Doubting Marcus

Anonymous asked:

Who are you voting for in the upcoming election and why?

I’m voting for Humma Kavula because his campaign slogan “Don’t Vote for Stupid” thoroughly convinced me that I would be wise not to vote for Stupid.

I seriously considered leaving this one here, and I also seriously considered just not answering this, as I just don’t feel comfortable saying so. Largely because in this platform it would feel I’m proclaiming there to be an objectively correct answer or that I’m playing for a team, neither is the case. However, I don’t run from the fact I think some popular economic policies aren’t based on accurate models of reality or that my values are better represented by the policies of some rather than others (after all I’m a flaming atheist who supports humanist values).

So thanks for the question but for the moment I’m still going to pass on a direct answer.

Anonymous asked:

believers take jinns and jinn stories very seriously in my experience. I'm sorry I wasn't clear, that was silly of me. I was hoping for a break down of points which might discredit the story. and maybe possible.. psychological explanations for what might have been going on with Zaheer's son assuming that this account isn't totally made up. and thank you very much for the links, I'm watching QualiaSoup video now.

*context

Ahh well that should be much simpler. I too assume that people aren’t totally making up stories like this, I even have family members who have claimed to have seen angels, but the list of reasons of what’s wrong with this story is quite long as it includes many minor problems of inference. So I’m going to just focus on just the major errors.

Jinn don’t exist - This has to be the central focus for a story centered around jinn and as I pointed out before nothing can be made of fire. Of course I know a believer would say I’m presuming the conclusion as they have evidence. Well about that evidence…

The story almost certainly didn’t happen as described - I don’t just mean that jinn don’t exist, I mean Zaheer is very likely to have at least unintentionally revised the story. I don’t believe his son displayed mind reading powers for the same reason I don’t believe the myriad of other tales of mind reading I’ve heard. No one has ever produced such effects under controlled conditions but if it were possible it almost certainly would have happen by now. However so far we have zero examples of real psychic powers out of thousands of trials. Not only that but we have countless examples of people being fooled by cold reading techniques into believing someone has psychic powers, people fooling themselves by misremembering a story and outright lies about such powers in countless situations. It is overwhelmingly likely that some combination of those three are responsible for the details in this story and as latecomers to this story, as opposed to being there and recording the conversations, we have no access to the event and are missing crucial details.

What makes them sure it was a jinn? - Even ignoring the story is extremely unlikely to even have been experienced as told, why should I jump to accept that it was a jinn? Even if you accept the display of psychic powers by Zaheer’s son there’s no reason to then presume he was aided by some jinn. Besides when speaking of incorporeal beings like this, there’s essentially nothing that could be done to distinguish one bodiless being with magic who knows more than you from a different bodiless being with magic who knows more than you. In other words, no set of experiences could have justified the conclusion it was a jinn as opposed to a genuine deity who had a conflict with Islam or an invisible dragon psychic.

So the jinn was wrong, that makes it evil? - Putting aside that we have no reason to believe the story, and perhaps I only bring this up because I find the ensuing story hilarious, but it’s quite ironic for the jinn to be ruled evil because it was wrong about one topic. The presumption of course is that a good jinn wouldn’t lie about its powers nor be wrong. However the Qur’an is factually wrong about countless subjects and most comically about slapping the dead body of a murder victim with a piece of a sacrificed cow so that the dead body will come back to life and identify its killer. If being wrong about reality disqualifies you from being good then the Qur’an is disqualified as coming from a benevolent source dozens of times over.

Thanks again for the question.

Anonymous asked:

a request: please discuss khalidzaheer(.)com/essays/kzaheer/following%20islam/experiencing_a_jinn(.)html whenever you can. I tried to make sense of it but my knowledge in the area is limited. thank you.

Well I’m quite far from knowledgeable about Islam, however I must say even ignoring the inter-religious squabbles in the story I can’t reasonably list all the problems with this story. So the basic premise is Zaheer had a student who told him about a jinn, which is essentially a genie, he could talk to. As a result of this pure speculation, which likely should’ve been taken as a sign of mental illness, Zaheer asks his son to contact this jinn who in turn gives some “proof” of psychic ability but all of this information doesn’t turn out to be true so this jinn was really an agent of Satan. Honestly, I’d think the story, or at least this question, was a joke if I didn’t know how seriously many believers take stories like these.

The first thing that comes to mind, other than a chance to plug The Jinn and Tonic Show, is that according to the Qur’an jinn are allegedly made of “smokeless fire” which is silly on its face because nothing can be made of fire. Fire is a process not an element and this is remnant of a type of phlogiston or classical theory of fire which I’d hope would today be seen as silly as someone saying something was made of photosynthesis. As for the story about how this evil jinn deployed his mind reading abilities in order to fool them into thinking he was good I think it’s a classic example of having a theory of how the world works which can only confirm what you already believe. However not really knowing what problem you are having I don’t really know what to say. If I had to guess I’d say you are just having a problem explaining why it’s foolhardy to accept anecdotes as proof of supernatural events but for the time being I’ll just refer you to an old QualiaSoup video which hits on all of the basics rather than give a lengthy but perhaps wasted discussion of that topic.

I hope I’ve been helpful but you didn’t really give me a lot to go on. Still, thanks for the question.

Anonymous asked:

Any good book recommendations for learning Critical Thinking skills?

I actually have a page which included book recommendations in my, largely, virtual library:

Lifted heavily from there:

Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - There’s a reason this book is usually the first cited by skeptics when asked what book they would recommend to a lay person. Sagan clearly and thoroughly explains the scientific method and critical thinking in an easily comprehensible way while enticing the reader with many useful anecdotes and clear examples.

…

Theodore Schick & Lewis Vaughn - How to Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking for a New Age - A very clear book on applied epistemology which both shows how to examine evidence for theories about the world and why you need to take precautions. This is a book you can give to a child but which can be equally valuable to an adult explaining the basics of critical thinking through examples of the paranormal, new age and just plain weird claims.

If I had to pick between the two I’d recommend Schick & Vaughn. It’s much more straightforward in taking the reader step by step but I highly recommend both, assuming you don’t know much critical thinking. If you do however you’d probably do better to learn about the application of Bayes’ theorem, rationality and the presence of cognitive biases. While I haven’t yet read any books on Bayes’ theorem, and I don’t there are any prominent books specifically devoted to rationality, there are several on cognitive bias:

Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow - If you intend to try to be objective in evaluating evidence you need to know how you think and this work does just that. The difference in our intuitive and effortful modes of thinking, the way cognitive biases and heuristics effect our choices, our failure to comprehend randomness and the difference between our experiencing self and remembering self may all seem like abstract concepts but Kahneman shows that these all have a significant impact on everything from our daily lives to our most broad philosophical assumptions.

Michael and Ellen Kaplan - Bozo Sapiens: Why to Err is Human - Everyone knows humans make mistakes but the Kaplans help show why and just how pervasive these errors are in all aspects of our lives with this expose on heuristics, cognitive biases and reasoning quirks.

These two are at the top of my list as far as understanding how humans think and I’d recommend both to everyone. Without being more specific about what you are looking for this is the best I can do.

Thanks for the question.

riffee asked:

"unconscious decisions" is logically contradictory. If it is unconscious, it isn't a decision. And the fact that people are able to choose doesn't mean that those choices aren't influenced by entirely deterministic stimulus. Compatabilists' ability to defend their belief of free will is no different than a fatalists ability to defend theirs or a theist to defend theirs. Just as the concept of Fate is unfalsifiable, so is free will. There is nothing scientific about the concept of free will.

*Follow up to Anon’s question from yesterday

I should have been more clear about what I meant by “unconscious decisions” but perhaps you’ll agree that they do exist after I clarify myself. If I kick my leg in response to a tap on the knee that would be a reflex, totally lacking in mental processing or assessment. However if I, without conscious deliberation, choose coffee over tea in the morning or go right rather than left on a basketball court that can hardly be said to be a reflex, it seems to me to be a decision. Those latter actions involve unconscious processing and assessment of information in the brain in a way not present in mere reflexes. However, perhaps you want to reserve the term “decisions” specifically for conscious reflection but I see no problem with calling a choice of action by my unconscious mind a decision. Still, as I said in my response to anon, the unconscious part of your mind is still you and hence whatever you choose to call its processes and their results are still part of you.

And the fact that people are able to choose doesn’t mean that those choices aren’t influenced by entirely deterministic stimulus.

I never said they weren’t. Even though if you press me I’ll tell you determinism isn’t even true, or at least that’s my best understanding of what quantum mechanics is tells us (Did I just commit the Deepak Chopra fallacy?). Compatibilists can and do accept that deterministic and random inputs effect the brain or even are the ultimate cause of their results. The claim is, as Daniel Dennett likes to put it, that we have the varieties of free will worth wanting. These include deliberative reasoning, imagining different futures and choosing to select a course of action that will bring about your preferred future, etc.

As for your last string of commentary I must admit I don’t know what you are talking about. Unlike fatalists, compatibilists aren’t making claims that would fit the data no matter what it showed. If you could demonstrate we don’t have the kinds of traits I listed above that would falsify compatibilists claims of free will. Nothing could, even in principle, contradict fatalism.

Lastly, science isn’t the sphere of all knowledge so even if it were true that free will wasn’t scientific that wouldn’t demonstrate that it didn’t exist. However, in this case neuroscience does have a significant role to play (in the future) about whether or not we really do have the capacity for executive control and it already has had a large impact on demonstrating our “will” isn’t the origin of our impulses (this is the type of subject the Libet experiments demonstrate).

Thanks for the question.

Anonymous asked:

I'm not quite sure where I stand on Sam Harris' book, but from what I read of it, when he mentioned conscious thought being unrelated to free will he was discussing the causes of conscious thought. We can't control it: have you ever tried to think of nothing, and random things came into your head? It was basically that. If thoughts are caused, then we don't control them: and if they're random, we don't control them, and it's hard to think of another source, It fascinated me.

Harris did indeed make this case in Free Will and I didn’t touch on it in my response. However, while I agree with his premise that there is nothing outside of random and caused to influence events I think, among other things, he is working from a very strange sense of self. If “I” doesn’t include unconscious decisions we’ll be forced into the bizarre scenario in which whenever we are engaging in an activity unconsciously it isn’t really “us” that is responsible. What would it even mean to say “I” am not running or driving unless “I” am consciously thinking about it? If “I” am not engaged in these activities then who is? My inner zombie?

The fact that ultimately we exist inside of physics doesn’t diminish, but rather enables, our ability to make decisions. A perfect decision maker would be entirely deterministic, input A would lead always lead to output B. Similarly with the case of executive control which requires our conscious deliberations to exert influence on the decisions we make. Unless we evolved the totally useless, but extremely costly, capacity for conscious reasoning (the brain processes that caused such abilities would have to be dead-ends) then our conscious decisions can influence our behavior. It’s these types of abilities which have been defended by compatibilists for hundreds of years and Harris’ book does nothing to demonstrate we don’t have these abilities. Instead he just declares (by fiat) that his definition of free will is correct and the only one that matters, even though he concedes, as I pointed out, that to lose these abilities would “greatly diminish us.”

So let’s try to get his view straight: Losing our ability of deliberative reasoning would harm us but it doesn’t really matter unless our conscious deliberation process was entirely independent of causality. According to this view we don’t have free will unless our conscious thoughts were the origin of our all conscious thoughts—don’t ask me how this would be possible!—which allows us to the freedom to make something different happen in a scenario in which everything that could conceivably influence the outcome is the same. Since we don’t have these abilities (despite the fact such views aren’t dominant or even majority view of free will in philosophy or the public) then we don’t have free will.

I submit, as Harris does when he (wrongly) chastises people who disagree with his view of morality, that I don’t know what he’s talking about. Worse yet, I’m afraid, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about either.

Again I recommend Russell Blackford’s article on Harris’ book (indeed I recommend all of Blackford’s work during the past couple months on the topic at Talking Philosophy which can be found archived under his name) and say thanks for the question.

Anonymous asked:

On the 'know how it feels to not know' point, the main issue is that by analysing our brains, it still doesn't know how it feels as it would know what that person does not know, hence it cannot know how it would feel to not know. It's a subtle difference, but relevant for an omni-trait. Also, on the paradox, the point was there's ultimately a stalemate: one side assumes omniscience is impossible, one side otherwise, and there's no reason to lean either direction.

*Context

If our feelings are ultimately the result of brain states then it would know what that person was feeling emotionally as well as exactly what it did not know. I think you are unknowingly advocating a kind of dualism under which there an omniscient being can get the facts of the matter, what specific information is lacking, but our personal feelings would be unavailable through inspection. However even supposing such a system was right, if a being knew everything about the physical world as well as all of the activity of our mental life it would know exactly what we felt at any moment and what that experience was like.

As for my proposed problem with omniscience: I’m not just assuming omniscience is impossible, I made an argument. Now that argument can stand or fall but it isn’t an assumption. I certainly didn’t begin with the conclusion that omniscience was impossible and work backwards rather I worked forward from what it would mean to know all things and attempted to illuminate an example where it just isn’t possible to know the truth about reality. If I succeeded there’s good reason to abandon the idea of omniscience. If in the face of this argument all one has is the assumption that omniscience really must be possible anyway there’s very good reason to lean away from it being possible. Otherwise all logical arguments would be pointless.

I will say, stepping back from my argument about omniscience, the bigger problem lies in the silliness of attempting to apply absolutes to terms of relativity. It just doesn’t make any sense to say a being is maximally tall or infinitely witty as these terms are ultimately grounded in comparison. Why should I think any differently of terms like just, powerful or knowledgeable? Moreover “knowledge” of our world is (largely) acquired after effort and the idea of a being that just innately knows everything is an affront to how we think of knowledge. Such all-everything traits might have once sounded impressive but it seems to me they are all just as ridiculous as claiming a being is all-charming.

Thanks for the dialogue.

Anonymous asked:

On your comment on omniscience, I think the best response to it is simply that the being knows that it's not a brain in the vat, or some such thing. I can't say how the theoretical omniscient being knows that because I'm not omniscient: but it's logical that it could just simply know it. A better paradox would probably be whether an omniscient being knows how it feels to not know something.

*Context

I’ve heard that latter claim but I’ve never bought it. Let’s take an extremely simple monist view that our mental states are just an emergent phenomena of our brain states, that is to say our minds arise out of our physical brains the way “wetness” does out of physical H2O molecules. If this was the case an omniscient being could examine those brain states and, because it knows every detail about what mental states they entail, know exactly what it would be like to not know something without actually personally being in this position.

As for an omniscient being “just knowing” that it is omniscient because, as you implied it is omniscient (while you aren’t), this is completely circular. Implicit in your reasoning seems to be the assumption that omniscient beings truly are possible but that’s the very thing in question so can’t be assumed in order to argue such a being “could just simply know” it was omniscient.

If you accept my premise that you could, in principle, create a video game character that knew everything about the world it inhabited and believes it has always existed but simply can’t know, due to the limitations of being a mind, whether or not it was in the only universe or being totally deceived I don’t see how declaring a being “just knows” helps. Surely such a video game character could believe it  “just knows” whether or not it was in such a realm but surely that character would be wrong. The same goes for the sub-god idea professed in noelplum99’s video. Surely a sub-god who knows everything about the universe it inhabits could believe it knew everything and surely it would be wrong. If their is no substantive way these scenarios are different from the proposed position of an omniscient being then we have no reason to believe omniscience is possible.

Our imaginations could be lacking, perhaps there is a substantive difference between the scenarios we are proposing (though in this case I highly doubt it), but saying a being “just knows” doesn’t help remove the problem. Saying a being “just knows” isn’t even an argument, but rather a bald assertion. By this reasoning you could dismiss any and all criticism about logical contradictions directed at a proposed god like this by declaring, by definition, that it really can exist. Take your own example above: By the “just knows” reasoning you could have argued that an omniscient being would “just know” what it was to not know something because the ability to know what it feels like to not know something is included in the definition of omniscience (at which point we’re back to the follies of ontological arguments). After all we aren’t omniscient how can we say what an omniscient being does and doesn’t know.

I hope you can see the problem here. An apparent logical impossibility like this can’t be swept away without argument by declaring our knowledge imperfect and that some other being could “just know” everything.

Thanks for the comment though.

Anonymous asked:

waiit you were trying to complete the bible? or make a new one?

*Context

I’m afraid I was considering making a new Bible but I found out someone had already beat me to it:

Seriously no, I have no desire to be Thomas Jefferson. I had been trying to finish reading the Bible. On my initial effort I made it about one fifth of the way through. Later I went back and tried to pick it up and only progressed a few more pages before I was again unable to continue. Since then I just couldn’t bring myself to read the rest and I no longer considered it wise to try.

Thanks for the question.

Anonymous asked:

I would like to just correct you on something. Not in mean way.. I saw your answer to the question about the book "heaven is for real!" and me being someone who has read the book let me just tell you! He said that he went up to heaven where he met Jesus and told hes parents he Saw what they were doing. He said that he saw his dad praying in the church!! His Dad said that he hadnt told anyone he even went to the church to pray so he stated facts he would never had known. You should really read it

*My previous response

Yesterday I spoke with my grandmother who regaled me with a dream about my tiny dog barking ferociously at an unwanted guest. Now it just so happens that my dog does that all the time, hence why she dreamed about it. It turns out that my dog didn’t ferociously bark at a guest in the couple days around when that dream occurred but if he did would that be proof that my grandmother has psychic powers?

What you are arguing is that the boy somehow is able to separate supernatural experiences from natural ones and the proof is in that he “knew” his dad went to church and prayed. Even if we assume his father rarely prayed or went to church, which we know isn’t true because his father is a pastor, unless the child was not familiar with the idea of people going to church or praying this hardly rises above predicting the routine to happen. Far from being an impressive prediction this the basic modeling of behavior we all do. This is why if someone predicted I’d be on tumblr today, no matter the origin of that prediction, it wouldn’t be impressive.

Not to mention all I have is their testimony that this happened. For example, if I had less integrity I easily could have lied to you about the story of my grandmother and my dog above to make it better fit her prediction. Or I could have simply mangled and misremembered the details of the story or the events of the past few days with the same results. Even without taking into account the background of the story (or considering if someone is lying) you should ask yourself: Which is more probable a person in distress would forget what he’s said or that heaven exists, Christianity is right and that this boy went there?

Suffice it to say I know which one of those two is more plausible so thanks for the comment but I won’t be reading that book.