do you perceive? 
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I answered that already.  Furthermore, you already know that I answered that, because you complained that I was
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> >identifying possible flaws in my analogy
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I think it's disingenuous to first complain that I am identifying flaws, and then ask me what flaw I perceive!

>>>>>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (5 days later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> We're going in circles here.  We both agree the analogy isn't a perfect representation of the more abstract rules of logic and reasoning I'm discussing.  You additionally say that it is impossible to improve the analogy because the underlying point it is trying to illustrate is wrong to begin with.  Every time I try to ask you what is wrong with the underlying point, you start complaining about the analogy again.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> If you refuse to state what you think is wrong with my actual point, then I will conclude that you disagree without fully understanding my point as a result of your disagreement with me on other matters =).

>>>>>>>>>> **u/Jiro_T** [+1]  (5 days later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> I already posted what I thought was wrong with your original point.  
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> >Ants don't have a concept of testing hypotheses. This metaphor only "works" because the audience is supposed to think of the ants as doing things that ants can't do, but still only having the success at them that actual ants have.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> However, first you complained that I was identifying flaws in your analogy, then you asked me what flaws I percetived in your analogy.

>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (5 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Perhaps there is some confusion here.  Let me try to be clear.  The ants are the analogy.  The ants are not the underlying point.  Please stop talking about the analogy and the ants.  Imagine that the whole analogy of the ants is missing from my post.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Do you have any objections to the point I was making about logic and reasoning?

>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Jiro_T** [+1]  (5 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Yes.  First of all, as Krozart pointed out, given how you describe God to us, there really should be evidence.  "It's an intelligent being" doesn't automatically mean there is no evidence--I'm pretty sure I could produce evidence that the President exists, for instance.
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Second, this is a double standard.  If you're going to say that something exists but there is no evidence, that doesn't just mean that God exists--it means that all sorts of things exist, including gods of other religions, space aliens, psychic powers that vanish whenever tested in a laboratory, etc.  Evidence is how you tell a real entity from a fake.  You're basically postulating "it's real, but it looks exactly like a fake".

>>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (6 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Thank you!  These are specific and very reasonable objections.  The same objections were raised on another comment chain here in this thread, so please let me [link you to my response](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4bivel/do_you_need_to_be_an_atheist_to_be_a_rationalist/d1b85qp?context=1).

>>> **u/LiteralHeadCannon** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Ants can comprehend us much better than rocks can; they can comprehend us as large predators much the same as wolves, apes, or dinosaurs.
>>> 
>>> Are humans good for ants?  The answer isn't no.  The answer is that it's a meaningless question.

>> **u/scruiser** [+4]  *CYOA* (8 hours later)
>> 
>> The solution space of things that could logically exist but can't be empirically tested is very large... I could be a smartass and bring up the flying spaghetti monster, but to restrict my examples to things to more serious things, some of which I could hypothetically actually believe given bizarre enough personal experience.
>> 
>> * The Simulation Hypothesis (reality is a simulation maintained on some underlying substrate of a much vaster, 'realer universe')
>> 
>> * Boltzman brain.  I am just a brief collection of dust that has managed to temporally emulate a mind long enough for it to imagine it is real...
>> 
>> * Magic exists, but can't be tested because of some arbitrary convoluted occult properties it has (i.e. the further it is known and revealed to reality, the more it ceases)
>> 
>> * Some form of extreme post-modernism is actually literally true about 'objective' reality, but science is unable to realize this because its ability to arrive at truth depends on a consensus process in the first place.
>> 
>> * Modal realism is true, as a side effect of this, an even more generalized form of quantum immortality applies.  From one's own perspective, instead of dying, improbable events, or outright previously unknown laws of nature (this is the modal realist version), will seem to continuously conspire to keep you alive.
>> 
>> * Combining modal realism and simulation hypothesis results in an even deeper rabbit hole of seemingly paradoxical implications...
>> 
>> * Alien life and civilizations exists/have existed, but the laws of physics make it such that the infinite computing substrate is obtainable collapsing edge of a blackhole, so the solution to the Fermi is that all intelligent life eventually chooses to migrate to simulations on the edges of blackholes
>> 
>> * Future civilization is likely to simulate us to get a chance to resurrect us, to some small margin of probability 
>> 
>> * Combining several previous points: all of this has already happened before and will happened again...
>> 
>> **Anyway** my point is that the concept of God is just as untestable as most of these other ideas.  Why should it receive any special respect/belief over any of these other possibilities?

>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (a day later)
>>> 
>>> I agree with your point.  Let me try to be more clear about what I'm saying.  Though God and related matters was the example given in the Less Wrong page, the point I am raising is not some special case or special pleading for God.  Neither am I at present trying to make any positive case for God whatsoever.  In fact, despite disputing the particular example the Less Wrong page uses, I agree with its main point - we should be seeking to apply techniques of rationality to all aspects of our observed reality, and not compartmentalizing.
>>> 
>>> So let's backtrack in order for me to better explain my objection.  What exactly is the role of the oft-quoted maxim of "absence of evidence is evidence of absence"?  Essentially, the idea is to reveal that evidential situations which appear to be neutral at first glance may not be so at all.  For example, suppose that someone claims that all politicians are secretly lizard people.  Taking into account absence of evidence prior, we should rightly be skeptical of such a claim.  After all, even if there were some grand conspiracy of lizard politicians, there are regularly news stories of politicians needing medical attention or even surgery.  Are all doctors now lizard people as well?  There's a massive complexity penalty to such claims; there seems to be an internal inconsistency in the hypothetical world where that were true.  If this were true, we have good reason to expect pre-existing evidence of it.  Absence of that evidence should rightly take us out of a neutral starting point, and into one where we say that the claim would require extraordinary evidence to surmount.
>>> 
>>> The point I was making, much like the Less Wrong article itself brings up, is that we can't simply quote useful heuristics blindly without understanding where they come from or what their boundary cases are.  Suppose we try to apply the same "absence of evidence" heuristic to a simulationist matrix.  Should we consider that we have a pre-existing insurmountable degree of evidence that we do not live in a matrix?  Well, no.  We have no evidence one way or another in this case.  There's no good cause to suppose that living in a world that is a matrix would give us plentiful evidence of that, like in the case of the lizard people.  We should maintain a neutral position regarding life in a matrix until such evidence arises one way or the other.  This doesn't mean that we have to take a 50/50 view on the subject, merely that we should acknowledge that we have no existing pool of evidence which could directly counter, for example, a personal experience where you awaken on Morpheus' ship.  Either option would have valid internal consistency.
>>> 
>>> So far as I can tell at a glance, most of the ideas you list fall into this second matrix category, rather than the lizard people category.  That doesn't mean that any of them are necessarily true.  It merely means that they do not lack internal consistency.  This is a gradient obviously - we must evaluate how likely it would be, given that any of those were true, that we would expect to have scientific evidence of that truth.  For some, like the matrix or aliens living on the edge of black holes, we would have no such expectation, and should treat them as neutral propositions until evidence arises on the topic.  For others, such as the theory of hidden magic, we can assign different expectations depending on the properties proposed.  For example, HPMOR-style hidden magic existing in the present day has become rapidly less and less likely within the past ~100 years with the advent of Polaroid cameras, the internet, and camera smartphones.  However, if you propose magic that mostly faded away 1,000 years ago, then we should regard that as a neutral (if mostly useless) proposition.
>>> 
>>> Getting back to the example of God, the "absence of evidence" heuristic can retain some very valuable utility even in cases where it cannot be applied to every possibility within a broad range.  For example, I think we can agree on the basis of this heuristic that there does not exist any God who wishes to make its existence known to the maximum possible number of humans as its top priority.  That would fail the internal consistency test.  So despite that fact that the maxim cannot be applied as broadly as some would like, it can still reveal useful information.  If any God does exist, then for some reason it seems not to want to be detected by scientific tests of prayer, for example.
>>> 
>>> For us to say that such a being does actually exist - this would require evidence, which is a long and separate discussion =).

>> **u/None** [+2]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> If an entity exists but doesn't leave any verifiable evidence that it exists, then it functionally does not exist.
>> 
>> That's how evidence works.
>> 
>> Edit: No, I will not be responding to any incredibly over-elaborate, pseudointellectual justifications for why you're allowed to believe in your dumb magic shit without evidence. Holy fuck why did I get these responses.
>> 
>> Followup edit: No, I will also not be responding to any weird stalker-y personal attacks aimed at me because I say silly things on this reddit account. You people need to stop.

>>> **u/Alphanos** [+3]  *The Bright Powers* (5 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Edit: This post, and the reply to his next comment, were written prior to the addition made by his edit.  I'm disappointed that he chose to abandon discussion of rationality in favour of an emotional appeal to incredulity.
>>> 
>>> I upvoted you for very succinctly expressing the same error that all other replies have made.
>>> 
>>> I agree with the principle that you're expressing, but I disagree in regards to its limitations.  You're expressing this as a universal, philosophical truth.  I'm saying that it is an exceptionally useful heuristic which has boundaries we very rarely encounter.
>>> 
>>> Please understand that I'm not making a positive case for God.  I'm not saying God exists because of experimental controls.  Rather, I'm saying that attempts to use the heuristic you quote to prove that God cannot possibly exist are misguided.  There may be many other arguments or reasons to claim that God does or does not exist.  But this one isn't valid due to the issue of experimental controls.  This is a very narrow and limited claim I'm making.
>>> 
>>> We are not able to verifiably measure whether any such evidence exists despite our best efforts.  In the case of an unknown powerful intellect we are trying to detect, absence of evidence may not, in fact, be evidence of absence.  I'm not saying such an entity doesn't have any effects upon the world - I'm saying that we cannot successfully formulate an experiment or test that will reliably tell us which effects, if any, such an entity would hypothetically be responsible for.

>>>> **u/None** [+1]  (a day later)
>>>> 
>>>> Point of clarification I am posting instead of editing in for the sake of you actually seeing it:
>>>> 
>>>> I am not making an 'appeal to incredulity' and this is not a debate. I am expressing my actual, sincere incredulity and giving up. If this were a debate, heaven forbid, I would be forfeiting. Likely with a gun in my mouth.

>>>> **u/None** [+1]  (6 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Ah, I see. You're misrepresenting the opposition as arguing that "God could not possibly exist." I suggest you familiarize yourself more with the beliefs that actual atheists on this subreddit and lesswrong actually hold, instead of the ones you imagine.

>>>>> **u/Alphanos** [+1]  *The Bright Powers* (6 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I agree with the importance of Bayesian reasoning, but I think the semantic distinction you are drawing is unhelpful.  If I have been imprecise in my choice of wording, then so has everyone else talking about the absence of evidence in general terms without explicitly expressing all limitations of the involved probabilities =).

>>> **u/scruiser** [+2]  *CYOA* (8 hours later)
>>> 
>>> I don't think this is quite true for the most general meaning of 'exist'...
>>> 
>>> * The expansion of the universe could cause a relativistic ship to travel far enough that (assuming the speed of light is the absolute limit) no information from it could ever return.  Does this relativistic ship cease to exist?
>>> 
>>> * There is also EY's favorite of the many worlds interpretation verse collapse interpretation...  Intuitively, many worlds seems more complicated and less parsimonious, but it is arguably more parsimonious (people with more physics knowledge occasionally disagree with EY, but for the sake of argument lets just compare many worlds against collapse interpretation that are less parsimonious in this case)
>>> 
>>> * Do you define information entirely by its physical substrate?  This is more a philosophical question in the present, although if mind-uploading or teleportation based an atomic disassembly and reconstruction ever become possible, this could be a major issue.  This also might one day be relevant if we had a completely reductionist understanding of the human mind well enough to rigorously define all the concepts humans thinks of in order to put Anslems/Godel ontological style arguments into a more rigorous form.
>>> 
>>> I do agree with your statement for the most part, particularly in the case of god, but it worth keeping in mind the edge cases.

>>> **u/LiteralHeadCannon** [+1]  (8 hours later)
>>> 
>>> If I put something in an impenetrable box set to open itself sometime in the next thousand years, do the contents of the box not functionally exist?  Do you consider the box empty, and do you consider the existence of the box's contents to be untestable?  You saw me put it in the box!
>>> 
>>> The religious expect to obtain undeniable proof of their beliefs beyond the veil of death; skeptics of religion expect to "find" nothing there, and to simply not exist.  Contrast string theory, a belief that truly offers no testable predictions (though every few years one of its proponents claims it does).  What a strangely prominent and accepted cult that is.

>> **u/shadowstar731** [+1]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> In your analogy, the existence of humans is not in doubt. Whether humans care about ants or not, the hypothetical scientist-minded ants would be able to observe humans and directly be affected by their behavior.
>> 
>> As for your underlying point - sure, we can hypothesize that there exist entities that cannot in any way be detected or in any way affect our world. I don't see what that has to do with conventional religion or claims of paranormal/supernatural phenomena such as "spirit speaking" - all of these typically claim to be able to affect reality in a meaningful sense.

> **u/None** [-1]  (13 hours later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/ajuc** [+1]  (15 hours later)
>> 
>> > This is intuitive.
>> 
>> 1. my intuition has no opinion on that matter. How is it intuitive?
>> 
>> 2. quantum mechanic is anything but intuitive, yet it's true.

>> **u/None** [+1]  (a day later)
>> 
>> Wow are you in the wrong place.

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