Something You Believe Is Wrong

No one is omniscient. No one knows everything. That means everyone believes something that is wrong (at least everyone who's not in a state of radical doubt). That includes me and you.

There is something I believe that is wrong. There is something you believe that is wrong. The problem is false beliefs feel just the same as true beliefs. Even something you know is true, might still be false.

And the only way to improve the situation, is to be willing to change your mind. Keep that in mind when you interact with someone who disagrees with you. They're probably not evil. They might not be stupid. They may not even be wrong. They have reasons for believing what they believe, just like you do. They might not be good reasons, but you can't determine that until you know what they are.

Note that I'm not saying you should blindly accept what someone who disagrees with you says. But nor should you blindly reject them either. You should be willing to listen to their arguments, and honestly evaluate them. Even for things you're absolutely sure are true, because those are the things you're least likely to question on your own.

So, always be willing to keep an open mind. Someone who disagrees with you might know something you don't.

Ken Ham and Evidence

A couple weeks ago Bill Nye and Ken Ham had a debate about creationism. Of course, nearly every point Ham made was factually inaccurate. But beyond having the simple facts wrong, Ham also had a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of evidence.

This was highlighted most clearly in Ham's answer to the question "What could change your mind?". His answer was, summarized, "Nothing". Now, this answer in and of itself is a serious strike against Ham's rationality. The point of changing your mind is to make your beliefs more accurate. If you don't even admit the possibility of changing your mind, you're saying that your beliefs cannot possibly be wrong, which is, well, arrogant to say the least.

But it's worse than just that. Ham also said that the Bible makes testable predictions. Alone, that's not a bad thing, quite the opposite. But when combined with his statement that nothing could change his mind, it shows that he doesn't understand the point of predictions. The point of predictions is to provide evidence, but the thing is, that evidence can go either way.

If you make a prediction and perform a test, and the results of the test match the prediction, then that is evidence that supports your beliefs. On the other hand, if you make a prediction, and perform a test, and the results don't match the prediction, then that is evidence that opposes your beliefs. If there is no such outcome that would go against your prediction, then it's not a prediction at all.

For example, suppose I held a rock, and based on my beliefs about the material it's made of, and the laws of physics, I predicted that when I let it go, it would fall down. Then, if I dropped it, and it fell down, that would be evidence in support of my beliefs. But, if I dropped it, and it didn't fall down, either falling up, or hovering in place, or anything else, that would be evidence opposing my beliefs. If I had predicted that when I let it go, either it would fall down, or it wouldn't, then I haven't actually made a prediction. I haven't, in any way, specified what the result of a test would be, which means no outcome can oppose my beliefs, but no outcome can support them either.

If Ham thinks the Bible really does make predictions, then those predictions failing to come true should change his mind. If nothing could change his mind, then his predictions can't actually provide evidence.

Beware Superstimulus

All animals have evolved instincts and reactions to stimuli they ordinarily encounter. For example, birds protect things that look like eggs, because ordinarily if something looks like an egg, it is an egg. And they'll protect larger eggs rather than smaller eggs, because more resources go into creating a larger egg.

But in a scientist's lab, something that looks like an egg might not actually be an egg. And in such circumstances, birds will protect large non-eggs more than small eggs. They respond to the stimulus even when it no longer indicates what it ordinarily indicates, and the stronger the stimulus, the stronger the response.

We are just as susceptible to this as other animals. In our ancestral environment, sugar and fat were hard to come by, so when it did come by, you wanted to eat as much as you could while it lasted. So sugar and fat taste good, and they keep tasting good even when they are no longer in short supply.

Superstimuli are a large cause of today's obesity epidemic. Ice cream and cheeseburgers have more concentrated sugar and fat than anything a hunter-gatherer could get, so they trigger a stronger response.

Superstimuli apply to more than just food. Models are made-up and airbrushed to look more perfect than any real person ever could. Our modern society is inundated with superstimuli. Movies, television, computer games, the internet, porn. These all provide stronger stimuli than you could ever get otherwise. And when the stimulus becomes disconnected from the benefit it provides, the response does as well.

Blasphemy Day: Freedom of Belief

Today is blasphemy day. In honor of that, here's some blasphemy: If God exists, he is monstrously evil. People do not get reincarnated when they die. Bad actions are not always punished, and good actions are not always rewarded. The writings of bronze age goat herders are scientifically inaccurate. Human sacrifice is not necessary for the sun to rise. Bunnies don't lay eggs.

Doubtlessly, you believe at least one of these things. Which is why I support Blasphemy Day. Because something you believe is blasphemy to someone. The price you pay for being able to express it is that others can express something that you may disagree with or find personally offensive. To oppose that is to oppose the very concept of free speech.

And so here's another piece of blasphemy: Religious belief should not be treated any differently than any other belief.

I don't believe in freedom of religion. I believe in a more general freedom of belief. Everyone should be allowed to believe whatever they want, including but not limited to religious beliefs. I prefer this formulation because as above, religious belief should not be treated any differently than any other belief.

There are lots of times when beliefs are treated differently because they're religious beliefs. The most obvious examples are blasphemy laws, which is what Blasphemy Day is in protest of. For some groups, simply disagreeing with their religion amounts to disrespecting it, which is a totally different standard to non-religious beliefs.

The reason religious beliefs should be treated just like any other is that they are just like any other. They can be right or wrong just like other beliefs and wrong beliefs should be discarded for right ones. Bad beliefs cannot be improved if they are specially protected as religious beliefs tend to be.

Another reason to treat religious beliefs the same as others is who gets to decide what is a valid religious belief and what isn't?

Cargo Cults Get a Bad Rap

Cargo cults are religions that formed in pacific island cultures when they came into contact with Europeans. They sought to replicate the Europeans' material wealth and technology by imitating it. They didn't know how those things were made, so they thought they were gifts from the gods. They built imitation airstrips and control towers thinking those were rituals to summon planes.

The term cargo cult has also been applied in other contexts, such as cargo cult science or cargo cult programming, to mean imitating techniques and procedures without what they're for or why they're used. I don't object to that usage, because it seems pretty accurate, but it does give a poor representation of cargo cults.

As far as I can see, cargo cults are the most rational religion in existence. They're still wrong and irrational of course. But compared to more mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam, they're downright sane. Cargo cults have real evident miracles.

Airplanes and radios and all sorts of magical things. You don't need to have faith in those things. Their explanation for those things was wrong, but that's not necessarily irrational. The irrational part of cargo cults is refusing to give up that explanation when it fails to work. Compare that to Christianity which is entirely based on irrationality and faith.

Reality is Objective

Reality is objective. What's true is true for everyone, regardless of what people believe.

You'd think this would be obvious. And yet, it comes up. Particularly in debates about the supernatural. People will say things like "Well, maybe ghosts don't exist for you, but they do exist for me." I've never seen anyone apply this sort of reasoning when doing something mundane, like say, crossing the street. No one ever says "That bus might exist for you, but it doesn't exist for me." People know there either is a bus there, or there isn't, regardless of what they believe, and if they want to not get hit by it, they ought to have beliefs which match objective reality.

I think the idea that reality is different to different people might come from the thought that our senses are infallible. If I see something, that means it's there. If I see something, and someone else sees something different, well our realities must be different. But our senses aren't infallible, and we frequently see or hear things that aren't there, or fail to see or hear things that are.

It seems to me much easier to explain occasional discrepancies in our perceptions in an objective reality than to explain the ubiquitous consistency of our perceptions. How often do people disagree about whether it's day or night, whether they're inside or outside, whether they're sitting or standing, whether there's a bus in the road or not? If reality were subjective, why would such consistency be so common?

Justified True Belief?

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy interested in the study of knowledge. One of the foundational questions of epistemology is "What does it mean to know something?". A common answer is that knowledge is justified true belief. In order to know something, you have to believe it, have a good reason for believing it and it has to actually be true.

That sounds pretty good, but there are problems with it. It's possible to construct scenarios in which all three conditions are apparently met, but it doesn't seem like anything was "known".

There's also the question of what counts as justification. But I think there's another, more fundamental, problem with this definition. One I don't think I've ever seen anyone else point out.

No definition of knowledge should include the condition of being true.

To do so is to make the term inapplicable in any situation remotely resembling real life. The reason for that is because of the answer to another fundamental question of epistemology: "Is it possible to be absolutely certain of something?". The answer to that is no. (Of course, others disagree, and I should probably write another post explaining why I think that.) All we can do is get more and more evidence for something, getting closer and closer to 100% certainty, but never actually reaching it.

In toy examples, whether a given fact is true or not is simply assumed/given. So if a hypothetical character has a justified belief, we can say whether that character knows it or not, because of our god-like omniscience. But in real life, no one has that omniscience.

Consider the same question - Is a belief knowledge or not - applied to yourself. Do I know the sun will rise tomorrow, or do I just believe it? Well, I certainly think it's true that the sun will come up. I wouldn't believe it if it I didn't think that, tautologically. But if that's the standard, then I ought to consider every belief I have to be knowledge. If I didn't believe they were true, I wouldn't believe them.

And if we apply that standard to other people, then our evaluations of whether someone else knows something or merely believes it, simply becomes a question of whether they agree with you or not.

I propose a simpler definition: Knowledge is belief that is held with a high degree of confidence.

This definition fits very well into a Bayesian framework. Degree of confidence is simply probability. If you believe something is true with a probability greater than, say, 99.9%, you can be said to know it. This also handily deals with the question of what counts as justification - that's just Bayesian evidence.

Extraordinary Evidence

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" -Carl Sagan

 Some people don't like this quote. They say it's too subjective. There's no objective standard of what's extraordinary. And other rather silly objections.

I would generalize the saying to be something more like this: "All claims require the appropriate amount or degree of evidence.".

The ordinariness/extraordinariness of a claim is not a binary feature, but rather a sliding scale. If I said I had eggs for breakfast this morning, that's a perfectly ordinary claim. You'd probably need no more evidence than my word to believe it. If I said I saw a zebra in my backyard, that's a little bit extraordinary, since they don't live anywhere near here. You'd probably need a photograph, or a news story about a zebra that escaped from a zoo to believe it. If I said I saw a unicorn, that's even more extraordinary. You'd probably need to see the real live thing to believe that. If I said neutrinos can go faster than light, that's even more extraordinary and will require lots more evidence. And then of course, there's always God, which is about the most extraordinary claim imaginable.

Another important thing to note is that belief too is not a binary value. Rather, it's degree of certainty. Probability. Which is nice, because that means this saying can be formalized by using Bayes' Theorem.

Bayes' Theorem is a mathematical formula that lets you calculate how probable you should consider a hypothesis after seeing some evidence, given your prior probability of that hypothesis, how likely you are to see that evidence if the hypothesis were true, and how likely you are to see that evidence if the hypothesis were false.

How extraordinary a claim is, is simply how low your prior for it was. This doesn't totally eliminate claims of subjectiveness, but it's no less subjective than any other belief, and if you're doing Bayes right, it's really a lot less subjective.

And how extraordinary evidence is, is simply how much more likely that evidence is to occur if the claim were true than if the claim were not true.

Going back to my examples, the prior probability for me eating eggs for breakfast is relatively high. You already know from past experience that eggs exist and that people commonly eat them for breakfast. So the evidence doesn't need to be very strong. I'm more likely to say something if it's true than if it's false, but lying isn't unheard of.

The prior probability of me seeing a zebra in my backyard is lower. You still know that zebras exist, but you also know they don't live in the wild here. So, on just my word, it might seem more likely that I'm lying than that I actually saw a zebra. The prior probability for the unicorn is even lower, because you already know they don't exist. A photograph isn't sufficient here because it's more likely that I faked it than that unicorns actually exist.

There is Evidence for God

Something many atheists claim is that there is no evidence for god or religion. Not one single bit of evidence at all. But that's not true. It's frequently talked about as if it were an all or nothing kind of thing. As if all the evidence points one way or the other. But, it's possible for there to be evidence for something that's false.

There is evidence for god. It's weak evidence, and clearly overwhelmed by the evidence against, but it's still there. It's not nothing.

The biggest piece of evidence I can think of is that the vast majority of people believe in god. And this is not argumentum ad populum, but rather a probabilistic, Bayesian point of view. Which is more likely? The probability that so many people would believe in god given that god exists, or the probability that so many people would believe in god given that god doesn't exist? I think people are more likely to believe in something true rather than something false, especially if it interacts with them personally. Of course, people are willing to believe all sorts of crazy shit, so it's not much more likely. Which is why it's very weak evidence.

The Ship of Theseus a.k.a. Grandfather's Axe

There's an old philosophical puzzle. Suppose you have a wooden boat. You notice some of the planks are getting rotten, so you replace them. Is it still the same boat? As time goes on, you replace the planks one by one, until every single plank making the boat has been replaced. Is it still the same boat?

Alternatively, your grandfather's axe is a family heirloom. But when your father got it, he replaced the head, and when you got it, you replaced the handle. Is it still the same axe?

I posit that identity cannot be determined by the identities of the constituent parts.

First, I'll assume that identity is something that can be discerned - that is it's something that can be determined by observation. Intuitively, this makes sense. If you see two boats, you can distinguish them by how they look, even if they switch positions, or change by small amounts. Even if you have two boats made the same, there will be minute differences that can distinguish them. And the same with the planks. You can tell two planks apart.

But the fundamental constituents of matter have no such identity. An electron is an electron is an electron. All electrons are indistinguishable, and provably so. If you had an electron, and you put it in a box full of other electrons, it would not be possible to find your initial electron again. In fact, there isn't such a thing. Initially, there was one electron in your hand, and many electrons in your box. Then there were many+1 electrons in your box. The one electron cannot be uniquely tracked. It has no identity.

What this means is that if you have, say, a hydrogen atom, and then instantaneously swap out the electron with a different one... Then nothing has changed. Nothing has been done. If that hydrogen atom had an identity, it could not have changed, even if every single subatomic particle in it had been swapped at the same time.

On the macroscopic scale, things can have identity, because they aren't indistinguishable. They have different particles in different configurations following different patterns.

Identity is one of those things that makes sense in our experience, but which breaks down in extreme thought experiments because it has no fundamental truth to it and our flawed conceptions were only meant to work with what we have experience with.

Blasphemy Day: Bad Faith

Today is Blasphemy Day. In honor of that, here's some blasphemy: There is no god. Jesus was just a man. Mohammed was not a prophet. A cracker cannot turn into flesh. Thunder and lightning are not caused by Thor or Zeus. Heaven and hell do not exist. Sex is a good thing. The presents under your tree weren't left there by Santa Claus.

Doubtlessly, you believe at least one of these things. Which is why I support Blasphemy Day. Because something you believe is blasphemy to someone. The price you pay for being able to express it is that others can express something that you may disagree with or find personally offensive. To oppose that is to oppose the very concept of free speech.

And so here's another piece of blasphemy: Faith is a bad thing.

In this context, by faith, I mean belief without reason. The word is sometimes used to mean something more like trust. A common arguing technique by some believers is to deliberately confuse the two separate meanings. ("You have faith that your brakes will work, which is the same as my faith in god.") Let me be clear, I am talking about belief without reason. If you have a reason for believing something, it's not faith.

Why is faith a bad thing? Because it's fundamentally irrational. You can't draw a map without first looking at the territory. Something you believe by faith might be, by pure chance, correct. But given all the different mutually exclusive things you could believe by faith, that chance isn't very good. If you're actually interested in having your beliefs be correct, faith is a very bad approach to take.

Now, evidence can be misleading. People believe things that are incorrect, but with backing evidence all the time. For example, scientists at the end of the nineteenth century believed in luminiferous aether and with good reason. Light's a wave, it has to travel through something, right? But by always evaluating new evidence, you can correct your mistakes and make your beliefs closer to the truth. With faith, there is no such recourse.

Faith is a bad thing, but what's even worse than faith is the belief that faith is a good thing. Human irrationality is a bad thing, but it's an inevitable thing. We are not rational beings by nature, and a certain amount of irrationality is to be expected. But it is not to be desired. We must strive to be as rational as possible, because that is the only way we can progress. It is the only way to correct our mistakes and fix them.

Promoting faith as a paramount good is perhaps one of the most evil things religion has ever done (well, ok, crusades, pogroms, fatwas, etc. are pretty bad too).

Something That Explains Everything Doesn't Explain Anything

I read this somewhere else, but it's important so I'll talk about it too. "Something that explains everything doesn't explain anything." Sounds a little confusing at first. Let me try to reformulate it a little bit clearer.

Suppose you have an idea that is supposed to explain something. If any observation you make can be fit into this idea, then it doesn't have any actual explanatory power.

Now, let me explain. If something has no predictive power, it has no explanatory power. Because, if it can't tell you what to expect in the future, it can't tell you why something happened in the past. That is, if something has can explain something, it should be able to take the explanation, and apply it to something it hasn't seen the result of.

Something that can explain everything has no predictive power. Because it if explains x just as well as not-x, it gives you no reason to expect one over the other.


This is why falsifiability is so important in science. If nothing can show a hypothesis to be wrong, then the hypothesis "explains" everything. If there were anything that it didn't explain, then that potentiality would falsify the hypothesis. An unfalsifiable hypothesis can't explain anything.

Pascal's Wager

Pascal's wager is an argument to believe in god. It goes like this: If god exists, and you believe, you'll go to heaven for eternity. If god exists, and you don't believe, you'll go to hell for eternity. If god doesn't exist, you'll neither gain nor lose anything by believing or not believing. Because the reward/punishment of heaven/hell is infinite, no matter how unlikely god's existence is, the cost/benefit analysis says that you should believe.

The first problem is: what if you pick the wrong god? Worship Zeus and Odin could damn you. Oops. Still, you might think it's better to choose some god, rather than none. Picking the wrong god gets the same punishment as picking no god, but picking a god gives some chance of getting the infinite reward.

But it goes further than that. There's no reason to think that any god would give you infinite reward for believing in it and infinite punishment for not believing in it. It's possible, sure. But it's just as possible for a god to punish anyone who believes in it, and reward anyone who doesn't believe in it. Or, the god could reward only those who truly believe, and not just play some silly game. Or, god could capriciously reward and punish people regardless of what they did in life. Or, some other scenario I haven't thought of.

Also, there is a cost to believing that's not incumbent on the non-believer; following the tenets of the religion you've chosen.

With all those different possibilities, there's no reason to think trying to believe in god is better than not trying to believe.

The Free Market, Rationality and the Prisoner's Dilemma

Something that free market ideologues like to talk about is rational self-interest. It's a simple concept; everyone will be better off if we look after our own best interests. On the face of it, it doesn't look too bad. If I have cows and you have chickens, and I want some chickens and you want some cows, then we can both benefit by working to satisfy our own wants.

Certainly there are cases where this works, but consider a thought experiment: the prisoner's dilemma. The setup goes like this.

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (defects from the other) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent (cooperates with the other), the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

Here it is in table form. It's written in terms of utility instead of disutility, and the numbers don't exactly match up, but it's only the relations that really matter.

	Cooperate	Defect
Cooperate	9 / 9	0 / 10
Defect	10 / 0	1 / 1

Deciding which action to take using rational self-interest, the answer is to defect. This is because defecting dominates cooperation - no matter what the other prisoner does, you will always be better off (if only slightly) by defecting. If the other prisoner cooperates, you can get 9 utils by cooperating or 10 by defecting, and if the other prisoner defects, you can get 0 utils by cooperating or 1 by defecting.

But this results in a situation that is obviously not optimal. Both prisoners defect, and end up in the worst overall situation. The best outcome would be for both prisoners to cooperate, but they have no incentive to not defect.

This particular situation may seem contrived, but there are plenty of situations in real life that follow the same pattern. Wikipedia gives a lot of examples. This poses a problem to the initial premise that everyone looking after their own best interest will result in the best overall situation.

It seems to me that a better way to go about it is not to use rational self-interest, but rather rational pan-interest. Instead of comparing different actions by how the results affect you, compare them by how the results affect everyone together.

Of course, in the real world, this solution has problems: how do you know what's best for everyone else, how do you avoid getting deceived or tricked, etc. But I think ordinary rational self-interest has most of the same problems, in real life.