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Curiously, as someone who is religious, I read his article and thought after a couple of arguments "Huh, I guess burning wood is dangerous. Won't be using a fi

Curiously, as someone who is religious, I read his article and thought after a couple of arguments "Huh, I guess burning wood is dangerous. Won't be using a fireplace anytime soon". Now, I didn't bother to check any of his facts myself, but I'm confident he probably got them correct. I guess my point is that, despite what he seems to assume, not all religious people debate on the basis of "feelings" or "emotions". My belief is the product of many years of debating with myself what the most reasonable explanation for existence is, and my conclusion was God. I'm not going to list my reasons or get into a debate on HN about it, because my point is simply this: it is possible for two rational people to come to different conclusions without the influence of emotions or personal bias.

Udo 14y ago
The point is, it's possible for the same person to be rational about one thing, and irrational about another. In your case, the willingness to accept the health dangers of fireplaces cannot be used to meaningfully demonstrate that your belief in the supernatural must be rational. I think you're right though that irrationality is not necessarily rooted in emotion. There are probably multiple reasons why sometimes malicious memes thrive in brains and no single brain is immune to all of them. That's the price we pay for being cultural and communicative beings. Personally, I think fireplaces are nice, not as a heat source but recreationally. But I know it's irrational ;-)
sold 14y ago
> it is possible for two rational people to come to different conclusions without the influence of emotions or personal bias. Aumann's agreement theorem [1] states this is not the case. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann_agreement_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann_agreement_theorem
- fnayr 14y ago
  Except that that theory requires common knowledge, which certainly is not a correct assumption. What exactly is common knowledge is almost entirely the debate between religion and science.
- wolfhumble 14y ago
  I haven't studied Aumann's agreement theorem, but according to the Wikipedia article it assumes "Bayesian rationalists with common priors". The article goes on to say that "the assumption of common priors is a rather strong one and may not hold in practice", but according to Robin Hansen this is the case when Bayesians adhere to a certain pre-rationality condition: ". . . Bayesians who agree enough about the origins of their priors must have the same priors" [1]. Will Bayesians ALWAYS agree enough about the origins of their priors? [1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11238-006-9004-4#page-1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11238-006-9004-4...
- tunesmith 14y ago
  I can't think of this theorem as anything other than silly. Let's look at what two people might disagree over. It is quite likely a "should" statement, rather than something simply factual. If it were cleanly factual and measurable, they could just devise a test and observe it. So it's probably a "should" statement. A conclusion is derived from premises that logically lead to the conclusion. Those premises are in turn derived from deeper premises, and so on. It's known that there are only three possible outcomes to such an exercise. You either delve to infinity, which is not reasonably acceptable, or you engage in circular reasoning, which is not rational, or you eventually arrive at axioms. The axiomatic approach is the one commonly accepted. The problem is that it is pretty well-accepted that you cannot derive an "ought" statement (a "should" statement) from "is" statements alone. Any "ought" statement is going to partially rely on "ought" premises. And this means that you're eventually going to drill down to "ought" axioms. Blowhards like Sam Harris like to argue otherwise, but really all they are doing about with their "moral science" talk is strenuously arguing that we should accept certain "ought" axioms. They couch it in language such that we should consider these axioms so basic and obvious that they somehow don't become axioms anymore, but that's silly - they are still "ought" axioms. Anyway, the point is that we do not all have the same "ought" axioms. That's what the entire field of philosophy is all about - the different collections of "ought" axioms we accept for ourselves. And since two people can have different "ought" axioms, it is then possible for them to have entire world views that conflict with others, and yet are still internally consistent. In other words, it's possible for two people to come to two different conclusions while still both being perfectly and completely logical, rational, and internally consistent. This thing about different "ought" axioms might be what the theorem means about "different priors", but if so, that would basically make the theorem meaningless - and it seems to be a different meaning than what "common knowledge" implies.
wolfhumble 14y ago
Being Christian and reading the article, I didn't find anything that reflects how I react to questions about my faith. I didn't choose to believe in God because I needed a crutch, a cozy fireplace or imaginary friend on tough days. I choose to believe in Him because He made sense of it all.
- Dove 14y ago
  That was my reaction, too. It has seemed to me historically that Sam Harris' grasp on what "religious" people are like is . . . tenuous. I guess that isn't really surprising, given that he isn't one, but people seem to inexplicably consider him a credible source anyway.

Udo 14y ago

The point is, it's possible for the same person to be rational about one thing, and irrational about another. In your case, the willingness to accept the health dangers of fireplaces cannot be used to meaningfully demonstrate that your belief in the supernatural must be rational. I think you're right though that irrationality is not necessarily rooted in emotion. There are probably multiple reasons why sometimes malicious memes thrive in brains and no single brain is immune to all of them. That's the price we pay for being cultural and communicative beings. Personally, I think fireplaces are nice, not as a heat source but recreationally. But I know it's irrational ;-)

sold 14y ago

> it is possible for two rational people to come to different conclusions without the influence of emotions or personal bias. Aumann's agreement theorem [1] states this is not the case. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann_agreement_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann_agreement_theorem

fnayr 14y ago
Except that that theory requires common knowledge, which certainly is not a correct assumption. What exactly is common knowledge is almost entirely the debate between religion and science.
wolfhumble 14y ago
I haven't studied Aumann's agreement theorem, but according to the Wikipedia article it assumes "Bayesian rationalists with common priors". The article goes on to say that "the assumption of common priors is a rather strong one and may not hold in practice", but according to Robin Hansen this is the case when Bayesians adhere to a certain pre-rationality condition: ". . . Bayesians who agree enough about the origins of their priors must have the same priors" [1]. Will Bayesians ALWAYS agree enough about the origins of their priors? [1] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11238-006-9004-4#page-1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11238-006-9004-4...
tunesmith 14y ago
I can't think of this theorem as anything other than silly. Let's look at what two people might disagree over. It is quite likely a "should" statement, rather than something simply factual. If it were cleanly factual and measurable, they could just devise a test and observe it. So it's probably a "should" statement. A conclusion is derived from premises that logically lead to the conclusion. Those premises are in turn derived from deeper premises, and so on. It's known that there are only three possible outcomes to such an exercise. You either delve to infinity, which is not reasonably acceptable, or you engage in circular reasoning, which is not rational, or you eventually arrive at axioms. The axiomatic approach is the one commonly accepted. The problem is that it is pretty well-accepted that you cannot derive an "ought" statement (a "should" statement) from "is" statements alone. Any "ought" statement is going to partially rely on "ought" premises. And this means that you're eventually going to drill down to "ought" axioms. Blowhards like Sam Harris like to argue otherwise, but really all they are doing about with their "moral science" talk is strenuously arguing that we should accept certain "ought" axioms. They couch it in language such that we should consider these axioms so basic and obvious that they somehow don't become axioms anymore, but that's silly - they are still "ought" axioms. Anyway, the point is that we do not all have the same "ought" axioms. That's what the entire field of philosophy is all about - the different collections of "ought" axioms we accept for ourselves. And since two people can have different "ought" axioms, it is then possible for them to have entire world views that conflict with others, and yet are still internally consistent. In other words, it's possible for two people to come to two different conclusions while still both being perfectly and completely logical, rational, and internally consistent. This thing about different "ought" axioms might be what the theorem means about "different priors", but if so, that would basically make the theorem meaningless - and it seems to be a different meaning than what "common knowledge" implies.

wolfhumble 14y ago

Being Christian and reading the article, I didn't find anything that reflects how I react to questions about my faith. I didn't choose to believe in God because I needed a crutch, a cozy fireplace or imaginary friend on tough days. I choose to believe in Him because He made sense of it all.

Dove 14y ago
That was my reaction, too. It has seemed to me historically that Sam Harris' grasp on what "religious" people are like is . . . tenuous. I guess that isn't really surprising, given that he isn't one, but people seem to inexplicably consider him a credible source anyway.