[Original post: Why I’m Staying Out Of The Substack Religion Debate]
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I → stay → Debate
Ben Smith writes:
This post sure reads like participating in the object level debate, not just "writing a post about how I won't participate".
I did joke about this at the end, but I also want to defend calling this a post about how I won’t participate.
This essay presented a kind of hand-wavey heuristic for why I’m not spending lots of time examining the details of every individual argument.
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I → write → argument
This is fine, everyone has to do this or be overwhelmed, but I think it’s important to keep hand-wavey heuristics for not participating in arguments, vs. actual participation in arguments, distinct.
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it → have → arguments
Little annoys me more than when I spend weeks carefully gathering citations and making a substantive contribution in a domain, and somebody responds with “well that’s obviously all bullshit because it vaguely reminds me of something I have negative affect towards”.
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I → annoy → affect
It’s not necessarily wrong to deprioritize a topic because it vaguely reminds you of something that you have negative affect toward, but I would prefer these people admit they’re dismissing/ignoring it rather than claim to be engaging with it.
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they → ’ → it
I’m working on a longer post about this topic.
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I → work → topic
Chaotic Neutral writes:
I think Scott presents a great summary of the default skeptical position here.
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Scott → write → position
But I would like to remind him that in his first Fatima article he accused me of having a trapped prior for following the exact same logic in explaining my casual dismissal of the miracle discourse.
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he → like → discourse
In any case, I think Scott and anyone who enjoyed his article would also enjoy Onid excellent and relevant essay (using Kolmogorov complexity!) to attack the idea of a “simple” infinity god.
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who → think → god
I can see why Chaotic Neutral would think I’m being hypocritical or at least inconsistent, but let me offer a few defenses.
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me → see → defenses
First, I used “trapped prior” in a specific way there, referring to Chaotic not feeling surprised by Fatima.
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Chaotic → use → Fatima
My point was that the miracle Fatima, if we can’t explain it, provides some evidence for Catholicism (let’s say it should update us 10% towards it).
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it → explain → it
We may say, after updating, that Catholicism still seems unlikely on net.
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Catholicism → say → net
If that’s true, then Fatima must be fake somehow.
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Fatima → ’ → ?
However, even though that should be our bottom line, we can’t go back and say “therefore, Fatima isn’t surprising at all, and shouldn’t even update us 10% of the way to Catholicism”, because that’s double-counting.
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that → go → Catholicism
The correct action imho is to continue thinking of Fatima as a weird unexplained creepy anomaly in our worldview, which we have some other reasons to think will get solved eventually.
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we → continue → reasons
I thought there was a missing mood in some of the Fatima posts where people didn’t keep it open as a weird unexplained creepy anomaly.
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people → think → anomaly
(by analogy, suppose that you time travel back to meet Napoleon, and you notice that there’s a UFO hovering above his camp headquarters.
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you → suppose → headquarters
You might, in the end, assume that, given the implausibility of aliens, you must have been hallucinating, or that it must have been a very weird cloud, or something like that.
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it → assume → that
But you wouldn’t think “ah, nothing to see here, this doesn’t worry me in any way”.
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this → think → way
The fact that it was worrying and you genuinely didn’t know how to explain it would coexist with the fact that it didn’t fully move you towards the alien-Napoleon conspiracy theory and so you assume it must have some natural explanation.
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it → know → explanation
This doesn’t apply to this post, because I’m not using my atheism to dismiss or explain anything else, I’m just asserting it.
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I → apply → it
Second, as I said above, I was careful to claim this was a dismissal of the debate, and not a participation in the debate.
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this → say → debate
I think it would be fine to say “I’m not wading into the miracles debate, because miracles are nonsense”.
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miracles → think → debate
I think it’s worse to claim to have participated in the debate by saying that.
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it → think → that
I still get a trickle of DMs, maybe one or two per month, by people who are terrified of Fatima and want me to reassure them that it doesn’t prove they’re going to Hell (I’ve tried to help some of these people, but others are too compulsive about it, or strike me as not likely to be productive to talk to).
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others → get → me
I think that considering the people in this bin makes it easier to distinguish between a dismissal of the debate and a solution to the debate.
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it → think → debate
Finally, the charge of inconsistency would be stronger if I criticized CN but didn’t criticize myself.
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I → criticize → myself
But I did criticize myself.
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I → criticize → myself
In my post, I said things like:
“I admit this [argument] is dangerous.
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argument → say → things
It risks degenerating into . . . the absurdity heuristic.”
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It → risk → heuristic
“The whole thing feels a bit midwit, as if I’m saying you’re not allowed to consider this because it sort of looks like other things that give me the creeps.
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that → feel → creeps
”
I hope this was enough self-criticism to free me of the charge of hypocrisy.
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this → hope → hypocrisy
I enjoyed this, and broadly concur—but I’m a bit suspicious of the airplane argument.
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I → enjoy → argument
On one hand, I can’t quite refute the “adding a limit is like adding an incapacity” point: it does seem equivalent, and equivalently illegitimate.
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it → refute → point
On the other hand, I wonder if—in re at least the airplane bit, specifically—we might not be conflating two things: viz., (1) how many bits it takes to specify something, vs. (2) how much effort and time etc. it takes to build something.
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it → wonder → something
That is, the one does not (have to) bear upon the other at all; we cannot necessarily reason from “the more-limited biplane is easier to construct than is the less-limited starship” to “the biplane *must be* simpler”.
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biplane → have → other
E.g.: “a sphere” is undoubtedly simpler than “a small sphere”, conceptually/semantically speaking—but that surely doesn’t require that constructing a sphere of unlimited (= unspecified?)² size will be easier than building a small one!
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constructing → speak → one
Or, put another way: is it a valid general principle that “an object with a simpler description ought be easier to construct than will be a like object with a more complex description”, such that “it’s harder to go ‘starship → biplane’ than the converse” is evidence for latter’s simplicity?
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’s → put → simplicity
Well, it might be some evidence—i.e., simpler things probably are mostly easier to make—but seems to me that so many factors beyond complexity can go into “ease of construction” that it can be, at best, only suggestive of simplicity.
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it → make → simplicity
…and 155 more, not listed.
