5 ms·

Why do people believe true things?

djaouen 2y ago
Uhhh, what? Do experience and rationality not count here?
- pdonis 2y ago
  > Do experience and rationality not count here? Bear in mind that the title question actually has (as the article makes clear) a crucial qualifier: the question is why people believe true things "beyond their immediate material and social environment". In other words, in the domain where experience and rationality obviously work--the immediate material and social environment--it is not surprising that people believe true things, because believing true things in that domain has obvious and immediate survival value. It's when you go beyond that domain, to things which don't have any clear, immediate connection to one's daily life and survival, that believing true things is surprising--because, as the article points out, the default state of almost all humans who have ever lived is the opposite.
ajkjk 2y ago
This is being dense for no reason. 'Why is there poverty? ' means 'Why is there poverty [when there could not be]?', obviously. Same with every other question they pretend to be surprised by an inverse formulation of.
- Sakos 2y ago
  This is unreasonably dismissive of a very interesting article about where our beliefs and our "knowledge" of the world comes from. HN is supposed to be a place where we try to learn more about the world and our understanding of that world. But if an article becomes a tiny bit philosophical, people go all "nuh-uh, don't want to think about this at all". What is this epistemological laziness? At a time where even the most basic truths have become deeply polarised, political issues, it's important to be able to think about how we arrive at what we "know". Because it's something we're constantly struggling with, whether consciously or not. And if you're not conscious of this struggle, then you're just allowing yourself to be dragged along with whatever tide "seems" rational to you or "feels right".
  - empath75 2y ago
    Anything on Hacker News that requires more than 30 seconds of attention usually starts off with dismissive hot takes.
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    My reply was not that I did not want to think about it! I thought that the article was bad at thinking about it. I like philosophy, but there's still such a thing as bad philosophy and this is, imo, it.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    I wonder if this even is a time where basic truths have become deeply polarised. The article kind of implies "it was ever thus".
  - mistermann 2y ago
    > What is this epistemological laziness? It would be hilarious if this was the answer to the question of why we have poverty. It would not surprise me at all. Oh, and for your question: it is our culture. Paying no mind to epistemology most of the time (if not considering the very concept hilarious) is what Westerners do.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  What are you even trying to say?
  - trackofalljades 2y ago
    They're trying to say that they've never studied philosophy, or perhaps even discrete mathematics, and possibly that they don't understand the inherent value in breaking down and very methodically and rationally trying to explain ideas or answer questions that may seem "obvious."
    - ajkjk 2y ago
      No, I just thought the article was intellectually lazy and picking on strawmen.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
alphazard 2y ago
This is actually a piece about social justice. As it relates to the title: basically the author doesn't understand why altruism was difficult for evolutionary biologists and game theorists to explain, and instead of learning about those fields and the questions they raised then answered, they call for an "explanatory inversion" where their own beliefs are correct by default. The titular question is maybe only interesting if you've been steeping in post-modernism for too many semesters and are trying to blow some epistemic bubbles to see which way is up. It's worth noticing that a rational mind can believe an unlimited amount of true things without needing to un-believe anything. The same is not true for non-truths. Non-truths conflict with truths and other non-truths.
- GavinMcG 2y ago
  > a rational mind can believe an unlimited amount of true things without needing to in-believe anything Sure, if minds were logic engines pre-loaded with true axioms. But none of us believes only true things from the get-go, so the capability of a mythical “rational mind” doesn’t offer much guidance for humans who need to decide whether or not to discard an existing belief.
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
  Did you finish the article? The author clearly disagrees with the assertion that people are rational actors.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    How could this reply possibly make sense in light of GP’s point? Genuinely what is the connection?
- oivey 2y ago
  Most of the article isn’t even about altruism. It is only an example. The author doesn’t take any particular position. Quoting from near the end: > The truth is not self-evident. Given this, those who claim to know the truth, including misinformation researchers, should have more intellectual humility than they often have. Might work for you, too.
empath75 2y ago
This is basically just a reiteration of Hobbes (life in the natural state of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".) But still, it is interesting to consider that the three phenomena he talks about -- poverty, crime, and ignorance -- are now mostly thought of as aberrations from the norm that needed to be eliminated, when in fact they're the state that the vast, overwhelming majority of humans in history were born, lived and died in. If you do think of the problems in the reverse way -- how do we _increase wealth_, and _increase cooperation_ and _increase knowledge, they're all become sort of the _same problem_ -- ie: how do we as a society increase the benefits of cooperation with each other? You see the problem of tackling crime not as a problem of devising the correct punishment scheme, but as devising a way such that the benefits of cooperation outweigh the benefits of free riding.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  Where can I read more of this Hobbes?
  - empath75 2y ago
    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leviathan https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leviathan
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    wikipedia "hobbes" and "leviathan"
- api 2y ago
  It seems like Hobbes could be restated thermodynamically: the lowest energy highest disorder state is the most likely and therefore the default. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- those are all low energy high entropy states. The opposite of solitary is cooperating and connecting and that's provably difficult to achieve (see game theory). Brutish is also a game theoretic "all defect" scenario which is very likely. Cooperation and peace are harder to achieve and require more sophisticated game playing strategies that integrate results over multiple iterations. Poor, nasty, and short describes low energy high disorder states. So ultimately the question is how and why do we exceed the bare minimum, because exceeding the bare minimum state required for survival and procreation is pretty much the definition of a great or exceptional society or period of history.
zabzonk 2y ago
horribly unreadable. i really don't know where to start criticising this, but "why is there poverty?" - really?
- empath75 2y ago
  If you didn't read it why are you commenting on it? We should probably just delete this entire comment section and start over.
  - zabzonk 2y ago
    i did read it, with great difficulty - that does not make it basically unreadable
    - dinkblam 2y ago
      i found it one of the most easily readable articles in a while. the author has a clear mind and good articulation.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago
  The example question "Why is there poverty" is presented as an example of a childish question. In the limited criticism you provide, I think you're actually agreeing with the author.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    Because humans were born naked onto a planet with no material wealth until they started creating it for themselves? That, by the way, is the very definition of absolute objective poverty. Is this not plainly obvious even to small children?
    - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
      Yes, exactly. This is one of the points of the article -- it isn't interesting to ask "Why is there poverty?" A more interesting question would be like "How does _anyone_ escape poverty?"
didgetmaster 2y ago
Is anyone else troubled by the historical graph of global GDP? It looks to me like your typical deceptive hockey stick graph specifically design to shock the public. First, GDP is a total amount, not a per-capita figure. The population has grown dramatically, so even if everyone throughout history was equally wealthy, the graph would still have the same general shape. Second, even though the scale on the left side is equally divided into $20T increments; going from 0 to $20T is not the same as going from $20T to $40T. Exponential growth is required to achieve the first milestone. A mere doubling gets you to the second one.
- amalcon 2y ago
  If you go to their source, you also see that there are only 3 data points in the first 75% of the graph. This makes sense, since obviously global GDP can only be very roughly estimated in e.g. 1000AD. It kind of raises the question of whether GDP is even a coherent concept in 1000AD. However, the post-1500 numbers are going to be at least somewhat reliable, and can be inspected at the source: 1500: 502.98G 1600: 671.14G (0.29% annualized growth) 1700: 751.59G (0.11%) 1820: 1.40T (0.52%) 1850: 1.85T (0.93%) 1870: 2.35T (1.2%) 1900: 4.19T (2.9%) (skipping a bunch because it's pretty high res now) 2000: 68.44 (2.8%) There are periods of faster and slower growth in those years -- most evidently, growth slowed between 1940 and 1950 for geopolitical reasons -- but that's at least the average. There is clearly something interesting going on between 1700 and 1900, with the significantly positive second derivative. However, that interesting thing is called the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution fits the article's narrative pretty well, and it's probably safe to assume their readers are aware of it. I don't know why they went this route rather than just pointing to the industrial revolution as evidence.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    In the past, more than today, a lot of material benefits to people were provided via baked in social relations and other ways of life, and not via monetary exchange. For example, paying someone to take care of your kids is not something that happened when extended families lived with each. This was not included in past (or today's gdp). Similarly, if you grow part of your own food, then that's not included in the gdp. Past estimates of GDP largely only account for monetary exchanges, and not for stuff like the above. So they grossly underestimate how "wealthy" people were. I have seen several recent papers that try to correct for this.
jawns 2y ago
If "Why do people believe true things?" tickles your brain, wait until you try "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Especially once you go beyond the surface-level responses that try to rely on things like particle physics. It is fundamentally a philosophical question, not a science question.
- thfuran 2y ago
  [flagged]
- anotherape 2y ago
  Would love some references for that to get started. The question must touch on the nature of intelligence and conscious experience. How that connects to mathematics (and why even mathematics!)
  - card_zero 2y ago
    If you want to look it up on Wikipedia, the relevant page is "Why is there anything at all?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_is_there_anything_at_all%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_is_there_anything_at_all%3...
    - lelandfe 2y ago
      > No experiment could support the hypothesis "There is nothing" because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer Fun article, reminds me of how much I enjoyed philosophy classes in undergrad
memtet 2y ago
[dead]
kkfx 2y ago
Ancient Greek's have two separate world for "knowledge": doxa and gnosis. Doxa is the practical, notional ability of doing things, gnosis is the understatement of things. Today schools push doxa and try to their best to avoid gnosis and even speculation about gnosis. They form useful idiots https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef... or Ford-model stereotypical workers, not acculturated citizens. As a result modern society is practically ignorant as the middle-age societies, only most does not know that because they think knowledge is only doxa.
woopsn 2y ago
What more is there to say than philosophy, the social sciences, life sciences, computer science and mathematics, education and journalism schools have said about this already. Modern media culture has been well characterized since the 60s - "we are back in the acoustic space of tribal pre-literate society".
- mistermann 2y ago
  "Based on our extensive academic knowledge, what actions could be taken to substantially moderate the problems humanity experiences from our shortcomings in this area?" is physically possible to say, but it may not be metaphysically possible (to say, and follow up on).
Xen9 2y ago
Humans probably believe in true things because lack of conception of logic would lead to cognitive retardation. It is also possible to say that it is impossible to not to believe in true things, because belief may be a definition of the truth. Finally, truth may not really be related to belief at all very directly: for example Bayesian, quantum, fuzzy logics can have somewhat strange conceptions of truth—modelling quantum phenomena gets even stranger. Yet the most interesting interpretation of truth is not, unlike many of our times would like to have believed (!!!), related to Gödel but Embeddes Agency which models the behaviour of an agent under various environments.

Uhhh, what? Do experience and rationality not count here?

pdonis 2y ago
> Do experience and rationality not count here? Bear in mind that the title question actually has (as the article makes clear) a crucial qualifier: the question is why people believe true things "beyond their immediate material and social environment". In other words, in the domain where experience and rationality obviously work--the immediate material and social environment--it is not surprising that people believe true things, because believing true things in that domain has obvious and immediate survival value. It's when you go beyond that domain, to things which don't have any clear, immediate connection to one's daily life and survival, that believing true things is surprising--because, as the article points out, the default state of almost all humans who have ever lived is the opposite.

This is being dense for no reason. 'Why is there poverty? ' means 'Why is there poverty [when there could not be]?', obviously. Same with every other question they pretend to be surprised by an inverse formulation of.

Sakos 2y ago
This is unreasonably dismissive of a very interesting article about where our beliefs and our "knowledge" of the world comes from. HN is supposed to be a place where we try to learn more about the world and our understanding of that world. But if an article becomes a tiny bit philosophical, people go all "nuh-uh, don't want to think about this at all". What is this epistemological laziness? At a time where even the most basic truths have become deeply polarised, political issues, it's important to be able to think about how we arrive at what we "know". Because it's something we're constantly struggling with, whether consciously or not. And if you're not conscious of this struggle, then you're just allowing yourself to be dragged along with whatever tide "seems" rational to you or "feels right".
- empath75 2y ago
  Anything on Hacker News that requires more than 30 seconds of attention usually starts off with dismissive hot takes.
- ajkjk 2y ago
  My reply was not that I did not want to think about it! I thought that the article was bad at thinking about it. I like philosophy, but there's still such a thing as bad philosophy and this is, imo, it.
- card_zero 2y ago
  I wonder if this even is a time where basic truths have become deeply polarised. The article kind of implies "it was ever thus".
- mistermann 2y ago
  > What is this epistemological laziness? It would be hilarious if this was the answer to the question of why we have poverty. It would not surprise me at all. Oh, and for your question: it is our culture. Paying no mind to epistemology most of the time (if not considering the very concept hilarious) is what Westerners do.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
What are you even trying to say?
- trackofalljades 2y ago
  They're trying to say that they've never studied philosophy, or perhaps even discrete mathematics, and possibly that they don't understand the inherent value in breaking down and very methodically and rationally trying to explain ideas or answer questions that may seem "obvious."
  - ajkjk 2y ago
    No, I just thought the article was intellectually lazy and picking on strawmen.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

alphazard 2y ago

This is actually a piece about social justice. As it relates to the title: basically the author doesn't understand why altruism was difficult for evolutionary biologists and game theorists to explain, and instead of learning about those fields and the questions they raised then answered, they call for an "explanatory inversion" where their own beliefs are correct by default. The titular question is maybe only interesting if you've been steeping in post-modernism for too many semesters and are trying to blow some epistemic bubbles to see which way is up. It's worth noticing that a rational mind can believe an unlimited amount of true things without needing to un-believe anything. The same is not true for non-truths. Non-truths conflict with truths and other non-truths.

GavinMcG 2y ago
> a rational mind can believe an unlimited amount of true things without needing to in-believe anything Sure, if minds were logic engines pre-loaded with true axioms. But none of us believes only true things from the get-go, so the capability of a mythical “rational mind” doesn’t offer much guidance for humans who need to decide whether or not to discard an existing belief.
BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
Did you finish the article? The author clearly disagrees with the assertion that people are rational actors.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  How could this reply possibly make sense in light of GP’s point? Genuinely what is the connection?
oivey 2y ago
Most of the article isn’t even about altruism. It is only an example. The author doesn’t take any particular position. Quoting from near the end: > The truth is not self-evident. Given this, those who claim to know the truth, including misinformation researchers, should have more intellectual humility than they often have. Might work for you, too.

empath75 2y ago

This is basically just a reiteration of Hobbes (life in the natural state of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".) But still, it is interesting to consider that the three phenomena he talks about -- poverty, crime, and ignorance -- are now mostly thought of as aberrations from the norm that needed to be eliminated, when in fact they're the state that the vast, overwhelming majority of humans in history were born, lived and died in. If you do think of the problems in the reverse way -- how do we _increase wealth_, and _increase cooperation_ and _increase knowledge, they're all become sort of the _same problem_ -- ie: how do we as a society increase the benefits of cooperation with each other? You see the problem of tackling crime not as a problem of devising the correct punishment scheme, but as devising a way such that the benefits of cooperation outweigh the benefits of free riding.

stonethrowaway 2y ago
Where can I read more of this Hobbes?
- empath75 2y ago
  https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leviathan https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Leviathan
- zabzonk 2y ago
  wikipedia "hobbes" and "leviathan"
api 2y ago
It seems like Hobbes could be restated thermodynamically: the lowest energy highest disorder state is the most likely and therefore the default. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- those are all low energy high entropy states. The opposite of solitary is cooperating and connecting and that's provably difficult to achieve (see game theory). Brutish is also a game theoretic "all defect" scenario which is very likely. Cooperation and peace are harder to achieve and require more sophisticated game playing strategies that integrate results over multiple iterations. Poor, nasty, and short describes low energy high disorder states. So ultimately the question is how and why do we exceed the bare minimum, because exceeding the bare minimum state required for survival and procreation is pretty much the definition of a great or exceptional society or period of history.

zabzonk 2y ago

horribly unreadable. i really don't know where to start criticising this, but "why is there poverty?" - really?

empath75 2y ago
If you didn't read it why are you commenting on it? We should probably just delete this entire comment section and start over.
- zabzonk 2y ago
  i did read it, with great difficulty - that does not make it basically unreadable
  - dinkblam 2y ago
    i found it one of the most easily readable articles in a while. the author has a clear mind and good articulation.
pinkmuffinere 2y ago
The example question "Why is there poverty" is presented as an example of a childish question. In the limited criticism you provide, I think you're actually agreeing with the author.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  Because humans were born naked onto a planet with no material wealth until they started creating it for themselves? That, by the way, is the very definition of absolute objective poverty. Is this not plainly obvious even to small children?
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
    Yes, exactly. This is one of the points of the article -- it isn't interesting to ask "Why is there poverty?" A more interesting question would be like "How does _anyone_ escape poverty?"

didgetmaster 2y ago

Is anyone else troubled by the historical graph of global GDP? It looks to me like your typical deceptive hockey stick graph specifically design to shock the public. First, GDP is a total amount, not a per-capita figure. The population has grown dramatically, so even if everyone throughout history was equally wealthy, the graph would still have the same general shape. Second, even though the scale on the left side is equally divided into $20T increments; going from 0 to $20T is not the same as going from $20T to $40T. Exponential growth is required to achieve the first milestone. A mere doubling gets you to the second one.

amalcon 2y ago
If you go to their source, you also see that there are only 3 data points in the first 75% of the graph. This makes sense, since obviously global GDP can only be very roughly estimated in e.g. 1000AD. It kind of raises the question of whether GDP is even a coherent concept in 1000AD. However, the post-1500 numbers are going to be at least somewhat reliable, and can be inspected at the source: 1500: 502.98G 1600: 671.14G (0.29% annualized growth) 1700: 751.59G (0.11%) 1820: 1.40T (0.52%) 1850: 1.85T (0.93%) 1870: 2.35T (1.2%) 1900: 4.19T (2.9%) (skipping a bunch because it's pretty high res now) 2000: 68.44 (2.8%) There are periods of faster and slower growth in those years -- most evidently, growth slowed between 1940 and 1950 for geopolitical reasons -- but that's at least the average. There is clearly something interesting going on between 1700 and 1900, with the significantly positive second derivative. However, that interesting thing is called the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution fits the article's narrative pretty well, and it's probably safe to assume their readers are aware of it. I don't know why they went this route rather than just pointing to the industrial revolution as evidence.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  In the past, more than today, a lot of material benefits to people were provided via baked in social relations and other ways of life, and not via monetary exchange. For example, paying someone to take care of your kids is not something that happened when extended families lived with each. This was not included in past (or today's gdp). Similarly, if you grow part of your own food, then that's not included in the gdp. Past estimates of GDP largely only account for monetary exchanges, and not for stuff like the above. So they grossly underestimate how "wealthy" people were. I have seen several recent papers that try to correct for this.

jawns 2y ago

If "Why do people believe true things?" tickles your brain, wait until you try "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Especially once you go beyond the surface-level responses that try to rely on things like particle physics. It is fundamentally a philosophical question, not a science question.

thfuran 2y ago
[flagged]
anotherape 2y ago
Would love some references for that to get started. The question must touch on the nature of intelligence and conscious experience. How that connects to mathematics (and why even mathematics!)
- card_zero 2y ago
  If you want to look it up on Wikipedia, the relevant page is "Why is there anything at all?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_is_there_anything_at_all%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_is_there_anything_at_all%3...
  - lelandfe 2y ago
    > No experiment could support the hypothesis "There is nothing" because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer Fun article, reminds me of how much I enjoyed philosophy classes in undergrad

memtet 2y ago

[dead]

kkfx 2y ago

Ancient Greek's have two separate world for "knowledge": doxa and gnosis. Doxa is the practical, notional ability of doing things, gnosis is the understatement of things. Today schools push doxa and try to their best to avoid gnosis and even speculation about gnosis. They form useful idiots https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-usef... or Ford-model stereotypical workers, not acculturated citizens. As a result modern society is practically ignorant as the middle-age societies, only most does not know that because they think knowledge is only doxa.

woopsn 2y ago

What more is there to say than philosophy, the social sciences, life sciences, computer science and mathematics, education and journalism schools have said about this already. Modern media culture has been well characterized since the 60s - "we are back in the acoustic space of tribal pre-literate society".

mistermann 2y ago
"Based on our extensive academic knowledge, what actions could be taken to substantially moderate the problems humanity experiences from our shortcomings in this area?" is physically possible to say, but it may not be metaphysically possible (to say, and follow up on).

Xen9 2y ago

Humans probably believe in true things because lack of conception of logic would lead to cognitive retardation. It is also possible to say that it is impossible to not to believe in true things, because belief may be a definition of the truth. Finally, truth may not really be related to belief at all very directly: for example Bayesian, quantum, fuzzy logics can have somewhat strange conceptions of truth—modelling quantum phenomena gets even stranger. Yet the most interesting interpretation of truth is not, unlike many of our times would like to have believed (!!!), related to Gödel but Embeddes Agency which models the behaviour of an agent under various environments.