I.
Matthew Adelstein (aka Bentham’s Bulldog) and Richard Chappell debate the existence of God.
asserted
Adelstein → debate → God
So do JP Andrew, Benjamin Tettu, Sangwon Lee, Ethan Muse, other Ethan, and “Atheistic Journals”, all within this month!
asserted
all → do → month
I thought the omnipresence of the early ‘00s online atheism debate was a time-bound historical phenomenon.
asserted
omnipresence → think → debate
But now that the blogosphere has reincarnated as Substack, it’s back, nearly as strong as ever.
asserted
it → reincarnate → Substack
I enjoyed participated in the early 00's version, but the current incarnation leaves me cold.
asserted
incarnation → participate → me
I can’t get as interested as I once did in the details of the Fine-Tuning Argument, the Argument From Miracles, et cetera.
asserted
I → get → Miracles
It’s not just that I’ve already served my time in the theology mines.
asserted
I → ’ → mines
My lack of belief in God intuitively feels like it precedes all of these things.
asserted
it → feel → things
Consider by analogy a society where people regularly debated whether aliens assisted the rise of Napoleon.
asserted
aliens → consider → Napoleon
There are many reasons to believe in such assistance: Napoleon’s rise from Corsican nobody to Emperor and would-be world conqueror was a bizarre deviation from the usual pattern of history.
asserted
rise → be → history
He won battles outnumbered 4-to-1, when everyone knows victory usually goes to the larger army.
asserted
victory → win → army
He became monarch of France immediately after it had declared eternal enmity against the concept of monarchy and resolved to murder anyone who didn’t hate monarchy enough.
asserted
who → become → monarchy
True, nobody saw aliens, but a sufficiently advanced civilization could conduct its interventions in secret.
uncertain
civilization → see → secret
True, our prior for alien intervention is generally low, but maybe this is unjustified: we have no idea how many historical events the aliens have intervened in; Alexander the Great was pretty strange too.
asserted
Great → have → events
True, Napoleon finally lost, but this is not decisive; maybe the aliens only wanted him to blaze brightly for a few years before his eventual defeat, or maybe stronger aliens were backing the Duke of Wellington.
asserted
aliens → lose → Wellington
In a world where this hypothesis somehow entered the space of serious debate, it would be hard to dislodge.
asserted
it → enter → debate
Our own historical community is protected from it not because they can precisely add up the Bayesian evidence for and against each of these considerations and conclude its falsehood, but because common sense precludes entertaining it in the first place.
asserted
sense → protect → place
This isn’t to say that Reason doesn’t work - if someone could precisely add up the Bayesian evidence for and against these considerations, they would get the right answer - but as a historical matter, this type of delicate reasoning wasn’t how our society resolved this question.
uncertain
society → say → question
My atheism is more deeply rooted in whatever prevented us from considering this question in the first place than in the type of delicate reasoning that could get us out of it.
uncertain
that → root → it
I admit this is dangerous.
asserted
this → admit → ?
It risks degenerating into insult-slinging - “your religion is just as stupid as believing aliens caused Napoleon!”.
asserted
aliens → risk → Napoleon
Even if it avoids that failure mode, it would at best come out as the absurdity heuristic, a dangerous fallacy where someone concludes that they can dismiss a matter without careful consideration because it feels absurd to them.
asserted
it → avoid → them
This would have dismissed nuclear weapons in 1900, heavier-than-air flight in 1850, and atheism throughout most of history (surely it’s absurd that complex life could come to exist just by random chance).
uncertain
life → dismiss → chance
It’s also useless: religion obviously doesn’t feel absurd to religious people, so it can do no work convincing them.
asserted
it → ’ → them
So rather than stop here, we should dig in further: why do we exclude the Napoleon scenario from consideration, and what can we learn from it?
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we → stop → it
The “aliens caused Napoleon” scenario fails because of overfitting.
asserted
scenario → cause → overfitting
Anything at all can be explained by “there was a powerful hidden entity trying to make that specific thing happen”.
asserted
thing → explain → ?
Why does the location of the Great Pyramid encode the speed of light to seven decimal places?
asserted
location → encode → places
There was a powerful hidden entity involved, and it aimed at that specific outcome.
asserted
it → be → outcome
How did Donald Trump come from behind to win the 2016 election?
asserted
Trump → come → election
Well, there was a powerful hidden entity, it wanted Donald Trump to win, and so it arranged to make that happen.
asserted
that → be → ?
These pseudo-explanations aren’t merely as good as real explanations, they’re strictly better.
asserted
they → ’re → explanations
Trump rode a wave of right-wing populism, but why didn’t that show up in earlier polls?
asserted
that → ride → polls
How did Napoleon win all those battles?
asserted
Napoleon → win → battles
The “powerful hidden entity trying to make that specific thing happen” explanation plows through objections like these easily.
asserted
explanation → try → these
Any reasoner who ever wants to get past that to a more useful model will need to give the “powerful hidden entity” story a preemptive penalty.
asserted
who → want → penalty
We usually apply this penalty under the term “conspiracy theories”.
asserted
We → apply → term
Since no individual human is powerful enough to unilaterally choreograph the course of history, it must be a cabal of elites; since we haven’t seen such a cabal, it must be hiding its own existence.
asserted
it → choreograph → existence
We debunk such theories by observing that large conspiracies are hard; a worldwide plot would have to maintain secrecy for decades or centuries, even though the real government sometimes accidentally invites hostile journalists to their Signal groupchats.
asserted
government → debunk → groupchats
To avoid these counterarguments, the really intense conspiracy theorists add more epicycles: the conspiracy has memory-wipe technology that they can use to cover up leaks!
asserted
they → avoid → leaks
…and 102 more, not listed.
The Aporia
