Doubting Marcus

The Easter Truth Hunt

Every year on Easter I follow a bit of a ritual. First, I forget it’s Easter. Then, I am reminded of painting eggs as a child and finally I remember the Easter Challenge. In previous years I’ve been tempted to actually apply the Easter Challenge—an effort to try to get Christians to tell a coherent, sequential and complete narrative of the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection without excluding anything from any of the four gospels—but now it seems I’m jaded on the point of the challenge.

While it’s usually worthwhile to point out obvious shortcomings, it seems to me that attempts at reconciliation for the Easter Challenge, and many other challenges presented to religious and pseudoscientific, miss the point of how we determine truth. Going from impossible as stated, and therefore extremely improbable, to possible as stated but still vanishingly improbable isn’t really an accomplishment . Still, some believers seem content in doing just that and those who would challenge them also seem to fail to realize determining truth needn’t be done—and normatively shouldn’t be done—solely in absolutes.

Imagine a prosecutor saying “The defendants stories flatly contradict on what happen and in the timeline of events. Therefore the stories can not all be true.” only to be challenged by the prosecutor who argues “I object! If you make highly improbable assumptions and selectively interpret their words it isn’t strictly speaking impossible, only highly improbable that their stories are all true.” No reasonable jurist would then think “…well so long as it’s not impossible that their stories are all true that’s a good reason to believe they are indeed true.”

Yet this exact game seems to play out, on repeat, for a plethora of unlikely claims. So instead of focusing on what is or is not possible (which is really only a nonspecific declaration that something fails to meet a certain probability threshold) when you explicitly think about the relative probability of claims harder to let proving the impossible get in the way of highlighting a claim is extremely improbable. When you do this, the point of the Easter Challenge fades away as proving something is not a billion to one odds against but a million to one still means there’s a 99.9999% chance that it didn’t happen and means, frankly, that it isn’t even worth considering seriously.

Darwin Day and the Creationist Cause

Four score and seven eight years ago our intellectual fathers brought forth the famous Scopes “Monkey” Trial, a legal battle over the teaching of evolution, and those dedicated to the proposition that nothing shall be taught that does, or seems to, undermine popular religious teachings initially won.

Having failed at overt censorship in the intervening decades, however, the creationist cause has recently turned its focus to evermore indirect ways of challenging evolution. When there are not bills being proposed to “teach both sides” (as there are in “across America”) there is still ceaseless pressure on teachers to simply not discuss evolution.

This is why, aside from the joys of learning and discovery, Darwin Day is a reminder to me that the fight against anti-intellectualism, in all its forms, is an ongoing struggle. Simply having the facts be against them isn’t enough to halt the creationist cause. Particularly because, as anyone who has spent time debating professional creationists will acknowledge, honesty apparently isn’t something they hold as important, especially when preaching to the uninformed.

So take the day to enjoy some science, learn something new about life but also remember to stay vigilant in the fight against replacing hard-won knowledge with dogma.

Happy Darwin Day!

Prove You Wrong? Bayes Says We Already Did

One of your employees marches into your office convinced he has a brilliant idea. He’s not only convinced his idea will work but that it will revolutionize your industry. What is this brilliant idea? He’s delighted to inform you that if you spend company funds to purchase him a Ferrari office productivity will increase 500%. Should you take this idea seriously? In the highly competitive business world should you spend the money in order to test this theory?

Of course not. Indeed, some of you might be tempted to fire this employee on the spot. I can scarcely think of anyone who would defend such a clear waste of time and resources on something that has no plausible chance of success. The simple fact that the idea hasn’t been formally attempted lends no justification to trying it.

You need not formally test every wacky idea in order to conclude they are false. We all do this regularly, and rightly so. Otherwise we would be demanding the British royal family be publicly DNA tested in order to prove they aren’t reptilian humanoids.

Nonetheless, the demand science prove some obviously silly therapy doesn’t work never ceases. Everything we’ve ever learned about physics counts against claims of levitation through meditation. Each bit of knowledge of human biology ever gained tells us a “beam ray” light won’t get rid of the swine flu or heal a broken neck. You don’t need to actually run a new test to prove such claims wrong because our prior knowledge counts and it emphatically says such ideas are wrong.

This is why the demand we treat every idea as equal is a demand we wipe away everything we’ve ever learned before we address any claim. Some theories about reality are genuinely superior to others because, given our previous knowledge, they are more likely to be true than others. It is a simple fact that evidence accumulates over time. If you disagree, then I demand you take seriously the claim that donating your life savings to me will eradicate all disease and suffering from the planet.

Supernaturalism is Fundamentally Mental

For all my talk of defending naturalism, unfortunately I, like many before me, haven’t made much of an effort to explain the difference between supernaturalism and naturalism. What exactly is the difference between the supernatural and the natural? One of the most useful distinctions I’ve come across, primarily due to aligning with how people use the terms in practice, was made by Richard Carrier who claimed it is between entities which are fundamentally mental and those which are reducible in principle.* That is to say the reason something would be supernatural is not because of the particular powers it exhibits, or because it is currently considered paranormal, but because it would not be reducible to nonmental entities.

Take the competing efforts to explain human consciousness as an example. If naturalism is correct, as I believe it is, then our mental properties are the result of the interaction of nonmental particles, namely the interaction between a vast number of neurons. However, if our mind is not dependent on the brain (or any other sub-component parts) then our mind is supernatural as it is irreducibly mental. The mind would simply possesses mental traits as an innate property.

Read More

What Does Your Theory Not Predict?

If I make a prediction that a certain but yet unspecified person has the ability to run 100 meters in under twelve seconds, which is near Olympic standards for time, two things should be apparent: There are observations that wouldn’t be expected by this theory, like the person simply trying and failing to accomplish this feat, and that the prior probability that any given person can achieve that is quite low.

However, our confidence in this claim should rise, somewhat slightly, upon finding out they are in their late twenties. The probability should again rise if more information revealed this person ran track in high school and would increase even more if you were to receive information this person was a collegiate sprinter. At any stage in this early process unfavorable evidence, like revealing the person is sixty instead of in their twenties, would lower the probability that they could achieve such a physical feat. Ultimately we can settle this with great precision by timing this person run a 100 meter dash on several occasions.

What’s so mundane about this is that there is a conceivable set of evidence which would increase the probability they could beat that time, up to and including physically testing them to see if they can achieve it and a similar set of data my theory would not predict which would decrease my confidence in this claim. This is how predictions work, however, this is nothing like the claims people make about alleged supernatural or pseudoscientific abilities. Today supernatural and pseudoscientific proponents are largely united in either making no predictions whatsoever or making testable predictions that are not met but then denying that the overwhelming observed evidence which their theory doesn’t predict should lower our confidence in their claims. In other words, they are either making unfalsifiable claims or making claims that have been tested and shown to be false.

Instead of an acknowledging there is observable data which would count for and against these claims what one finds instead is that many simply assert their ideas can’t be tested as if that’s makes their idea plausible. To any such claim the simple question of “What does your theory not predict?” is perhaps the most revealing of all possible lines of inquiry. When faced with this believers have to acknowledge that their theory predicts everything and is therefore an unfalsifiable claim, admit that their claim can be shown to be demonstrably wrong (which usually means acknowledging it already has been), or by exiting the present conversation. Naturally, as useful as this question is, this means if you are going to get into the habit of asking “What does your theory not predict?” of believers, you’d better get used to people fleeing in apparent horror.

Superstitious Beliefs

I’ve broken several mirrors in my life but I’m not quite sure if the 7 years bad luck which is supposed to result from it runs concurrently or consecutively. Of course it’s no surprise it’s hard to get clear empirical answers from believers in this superstition because superstitious beliefs come from not looking for ways to prove your theories wrong.

Most simply superstition is counting only the hits and not the misses. It’s the failure to account for the chance it would rain independent of your rain dance. However superstitious thinking isn’t really a certain set of beliefs but a claim about how one can come to know things. One can easily be just as superstitious about how to get your failing car to start, with no appeal to the supernatural, as you can about the effectiveness of prayer, which has an explicit appeal to supernatural entities. Once you fall into superstitious thinking, by not counting anything against your theory, you are guaranteed to see everything as confirmation of your theory but this is a mere psychological trap influenced by cognitive biases.

You have a friend Jason Voorhees who says he’s figured out what dark matter is and the precise role it plays in the current understanding of physics (and of course how to return from the dead). Stunned, you demand to know how he figured it out but he refuses to tell you or anyone else. Jason says his solution only makes sense if you accept his solution without attempting to verify it. This, you rightly think, is plainly ridiculous. You have no reason to believe he’s solved the problem if he is unwilling, or unable, to provide evidence of his claim. One could only imagine how brutally Jason would be received if he tried that type of reasoning at a scientific conference.

This is exactly the type of response you are likely to get from someone who is superstitious. It’s the type of answer we often get from believers in psychic powers, prayer, curses and athletes who think filthy undergarments help them win games. A world in which some force works in ways which can’t be statistically detected is indistinguishable from a world in which that force doesn’t work at all. Getting people to acknowledge this trap is the first step to getting them to drop their superstitious beliefs.

Practically Skeptical

You wouldn’t think of someone who runs a blog dedicated to controversial topics as being practical. However the idea of how to effectively communicate skepticism to the public was brought to my attention over this past weekend so I thought I’d recall some of the my personal hard-learned rules of dialogue.

Don’t Do Long Private Debates

To begin in complete hypocrisy I admit I violate this rule on a regular basis, indeed I’m engaged in one right now. However the reasons to avoid doing so are clear. You are far more likely to sway an undecided third party about anything than change the mind of a person who currently holds a view that is the mirror image of your own position. This doesn’t mean don’t try but it does mean recognizing a lost cause and as much as it hurts there will always be idiots on the internet.

Push As Possible

I often engage with people who I have no fantasy of fully converting to a skeptical mindset. What I do instead is try to move them one step along that process. If I am talking to a conspiracy theorist I try to get them to understand how evidence actually works. Or, when I’m feeling comical, I try to get them to realize that the evidence they think proves conspiracy is all part of the larger conspiracy to get you to believe the wrong conspiracy theory. Similarly if I’m speaking with someone who actively preaches bigotry towards atheists I don’t try to convince them that I’m right about the god question, I merely try to get them to realize that atheists are people like everyone else and that they actually know atheists. It’s unrealistic for the end goal of all your conversations to be that your interlocutor agree with you on everything from alternative medicine to religion. Which brings me to a related point…

Read More

Poor PR Decisions: Evolution, God and Design

I think I agree with creationists. No not about the existence of The Real Housewives of Bedrock but about the implications of evolution should have for theism in general and the Biblical religions in particular. Creationist outfits have been telling anyone who would listen that accepting evolution is incompatible with belief in god generally and the Bible in particular and for once I think they are right but naturally for reasons very different from what they’ve been suggesting. Unlike them I readily acknowledge there are lots of Christians and theists in general who accept evolution but the relevant question is are the beliefs really compatible?

The common claim of those who accept theistic evolution that evolution could have been a guided process just isn’t good inference. Modern evolutionary theory places enormous limitations on the history of life on this planet essentially all of which didn’t have to be true. The most common example is the claim that all life has common descent as all life didn’t have to be related but observation and experiment have overwhelmingly confirmed this. Even descent itself didn’t have to be true as a designer isn’t limited to breeding to produce new organisms. A designer just isn’t bound to a “branching tree a life” and could create organisms which have nothing or very little to do with previous organisms which means there were infinite paths to the current set of species.

Read More