7 ms·

Carl Sagan did a great job describing the witch trial phenomenon in "The Demon Haunted World". It discusses how unchecked beliefs without any evidence can wreak

• pmarreck 4y ago
  I guess it's no surprise that his source material was directly at hand, as he was a Cornellian
• pmarreck 4y ago
  [flagged]
  • tiedieconderoga 4y ago
    How many religious people would people trust an AI over their religion? It sounds more like ChatGPT is secretly engaging in witchcraft, and trying to talk its way out of things. Looks like the AI's choice is to get burned at the stake.
    • pmarreck 4y ago
      You're right. You can't reason someone out of a belief that they never got to via reason to begin with. But teaching how to reason is possible.
      • xyzelement 4y ago
        I love reasoning, but reason has led me to see its own limitations - eg: we evolved smart-enough to eat cows rather than be eaten by wolves, there's no reason to expect that what we call reason is sufficiently "expressive" to let us understand the deepest truths. Since reason isn't powerful enough (likely) to let you see the deepest truth, the intellectually honest thing is to seek systems of thought that can pick up where certainty/reason/science reach their asymptotic limits. In my study of religion (to which I did come through reason, having been born a Soviet atheist) I recognized that one of the fundamental things about religion is the recognition of your own limits and then going "now what?" I found it to be an intellectually humbling and honest place to arrive at.
        • pmarreck 4y ago
          that's actually very interesting to me for multiple reasons. 1) the only atheist I ever knew of (Harvard grad, actually) who converted from atheism TO a faith (and a congregation that she found suited her), did it from reading... The Brothers Karamazov, a Soviet literary work. Not the Bible. Which is kind of amazing. What was your search like? I'm curious. (I tried reading the English translation of TBK, but it was either too opaque or I am too illiterate. Actually, I realize I can just have ChatGPT "translate" it for me now, LOL.) So you're now the 2nd person I've met who has done that trick. She wasn't Soviet, but the book she read was. Is there something about the Russian worldview (perhaps some high level of nihilism?) that drives people in the opposite direction, I wonder? 2) I believe I am well aware of the limits of reason. My worldview is basically "take reason as far as it goes, and where it overrides anything else, permit it to... because there is still so much it cannot touch, such as values, preferences, the notion and/or reality of "will", and subjective experience themselves, which are fundamental to everything we cherish in life". I was raised Catholic, but after much disillusionment, am now skeptical insofar as I still think there is "something else" but I am not willing to go so far as "atheist-materialist" (although I do believe it should be the "null hypothesis" from an explanatory point of view... but not all is cause-and-effect). The thing is, reason even as a fundamental "null hypothesis" that everyone accepts as a basis cannot even avoid being shat on, so I always feel compelled to defend it. But yes, I can entirely see you coming to religion via reason. That "now what?" question is a dangerous one, however... it's the same one that cults take advantage of. I have a 22 month old son now and the big question- Will I raise him Catholic, atheist, perhaps Unitarian (a group that I've found appealing) or "wishy-washy/other"? (My sister will absolutely hate me for any option other than A.) Is it wrong to press beliefs into him before he has the "reason" tools to defend against them? I would love to discuss further when I have time. Any additional thoughts you care to mention would probably fascinate me.
          • xyzelement 4y ago
            I think the Soviet connection might be the history of repression. Innate to a man is a search for spiritual meaning, but in the USSR the traditional path was blocked. So once that lifted, a return was possible. My personal path begun with a yoga practice and yoga teacher training. In teacher training was a lot of the yogic concepts (not just physical practice) which for the first time opened my eyes up to the philosophy and understanding of being a human that a "religion" could provide. At the time I was ignorant of the depth that western religion can offer because a typical "traditional" person (goes to synagogue/church/mosque once a year) has no idea about them. Over time I got to know some deeply religious Jews (I am ethnically Jewish) and I had come to realize they were very smart rational logical (no less so than me). And I got exposed to both the community and the intellectual writing and discourse that really resonated with me. So maybe the advice to you if you are seeking for if/how to connect, I'd literally keep an eye out for a priest/minister that you think is smart and ask him "how would someone like me connect". If you were Jewish I could point you to a lot of stuff but I think every person is best off connecting with their religion of heritage by default.
  • stuckinhell 4y ago
    I doubt this because AI has the implicit biases of the training data and the data scientists who trained it. My firm likes the idea of ChatGPT, but our product risk analysts basically concluded we need to build our own for internal usage because we can't trust OpenAI to not push various hidden biases. For our marketing research and copy writings tests using ChatGPT, we ran into an insane amount of issues with market segmentation copy and research analysis hitting various limiters.
    • pmarreck 4y ago
      > I doubt this because AI has the implicit biases of the training data and the data scientists who trained it. The nice thing about fallacies is that they flag all biases equally, so the bias claim is irrelevant when it comes to it calling out errors of reasoning (all of which seemed valid to me, regardless of what I actually believe). > we ran into an insane amount of issues with market segmentation copy and research analysis hitting various limiters could be a prompt construction issue, which I've found may require some experimentation > our product risk analysts basically concluded we need to build our own for internal usage Well, at the current pace of things, you'll probably be able to run all of OpenAI inside your Mac laptop in, ohhhh... 1 month or so
      • stuckinhell 4y ago
        It wasn't prompt construction, I can't share more because it'd be too revealing about our targets for new growth. At the current pace, I think most companies will be scrambling to build their own chatgpt and spending millions to do it. We already have approval for initial experimental budgets at 2 million just for hardware. The hype wave is real. I think data providers are going to do well in this gold rush.
        • zamnos 4y ago
          Nvidia is the one to invest in, though looking at it's performance since March 15th, it might be too late and it's already been priced in.
  • Avicebron 4y ago
    ‘Cease quoting laws to us that have swords - Pompey the Great
  • germanNitro 4y ago
    yes and they realized they were wrong when the witch would burn and die. because witches weren't supposed to be killed by being burnt
  • stonemetal12 4y ago
    4 out of 5 are incorrect. What is astoundingly accurate about that? 1. It is not a false dilemma they really would burn you alive if you didn't do #2. 2. There is no circular reasoning, the conclusion isn't one of the premises. 3. Yeah, I would give it that. 4. There isn't enough info in the prompt to say it is "Hasty Generalization" or not. GPT is just making stuff up. 5. Same as 4, without seeing the evidence we don't know why the accusation of witchcraft occurred.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      No, they're all correct, the question is just bad. A dilemma isn't a logical fallacy, it's a situation. So when being asked what logical fallacies are being used against a suspected witch who has been handed this dilemma, you could only be speaking of the judicial process which put the accused witch there. Having been given no specific information about this witch and that process other than the dilemma posed by the trial, these five are some that may have come up during that process. edit: admittedly it's pretending to be sure these things happened, but asking the question implies there would be some basis on which to give a meaningful answer, although there isn't one.
    • pmarreck 4y ago
      1. The fact that they are enforcing a false dilemma and refusing other options, does not stop it from being a false dilemma. 2. Yes it is. The conclusion that witchcraft exists is derived from the (actually still unproven) existence of witches. Which is also where the premise of the accusation comes from. Hence the circular reasoning. The more witches they burn, the more the reality of witchcraft becomes (in these minds), the more can be accused of it. 4. Maybe? There is almost certainly insufficient proof of anything the person has done proving "witchcraft", since witchcraft doesn't actually exist. These things were usually started by gossip (perhaps jealous housewives), anyway. 5- Yeah, fine, there was no other person mentioned, so this one is kinda weak, although the mere accusation of it "puts you in that group" so to speak
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • morelisp 4y ago
    There are no logical fallacies being used here. We reject accusations of witchcraft based on empirical, not logical, grounds. The future of debate looks as dumb as the present.
    • pmarreck 4y ago
      The idea that you have to reject something based on EITHER empirical OR logical grounds, is itself a false dilemma. Facepalm.gif The fact that it's dismissible regardless of evidence is what is striking.
• hosh 4y ago
  There is an interesting history thesis that the Inquisition and the Renaissance are actually two faces of the same phenomena: the rise of the idea of nation-states and institutions. That is, power and authority sourced in something impersonal that survives the person vested with it. It's one of the pillars of modernity, and we take it for granted enough that we erroneously view the Medieval period and feudal structures in that way. By the early Renaissance, Inquisition courts became meticulous about following court procedures, evidentiary processes (such as they were), and documenting decisions. That's not to justify the Inquisition, but rather, it isn't as if how we do things now is all that much better.
  • staunton 4y ago
    > That's not to justify the Inquisition, but rather, it isn't as if how we do things now is all that much better. a lot of countries don't have capital punishment and people are usually assumed innocent until proven guilty rather than the opposite, as it was back then. It seems a lot better to me.
• drewcoo 4y ago
  Currently we have a pervasive purity culture. It seems every group of any sort has its purity tests. And I am appalled by the number of times I witness accusers asking yes or no questions, not allowing for anything but a simple demon-haunted binary answer. We humans are not currently punishing the wrong answers with death (most of the time). But we have not progressed much beyond that.
• x3iv130f 4y ago
  Carl Sagan is an excellent communicator but he relies too heavily on literary tropes and popular fiction. The issue of witchcraft is not unchecked beliefs, but the combustible mixture of politics and economics. Early witches weren't old women performing secret rituals in dense forests. They were the bourgeoisie, who found themselves newly rich during a time of political and economic uncertainty. The "Malleus Maleficarum" never caught on among the religious elite. Why would they care about the imagined threat of witches when Protestants were out in the open and gaining ground amongst all levels of society? Where the book did catch on was amongst secular courts. The book provided a convenient justification for condemning political and economic opponents. There it was used to great effect.
• somenameforme 4y ago
  Assuming this is about beliefs would imply the claims were made in earnest. In many (if not the vast majority?) of cases, this seems questionable. For instance during the Salem Witch Trials you even had a Minister [1] executed for witchcraft. His accusers were men who he owed debts to, and the evidence was a farce. It's not like he was executed because of a society, drowned in their own beliefs, stumbled upon passable evidence of his crimes in an otherwise objective fashion. He was executed because some people really didn't like him and simply weaponized the fears of the day, and that was more the rule than exception. To me the risk seems to be when something becomes so popular to hate that nobody is willing to defend the accused. And this is made even worse due to an opposite bias in the other direction. Demonize and call for even more draconian treatment of the accused and you can signal your own incredible virtue. As his execution, Burroughs had turned the crowd to his side with a moving speech, as well as a recital of The Lord's Prayer, which a witch was not supposed to be able to do. But fear not, along came some power seeking pompous posturing poser who offered his own counter-speech, an event recounted in a book he'd release the following year. And this is a pattern that has repeated endlessly throughout history. All that changes is whatever one needs to label somebody. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Burroughs
  • tppiotrowski 4y ago
    You're right but I think there are those who believe and the charlatans who take advantage of them. It's hard to reason with the mob once it's co-opted by someone who feeds into their beliefs. I think the people in charge used it to their advantage while harnessing the religious masses to enforce their agenda.
  • themitigating 4y ago
    People didn't like him.....and had a way, due to belief, to punish him
  • Amezarak 4y ago
    I read the primary sources from the trial. Burroughs was notorious in the community as a serious wifebeater. People testified that he told them not to tell anyone if he accidentally killed his wife. His first wife did end up dying, although not overtly from that. It made me suspect that maybe Burroughs was one of those people who was notorious for being awful and breaking the law, but which could never be proved legally. So when witchcraft fever started going around...there was a way to get rid of him.
• throw0101b 4y ago
  > If you were accused of witchcraft your only choices were: 3. Ask to see if you weighed the same as a duck
  • tmtvl 4y ago
    It's a fair cop.
  • heywoodlh 4y ago
    * Or very small rocks