What are the best parts of being an Atheist?

AppleEater · 2012-02-06T20:51:02.658428+00:00

Delicious baked babies.

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-06T20:05:23.661225+00:00

But on to the "explanation" in the link. According to our understanding of physical systems, namely the second law of thermodynamics, the initial state of the universe was actually more ordered overall than it is today. If you argue anything else, you'd argue directly against the second law of thermodynamics. As does the article, by positing that in the initial universe somehow there was less information inherent than in our current, supposedly "more complex" universe.

I think you're confusing phase space in physics with kolmogorov complexity in computation. The kolmogorov complexity is the smallest initial program which can "unfold" into the observed sequence, without concern for runtime or memory requirements. Once you take the latter into consideration, you come up with something more like the Speed Prior, which certainly does have merit.

Your separation of the universe into "phenomena A_0 through A_n" indicates that incomplete grasp of indexical concerns: A program with a complete encoding of our entire universe is much shorter than a program locating a particular human mind within our universe because of that indexical difficulty. This thread delves into the MWI version of indexical uncertainty a bit, although I'm having difficulty locating (heh, meta-indexical uncertainty) a suitable introduction to the modal realist version.

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-06T18:38:02.467286+00:00

Using Solomonoff Induction on the universe assumes the universe is computable. It doesn't make assumptions about why it's computable or why there is a universe. Your hypothetical list of actual and conceivable phenomena is a bit confusing, but I think it's beside the point; I think you're asking me to use Solomonoff Induction to explain why there is something instead of nothing; that's not really what it's built for.

If you're still wondering about the MML of God, read the whole link, not just the introductory part. The latter part is the explanation.

plzbecrazythrowaway · 2012-02-06T18:10:03.328963+00:00

But the Marines in The Rock totally got Connery with a laser level vibration detector; that's obviously a superior trick.

MisterEddy · 2012-02-06T17:39:29.257326+00:00

I don't think it's needless to say. I almost completely agree with him; and I'm an ex-christian, weak anti-theist, moral skeptic/non-cognitivist/still trying to decide.

MisterEddy · 2012-02-06T17:34:50.264188+00:00

Can we completely overcome bias? No. But that's a poor excuse for not even trying. We can at least study biases and implement policies and systems which aim at reducing them.

Which isn't to say that antitheists never engage in tribal thinking. I'm pretty sure every belief with more than one adherent has some who engage in tribal thinking.

And don't forget the possibility that conservatives and liberals are both correct about the other being the result of parasitic memes. Self-replicating strong opinions are not "just strong opinions."

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-06T17:28:23.899605+00:00

The likelihood of "A&B" is equal to or lesser than the likelihood of "A." So, the likelihood of "the universe exists pretty much as it looks to scientists" is equal to or greater than "the universe exists pretty much as it looks to scientists, because of a god who does not otherwise interfere." I'm disinclined to give a uniform distribution over antecedent reasons postulated for "the universe exists pretty much as it looks like to scientists," because the very concept of an antecedent reason for the universe seems incoherent.

I could see giving a uniform prior over "the universe is caused/the universe is uncaused," and then applying Solomonoff induction to causes. I still don't know how to program a God, but at a minimum, its likelihood decreases as you anthropomorphize or otherwise add characteristics. So, as soon as you say your version of the Big Bang is omnibenevolent, its likelihood is halved. This is a more in-depth overview.

anuses · 2012-02-06T16:32:53.816939+00:00

Somebody recently developed a graphene-based filter that lets water vapor and other stuff through, but not alcohol. You can distill just by using it as a cap. Could be that certain ways of treating barrels causes a similar effect naturally (burning wood creates carbon nanotubes in small amounts, for instance).

anuses · 2012-02-06T16:29:41.168356+00:00

You have the other end of the Lagavulin experience--I have a bottle of their 16 year, but I once had the opportunity at Lagavulin new make spirit. It tasted like Everclear and liquid smoke; biting, intense, harsh; quite an experience but not one I'd repeat often.

Scalawag · 2012-02-06T14:54:50.699021+00:00

While I do find your post interesting, don't forget that at its heart QM is also governed by non-determinism.

There are deterministic interpretations of QM, such as MWI. But I agree that gravity not being a fundamental force, the Bekenstein bound being due to some sort of holographic principle, or any other finding would not make our reality any more illusory than we already know it is.

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-06T13:52:37.027727+00:00

My mind is equivalent to a Turing Machine? Is this your version of Church's thesis? ...I object to a Bayesian stating assumptions as facts.

If enough people spoke it, I would learn Lojban and give my rough confidence interval along with every assertion. English, however, makes it awkward to do so; so I state things I'm fairly certain of without qualifiers. Physics seems to be computable, and the church-turing thesis seems to be true.

Also, since you're actually using Kolmogorov to decide on your beliefs

This is about the concept of being more wrong, and less wrong. Computing the velocity of something that's been under constant thrust for a long time is easier under newtonian physics than special relativity--but I don't need to do the SR calculations to tell you it's not going faster than C. Similarly, I can use the concepts from Solomonoff Induction to improve the accuracy of my predictions without actually computing the noncomputable.

Physics being apparently computable, and apparently very mathematically simple points toward a low kolmogorov complexity for the universe. Modal Realism in the vein of Max Tegmark or Schmidhuber has the residual problem of indexical uncertainty: Even if there is a coherent, computable description of a universe like this created by an omnipotent being, the vast majority of universes that look like this are based on mathematically simple physics.

Is this the basis for your atheism?

Depends on what you mean by "basis." Historically, no; I was atheist before (attempted) bayesian. Because of that, I can't guarantee that it's the proximal basis; that a convincing bayesian argument would convert me to theism. But I think it would, although I cannot conceive of a convincing bayesian argument for any particular flavor of theism.

GoodDamon · 2012-02-06T13:09:07.732791+00:00

This is less of an argument against science, and more of an argument that "supernatural," as commonly conceived by theists, is an incoherent concept.

runcibald · 2012-02-06T12:58:28.158822+00:00

Not quite understanding how a universal quantum superposition would allow free will--is it because free will is mysterious, and "quantum" is mysterious, too?

CannabinoidNinja · 2012-02-06T02:07:15.574006+00:00

The influence of a guy who's taking a medical treatment that's perfectly safe, legal in his own state and municipality, but that the federal government doesn't like? My goodness, if you start accepting that sort of student, next you'll be having applicants who look at porn that doesn't have a proper 2257 statement, or who download copyrighted content!

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-06T02:03:02.371201+00:00

A computer's logic runs on a substrate of silicon and electricity. Your logic runs on a substrate of psychology and grey matter. Your logical certainty cannot be more certain than your psychology allows, which is finitely certain.

The quadrillionth digit of pi is no more difficult to calculate, in principle, than its tenth digit. To claim that the former is in a different epistemic category than the latter is unjustified.

What we have is a heap of sorites paradox; but where one can "solve the knot with the sword" and declare what's left "a heap of 0 grains," there is no such easy syntactic solution to certainty. We can keep adding certainty as we reduce our significant digits of pi, but where exactly do we cross from finite certainty to infinite certainty?

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-05T23:40:46.024811+00:00

It seems a non-sequitur to you because you're thinking of "truth" from an ontologic perspective instead of an epistemic perspective. Remember, what we're asking is whether you can be absolutely certain of anything. So whether analytic truths are certainly true does not answer whether you can be certain of any particular analytic truth. "The quadrillionth digit of pi 4" is certainly either true or false. But you cannot do any better than guessing "false" and having a 90% chance of being correct.

xoxoyoyo · 2012-02-05T15:16:40.319854-07:00

One upper bound on your justifiable certainty is the number of people in the world who believe clearly nonsensical things with the same unshakeable certitude you place in "2+2=4." So you need to take into account the unlikely, but still possible chance that you're currently banging your head into a padded wall somewhere. We could call this the "imperfect software" flaw.

Additionally, there's a thing called "logical uncertainty" that keeps us from being absolutely certain of analytic truths. Is 298632487518654167412341243498621789518752489762875168547289761^2-1 a prime number? This is an apriori truth or falsehood, yet it would take you a long, long time to even check it, and I doubt you'd ever bet your life on it, even with a computer and sieve of eratosthenes you built yourself. We could call this the "imperfect hardware" flaw.

There are many other flaws, and fine-grained divisions between these flaws; but these two show sufficiently that absolute certainty is impossible. In a probabilistic sense, absolute certainty means that no amount of evidence could ever shake your belief one iota. In a practical sense, nobody's ever been that certain of anything.

Trevoke · 1 day

Just set my name to khafra. I haven't answered much yet (but I already got in a fight over using empirical data instead of guessing).

3pict3tus · 2 days

Given my observations of the world, no. Any God that exists does not share my idea of what "good" entails. Assuming counterfactually that I only knew as much of the world as I did when I was a small child; or that it wasn't as inexcusable as it is; I would wish for God to exist.

Of course, I certainly wish a good God would start existing right now, or at some point in the near future.

xoxoyoyo · 2 days

The prior that assigns probability 2^-k to each program of length k that produces a specific output is referred to in the literature as a Kolmogorov Prior. Solomonoff Induction uses a Kolmogorov Prior.

The Kolmogorov Prior is, indeed, not computable; in the same way that you cannot prove that 235711131719232931374143 or 881998376412172694635202 is random: ie, with a little bit of thought, you can can tell which one of them is more random, for an easy example like that (this is only possible because your mind is a Turing Machine with a length much greater than either of the numbers).

This translates into a fairly short python program, and will output something that looks quite a bit like our universe. Please show me your shortest program that outputs an all-powerful being who creates a universe that looks quite a bit like ours.

xoxoyoyo · 2 days

I see where the apparent disagreement stemmed from, now. I should make explicit what the evidence is weak/strong for or against: The specific God the experiencer of divine feelings has in mind. Looks like I made a similar mistake to theirs in assuming too much about the external universe based on my mental state.

khafra · 3 days

Take it as far as it's useful, then; but don't use it when discussing the PoE or free will: It is anti-useful there; it is actively misleading.

xoxoyoyo · 3 days

I'm not saying that experiences of God are evidence at all.

In what way could experiences of God possibly not be evidence at all? Surely, even though we have a helmet which can induce the same experiences with electromagnets, there's always some small chance that these experiences mean exactly what their subjects assume them to. To that extent, experiences of God's presence must be evidence in his favor. Just extremely weak evidence.

I don't think metaphysical naturalism is as established

My case does not depend on metaphysical naturalism. Only on the ways I have of determining whether God exists or not, and the combined strength of those ways--both apriori and empirical.

aliens, while no doubt existent somewhere out there, are probably not nearby and are probably not regularly visiting the Earth and are probably are not interested in the anuses of human beings sleeping in their beds at night.

Of course, if they're supernatural aliens, then all bets are off.

xoxoyoyo · 3 days

To avert infinite epistemic regress, I'm going to assume induction and a kolmogorov prior for the purposes of this comment.

I, personally, have few ways to independently test for the existence of God, vs. the ways I have to test for the existence of the CIA and stoplights. I, personally, know of things which can produce the experience of God, but which are reducible to physical phenomena. Therefore I, personally, take reported experiences of God as extremely weak evidence in favor of God.

If your logical arguments for the existence of God seem like strong evidence to you, you will treat reported experiences of God more seriously.

xoxoyoyo · 3 days

Exactly why I picked that example. Sure, some people do ridiculous things; and even if they don't, somebody out there wins the powerball lottery every so often. Nonetheless, I am certain that you, xoxoyoyo, are never going to win the powerball lottery.

khafra

TROPHY CASE

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