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> There still exist religious scientists. Heck, I even know creationists who fully understand how carbon and uranium dating work, and yet they're still creation

> There still exist religious scientists. Heck, I even know creationists who fully understand how carbon and uranium dating work, and yet they're still creationists. You can be creationist and believe in carbon dating, fossils, etc. There's no contradiction. There are unanswered questions, such as "Why would a creator create a young planet that looked very, very old?" But that's not a scientific question, it's philosophical and irrefutable one, and therefore (IMO) it is not a particularly interesting question to get hung up on. I mostly agree with your point that these kinds of phenomena are not about critical thinking as such. Though I do think fans of deductive and inductive reasoning tend to entirely overlook other forms of reasoning. For instance, abductive reasoning: what narrative makes the most sense given the options? Also, reputational reasoning: which experts am I going to trust on this? Abductive reasoning doesn't apply in the case of the shape of the Earth, but reputational reasoning certainly does. At any rate, they help me understand why people make (to me) consterning choices, including in politics, religion, criminal verdicts, investing, and (lately) personal health care.

im_down_w_otp 5y ago
I don't think they're unaware of the questions. In fact, in the half-dozen or so cases I have any direct interaction with I'm certain they're aware of such questions. My point is exactly that they have other forms of incentives and reasoning that cultivate a willingness, or in the worst cases a zealotry, to entertain what their relative out-groups would consider a contradiction simply as open questions that their in-group permits. I used the example as a representative for the kind of issue involved, not as an exhaustively defensible one. :-) Principally I think we're in agreement. There seems to be quite a bit of analysis and consideration about what's going on that's through the lens of a kind of "enlightenment" reasoning wherein it's purportedly obvious that the pursuit of facts is intrinsically valuable, and so people not arriving at that value must be that they just don't know how to get there or are being lead astray. Alternatively, I would suggest that for almost everything that almost everyone deals with in their day-to-day and/or finds reward & incentives for, there's practically no value to facts. Often it's the inverse. "Bullshit" pays. Sometimes socially, sometimes financially, sometimes both. In the case where such "bullshit" has become a subculture of its own, suddenly facts have negative value. For whatever it's worth, this relates to one of my annoyances with the general startup ecosystem as it exists (to bring it around to HN-esque territory) I've been told (more than once) that the fact I have integrity is going to make my life harder as a founder. It makes it harder to sell. It makes it harder to fundraise. Etc. Those people are absolutely right. Because both selling and fundraising have a built-in incentive toward BS. "Fake it 'til you make it." became a social and financial good, and so people do it. Because if they don't, they automatically start out at a significant disadvantage. My personal bet is that my biasing toward integrity approach pays off in the long-term when the builders, not the brokers, get their cyclical day in the sun again, and in the meantime I can still be square with myself. That said, I very well could be wrong, and I unnecessarily made both the short term and the long term harder than they needed to be.
nate_meurer 5y ago
"Why would a creator create a young planet that looked very, very old?" That's not quite the right question. God didn't create a universe in a disguise that looks old. God simply created a universe of a certain age. This is perfectly consistent with the bible's creation story. God created humans of a certain age, in adult form. The bible doesn't say God created embryos that then grew up into Adam and Eve. Likewise the Garden was created with what we presume were fully grown trees, complete with tree rings providing evidence of prior years of existence. Trees with a past, which came into existence just now. Young-earth creationists like to pick and choose which features of the universe are allowed to have been created in place, and which must have been formed by mysterious interim events. For some reason, a lot of them refuse to allow geological features to have been created in place, which forces them to invent absurd explanations that usually involve Noah's flood and a lot of hand waving. But it's all unnecessary. There's no reason we can't entertain the notion that the universe was created complete and in motion, exactly as it is, at any point in time. And in fact there would be no way to prove it one way or another, just as there would be no way for Adam to prove that the trees in his garden were a hundred days or a hundred years old.

im_down_w_otp 5y ago

I don't think they're unaware of the questions. In fact, in the half-dozen or so cases I have any direct interaction with I'm certain they're aware of such questions. My point is exactly that they have other forms of incentives and reasoning that cultivate a willingness, or in the worst cases a zealotry, to entertain what their relative out-groups would consider a contradiction simply as open questions that their in-group permits. I used the example as a representative for the kind of issue involved, not as an exhaustively defensible one. :-) Principally I think we're in agreement. There seems to be quite a bit of analysis and consideration about what's going on that's through the lens of a kind of "enlightenment" reasoning wherein it's purportedly obvious that the pursuit of facts is intrinsically valuable, and so people not arriving at that value must be that they just don't know how to get there or are being lead astray. Alternatively, I would suggest that for almost everything that almost everyone deals with in their day-to-day and/or finds reward & incentives for, there's practically no value to facts. Often it's the inverse. "Bullshit" pays. Sometimes socially, sometimes financially, sometimes both. In the case where such "bullshit" has become a subculture of its own, suddenly facts have negative value. For whatever it's worth, this relates to one of my annoyances with the general startup ecosystem as it exists (to bring it around to HN-esque territory) I've been told (more than once) that the fact I have integrity is going to make my life harder as a founder. It makes it harder to sell. It makes it harder to fundraise. Etc. Those people are absolutely right. Because both selling and fundraising have a built-in incentive toward BS. "Fake it 'til you make it." became a social and financial good, and so people do it. Because if they don't, they automatically start out at a significant disadvantage. My personal bet is that my biasing toward integrity approach pays off in the long-term when the builders, not the brokers, get their cyclical day in the sun again, and in the meantime I can still be square with myself. That said, I very well could be wrong, and I unnecessarily made both the short term and the long term harder than they needed to be.

nate_meurer 5y ago

"Why would a creator create a young planet that looked very, very old?" That's not quite the right question. God didn't create a universe in a disguise that looks old. God simply created a universe of a certain age. This is perfectly consistent with the bible's creation story. God created humans of a certain age, in adult form. The bible doesn't say God created embryos that then grew up into Adam and Eve. Likewise the Garden was created with what we presume were fully grown trees, complete with tree rings providing evidence of prior years of existence. Trees with a past, which came into existence just now. Young-earth creationists like to pick and choose which features of the universe are allowed to have been created in place, and which must have been formed by mysterious interim events. For some reason, a lot of them refuse to allow geological features to have been created in place, which forces them to invent absurd explanations that usually involve Noah's flood and a lot of hand waving. But it's all unnecessary. There's no reason we can't entertain the notion that the universe was created complete and in motion, exactly as it is, at any point in time. And in fact there would be no way to prove it one way or another, just as there would be no way for Adam to prove that the trees in his garden were a hundred days or a hundred years old.