Yes. Indeed it was so compelling that I feel the need to be wary of it. I need to read some rebuttals before deciding if I can really endorse what BB is saying here.
Yea, basically every book I read on topics that might interest this group of people - history, science, rationalism and things of that nature - has always came across as very convincing. This isn’t surprising! A 300 page book written by an expert complete with a battery of citations and papers can make basically anything sound convincing.
As you bring up, conspiracies are plentiful and a diverse range of them are believed by many people - organized religion, jews did 9/11, marxism and so on carry plenty of water because you can endlessly find pretty good evidence that they are correct.
being subject matter expert is unfortunately often only version 2 of this same hubristic trap. Expertise is only such in the bounds of some domain but that domain is but an abstracted silo based on prev general levels of knowledge(ignorance). Alas our minds contain not the mind of God, and our scratching forth out of ignorance lends 0 inherent credence to heuristics made from such selections. useful yes, affordable yes, but truthfulness only revealable over much more time
"Subject matter experts" is a social construct. Now that fields are hopelessly technical, what you have is an In-Group of supposed experts who produce a bunch of elaborate treatises on their topics of interest, in journals nobody reads, and which are probably wrong anyway. But they have the In-Group mythology and clout that silences Out-Group adversaries
IDK, man. Engineering is evidence that certain effects can be leveraged to make machines, but this says nothing about whether the narratives the "subject matter experts" tell about these effects are true. Most engineers couldn't even derive the Pythagorean Theorem on their own, let alone possibly follow some modern math/physics dense theoretical exposition of anything cutting edge
Part of the power of engineering/science is in coordinating people with different sets of expertise to achieve things together. The engineer doesn't *need* to rederive the pythagorean theorem: that's already been done by people the engineer is able to trust.
So you wouldn't ask the engineer about the pythagorean theorem: but you can ask him where he got the equation from, and figure out who to ask based on that.
Yes, I see what you're saying, but let's take a look at the Engineering=>Experimental Physics=>Theoretical Physics=>Mathematics "chain of command", and see whether this might just be a bunch of political power-play that reinforces a potentially bogus academia:
1. The engineer gets wind of some effect that can be reliably reproduced in some experimental physics lab, and then exploits this effect for technological ends
2. The tinkering experimental physicists probably happened upon this effect while trying to refute some of the rare intelligible points in a theoretical physicist's paper.
3. The theoretical physicist's paper was probably based on some BS mathematical handwaving to reconcile some unrelated experimental results.
4. The BS mathematical handwaving was probably one of the few intelligible points in some mathematician's otherwise unreadable paper.
Notice, none of the "higher academics" in any of this need to be correct in any way, whatsoever, as far as the engineer/technologist is concerned. All he needs is some "lucky effect" to fall into his hands from the ladder rung above him. And the same pattern continues as we move up the ladder: The rung above has only incidental relevance to the rung below, and only insofar as it happens to drop an occasional "lucky bone". The higher rung pretends to have a certain dominance over the lower, but, eg, history shows that physicists would've continued to use "mathematically deficient" forms of calculus, even if mathematicians had never figured out how to formalize it.
However, we must also note that it's not in the engineer's or the lab rat's business interests to be thought of as merely lucky tinkerers. So, although the lower rungs aren't dependent on the higher rungs for anything of material substance, they do depend on them for mystique and prestige. And this naturally feeds the tendencies of these institutions to form vaunted and segregated Ivory Towers. Yet, as we've argued, these towers may well be all bark and no bite, as far as the Truth Bidnezz goes
There are at least a few tired old arguments that all the experts know how to debunk. But this doesn’t prevent them from falling into groupthink and believing a few things that are probably wrong but harder to refute. And there are, of course, entire fields where there is no way to refute anything.
This is why people are so easily bamboozled by fraudulent psychics (that is to say, all of them). People simply can't fathom how the psychic could have known non-obvious fact "x", or performed seemingly miraculous effect "y".
Yup. Which is probably why sensible people find philosophical arguments unconvincing: they know that even if they can’t find the flaw, that’s poor evidence that there’s no flaw.
Indeed. I now only skim the articles about anthropics, SIA, etc., as all the coin-flip analogies seem contrived and outlandish, even if there is no obvious flaw that I can immediately discover.
I find your thesis to apply well to philosophical topics. I see all sorts of intelligent philosophical argument on substack, but in virtually every case the argument is definitely deficient, as there are excellent counterarguments. Whether one is arguing about free will, consciousness, God, or whatever, I guarantee that there are thousands of more sophisticated and detailed arguments on the very same matter, usually with no clear winner or consensus. I did research in philosophy for 30 years, so my opinions are based on a lot of experience.
This is NOT to say that there is no consensus in philosophy; there definitely is. But when I see someone outside of the professional literature arguing that God exists, or doesn't exist, or we have free will, or we don't, I know that *at best* I'm reading a bumper sticker summary of a good argument.
What do you think is the probability you no longer believe God is more probable than not in the next 5 years or that there’s some major issue with SIA and you seriously change your views on anthropics? I pretty much agree with what you’re saying but I’m wondering if it undermines your confidence in your other perspectives?
That 30% probability seems quite reasonable to me. But what's your confidence that God exists now? if greater than 70%, does that mean that you think your views about God will become less correct over time?
Seems I have been overestimating your P(God), your value seems quite consistent with today's post and with your estimate of how likely you are to change your mind!
This problem has been around for the lifetime of intellectual debate. Somehow us scientists managed to overcome it enough to land on the moon, create miniaturised computers, etc. The scientific method as actually practiced (by no means a simple matter to define) seems to succeed in defeating this problem, or at least defeating it enough to get shit done.
As critical rationalism explains, we can never have better than a current, critically-preferred, conjecture (even in mathematics and logic). But that is often an extremely useful thing to have, and it could be true. In any case, we do not choose whether we believe a theory or not (doxastic voluntarism appears to be introspectively false). Therefore, we should not regard it as a problem that we have been convinced by some cogent argument. But we should always remain alert to any criticisms of it. The great epistemological error is dogmatism.
I would put forth the following hypothesis regarding competing arguments/metanarratives:
1. It's nearly impossible and totally contrary to our nature to place the competing arguments in an "objective framework" (a fair boxing ring, as it were, with a fair referee), so as to objectively settle the dispute
2. When we do succeed at this, what tends to happen, assuming both arguments are coherent, is we find that the arguments are basically saying the same thing, only each with its distinct idiomatic vocabulary
Example: Your SIA argument for God. I contend that this was never a fair fight to begin with. You pitted an Almighty God who maximizes goodness by creating as many universes with as many observers as possible against a broad survey of Atheistic theories (which tend to be primarily concerned with the universe we can observe). In other words, you put an SIA-steroid-infused transman Theism into the ring with some poor little girl Atheism. Surprise surprise who won.
But suppose the Atheists had a chance to beef up their theory first:
Atheist 1: Well, what happened was, there was a singularity of energy M that gave rise to our universe and us in it
Atheist 2: Ya, but why limit ourselves to an observable universe. If the universe is infinite, it seems equally plausible that there could've been a second singularity beyond the universe we observe. This doubles the number of observers, and is therefore twice as likely under SIA.
Atheist 3: Of course, but why are we limiting energy in a potentially infinite multiverse? We might as well posit infinitely many singularities. Hence, the observers are multiplied infinitely, and the theory becomes infinitely more likely under SIA
But now that we have an equally SIA-roided Atheism, the fight is a draw, and it becomes a "definitions game".
"There's an infinite reservoir of some X that maximizes its X-ness by creating universes with observers like us"
The theists associate X with God/goodness, whereas the atheists associate it with Nature/energy. We could even invite a third contender, the "Evil God" theorists, who associate X with Evil/suffering
Nice post! You've made a compelling argument.
Yes. Indeed it was so compelling that I feel the need to be wary of it. I need to read some rebuttals before deciding if I can really endorse what BB is saying here.
Scott Alexander has made somewhat similar points here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/03/repost-epistemic-learned-helplessness/
And a related post titled "Getting Eulered":
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/10/getting-eulered/
Thanks, I hadn't read that one before!
Yea, basically every book I read on topics that might interest this group of people - history, science, rationalism and things of that nature - has always came across as very convincing. This isn’t surprising! A 300 page book written by an expert complete with a battery of citations and papers can make basically anything sound convincing.
As you bring up, conspiracies are plentiful and a diverse range of them are believed by many people - organized religion, jews did 9/11, marxism and so on carry plenty of water because you can endlessly find pretty good evidence that they are correct.
being subject matter expert is unfortunately often only version 2 of this same hubristic trap. Expertise is only such in the bounds of some domain but that domain is but an abstracted silo based on prev general levels of knowledge(ignorance). Alas our minds contain not the mind of God, and our scratching forth out of ignorance lends 0 inherent credence to heuristics made from such selections. useful yes, affordable yes, but truthfulness only revealable over much more time
"Subject matter experts" is a social construct. Now that fields are hopelessly technical, what you have is an In-Group of supposed experts who produce a bunch of elaborate treatises on their topics of interest, in journals nobody reads, and which are probably wrong anyway. But they have the In-Group mythology and clout that silences Out-Group adversaries
Yeah, except that the success of technological advancements is strong evidence that the underlying science is true.
IDK, man. Engineering is evidence that certain effects can be leveraged to make machines, but this says nothing about whether the narratives the "subject matter experts" tell about these effects are true. Most engineers couldn't even derive the Pythagorean Theorem on their own, let alone possibly follow some modern math/physics dense theoretical exposition of anything cutting edge
Part of the power of engineering/science is in coordinating people with different sets of expertise to achieve things together. The engineer doesn't *need* to rederive the pythagorean theorem: that's already been done by people the engineer is able to trust.
So you wouldn't ask the engineer about the pythagorean theorem: but you can ask him where he got the equation from, and figure out who to ask based on that.
Yes, I see what you're saying, but let's take a look at the Engineering=>Experimental Physics=>Theoretical Physics=>Mathematics "chain of command", and see whether this might just be a bunch of political power-play that reinforces a potentially bogus academia:
1. The engineer gets wind of some effect that can be reliably reproduced in some experimental physics lab, and then exploits this effect for technological ends
2. The tinkering experimental physicists probably happened upon this effect while trying to refute some of the rare intelligible points in a theoretical physicist's paper.
3. The theoretical physicist's paper was probably based on some BS mathematical handwaving to reconcile some unrelated experimental results.
4. The BS mathematical handwaving was probably one of the few intelligible points in some mathematician's otherwise unreadable paper.
Notice, none of the "higher academics" in any of this need to be correct in any way, whatsoever, as far as the engineer/technologist is concerned. All he needs is some "lucky effect" to fall into his hands from the ladder rung above him. And the same pattern continues as we move up the ladder: The rung above has only incidental relevance to the rung below, and only insofar as it happens to drop an occasional "lucky bone". The higher rung pretends to have a certain dominance over the lower, but, eg, history shows that physicists would've continued to use "mathematically deficient" forms of calculus, even if mathematicians had never figured out how to formalize it.
However, we must also note that it's not in the engineer's or the lab rat's business interests to be thought of as merely lucky tinkerers. So, although the lower rungs aren't dependent on the higher rungs for anything of material substance, they do depend on them for mystique and prestige. And this naturally feeds the tendencies of these institutions to form vaunted and segregated Ivory Towers. Yet, as we've argued, these towers may well be all bark and no bite, as far as the Truth Bidnezz goes
There are at least a few tired old arguments that all the experts know how to debunk. But this doesn’t prevent them from falling into groupthink and believing a few things that are probably wrong but harder to refute. And there are, of course, entire fields where there is no way to refute anything.
This is why people are so easily bamboozled by fraudulent psychics (that is to say, all of them). People simply can't fathom how the psychic could have known non-obvious fact "x", or performed seemingly miraculous effect "y".
Yup. Which is probably why sensible people find philosophical arguments unconvincing: they know that even if they can’t find the flaw, that’s poor evidence that there’s no flaw.
Indeed. I now only skim the articles about anthropics, SIA, etc., as all the coin-flip analogies seem contrived and outlandish, even if there is no obvious flaw that I can immediately discover.
I find your thesis to apply well to philosophical topics. I see all sorts of intelligent philosophical argument on substack, but in virtually every case the argument is definitely deficient, as there are excellent counterarguments. Whether one is arguing about free will, consciousness, God, or whatever, I guarantee that there are thousands of more sophisticated and detailed arguments on the very same matter, usually with no clear winner or consensus. I did research in philosophy for 30 years, so my opinions are based on a lot of experience.
This is NOT to say that there is no consensus in philosophy; there definitely is. But when I see someone outside of the professional literature arguing that God exists, or doesn't exist, or we have free will, or we don't, I know that *at best* I'm reading a bumper sticker summary of a good argument.
What do you think is the probability you no longer believe God is more probable than not in the next 5 years or that there’s some major issue with SIA and you seriously change your views on anthropics? I pretty much agree with what you’re saying but I’m wondering if it undermines your confidence in your other perspectives?
Maybe 30% on God, 10% on anthropics (I might slightly tweak the formulation, but I'm pretty sure I won't abandon SIA).
I am a subject matter expert when it comes to theism and SIA.
That 30% probability seems quite reasonable to me. But what's your confidence that God exists now? if greater than 70%, does that mean that you think your views about God will become less correct over time?
63%.
Seems I have been overestimating your P(God), your value seems quite consistent with today's post and with your estimate of how likely you are to change your mind!
This problem has been around for the lifetime of intellectual debate. Somehow us scientists managed to overcome it enough to land on the moon, create miniaturised computers, etc. The scientific method as actually practiced (by no means a simple matter to define) seems to succeed in defeating this problem, or at least defeating it enough to get shit done.
As critical rationalism explains, we can never have better than a current, critically-preferred, conjecture (even in mathematics and logic). But that is often an extremely useful thing to have, and it could be true. In any case, we do not choose whether we believe a theory or not (doxastic voluntarism appears to be introspectively false). Therefore, we should not regard it as a problem that we have been convinced by some cogent argument. But we should always remain alert to any criticisms of it. The great epistemological error is dogmatism.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/critical-rationalism?utm_source=publication-search
https://jclester.substack.com/p/belief-and-libertarianism?utm_source=publication-search
1. This is why you need empirical testing of your claims about parameters. Hence, why economics is good.
2. Stop arguing for God, it's very silly.
I would put forth the following hypothesis regarding competing arguments/metanarratives:
1. It's nearly impossible and totally contrary to our nature to place the competing arguments in an "objective framework" (a fair boxing ring, as it were, with a fair referee), so as to objectively settle the dispute
2. When we do succeed at this, what tends to happen, assuming both arguments are coherent, is we find that the arguments are basically saying the same thing, only each with its distinct idiomatic vocabulary
Example: Your SIA argument for God. I contend that this was never a fair fight to begin with. You pitted an Almighty God who maximizes goodness by creating as many universes with as many observers as possible against a broad survey of Atheistic theories (which tend to be primarily concerned with the universe we can observe). In other words, you put an SIA-steroid-infused transman Theism into the ring with some poor little girl Atheism. Surprise surprise who won.
But suppose the Atheists had a chance to beef up their theory first:
Atheist 1: Well, what happened was, there was a singularity of energy M that gave rise to our universe and us in it
Atheist 2: Ya, but why limit ourselves to an observable universe. If the universe is infinite, it seems equally plausible that there could've been a second singularity beyond the universe we observe. This doubles the number of observers, and is therefore twice as likely under SIA.
Atheist 3: Of course, but why are we limiting energy in a potentially infinite multiverse? We might as well posit infinitely many singularities. Hence, the observers are multiplied infinitely, and the theory becomes infinitely more likely under SIA
But now that we have an equally SIA-roided Atheism, the fight is a draw, and it becomes a "definitions game".
"There's an infinite reservoir of some X that maximizes its X-ness by creating universes with observers like us"
The theists associate X with God/goodness, whereas the atheists associate it with Nature/energy. We could even invite a third contender, the "Evil God" theorists, who associate X with Evil/suffering