Religion: A useful theory?

Over many years I have thought about religion, listened to speakers of various beliefs and found myself arguing on both sides of debates. Eventually however, the tide of my thoughts turned, leaving me dissatisfied with religion. I hope here to list one of my main problems: religion is a poorly formed theory to use to make prediction.

To start with, I'd like to boil down the idea of religion. Religion comes in many different forms and types; most commonly it is a set of beliefs about a deity, a supernatural being of some sort. By some definitions, everyone has a religion, so I will restrict it for now to just those who believe in an all powerful deity and received truths such as ancient texts. Almost every religion professes to be the truth, or at least a truth. First I will consider religions that profess to be the only truth. This would contain most religious people, after all, the main Abrahamic religions tend to fall under this category.

Faith

At the basis of many religions there is faith. The Oxford English Dictionary states that faith is:

1. Belief, trust, confidence.

 a. Confidence, reliance, trust (in the ability, goodness, etc., of a person; in the efficacy or worth of a thing; or in the truth of a statement or doctrine).

So faith is an acceptance of a truth, acknowledging that something is correct as far as we know and usually the implication is therefore to base ones actions upon it. It's the axioms you base your logic upon. For example I have faith that my mobile phone can send messages hundreds of miles reliably. I derive this partially from my faith in my senses to be roughly true. As a result I use it to communicate with my friends on a regular basis, and trust that what comes up on the screen is actually my friends who I meet in the flesh want to say. More basic is truths I find it hard not to accept, like that I exist and the world I see around me follows certain physical laws. I base this on observation, and what I have learnt fitting with observation. My observation, in turn are based on my faith in my senses, after all, what else can I believe in? I believe in gravity because I need to describe how things stay on the ground. A certain amount of faith combined with strong evidence (and lack of it to the contrary) allows me to hold the faith that gravity does work, that every mass near the surface of the earth is pulled towards it at an acceleration of 9.81 metres per second squared (unless acted upon by a non-negligible force).

It would not be unreasonable to say, by the scientific method that my beliefs are based on how reliably it fits the world I see around me.

I think we can agree that the scientific method is the best way to make a decision. Logically, it is the best way we can make predictions about future sensory input from current sensory input. I.e. the scientific method is the best way to evaluate and understand your reality. Very quickly, what is it? Make a theory, develop a prediction (hypothesis) from the theory, test that prediction. If it fits, try more predictions, test it forever (i.e. continually adjust to new evidence). If it doesn't, amend your theory and try again.

So up to now, religion is fine, lets say it's a theory. It's a statement about reality that can be used to make predictions. Let's evaluate it as a theory, what makes something a good/useful theory?

Reliability

For this subsection, lets say we come across several theories, each of which is a religion or belief set. The test of whether or not a theory is useful is its reliability: how often the predictions it makes fit with reality. Tied into this is how sure the theory was of the prediction (what margin of error did it concede) and how precisely it was defined. If a theory consistently produces correct results, it is reliable.

Simplicity

There's something great about simplicity. As a mathematician it is what makes me tick. As Hardy said “A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.” The simplicity of the groups axioms which create amazing structures and interesting results when combined with intuitive constructions. Or the very basis, the Peano axioms, which alone can hold up the vastness of number theory. But that is just me rambling, more tangibly (and built on maths) are Newtons laws. Summed up with a simple F=ma, along with the law of gravitation which takes just the two masses and the distance between them, can explain the intricate and complex behaviour of our solar system to an amazing degree of accuracy. Instead of this simplicity, we could say that all celestial bodies are drawn to each other by magic pixies, and we are held on the earth by invisible ropes. Now you could say that's almost easier to understand, but it makes so many assumptions (the pixies have always been there, they are ultimately clever, they are invisible, impossible to interact with, they are reliable with mathematical accuracy). And these just aren't required, we could forget all about these sentient pixies, and have one assumption: one force gravity, interacts with mass with this relationship. Its the principle of Ockham's razor: "The [hypothesis] that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected." Especially if the two theories produce the same results, as assumptions should be cut down to a minimum.

And there's another problem with religion, it invokes a God: a sentient, complicated uncreated creator. When all that's needed is one law: things came into beginning at the start of time (as we can tell). This gets rid of messy questions and needless assumptions. We don't have to look far to find awkward questions because of the existence of God, it on the tip of everyone's tongue: Why won't God forgive everyone? Why doesn't God stop the pain? In the assumption department we have more problems. If we have this God who is a bit like us but more powerful, we have to put him in his own universe with its own rules (more assumptions). How does God interact with this reality we know and love? (more assumptions and laws)

It may be commonly argued that science is constantly changing and therefore cannot be claimed to be the truth. This is partially true, science attempts to constantly improve; better, more succinct and accurate theories replace old ones. To avoid the continuum fallacy, you should think of science getting closer and closer to the correct answer. If we get closer, this doesn't mean we were far away before. The strength of a theory is not based one whether or not a better one is produced, but how strong the evidence actually is. So it isn't correct to use theories which are more complex and less accurate. We use the best one we have at the time.

What's the point in a theory?

A theory gives us a framework for looking at the world, it can make predictions and statements about the reality we inhabit. To use gravity as an example, it allows us to understand nearly all of rocket science; space exploration is based on the ideas of Newton, it can for example accurately predict how much fuel is required to leave earth. To give you some perspective, NASA managed to get to the moon and back without considering quantum or relativistic effects, just plain old Newton. Gravity and the rest of Newton's laws provide us with definite, quantifiable predictions which are tested time and time again to be shown to be true (to a high degree of accuracy for low speeds up to around 1% of the speed of light).

This brings us to the second case, religions which do not claim to be only or total truth. These tell us nothing for sure, and are useless for prediction. A theory which states x is true sometimes, with no qualification of when is near useless. Again, like all unfalsifiable claims, unless it has contradictions it cannot be false but we can say it is useless. And if a religion is somewhere in between the two, the set can be split into parts and critiqued separately. Either a specific Religious claim can be falsified, or it is pointless in this reality to use as a theory.

The point of a theory is to make definite, well defined statements about reality. Usually this is with a view to use it for prediction, which also entails constant testing.

Now, I don't want to offend religious people by putting it on the same pedestal as horoscopes, it was an extreme example to demonstrate the idea. Religion is a much better developed theory than astrology. Most religions have a/some powerful god/s (compared to us), we can consider two distinct cases from this. The god/s do interact with the physical world or they don't. Firstly, if the gods did interact with things we could see and detect the interaction, I don't know of any conclusive studies which show such predictions from holy books being detected but I could be wrong. However, in this case, at least the theory is potentially useful. If the god doesn't interact then the theory is useless as well as completely unprovable, it would make no useful predictions or explain any phenomena and logically should be eliminated.

Well Defined

This brings me to my final point, the strength of a theory is also based on it's certainty and how interpretable it is. For example to say "something is going to happen today" is correct but vague in many ways. You must have precisely definable terms and not make general statements. A classic example is horoscopes, they nearly always make correct statement without actually telling you anything useful. One I randomly found on the internet:

"Friends born under the Fixed signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius could offer the best kind of support over the next couple of days. You might need to access your own ability at detachment. A degree of confusion about a deadline is likely. Financially, however, all is likely to be clear - but not particularly pleasant. These issues may need to be addressed sooner rather than later."

Take the two highlighted phrases, they are near contradictory and actually describe the majority of financial situations we find ourselves in. Furthermore, there is no surety about these, there is no quantifiable way of measuring how right they were. The reading of horoscopes is therefore a poor theory, even discounted having no logical basis, they are pragmatically useless as a theory of how the universe works.

Similarly vague statements have little predictive power, particularly when they can be interpreted in so many ways. Being certain about something vague is analogous to being uncertain about something definite.

For example, saying

"Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever." 2 Samuel 7:16 (NIV)

is incredibly vague. At one point, this would have clearly referred to the physical line of David, however years later Paul was able to bend it to refer to the non-physical line including Jesus. This happens often today, if we define things in terms of some other more definite things, we could then make useful predictions. But we can't, every denomination disagrees. The more realistic denominations provide definitions so useless that it is a tautology or simply references something equally as badly defined.Thanks to the law of large numbers, someone is likely to make an interpretation that is correct, but this is no thanks to the poor theory. In this case its predictions are useful for only a small number of people, and only by chance.

For comparison, consider f=ma, where each term is defined relative to some exact object (for example a metre ruler) and their relationship mathematically. Newton's laws leave little room for interpretation and post-hoc reasoning. Admittedly, there is some amount of interpretability with everything, but it is clear to see that some things allow more than others. Almost everyone around the world with A level equivalent physics knowledge knows how to interpret f=ma. It's accuracy is high for a large percentage of people, it is a useful theory.

Summary

We use theories all the time, some of them we test and some of them we don't. The scientific method (almost by definition) is the best way to decide, whether or not we should a certain theory. Religion constitutes a terrible theory, that, when scrutinised offers very few helpful and accurate predictions. 

In summary, you can believe in an all powerful God who made everything (it is possible and it is a theory), however, it is not only more complex and less accurate, but riddled with inconsistencies. Furthermore, it is useless for solid predictions as it is open to so many wildly different interpretations. We can explain the universe accurately, reliably and in a well defined sense without a God.

"it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many" Thomas Aquinas (Ironic I know, I'll come back to this)

PS: I apologise that this article is somewhat confused, it has been written over a long period of time and has become a little unwieldy and haphazard.

Why do I do it?

It's a question I ask myself a lot, why do I spend a large chunk of my time writing a blog which is read by very few? One reason I like to tell myself is to improve my writing, although I'd be hard pressed to notice a difference. I'll keep on that one.

Another reason is to record my thoughts for myself. That was my original idea, after finding my memory was like a sieve. I would find myself having regular deja vu, re-"discovering" things. Having the words on the internet somewhere doesn't always directly help, but the act of writing itself seems to cement things in my mind a little better.  I suppose I can read back over what I have wrote, but I rarely do so, and when I do, it only reminds me how little I knew. So perhaps that's a plus, instead of telling myself that I did know something in the past, it tells me "yeah, you are making progress/you used to be an ignorant twat." To go even further off course, one day I'll read this and maybe think the same, how meta (okay, reading over that already makes me think that).

It also acts as a kind of filter, when thinking of a large idea I can lose track of the details. Getting it down on paper helps to lay it all out and potentially simplify it. Most of all I find it helps to make me notice when it's bullshit (which is why I have lots of unpublished and abandoned posts that you can't see).

This blog also allows me to properly set out what I believe for future reference. I think it is important to be able to call up previous conclusions, along with what should be reasonable logic to base then upon. And so in a slightly meta sense, I want this post to lay out my ideas about what this blog achieves and its limitations. I think I have covered what little it achieves, next, the limitations.

Many of my posts are about religion, this is mostly due to the fact that I come from a deeply religious family, and this is the best place to vent these. This has always been the case, but this blog is the only place that won't tire of my tirades. I think I may have exhausted the patience of most of my friend groups in this regard. Either my friends are all Christian and I don't want to offend them or they are strong atheist and they already know. I suppose I'm a little late to the atheist party, which means I'm still working through the arguments.

I'm not an expert on anything I talk about, I write almost completely on things other than maths, which is the only thing I can vaguely call myself an expert on. Furthermore, I don't spend enough time researching, they are predominately my thoughts. They aren't completely unresearched but not to the level I would expect of a professional blogger/journalist.

Fallacy fallacy and the big picture

The fallacy fallacy, apart from being a little more meta than its cousins, essentially boils down to this: the existence of a fallacy in an argument does not make the conclusion false. This is quite a straightforward fallacy once you have your head around it, essentially, an argument can be complete rubbish and/or the premises false, and the conclusion correct. To give a flippant example:

All envy is purple, therefore 2+2=4.

In reality, the fallacy is naturally more subtle. An argument is often a large set of premises and lines of logic, naturally, one line could be wrong but the argument could still stand on just one line of argumentation. If you're reading an article and the writer makes an error in an argument, we are often more dismissive of the surrounding arguments and general point. When a mistake spills overs from an arguments, tainting our opinion of the writer and in turn the article, you could argue that it is an ad hominem. Of course, I would like to stress again, this is a decent heuristic. If I read about a guy trying to prove gay marriage is morally wrong because of how magnets work; I am going to completely disregard everything else he says there.

To stretch the spirit of the fallacy a little further, we often mistake flaws in a system for conclusive evidence the system should change. Law is a common example. People will point out one example of a miscarriage of justice and declare the whole system to be wrong or requiring change. In reality, law, a reflection of the complexity of human interaction, is also complex. To change a law to fix that perceived mistake, could produce net negative effects. The fallacy fallacy here is that we are misjudging the complexity of the situation, systems and arguments do not rely on one logical support. Of course, even one miscarriage of justice is worthy of consideration but it must be taken in context.

In a small meta twist, I would like to highlight a nested fallacy fallacy when considering fallacies (buffalo buffalo buffalo...). When we highlight fallacies, we can react to them by doing the opposite, which although may be the correct direction is not necessarily the right amount. The proper reaction to error is not to do a big jump in the other direction, but to reconsider that area of thought.

Sometimes, when an error is found, the conclusion is still completely correct. Although it is a decent heuristic to then consider the argument weaker, an even better reaction is to completely reconsider the whole argument, system or methodology to get the bigger picture.

The anthropic, cosmological razor

Lets say I make a billion boxes, each capable of simulating a simple universe. Let's say the box has one parameter, where the probability of it being "correct" is 1 in a billion. When the parameter is correct, the universe produces sentient life. The boxes are completely sealed, and there is no way for the sentient life to know there are other boxes.

Let's say life is produced in at least one box. What would it be correct for that life to reason? Imagine the lifeforms realised that there was only one parameter, and that the probability of it being sentient was 1 in a billion. Does this probability tell it anything about the initial conditions? Without understanding anything about the mechanism that produced them, they cannot infer a probability and therefore infer that something must have been skewed. What if in my box making machine that parameter is always set to the "correct" value? What if it's 50:50 for a "correct" and "incorrect" value? Well there's no way to know. The only way to experiment on this would be to witness several such creations, but we have defined that as impossible.

Is it even possible for them to correctly recognise the parameters? Think about our universe for a second, and the infinite number of ways it could vary. What about if gravity turned off every minute for just a tenth of a second? What if there was an extra fundamental force? My point is, all our knowledge of reality and what it is like, stems from our observations and subsequent analysis of it. Without actually testing anything about the parameters of the box making machine, they should be careful making statements about it based on their universe. Naturally, the same applies in our universe.

But can't we use our intuition? Well how does intuition about reality form? Humans are pattern recognisers, by familiarising ourselves with a set of causes and effects, we begin to recognise the patterns. From this we infer a mechanism, an inference to the best explanation. Our brains are colossal and amazing, truly, the fact we regularly make sense of such complicated and noisy data is astounding. However, we can get carried away and over-apply it. At the conclusion of the cosmological argument, many conclude that a personal, all powerful deity is the most intuitive cause. I would say that the origins of the universe and whether anything else exists is no question suitable for our everyday intuition or emotion. If you want to derive a God from what you feel is correct, you need to take the assumption that your feelings are an authority. I am not willing to take this unnecessary assumption, and the principle of Occam's razor would agree with me. Anyway, life has probably given you enough examples of where your feeling have been wrong, however decent they are as an everyday heuristic.

Back to this example, I am the creator of the boxes, I am the box making machine, but there is no way for the life form to know this. The life form could equally imagine an upper-universe (that's where I, the creator live), where I do not exist. They could imagine an upper-universe where I have three eyes. They could imagine a universe where I am a tea-pot. To eliminate me completely would be a correct usage of Occam's razor. If two theories produce the same outcomes, then the one with the least assumptions should remain. To see this, start with me; then simplify me, producing identical consequences. For example, I have one eye, I have no mouth... Until I am just a single statement, their universe is created.  I am unnecessary and untestable. Notice that they would be incorrect (absolutely incorrect) to say I don't exist, even if from their viewpoint they were logically correct to eliminate me.

To move our perspective back to our universe (but it equally applies to my fictional one too), consider the two explanations of our universe.

1.The universe began, and it was like this.

2.There is a creator with these set of morals and he began the universe, and it was like this.

Number 1 is uniquely simple, you could argue: "but you've made number 2 look complex with language". And I admit, that it is possible to obfuscate with language, but I will struggle to explain it without. If you can see a hole please say. Perhaps I can try to lay it out plainer:

2a. There is a creator with these set of morals and she began the universe, and it was like this.
2b. There is a creator with this other arbitrary set of morals and he began the universe, and it was like this.

They are all equivalently plausible, even if they are a little facetious. Perhaps you could agree the following is one less assumption.

3.  There is a creator and he began the universe, and it was like this.

If you keep eliminating parts, you find you are left with 1. Again, it's not that it must be true, it's simply all you can assert. Any more detail is both completely baseless and unnecessary.

My point is, there is currently no, and may never be, a way to know about what is outside our box. If we can make no physical statements about what is outside our box, we can't assign probabilities to it. Consequentially (as in by examining the consequences) the simplest explanation is simply that we are, ie we know nothing. All other explanations are at least currently useless and untestable, which is fine to believe in, but don't come telling me you're sure unless you're willing to present decent evidence.

I have seen arguments that go something like this: "The best theory from atheist scientists is to invoke a multiverse. But a multiverse doesn't help because what created that? Therefore, there's a personal God with a son called Jesus." First, presenting a false dichotomy between the multiverse and a Christian God is ridiculous and unnecessary. I would submit that the current best explanation is none at all, to accept that "this reality simply exists" is all we can reasonably conclude from what we know.

So where does a multiverse theory come from? As in, why was it devised? Why did the silly atheist scientists devise it? I would submit that this links back to intuition. This branch of physics, namely theoretical physics is a mathematicians game. Above all, they hold a certain intuitive sense of elegance and simplicity of theories. This is where the multiverse is born, as a nice and intuitive explanation. Do the scientists stop there? Well, the theoretical physicists may but it by no means becomes an established theory until evidence is found. If you will, for now the multiverse theory is just a plaything for mathematicians. It isn't supposed to be an explanation for everything, it's an intuitive and nice explanation for some people. It's easy to believe too,  and doesn't over reach. Because there is no evidence for it, it would be stupid to make decisions based on it. Likewise, even if you find God an intuitive explanation, that as evidence is not strong enough to warrant you to change your actions.

But you may say that we still need an ultimate explanation, from the cosmological arguments. But lets do a similar exercise as before.

1. There's an uncreated, sentient, omniscient, just and kind cause called God. This cause produced the universe.

2.There's an uncreated cause. This cause produced the universe.

Which one is preferable logically? I would suggest the second. It makes less assumptions. The explanation is no better by adding sentience, never mind the other attributes, because they both explain it all.

God although not impossible, is either untestable or there is currently insufficient evidence for him. We cannot conclude with any surety from intuition that God is required. We cannot conclude this from a priori logic either, as God is logically superfluous. To you this theory might feel unsatisfactory, but this is no grounds for logical discourse, reality is often cruel, heartless and disconcerting.

Why aren't the gospels reliable?

Are the gospels evidence for a divine being? And further, evidence that Jesus was the son of that being? It should come as no great surprise that I'm not the first to ask those questions, and I shan't be the last. The historicity of Jesus is probably a topic which historians have given more undue attention to than any other. Please note, I am not a historian, not even particularly knowledgeable about historical events or even methods of historical analysis. So when coming out as an atheist to Christian friends, it was a question I wasn't really expecting. I had put more of my efforts into more "a priori" arguments about deities, and not thought about historical evidence. Ideally, properly appraising the evidence would mean hours of research and proper tuition. But I can afford neither the time nor the money of a tutor, and even then I wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the sheer volume or quality of historians before me. I can however try to produce reasons as to why I may dispute the evidence. Here I hope to formalise my argument a little more, and cache it for future use.

Context and implications

Existence of divinity is an extremely important claim, it requires a huge amount of evidence. I can accept that Julius Caesar did this and said that with fairly large margins of error. The reason I can is that it really doesn't matter to me. Historical evidence of a deity and especially the link of one person to said deity is a really important question. If such a deity is real, I need to profoundly change my behaviour; it's not something I am going to accept without very certain evidence. In other words, I am sticking to my null hypothesis because of the huge implications of the tested hypothesis. At this point, you may feel an urge to tell me that this makes me evil, as if I am somehow avoiding God. I can demonstrate the circular nature of this with two arguments. Firstly, imagine you tell me that by jumping off a cliff I will achieve eternal happiness and life. In this case, the consequences under my current theory (no belief in any such supernatural mechanisms) are dire. I would need stupendous amounts of evidence to convince myself to do it. It is the same for religion, it will literally change the way I live, that's a big deal. Secondly, you would exercise the same caution when evaluating other religions and their books, and you would implore me to do the same if I was to look at the historicity of Muhammed. If you are compelled to reply to that with, "I have looked at Islam, and it really was silly and unbelievable", just seriously consider whether perhaps your cultural or confirmation biases would have affected your judgement at all. For more about my choice of the null hypothesis, read this post.

Bayes' Theorem

One qualitative assessment of Bayes' theorem is the need to consider prior evidence. If you'd rolled a dice 1000 times and every time it came up a one, and a friend told you that your next roll would be a six, you should be a little skeptical. You would also be skeptical of a historical document which talked about unicorns and dragons, because you have never observed any yourself. This is not unreasonable, the claim is extraordinary, and to quote Sagan: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If a historical document said that people generally went about doing normal peoplely things in the past, we'd be much less critical of it. It is not wrong to "view" the bible in such terms, it is indeed correct to require extraordinary evidence for the claims of miracles and of deity.

To use a further example: if you found a video of me shooting a laser out of my mouth, would you believe I possessed a power like some kind of gastronomical Cyclops? No, you would view the evidence in light of what you know about me, and about the source. You've never seen anyone shoot lasers out of their mouths, and you'd probably be right to say it's impossible within our current understanding of physics. Furthermore, you know that videos are easily and convincingly faked. It would be ridiculous and naive to believe I could. Of course, with the bible it is not so obvious, but think about the concepts which would lead you to reject or accept such claims.

Were they lying?

I was asked several times whether or not I thought the gospels were faked. I see this as a false dichotomy, on one end the early church conspired to mislead us and on the other, the whole bible is literally (like literally literally) true. In reality, humans are capable of everything from outright lies to honesty, but there's a lot in between where intentions are good but the outcomes are false. Biblical experts widely agree that none of the gospels were written by eye witnesses. It is perfectly plausible that the facts about Jesus were escalated, getting more and more fanciful as traditions began to form and people began to get caught up in this new messiah. Like a game of Chinese whispers, an increasingly fascinating story on top of someone who was probably a great teacher. Naturally, the accounts may all be true, but it is most certainly a large leap to suggest that it amounts to evidence. It is circular at best: there is a plausible pathway to the gospels being formed and not being literally true.

But how did a lie convince so many people? They plead. As people we are bombarded with huge amount of information from birth. Much of what we learn is simply copied and pasted from our culture and parents. Once a religion takes hold, it stays, and as I have mentioned before, strong religions remain. By definition. The weak religions die much more easily so the only ones that are left are the convincing ones. Obviously this is a theory, but it shows that there is a possible mechanism for convincing religions to form without any real truth behind them. Also, this argument falls apart when we consider other religions. How about Islam vs Christianity, both religions deny the authenticity of the other. Clearly convincing incorrect religions can form, convincing in fact to 2.2billion and 3.3billion respectively. People don't tend to lie, they bend facts with a whole slew of biases. Humans are really terrible sources for many reasons, especially in a religiously and emotionally charged environment.

Conclusion

The problem with looking back and making theories around the evidence is that there are an infinite number of possibilities that fit with any given set of evidence. It is no surprise that both theories fit. This is invariably what happens with all kinds of historical theories, I'm not saying history is wholesale tosh, far from it. Historians know how difficult it is to make concrete statements about past events. Obviously, this applies to all historical theories, even the one that Jesus was not divine. With the bar for proving the existence of a deity is so very high and the theoretical quality of the source is so low, it is inadequate to make even a weak claim.

In-groups and Stockholm Syndrome: The Musical

By what criteria do we judge music? It's some fuzzy quality, that when we listen to it, makes us want to float on the music; take it all in and absorb it. It's a quality that expresses emotions quickly and effectively, good music makes you feel empowered, it lifts you up a little bit in every way. Even sad music can lift you a little, reminding you that you're not the first person to feel that, or by temporarily allowing you to sympathise.

Uncharacteristically vague descriptions aside, music is a truly pervasive and powerful tool. Music can turn a crowd, a simple look at football chants shows us the powerful effects. It effectively polarises, perhaps when used socially it taps straight into our wish to be similar. Sometimes, this makes me wonder back about the "quality" of music. The most powerful music I have experienced sometimes correlates weakly with any ideas of high art: maybe a euphoric but cheesy Christian song, a primitive chant inducing solidarity or a shallow and repetitive beat that makes me go crazy.

The only common factor is that the music was a social act. I went along with the flow, it was the feeling of belonging and social acceptance that lifted me. Even if the song was annoying at first, it would grow on me because everyone else was enjoying it. Perhaps it's a big jump to say music is just Stockholm syndrome, but your music taste is defined almost entirely by what you listen to and what group you identify with. Perhaps there is some backward causation too, we are often drawn to people similar to us (in a mildly xenophobic way). I am over-simplifying what is an extremely complex behavior, but I can't seem to escape the feeling of that music quality is near arbitrary.

With a similar disregard for precise words and actual meaning as my first paragraph, read this review of Alt-J's "An Awesome Wave" from NME.

Alt-J indulge in impatient, complex songwriting. From the twisted a cappella interludes offsetting the distorted vocal and jagged guitars of ‘Intro’, to the wafting clap-happy breeze of ‘Dissolve Me’, each song flits between genres with the rapidity with which one would imagine Alt-J completed their algebra homework. ‘Breezeblocks’, starts as a smooth R&B groove before switching to a magnificent, clattering and sinister plea: “Please don’t go – I love you so!” The ‘In Rainbows’-indebted ‘Something Good’ is awash with piano and soaring melody. And while ‘An Awesome Wave’ might begun as some half-baked stab at a cinema concept album – ‘Matilda’’s drab strum is a paean to Luc Besson’s troubled child-star in Leon – it’s all the better for the added grit, real-life misery and heartache, as ‘Fitzpleasure’ attests. It’s a welcome injection of dirge, adding yet more sounds to the mix with rasping bass riffs and storming vocal before ‘Taro’’s finale, which fizzles disappointingly to the finish line.

Perhaps I have a unreasonably pessimistic view of art criticism but this previous paragraph strikes me as achieving very little. Sure, for someone who has experienced the album before, it does recall the feeling of listening to it. But, as a piece for expressing how good the album is to someone not in the indie rock in-group, it's useless. I suppose if we think we fit into NME's intended group it could work as a recommendation. It would express "I liked this, and as we like the same things, so will you". But we (I included) occasionally try to convince people outside of our music group that our music possesses some absolute, intrinsic quality. I'm probably being typically autistic and missing the point of such discussions but it always seems that we have the wrong end of the stick. Music taste is defined by who we hang out with and who we idolise. The music speaks to something within us, our identity and our experiences with no reference to intrinsic quality.

How do I conclude? Probably with the shocking revelation that music as an art is subjective, who knew eh? Well, not many, me included. I often thought of music as somehow different, as if there was a way to show that Justin Beiber's music is shit and Alt-J's is amazing. Of course, the stupidity of my statement appears now that I think about it, but as with many things, its trivial but not obvious.

I love easy wins

I was looking before at the book "The spirit level". It is a deeply divisive and influential book, with many people both supporting it and some making some seemingly valid criticisms of it. Right now, I don't want to take a side, I think of equality as a matter of morality; even if the evidence pointed the other way, I'd still want a more equal society. I want instead to consider what was going on in my head when I was looking into the book.

I was initially drawn to this book because of my left leaning. It looked great, evidence to justify my belief. My belief that an equal society is morally good means I want an equal society by any means (obviously within reason). When I find evidence which can achieve these ends, I jump for joy. But as you should be able to see, I am guilty of several fallacies: creating sides in a multifaceted debate, confirmation bias and the is-ought fallacy.

It doesn't end there though, I decided to check out criticism of the book, although I admit I went into war mode. I was looking for criticism so I could strike it down with my towering intellect and clearly correct information. As it happened, I brought only a pointed stick to a gun fight in both senses. My mind crawled away, wounded, cursing the day it ever decided to fight this battle and I gave up. Oh I can't be bothered with this it exclaimed.

And this reminded me of my previous post, I had missed something crucial. Not only do I give myself undue credit, not only am I prone to type one errors and not only that I turn debates into war. But I am also lazy! I like easy wins, unfortunately this was no easy win for my left centred brain. It struck me: I derive pleasure from winning, from being correct and shooting down other arguments, of course I will develop a complex where I avoid hard debates where my views will be challenged. I actually prefer to remain wrong and have a nice side to sit on and throw stones from than be buffeted by other people arguments and really engage with it.

You could call this self-flagellation, an in a way it is, I am pointing out my error in the hope that it will stick in my mind. To reiterate: Reality and morality are distinct and sometimes at odds with each other. The aim is to find the correct answer not for one side to win. I should not seek self affirming arguments. And to add to this: I should seek hard arguments and stop being so bloody lazy.

If you want to take a look at the debate:

A talk from the author summing it up: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

The blog of the book called the spirit level delusion: http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.co.uk/
A free pdf critique of the book: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/IMG/file/stages/A%20critical%20reading%20of%20The%20Spirit%20Level_Milos%20Simic-2.pdf

And heed my warnings.

Critical Thinking: Fallacies and Bias

Introduction

You are a good person and correct about pretty much everything. Or so we like to tell ourselves on a daily basis. I'm not being facetious, we literally do. Our inability to correctly critically assess our own views leads to regular and serious social problems, examples include racism, rejection of good scientific theories and debilitation of our political system. Key to become more correct is understanding your own limitations, this is not a discussion of how to persuade people with fancy words or emotive devices, but how to strive to be less flawed. (Note to reader, this is as much an exercise to help me as you).

A fallacy is simply an incorrect argument, and they can come in any shape or size. Often what is meant by "fallacy x" and perhaps a more helpful definition is: an incorrect logical construction or argument which humans often fall into. Bias can mean almost the same in this context, a tendency for humans to think in a certain way which can often lead to incorrect conclusions. Some of these biases may even be obvious, you may palm off the severity of them, saying: "I notice myself doing these all the time and stop myself." Maybe you are a cognitive superman and stop yourself all the time, but I doubt it because you are most probably human. Even if you are exceptional, these biases take a lot of work to find and minimise. You will never be done either, it is a process of continuous improvement, it is both unhelpful and inaccurate to think you will ever finish. Enjoy instead every time you eliminate some bias, becoming a little less wrong.

Fallacies and Bias

In general (there may be exceptions), fallacies and biases stem from a few human traits. Firstly, we view ourselves in an overly positive light and others in a negative light. We dismiss our own flaws, and assume we are correct more than we are. Second, we are overly prone to type 1 errors (false positives). After all, it is better to over-sensitive and avoid a harmless thing than be under-sensitive and ignore a dangerous one. This, apart from making us survive better, means we tend to see patterns in events that aren't there. Another major issue with human reasoning is our tendency to see a discussion as war. We are built to form groups, tight knit groups who believe broadly similar things. This is obvious in politics, where battles which should be about ideas and data become battles about groups and parties (Check out Politics is the Mind-Killer on Less Wrong for more).

Lastly, and a more general point which encapsulates the others: we aren't designed for this. Long, certain logical processes may be accurate but they are slow. It's not all bad, as I said with type one errors, with our limited processing power evolution has provided us with decent heuristics to survive. Heuristics are essentially cutting corners when it comes to finding solutions. They are far more efficient than proper logic, even if not perfect, complete or always correct solutions. In days gone by, when our minds were preoccupied by more basic needs, this was great. In fact it is tautological to say, those who survived to reproduce were better at surviving in that primitive environment. That's great, everyone loves survival. The problem arises when we focus our mind on one problem, our heuristics cloud our vision; offering their needlessly quick and half-arsed ideas, when we have all the time in the world. Evolution is an imperfect process, and contrary to popular belief (due to our knack for type 1 errors) it did not and does not "aim" for a perfect being. In this case, it has produced a being which is not very good at logical deduction, instead one which is good at surviving and reproducing.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to find evidence that agrees with their hypotheses. We don't like the feeling of being wrong or the effort of having to think to change our opinion (I'm speaking from experience). So as a coping device, we either avoid, suppress or deride such evidence. This can express itself in all kinds of ways. One example is when we seek out friends who agree with us, I'm not judging this practice as wrong, we all need down time (check out is-ought fallacy). Nevertheless, we should be aware of it, because sometimes it can lead us to another fallacy: the false-consensus effect (there are many other ways this can arise). We can also avoid conflicting evidence by only reading news-sources that agree with us. In the same regard we can be over-critical of people who disagree with us, (a little more of this later) or automatically put up barriers if we think they might. You may feel yourself do this, try reading two conflicting newspapers and feel yourself glide over one opinion but ridicule another. Of course, it is time consuming to do this, to question evidence you agree with and entertain evidence you don't (maybe you can see why we evolved this bias). I am by no means saying all evidence is equal, one important conclusion of Bayes theorem is that we take into account prior observations, but naturally we aren't sensitive enough (hence the bias). Don't waste your time seriously appraising evidence of the boogie-man, but do occasionally ask yourself, "is it my level of trust for this evidence reasonable or am I unfairly ignoring it/giving it undue credit?" And be willing to change your hypothesis in the light of sufficient evidence.

Attribution bias

Wikipedia sums this bias up very well with a story:

"For example, when a driver cuts us off, we are more likely to attribute blame to the reckless driver (e.g., “What a jerk!”), rather than situational circumstances (e.g., “Maybe they were in a rush and didn’t notice me")."

The situation acts in reverse when it is us cutting up the other driver, and although the bias is a little broader than this (and is very much worthy of a further read) it stems from a simple idea: we want to portray ourselves as positively as possible. To counteract this bias, remember that everyone else is like you.

Cultural bias

We see evidence through the lens of our current theories, we saw that in the confirmation bias. However, many of there theories are first formed and learnt from our culture. By culture I mean in the broadest possible definition, including the culture of your friend groups, the culture of humanity, the culture of your educational establishment etc. Perhaps it would be better to refer to it as environmental bias, what are the people around you saying? Again, this is a bias of magnitude not type, don't throw out everything your culture tells you; our ability to absorb and pass on huge amounts of culture is one of the few things which separates us from other primates. Remember that nothing is sacred, no idea above reproach. The fact that religion practically runs in families should serve as a stark reminder to question received knowledge. Cultural bias can be much more subtle, one interesting example is the obsession of western nations to enforce democracy on countries with authoritarian rule. However, we are surprised when the country votes for a despotic leader again, "they are silly", we exclaim, "why would you not want a secular and liberal democracy?!" Culture is powerful and paints everything you think: question the accepted norm.

Ingroup-outgroup formation and bias

This is a particularly toxic bias: we love to make sides, seek to widen gaps and reduce proper argumentation to throwing shit around. What do I mean?

We need no encouragement to produce sides, as the robbers cave experiment suggests. I would highly recommend reading it, but to quickly sum it up: two isolated groups were formed, and upon discovering each other, started a constantly escalating war which also standardised behaviour within the groups. See also, the two sided debating chambers of the House of Commons and the Cambridge union. But what is wrong with a bit of back and forth in a debate as long as we don't fight?

Firstly, issues are rarely two sided or even three sided, the best solution (and remember that is our goal) is somewhere on a many dimensional map of the solutions (x amount of this and y amount of this... etc). Reality and people are complicated, and so are the solutions to our problems, I don't want a choice between only two. Furthermore, I and you need no encouragement to conform to a binary choice. That isn't all of it though, our tendency to take sides often leads to poor argumentation. We provide our own side concessions and don't question, all the while demonising and criticising the enemy. We see the discussion as a war, where our side needs to win. To question your side is betrayal and making concessions is losing vital ground. This serves only to widen the gaps as insults become personal, make our own views more ardent and produce a more stark binary. Choices are rarely binary so don't take sides, you are trying to find the truth not win a war.

In politics these effects are blown up and their effects are too terrible to fathom, I would recommend reading politics is the mind-killer.

Ad Hominem

A famous politician once concluded "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?". He was stupid => his policies were stupid => we should do the opposite.

Ad Hominem is a decent heuristic, stupid person says stupid things, a bad tree bears bad fruit. But it isn't a valid method of refuting a specific argument. The truth of statement is entirely separated from the person saying it. If you have enough time, there is no need even to consider who is saying it. Simple statements about whether one thing implies another require no context. With all the time and resources in the world, more complex claims could be tested with your own evidence and all logical steps could be checked. Realistically though, it is useful to have context and possible motivations if it is a particularly complex argument. It is useful to know where someone is coming from to watch out for specific flaws, but remember when you do it. In your mind, you must separate the person and the idea. (To link it to the previous bias, bear in mind a discussion is not a battle between two people or even ideologies or cultures, the truth is unconcerned with the frame and participants of the debate.)

I feel I must defend poor George Bush, in my example I remarked at his grammatical slip. On this basis and on his mannerisms, you may conclude that George Bush was stupid, maybe he was. I don't care to be honest, good grammar and spelling are probably only weakly correlated with intelligence, or at least weaker than you think. Even if it was, it wouldn't be the point, the truth could appear badly spelt on the side of a railway track or uttered by a pompous fool and it would still be true.

An extension of this fallacy is the tendency to reject wholesale the views of the stupid or the evil. I don't think I can explain this any better than Eliezer Yudkowsky, see Reversed stupidity is not Intelligence.
The stupid and evil occasionally get it right.

Is-ought fallacy

The is-ought fallacy is the movement between statements of reality and statements of ethics without suitable justification. How things are (is) and how things ought to be are separate questions. We see a specific type a lot, when people appeal to nature; flogging food with all "natural flavours" and accusing homosexuality of being unnatural and therefore wrong. It's not that either statement must therefore be wrong, it just requires justification (you'll probably struggle more with the latter statement, I hope).

The connection between reality and morality should be reasoned and not simply implied.

Conclusion

These are literally a tiny sample, check out List of cognitive biases on wikipedia (less wrong also has some very good articles on such things). I have attempted to pick particularly common ones, but this is of course shaped by my experience and personal biases. Perhaps you would have picked different ones, but that's not the point, I just wanted to point out to you (and me) how often and how badly wrong we are. The answer to "why?" might be from our culture and genes, but don't blame your ancestors too much, wondering whether we are in the matrix isn't very helpful when a tiger is bearing down at you. If your ancestor had been having an existential crisis at that point, you may not be here to read this (maybe you wish s/he had). Corner cutting heuristics are much quicker, but take your time and don't skip the logical steps, there's often no need. If a decision is important enough to take your time about it, keep the logical steps short to avoid falling in such holes.

Critical Thinking: What and why?

What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking is what all thinking should be. The process of critical thinking is to sceptically assess an argument, checking that the conclusion and any implications along the way are justified. By definition, it is the method of making argumentation as correct as possible. Inwardly, it is spotting errors in your beliefs and arguments and correcting them. Outwardly, it is spotting flaws with what people say, not with the purpose degrading or insulting them, but in an effort to make the statement correct.

Why bother with it? 

The truth matters! Say we have a decision to make, about the welfare of people or a strategy to achieve something, there is a most effective solution. In order to find that solution, correct argumentation is required along with relevant evidence. Critical thinking is appraising the solutions, finding flaws in the logic, attempting to find that solution. In general, humans are very poor at this, we are not built for proper critical thinking. To add to this, we are also even more terrible at accepting where we are wrong. Critical thinking is quite possibly the most important process to learn. It is learning how to find the truth. For this reason, we shouldn't just grudgingly accept that we must study it. We have to wholeheartedly embrace it as a method, enjoying finding truth in the process. Our aim is make critical thinking a mind set, our default mode of thinking.

"The habits of mind that characterize a person strongly disposed toward critical thinking include a desire to follow reason and evidence wherever they may lead, a systematic approach to problem solving, inquisitiveness, even-handedness, and confidence in reasoning."

For further reading on critical thinking, see wikipedia. For a much better explanation of pretty much the whole of rationality, check out Less Wrong.

quote from The National Assessment of College Student Learning: Identification of the Skills to be Taught, Learned, and Assessed, NCES 94–286, US Dept of Education, Addison Greenwod (Ed), Sal Carrallo (PI).


This post is dedicated to Yasmin Slattery :D

Ambiguity and Faith

Let's assume God is reasonable, what do I mean by this? I mean he abides by basic logical rules and if he wants us to believe in him, has left enough evidence or enough a priori facts to convince a reasonable person he exists. I think this is reasonable, and feels almost like the minimum he could do. Of course, this already is a little flawed: if someone is of low intelligence, how can they be expected to work this out (therefore God discriminates based on intelligence)? Especially if they are surrounded by "evil-doers" (whatever that means). But I digress, lets continue this simple point to some kind of conclusion.

One example of a common argument for a God is the cosmological argument. This says

1. Every finite and contingent being has a cause.
2. A causal loop cannot exist.
3. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
4. Therefore, a First Cause (or something that is not an effect) must exist.

I don't want to delve particularly deeply on the points, for much better philosophers than I have already been there. I merely want to highlight that there exists areas of ambiguity.

• Our facts about causation is based on a posteriori knowledge, making 2 and 3 somewhat ambiguous. Some physicists have suggested that time does funny things near the start of the universe, allowing for a chain of infinite causation.
• 4 Concludes that an infinite, non-contingent "being" exists. However, it gives no indication as to what the being is like. It may not even be sentient. If you did want to conclude it was intelligent and conscious, then it may be a God who doesn't interfere, or does interfere but doesn't give two shits about our eternal welfare. It's certainly far from certain that its the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or any other).

For many others, check out the Wikipedia or if you don't like Wikipedia, I'm sure there are many other good resources out there. The point is, even if you think I am incorrect about these counter-positions, you must concede there is at least some ambiguity (i.e. it is entirely reasonable, from the evidence, to conclude there is no God). Then, because of the ambiguity of this argument (and of many others I don't have time to list), it is unreasonable (see definition of reasonable at top) of god to expect us to make that choice. The arbitrariness and ambiguity behind the decision makes it uncharacteristic of a reasonable God.

A common defence is that cynical people who require conclusive evidence and that take the position that logically we should start off as an agnostic, are denying God. Somehow, this cynicism or reluctance to have faith without evidence is a bad quality. Conversely, faith is rewarded and considered a good quality. Despite, logically being an inferior way of making decisions. This contradicts my premise, suggesting that such a God is unreasonable. Maybe God exists and is unreasonable, although if that is the case, then God help us all.

Favourite Quotes

This will seem an eclectic mix of quotes, and it is. It isn't supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts, its just a load of quotes I thought were good at the time. It should also be remembered that quotes are often poor examples of good logic. Rather they are succinct and beautiful expressions of said logic.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

Although it can be seen as pompous to quote Aristotle or other Greek philosophers, you would miss out on some great wisdom. This quote nicely sums up the level of open-mindedness we need, an ability to listen to ideas and critically appraise them without accepting them.

"Don't let your morals get in the way of doing what's right." Isaac Asimov (as Salvor Hardin)
"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul." Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov uses the wise Salvor Hardin as his mouthpiece to succinctly express the danger of blindly sticking to dogma. The second quote also partially expresses the same sentiment, along with Asimov's personal belief.
"[the puddle remarks] This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!" Douglas Adam
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams produces a pithy rebuttal to the Anthropic principal and sums up Occam's Razor.

"The fact if your own existence is the most astonishing fact you will ever have to confront. Don't you dare ever get used to it. Don't you dare ever say that life is boring, monotonous or joyless. One obvious way to express this is the improbability of your own personal existence." Richard Dawkins

A reminder for us that our biology and evolution is indeed beautiful and should not be dismissed as mundane. (On a related note I would recommend reading Mundane Magic)

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower." Karl Marx
Often the phrase in italics is plucked out of this this quote, but without context it ignores much of what Karl Marx what attempting to say. Whether or not you agree with Marx on this is another question.

"They whip out their sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs and shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and miss spellings but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language. Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of the tops of their tongues against the tops of the teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss. Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it. Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it." Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry criticising the tendency for grammar nazis to insist on language purity while missing out on the flexible and beautiful, but messy, qualities of language.
"I see these rappers that say things like 'no homo' and such;It always seems maybe the lady doth protest too much..." Scroobius Pip

"If your faith can move mountains, then it should be able to withstand critism " Ruben2287 (reddit)

Response to Should we care that smart women aren't having kids?

Posted on Should we care that smart women aren't having kids?

How is this a conundrum? Our idea of intelligence (high level problem solving) is disconnected from reproductive instinct; it would be more peculiar if they were connected. Children cost a huge amount of resources and temporarily decrease happiness, it's no surprise that women who are better at long term decision making are more likely to be uncomfortable at the idea. Furthermore, if someone is intelligent it is likely that they find computationally difficult tasks (like research or demanding jobs) more rewarding. Perhaps then, it is more likely that this urge will trump that of reproduction.

We have a tendency to anthropomorphise the evolutionary process and animal urges, simply put in this case, it is not always evolutionarily advantageous to be more intelligent. Intelligence might make you better at surviving but less likely to reproduce. We conflate survival of an individual to survival of the group, when the two can be disconnected.

I do agree entirely with you conclusion: as a society, if we want a more intelligent population, then we must provide support for intelligent and reluctant mothers. That's even ignoring the ethical side of it, where most would agree that women should be given greater freedom to have children and follow a career they enjoy.

Division of Ideas: Is and ought to be

To wrap up this in a nice (hopefully) trilogy, I finish on a philosophical note. Why do we bother sticking with democracy when it may not even be the most effective method? I light-heartedly said in the introduction that an ethical oversight committee is a spooky thought, however it belies the more serious note: there's just something right about democracy that is missing from technocracy. I don't want to delve particularly deeply into the basic philosophical rights and wrongs of democracy but the fact remains that a population without a feeling of autonomy is a deeply unhappy and rebellious one. Maybe a clever government which gave the illusion of freedom would provide the greatest possible total happiness but I still don't like the idea (interestingly Asimov touches on this topic a few times in his short stories about the three laws). What the reality is and what we think ought to be are distinct questions, yes one informs the other but we cannot move freely between the two.

On the same theme, perhaps the splitting of is/ought is key to an effective governance. Some questions are descriptive: are humans significantly affecting the earth's climate? The answer to this question has nothing to do with ideology or morality. The question: "what should we do about the answer to the first question?" Is answerable only with a system of morality combined with some evidence. Striving toward a system where experts answer the first question and a properly informed general public answer the second is probably the least worst realistic option.

Further Reading: A better explantion of is-ought comes from Hume

Division of Ideas: Ants and Crowds

An interesting paper from Arizona State University compared the reliability of choices made by an individual and by the colony. The paper found the surprising result that when a binary choice was easier (one choice much better than another), a single ant outperformed the colony. They found this was due to the fact that ants are likely to trust the word of an ant than check the choice out themselves (after all it is more efficient). It should be noted that the effect was not huge and naturally an easier choice was still more likely to be correct. It was simply that a single ant, checking out both choices for himself was slightly more likely to make the correct choice. I would recommend checking out a summary of it, for example on national geographic (or if you have a subscription check out the paper below).

I don't wish to make a direct comparison with human sociology, naturally our social structure and psychological autonomy is vastly different. However, in a more theoretical and basic sense, I think there are some things we can draw from this. Consider the following thought experiment:

There's a tough choice, lets say: should we give the green light for a certain GM crop (say called moonlight corn)? I'm pretty confident to say that only around 1% of the general public are even vaguely qualified to begin answering the question. Far less than that for people who are directly qualified to answer the specific question of this moonlight corn. So lets say there's 1000 people who know enough about this specific crop; not too unrealistic. Next, say 5 experts think the crop should not be grown. Now consider the dissemination of information about this moonlight corn.

The first amplification of this information would be the wider scientific community, however, say that the percentages are the same for the wider group of relevantly qualified scientists. The next stage would be the media and subject specific NGOs, and herein lies the problem. Again, I stress this is an example, but the amplification process is so efficient (few people informing many) and closed (subject to only a few cultures) that it is open to bias. Here we see real potential for misamplification of information where the people deciding on important decisions aren't the ones who are best informed. This isn't even seeking to demean the general public, we simply don't have the time to properly appraise evidence and decide for ourselves and the crowd decision making process is flawed.


Reference: Ant colonies outperform individuals when a sensory discrimination task is difficult but not when it is easy www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/24/1304917110.abstract. Unfortunately it seems Cambridge university doesn't have a subscription, so I couldn't check out the actual paper.

Further Reading: This isn't even considering that people use their world view as a prism to view evidence (confirmation bias), demonstrates that current social systems are not the best way to make decisions about empirical evidence.

Division of Ideas: Introduction

The power of humankind to achieve great things relies squarely on our ability to divide labour. For this reason, mathematicians are not typically tasked to do needle work, after all a proper tailor would be much better with such a needle. However, this does not just apply to the production of physical objects, to turn it on it's head: a tailor is not asked to prove mathematical theorems, after all, a mathematician is much better at maths and the production of mathematical ideas. Likewise, we trust economists to determine the best fiscal policy. Obviously, there isn't perfect consensus, but why is it trusted to the mathematicians and tailors to decide which idea is correct. I'm not preaching a totalitarian technocracy but why bother asking people to vote whether they want austerity or investment? The only merit in such would be to ask the people to vote on questions of morality. Is the burden of ethical decisions best left the the majority perhaps?

Although, even in this sphere, some people know better. After all we have philosophers and ethicists who can attempt to determine the best possible morality frameworks. At worst (and realistically) they can at least improve on the logic behind our decisions. But again, I'm preaching a government with an "Ethical Oversight Committee", which is a scary idea by most standards (maybe better if we called it Minimoral). I feel I've not got anywhere at all with this, although, I don't think the exercise is a pointless one. It just seems there is a better solution than letting people make decisions they (we) know nothing about. The people really in power are the ones that shape our (the publics) ethical and economic ideas. Do we really want to let the media and our teachers shape our future?

PS: I really want that to be a rhetorical question, not me planting the answer "no" in your brain with a literary device.

The least convenient possible world

Say I'm trying to demonstrate a principle, just that principle. The obvious approach is to pick out the principle, isolate and consider it. In this regard, all analogies or example are flawed because they don't do this. By placing the problem into real life (or near to) we add extra complications. Ideally, to avoid this, we would use a kind of flowerless, dry and precise mathematical notation to describe things but this would be hard to understand and off putting. The strength of an analogy or example is that it is more easily relatable for humans. The least convenient possible world refers to illustrations of an ethical nature. Its saying, there's no easy way out of this ethical dilemma, you need to make the choice that I wanted you to make.
I guess the least convenient possible world is a plea: when I use an analogy, don't be a smart-arse or you'll miss the point. You know what point I'm trying to make, don't invent a third option which circumnavigates the Dilemma.

The virtue of difficulty

Why is maths so difficult to understand? I often wondered this as I was trying to understand various mathematical problems. There was almost an innate sense that all things should be easily solvable. It is of course my naivety which makes me think this but it reveals an interesting truth. That a problem is useful only if it is difficult. It's an obvious concept, there is no great conundrum of how to walk (for typical humans). We just do it. However, Fermat's last theorem is a problem which a large number of people and hours of time was spent on. Again an obvious concept, but I did notice an interesting conclusion.

We tend to think about certain problems and how to solve them. For example when you use your phone, you often notice hundreds of problems with the hardware and the software. "Oh if only I could solve these problems, then this would be a perfect phone." But that isn't true, as when one problem is solved, we continue to seek problems until we hit upon a hard thing again, even if it is near useless. Just think about the number of hard problems that have been solved already. Thinking up a computer for solving vastly complex calculations, life saving drugs etc. There is a practically infinite number of problems that can be invented. I may be abusing language but what I mean is: with x number of atoms, there are more problems (even useless ones) that can be invented than solved by that collection of atoms. After all, just think about badly posed, silly questions. This might be at first distressing as if we will never quite work it all out. However, I think it is somewhat refreshing: just keep plodding along and enjoy solving the mass of puzzles. With that in mind, I accept there are lots of hard problems still to go and continue spout useless shit on here instead.


PS(As in, an interesting idea that I didn't manage to shoehorn into the main text): We tend to think of Utopia as the place where all the problems are solved. On second thought however It sounds dull and boring, quite the opposite to heaven. Naturally of course then this is no longer Utopia, it would be (for humans) the optimal amount of challenge and risk/reward.

PPS(As in clarification): When I say hard task, this can include easy tasks which require some complexity to discover. For example, simple group theory is very easy but to discover and understand its significance is considerably more difficult.

The British and their bizarre view of Americans

I was reading an article by Will Self on the BBC, and found a quote which I thought made a good point.

They say "aluminum", we say "aluminium", but both can be shiny and reflective surfaces. So, no matter how intently we examine the US, we cannot help but see our own features staring back at us. This phenomenon simply doesn't occur when we look at the French, the Vietnamese or the South Africans - all remain properly other.

Only America and the Americans have this ability to derange us with their capacity to reflect our own image. Not that they do this intentionally, really, it's something we do to ourselves.

It is an interesting look at the phenomenon and perhaps to use a scientific analogy to contrast Will Self's, I could say we feel a large gravity toward American culture as we are so similar and close (inversely proportionate to r^2). So we try all the harder to avoid being absorbed by the perceived large homogeneous blob that is American culture. I don't know how right we are to think so, I think we'd probably fit in just nicely as the 51st state...

Raven Paradox

While reading the less wrong blog I discovered a reference to the Raven paradox, an interesting problem posed in the 40s. I am aware that it is very much solved in every respect and solutions can be found on the Wikipedia page, it is however, still very interesting and quite difficult to get your head around (at least it was for me). Being a mathematician, I found it much easier to think about using ideas in maths. When converted to symbols and ever so useful Venn diagrams, it became very simple.

To say that all ravens are black is logically equivalent to saying all non-black objects are non-raven. This is a contrapositive and I've always struggled with this idea, but in the process of thinking about this problem, it became clearer. The paradox appears when we think that because of this, evidence that suggests ravens are black (ie a picture of a black raven) are equivalent to evidence that non-black things are non-raven (ie a picture of a red apple). It is intuitively and obviously incorrect. But why? The two statements that support are logically equivalent.

To start with, without evidence, we can only be sure that the top Venn diagram is correct, perhaps some ravens are black, perhaps some aren't. What we want is the second, where the whole set of ravens is contained within the set of black objects. Or, equivalently, there are no non-black ravens. The two piece of evidence have obvious uses now. The first tells us that the intersection of ravens and black objects is non trivial, and if the set of ravens is finite, that a non-zero percentage of ravens are black. Equivalently, the second piece of evidence suggests that a portion of non-black objects are non-ravens, and if the set of non-black objects is finite, it gives us a percentage. This is where the Probabilistic approach comes in, obviously the set of non-black objects is larger than the set of ravens, so the second piece of evidence tells us not nothing, but very little. To prove beyond doubt, we would have to check the whole set of non-black objects and find that none of them were ravens.

Our intuition was correct (nearly), the second piece of evidence is near useless, and that type of evidence nearly always is. On that note, while I've been not-working, I've been not-catching up with my work.