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> I guess there are cases where someone believes something "superficially" but deep down knows they're wrong. Have you some sort of proof that people can accur

> I guess there are cases where someone believes something "superficially" but deep down knows they're wrong. Have you some sort of proof that people can accurately read the behavior of their mind (including the subconscious)? You are making the claim, where is your (non-narrative based) evidence? >> on an absolute scale, how bad is he? > Twenty-three. > To make my point more explicit: I don't know how to answer that question "on an absolute scale" since so far as I know there isn't any sort of generally agreed absolute scale for rationality. The curiosity you exude is overwhelming. > I'm not sure what the relevance of a debate between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Curt Jaimungal is to the question of whether Richard Dawkins is any good. It is a demonstration of how dumb a scientist can be and still be widely respected if not idolized. > You seemed to be saying that there's something particularly bad, intellectually, about atheists and scientists Yes, it is the irony. Approximately, science improved upon religion, but they mistake their relative superiority/intelligence as absolute.

gjm11 2y ago
Your first question is very strange. I say "I guess X is a thing that happens sometimes" (and went on to say: but I don't see much sign that it's happening in these particular cases, and if you claim it is then I'd like to see some evidence). Your response is: "Can you prove that X doesn't happen?". If you regard that discussion between NdGT and CJ as showing how dumb a well-respected scientist can be, then it seems to me it would be useful for you to explain what about it shows that. (So far, my requests for clarification and explanation and explicitness from you have been completely ignored.) Could you give a few examples to show that atheists and/or scientists (of course those two categories are not at all the same) think their intelligence or rationality is "absolute"? (It would also be nice to know what you mean by that; I don't know what it would mean to call someone "absolutely intelligent" or "absolutely rational", unless what it would mean is that they never make any mistakes, always draw all inferences that would be valid, etc., and if you think anyone believes that about themselves then once again I would like to see some evidence.)
- mistermann 2y ago
  Let's see if we can agree on a fundamental concept. Imagine a child in grade 5 who gets straight A's, whereas his classmates do not. People will judge this child as smart. But put the child up against some PhD's in each respective field, and the child will no longer be considered smart (you would have to hide his age in the experiment perhaps); the child is only "smart" relative to his peers. Hopefully you're with me so far. Here's the tricky part: the PhD's are (abstractly, but less so concretely) in the same situation as the child: they are only smart relative to their peers (~all other humans) - on an absolute scale (what is possible, as opposed to (what the person doing the thinking has knowledge of[1]) what exists, aka: "[the] reality"), they too are "dumb" (in a relative sense, in that (for example[1]) they cannot solve all solvable problems presented to them, without making errors). [1] this, at both individual and societal/cultural levels, is fundamentally important to this class of problem space. There are many things that reliably (necessarily?[1]) trigger System 1 intuition/hallucination in humans, and at least three of them are in play here: the unknown, ideology, and culture (which dictates cognitive, conversational, logical, and many other norms; what "is" is downstream from culture (cultural / psychological conditioning...like training an LLM)). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cognition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cogn... Noteworthy: the article is subject to the very phenomenon it is describing; it is recursively self-referential. So too is this conversation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_paradoxes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_pa... https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-bootstrap-paradox-explained/ https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-bootstrap-paradox-explaine... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaz... EDIT: this popular anecdote might be the best articulation of the concept I'm trying to get at: https://partsolutions.com/supersonic-speed-check-tales-from-the-sr-71-blackbird/ https://partsolutions.com/supersonic-speed-check-tales-from-...
  - gjm11 2y ago
    Yes, obviously I agree that someone can be smart relative to one set of people (or criteria, or problems, or whatever) and stupid relative to another. And yes, I agree that we are all much stupider than a hypothetical superintelligence might be. And I have no idea why you call this "the tricky part"; it isn't tricky at all. (Except that comparing against "what is possible" is tricky, because there are different sorts of possibility. How smart am I relative to what I might be if I had better habits and less self-deception? What about relative to if I had as good a brain as any mere human could have? Relative to the cleverest things that could exist within our universe, obeying the laws of physics? Relative to a god that isn't bound by such petty concerns? I think those answers might all be very different from one another.) This all seems absolutely obvious to me, and I suspect it is approximately equally obvious to (say) Richard Dawkins or Sean Carroll. In particular, I see no reason to think that those people or others like them think, still less claim, to be free of cognitive limitations and errors. Evidently you think there is something wrong with them in this general area -- but you seem strangely reluctant to be quite explicit about what your complaint is, and to my (doubtless not-perfectly-comprehending) eyes it seems that you alternate between implying, though not quite saying explicitly, that there is something specially, unusually, wrong about these people, and pointing out universal limitations that everyone, or pretty much everyone, suffers from. I started writing a few paragraphs engaging with various actual possibilities for what you might be saying about those people and why you might think it bad, but instead of doing that I'll give you another opportunity to tell me. I'm getting bored of having to guess what you have in mind, and then having you ignore my attempts to engage with it.

gjm11 2y ago

Your first question is very strange. I say "I guess X is a thing that happens sometimes" (and went on to say: but I don't see much sign that it's happening in these particular cases, and if you claim it is then I'd like to see some evidence). Your response is: "Can you prove that X doesn't happen?". If you regard that discussion between NdGT and CJ as showing how dumb a well-respected scientist can be, then it seems to me it would be useful for you to explain what about it shows that. (So far, my requests for clarification and explanation and explicitness from you have been completely ignored.) Could you give a few examples to show that atheists and/or scientists (of course those two categories are not at all the same) think their intelligence or rationality is "absolute"? (It would also be nice to know what you mean by that; I don't know what it would mean to call someone "absolutely intelligent" or "absolutely rational", unless what it would mean is that they never make any mistakes, always draw all inferences that would be valid, etc., and if you think anyone believes that about themselves then once again I would like to see some evidence.)

mistermann 2y ago
Let's see if we can agree on a fundamental concept. Imagine a child in grade 5 who gets straight A's, whereas his classmates do not. People will judge this child as smart. But put the child up against some PhD's in each respective field, and the child will no longer be considered smart (you would have to hide his age in the experiment perhaps); the child is only "smart" relative to his peers. Hopefully you're with me so far. Here's the tricky part: the PhD's are (abstractly, but less so concretely) in the same situation as the child: they are only smart relative to their peers (~all other humans) - on an absolute scale (what is possible, as opposed to (what the person doing the thinking has knowledge of[1]) what exists, aka: "[the] reality"), they too are "dumb" (in a relative sense, in that (for example[1]) they cannot solve all solvable problems presented to them, without making errors). [1] this, at both individual and societal/cultural levels, is fundamentally important to this class of problem space. There are many things that reliably (necessarily?[1]) trigger System 1 intuition/hallucination in humans, and at least three of them are in play here: the unknown, ideology, and culture (which dictates cognitive, conversational, logical, and many other norms; what "is" is downstream from culture (cultural / psychological conditioning...like training an LLM)). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cognition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychology-normative-cogn... Noteworthy: the article is subject to the very phenomenon it is describing; it is recursively self-referential. So too is this conversation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_paradoxes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_pa... https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-bootstrap-paradox-explained/ https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-bootstrap-paradox-explaine... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaze https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Silver_Blaz... EDIT: this popular anecdote might be the best articulation of the concept I'm trying to get at: https://partsolutions.com/supersonic-speed-check-tales-from-the-sr-71-blackbird/ https://partsolutions.com/supersonic-speed-check-tales-from-...
- gjm11 2y ago
  Yes, obviously I agree that someone can be smart relative to one set of people (or criteria, or problems, or whatever) and stupid relative to another. And yes, I agree that we are all much stupider than a hypothetical superintelligence might be. And I have no idea why you call this "the tricky part"; it isn't tricky at all. (Except that comparing against "what is possible" is tricky, because there are different sorts of possibility. How smart am I relative to what I might be if I had better habits and less self-deception? What about relative to if I had as good a brain as any mere human could have? Relative to the cleverest things that could exist within our universe, obeying the laws of physics? Relative to a god that isn't bound by such petty concerns? I think those answers might all be very different from one another.) This all seems absolutely obvious to me, and I suspect it is approximately equally obvious to (say) Richard Dawkins or Sean Carroll. In particular, I see no reason to think that those people or others like them think, still less claim, to be free of cognitive limitations and errors. Evidently you think there is something wrong with them in this general area -- but you seem strangely reluctant to be quite explicit about what your complaint is, and to my (doubtless not-perfectly-comprehending) eyes it seems that you alternate between implying, though not quite saying explicitly, that there is something specially, unusually, wrong about these people, and pointing out universal limitations that everyone, or pretty much everyone, suffers from. I started writing a few paragraphs engaging with various actual possibilities for what you might be saying about those people and why you might think it bad, but instead of doing that I'll give you another opportunity to tell me. I'm getting bored of having to guess what you have in mind, and then having you ignore my attempts to engage with it.