People trying to convert you...

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My problem with that is two fold.

1) In most cases, you're probably wrong anyway. There's an 80% failure rate in R&D, and that's amongst people who are degreed professionals who are being paid to make these things work in order for their company to be successful (and pay their salary). They have every incentive to get it right, and they don't but 1-in-5 times... and companies that are smart about R&D actually get concerned if the department's failure rate drops below 80% because that's the only way to get the good ideas. If most of your stuff works, then you're not really doing anything interesting (or more importantly innovative). And science is constantly overturned... and not just little stuff, big stuff... Check out Learned Optimism (the history of cognitive therapy and how it overturned traditional behaviorism), or Bell's Theorem (non-locality). Yes, you can be right... just not as often as you think. If you think you're right most of the time, you're dead wrong. But you're basically built to be that way -- built-in human biases, overconfidence in particular lead to a "base rate fallacy" in which you insist that, "although most people are wrong most of the time, I'm right most of the time". It's not true. It's a base rate fallacy. That's just the way we're wired to think. Also check out the Wason Selection Task.

2) Often having an accurate belief is actually detrimental, whereas having an inaccurate yet optimistic belief is actually beneficial. There's a huge amount of research in cognitive science that supports this. Check out Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism and Richard Wiseman's the Luck Factor for some very down-to-earth science on this.

So, since I'm not very likely to be tremendously accurate in the first place, I'd rather focus on being happy and successful in life than worry only about being accurate and ultimately likely fail at all 3 (accuracy, happiness and success). Happiness and success are far more achievable than accuracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconfidence_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task

This does not mean that I don't strive for accuracy. I just don't obsess about it. It's not "the only thing" that's important to me, because I know it's ultimately not really that achievable anyway. So I give everything my best shot and when it turns out that I'm wrong or I've misinterpreted something, then since I haven't invested all my self-worth in being correct, I can allow myself to be wrong and it's all okay. I can change my mind more easily because I don't have to deal with as much endowment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect

Of course, I still get endowed, but it's easier to get past it when I've accepted that being wrong much of the time is just part of life. I don't have to save face because I accepted up-front that I might have been wrong.

Hmm. While I disagree with many of your references or applications thereof, I understand your perspective. However I do not share it. Besides, belief in something that I know is most likely to be untrue is something that would give me more negativity than benefit - but perhaps I may be unique in that aspect.

ike, your perspective is realistic and mature. However, it is also dead depressing and causes me great anguish. It is nothing I did not already know, but I still am unable to come to terms with those realities.

Humans have a psychological need to act on true beliefs- hence cognitive dissonance to reconcile discrepancy between belief and action. If you just "play along" for a while and act as though you believed something to be a certain way, you would gradually find yourself to in fact believe those things.

That's fine. I can agree to disagree...

I'm not sure that I explained it very well though, because I didn't give any specific examples.

Good example (I hope):

Over 90% of people with Asperger Syndrome experience severe and ongoing depression and social isolation. So given that, a realistic view would be to say that "there's little or no hope" that as an individual I would be able to be a social person or live without severe and ongoing depression as a result of this condition.

I have several options. Here are the two most obvious (and I admit this is a fallacy of the excluded middle, I'm just using it as an example of concept):

1) I can take a realistic view that "there is little or no hope".

2) I can say "oh, I don't have to live with depression"

The realistic view (1) is probably true... however, there is scientific proof that the realistic view will dramatically deteriorate not only my happiness, but also my physical health and even my brain function... I'll be less "intelligent" (in terms of IQ score) if I take a realistic view because depression inhibits neurogenesis in the hippocampus and a realistic view will guarantee that I will be more depressed (see self-fulfilling prophecy). The realistic view actually bends the reality of the situation in such a way that the result is much worse than the realistic view anticipated -- the realistic view anticipates ongoing depression, but the realistic view also makes that depression much worse than it otherwise would be. So the end result is that the realistic view is actually still unrealistic because it hasn't anticipated the effects the "realistic" view.

The optimistic view (2) on the other hand is probably a base rate fallacy. However, even though I may ultimately still suffer from depression, I will have a lot less depression simply because I've chosen the optimistic view. Over time this means that because I suffer less depression, I will not only be happier, but also have better physical health and be smarter.

So that's the reason why I value results more than "realism".

But if you do value nothing other than "truth", I'd recommend that you stay away from cognitive science, because it's likely to depress the hell out of you. There are a small handful of cognitive science studies that show things that are positive and cool, like the "broaden and build" model... but by and large, most of cognitive science basically just proves that humans aren't very objective, no matter how much we try or how much education we have or how much science we study (I don't know why, but I want to make an analogy here to the fact that we notice relative variability more than absolute values). Stephen Hawking is likely just as susceptible to base rate fallacy as everyone else.

Last edited by ike on 11 Jan 2009, 9:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I see where your coming from, and that's really why I'm still agnostic about a lot of things. I don't know what started the universe, and I've come to the conclusion it's impossible to know. We can make guesses based on good logic and such but we cannot be assured we're absolutely correct. Things I can't explain I prefer to just go with the answer "I don't know" rather than coming up with another answer to satisfy myself with that is utter nonsense, such as God. Although I do find it interesting to speculate and such, and ponder upon these often large questions, I do not think we can ever truly solve them. By we I'm not referring to scientists, I'm saying in general no one possesses mental powers I do not and therefore I do not see how anyone else actually can have the answers to these impossible to answer questions. That's my true opinion on it.


Unfortunately I find myself unable to believe things that I can't see as plausible. It doesn't mean I cannot be optimistic about life though.


Yuss.

Aspie-tweak. "no one possesses mental powers I do not" -- meaning "no one is omniscient", since, we can actually quantify and measure certain specific mental powers and see that some people have abilities that others don't, particularly such noticeable things as savant talents... I'm not a lightning calculator for example, or I don't have any special talent for mental calendaring like many of us do... but I realize that wasn't what you were getting at, I was just thinking about how a lot of us might literally interpret the way you phrased that.

It seems to me that, in addition, asking for evidence of their "Right-ness" or any other claim they make is also perceived as a personal attack against them.

Its a personal attack against your beliefs when they say
your wrong! your going to hell

Is atheism a belief or a lack thereof? If you have no beliefs, how can you be wrong?

sigh
i am a neopagan
or wiccan if you will
that's a real religion with real practices
eg marriage, death ceremonies, writings, deities
i am not an atheist

My mistake, then.

yeah-i have a religion i hold dear and i believe in
and don't appreciate people telling me i am evil and a horrible souless person
doesn't sit well

I thought when you sold your soul you were supposed to get fame and fortune in exchange... y'know, like in the movie Oh God You Devil. So if pagans are supposed to be soulless, how come most of the pagans I know are struggling financially?

No, that wouldn't sit well with anyone. Unless "evil, horrible, soulless" is what they're going for.

For the record, I have no evidence of my "Right-ness" other than the values and principles by which I live.

Because they're just ordinary people.

Call me crazy, but I think everybody has a soul even if they expressly believe otherwise.

I believe everything has a soul
and hold that true, myself