Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorpheusSandman
An experience itself is not evidence alone for any cause. It is only evidence for a cause if an experience can happen differently if the supposed cause is removed, or if other variables and possible causes, are eliminated. If I see a tree, it is not evidence that an alien placed it there, especially when we have plenty of evidence of trees growing when there's a combination of seed, light, soil, and water, and no evidence that trees are planted by aliens. Similarly, if someone has a "religious experience," this is not evidence for the truth of religion, especially given that people can have similar experiences without it being related to religion at all.
This article explains it quite clearly.
Here's a quote from the Yudkowsky blog you cited (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl/what_is_evidence/):
This is why rationalists put such a heavy premium on the paradoxical-seeming claim that a belief is only really worthwhile if you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise.
I agree with that statement. For example, many worlds, which this author promotes, is that kind of belief. There is nothing about it that could refute it.
Whether some religious reality underlies a religious experience might be similar, however, the experience still exists and needs to be accounted for. Most people want to know what is actually the case. They don't want any explanation, no matter how simplistic. They want the truth. They don't want an explanation that fits someone's metaphysics, religious or otherwise. They want the truth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorpheusSandman
Again, it has nothing to do with metaphysics.
It is all about metaphysics. Here's another quote from Yudkowsky, same link:
If what you believe doesn't depend on what you see, you've been blinded as effectively as by poking out your eyeballs.
Again, I agree with him although I don't support his metaphysics. What we see is the religious experience in others. We also have our own experiences, specifically religious or otherwise. That is the evidence. The metaphysics comes in when we think we have an explanation for the evidence when all we are doing is trying to keep our metaphysics afloat.
By the way, Yudkowsky should apply what he says to his own belief in many worlds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorpheusSandman
If I propose the "cause" of a tree to be a combination of seed, soil, light, and water, I can "test" this propose cause by removing any of these elements and see if a tree grows. If a tree doesn't grow, then it's good evidence that the "cause" of a tree is dependent on those factors. If I say "the cause of a tree is seed, soil, light, water, and love," then I can test that by simply removing the "love" part and see if a tree grows. What's more, even if we knew nothing of how trees grew, we should automatically prefer the non-love version of this because it's simpler (that's Occam's razor). Taking it back to this case, saying that such an experience happens because of how a brain is programmed fits the given evidence and is far simpler than saying that it happens because of how a brain is programmed by some divine being, especially when the latter can't account for non-religious versions of such experiences.
One automatically prefers the truth unless one has a preconceived metaphysics that one has to support.
If simplicity is all that counts then believing that the universe is a deterministic simulation is simpler. However, since the universe is not deterministic, and therefore not computable, such simulations aren't possible. But that doesn't stop some people from believing in the impossible.
Who do you think programmed the brain? You believe in many worlds, so evolution, or more specifically natural selection, doesn't work. Did some clock-maker deity design these deterministic many worlds?
On the other hand, I am not saying that the brain was programmed at all. The brain was not programmed because we are organisms not machines. There is no programming required. However, that doesn't mean there aren't influences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MorpheusSandman
All of these statements are just naked conjecture on your part. How in the world would you know what a deterministic machine would or wouldn't experience and how, if it all, it would be different from what we experience? I'm not talking about, say, how a sewing machine would "experience" anything, but how an AI programmed with a 1:1 digital cognition to our own would "experience" anything.
How do you know such a machine experiences anything? That sounds like a "naked conjecture".
