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Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

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Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#51

Post by specialist »

photochemsyn wrote: post #36
deebosong wrote: post #10

Anecdotally, I've seen this play out at religious communities (though I'm not at all in doubt that this phenomenon is commonplace and prevalent everywhere). I've often noted to myself when core beliefs that were expressed/ leaked, revealed that rather than being rooted in the Bible for instance (interpretations of which are highly debated), many people's beliefs in said community were often about furthering and advan…

For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. A notion like 'these are the fundamental truths of our religion, and to be a member of this religion, you must accept them without question' has no place in the sci…

Forgive non-professional philosophers their casual misuse of terms like faith, belief, and knowledge. Even so, you know very well what these placard brandishing plebes meant, despite your pedantry.

> I've seen this most often in the strident atheist crowd...

Granted. New Atheists are insufferable. For future, maybe use their moment of conversion as an opportunity to introduce them to Aristotle, Popper, your fave thinker.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#52

Post by whatshisface »

photochemsyn wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. Belief is not “inherently religious”, religion is one of many kinds of beliefs. Science is centered on a particular epistemology—a belief about what makes a belie…

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are re…

>Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events, but they make sure to do it only when the scientists aren't watching.

The atheism catechism already has an entry for this, it's the teapot hypotheses. It goes, "nobody can refute my claim that there is a teapot in the asteroid belt, but nobody should believe it either."

That sounds like a good argument to me although I don't know the metaphysical philosophical details of why. (Occam's razor?) No matter our stances in abstract epistemology we must all agree we can't go around believing every irrefutable claim we or anyone else thinks of, at minimum because many are contradictory.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#53

Post by motohagiography »

> Dunking on social media tells our monkey brain that we are rising in prominence, even though by next week people will have forgotten and moved on to the next round of gossip. Advanced tech exploits the brains of ideologues, who then create a culture where others spend too much time pledging fealty to ideologies rather than developing new ideas and technology for the benefit of humankind.

The word "ideologue," is key because it's a thought terminating cliche we use as an epithet to describe the people we don't agree with, instead of what it precisely is - a pattern of thinking that iterates the logic of an underlying idea. It may not even be on a chosen belief, but just a symbol for something we picked up and used as a stub for a concept.

I just assume people persecute each other because they love it, and instead, I index on finding people who aren't as addicted to that kind of conflict, as there are enough people in the world that arguing with any one of them is an opportunity cost against living. Maybe this is the real impact of the internet - when your potential Dunbar number and opporutunity now seems infinite, we can replace any person we have a conflict with, with just another more agreeable and validating avatar on the screen.

That fast, swipe-left culture filter not only rewards intolerance, but even imposes opportunity costs on tolerance because tolerance consumes time that could be applied to swiping until you get validation, and exposes you to defending against the infinite persecution of whomever you are tolerating. I'd be concerned about what human quality is atrophying as a result of not exercising the experience the tech has automated and replaced. It's not empathy, it's something more real and consequential like courage, dignity, or compassion.

The article is important, but I don't think there is a back or an undo we can reason ourselves back to as a culture. It's just a matter of finding new minds to equip with freedom and set to building again.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

photochemsyn wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. Belief is not “inherently religious”, religion is one of many kinds of beliefs. Science is centered on a particular epistemology—a belief about what makes a belie…

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are re…

> Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis

Thus, it is not a hypothesis but a conjecture. (Or, perhaps more accurately, an omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism.)

> much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists

Neither a fundamentalist nor an atheist myself, but I’ve never seen any of the latter “dismayed” by the fact that people can string together words to create a proposition outside of the domain of scientific inquiry.

> Similarly, one could argue that supernatural beings from alternative universes are constantly intervening in local events

One could assert that easily, but to argue it one would need first to establish some framework in which something could be offered to support that conclusion.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#55

Post by atoav »

photochemsyn wrote: post #36
deebosong wrote: post #10

Anecdotally, I've seen this play out at religious communities (though I'm not at all in doubt that this phenomenon is commonplace and prevalent everywhere). I've often noted to myself when core beliefs that were expressed/ leaked, revealed that rather than being rooted in the Bible for instance (interpretations of which are highly debated), many people's beliefs in said community were often about furthering and advan…

For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. A notion like 'these are the fundamental truths of our religion, and to be a member of this religion, you must accept them without question' has no place in the sci…

I mean you still have to believe that grasping what is actually going on is preferable to a numb, comfortable lie.

The nature of the world around us obviously doesn't care too much what we consider true about it and continues more or less unimpressed to go its course (unless of course we start to base our actions on these considerations).

You don't have to believe in a factual thing to make it true. Or well, you could, but it would be totally pointless either way.

But what you can believe in is that facts actually matter — and quite frankly there is a huge populus who are in dire need of that believe from at least one standpoint.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#56

Post by powersnail »

photochemsyn wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. Belief is not “inherently religious”, religion is one of many kinds of beliefs. Science is centered on a particular epistemology—a belief about what makes a belie…

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are re…

Nothing can be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis. It's the same as saying I have a monster in my closet, which is invisible, undetectable, and never interfere with any object in any manner.

Or that I'm just a cloud of consciousness dreaming about this entire experience, human, earth, the universe all being my imagination.

I don't see why it would dismay an atheist specifically. It's just an untestifiable statement like many other metaphysical thought experiments. Surely anyone with a basic read of philosophy would have encountered some.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#57

Post by ModernMech »

dragonwriter wrote: post #54
photochemsyn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are re…

> Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis Thus, it is not a hypothesis but a conjecture. (Or, perhaps more accurately, an omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism.) > much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists Neither a fundamentalist nor an atheist myself, but I’ve never seen any of the latter “dismayed” by the fact that people can string together words to create a propositi…

> omphaloskeptic intellectual autoeroticism.

You could have made your point without being rude to the parent.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#58

Post by implements »

photochemsyn wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. Belief is not “inherently religious”, religion is one of many kinds of beliefs. Science is centered on a particular epistemology—a belief about what makes a belie…

True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches. Science can't be used to address the veracity of that hypothesis, much to the apparent dismay of the fundamentalist atheists. I really lost interest in Richard Dawkins after he said something like "I won't answer silly questions about whether chairs and tables are re…

> True enough. This is why the simulation hypothesis is so interesting - i.e. the notion we are all living in a perfect VR simulation that never glitches.

That’s not the hypothesis, afaik - we’re beings generated inside the simulation rather than ‘brains in a vat’ experiencing it. Science could address veracity if (say) whatever was running the simulation chose to make it apparent, either directly (by revelation) or by some quirk of how physics operated, for example if we detected some (reflected) method to control how reality was being generated.

Saying that, I’ve pondered that giving every person their own entire universe where they had free will but everyone else was a simulated non-player character was one way of solving the religious problem of evil - nothing evil actually happens to real humans, it’s just a scripted set of tests to see whether the particular individual chooses to be good or bad.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#59

Post by dorchadas »

robertlagrant wrote: post #38

> This isn’t a partisan issue, either. Gibson and Sutherland report that, “The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively.” It may not be partisan in that sense, but today's fear is still coming from one side's extreme.

You obviously don't live in a red state. I was a leftist teacher in a very red state (as in, it was called from Trump within a minute of the polls closing, while half the state still had open polls). There's many times I had to watch what I said around people and not speak my mind for fear of possible backlash if students told their parents or if news got out among the community of some of my beliefs.

Re: Persuasion and the Prestige Paradox (2021)

#60

Post by thingification »

specialist wrote: post #51
photochemsyn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, placards stating something like "In this house, we believe in science" were showing up all over the area I live in. It's very odd because concepts like faith and belief are inherently religious, and don't have any place in scientific inquiry. A notion like 'these are the fundamental truths of our religion, and to be a member of this religion, you must accept them without question' has no place in the sci…

Forgive non-professional philosophers their casual misuse of terms like faith, belief, and knowledge. Even so, you know very well what these placard brandishing plebes meant, despite your pedantry. > I've seen this most often in the strident atheist crowd... Granted. New Atheists are insufferable. For future, maybe use their moment of conversion as an opportunity to introduce them to Aristotle, Popper, your fave thin…

> Forgive non-professional philosophers their casual misuse of terms like faith, belief, and knowledge.

I think that's good general advice...

> Even so, you know very well what these placard brandishing plebes meant, despite your pedantry.

... but I don't think it's pedantry in this case but a stupendously important point: I think both me and the GP think "Believe the Science" does very often correspond to some sort of belief in the importance of sources of knowledge or the need to shield ideas from criticism. "The Science" seems often very much "The" with a capital T.

Why stupendously important? If all problems are caused by lack of knowledge, and all knowledge is conjectural, then damaging traditions of criticism is maybe the worst thing anybody can do.

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