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On the role of experts in creating personal belief systems.

Started by Kai, December 17, 2012, 12:07:49 AM

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LMNO

I was going to post about what people were "experts" in with regards to the OP.  That is, the priest is an expert in the internal game rules of a lifestyle based upon a book.  The scientist is an expert in observing and predicting the behavior of the universe.  So, I wouldn't rely on the priest to tell me about the nature of the universe, and I wouldn't trust the scientist to tell me how any particular God wants me to behave.

But then Cain's post just kind of blew me away.  Nicely put, sir.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I really liked your post, Cain, but I also want to point out the great divide between social science and physical science. Economics is a social science, and a relatively new one at that, with a lot of room for error. I have to admit that even as a budding social scientist myself, I don't think of social sciences when I think "scientific method", simply because they're still too wiggly.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cain

Sure.

But the existence of academic cartels even within the hard sciences, and these cartels being aligned with media personalities and end up promoting the same mediocrity seen within the social sciences isn't too impossible.  There would be more pushback, because the facts are more readily available, but they are mostly unaccessible to those outside of those sciences because they don't have the necessary background or training to fully understand the terms of the debate.

Not to mention even scientists can fall prey to hearing something and internalizing it without actually verifying it first.  The placebo effect, for example, was widely believed to have an effect on 1/3 patients.  This number was based off a single experiment done in the 1950s, which was then repeatedly cited by the academic community without it actually being verified.  Two large-scale meta-experiments showed that this number was....a little optimistic, to put it mildly.  But the number is still cited to this day, especially in the media.

P3nT4gR4m

belief = trap.

OP illustrates this perfectly but still nobody noticed. Instead the impetus is - "well if I can't trust experts where should I get my beliefs from?"

Wrong question!

Beliefs aren't something you should be collecting. They're dumb fucking shit that you should be purging. Hunt them down. Annihilate them. Replace them with models that may be upgraded given better information.

Even fucking science, which does it's best not to be a belief system, suffers because of this innate human obsession with believing things. A theory gets made and tested and proven and this is good. Then another theory is piggybacked or dovetailed into that first one. Repeat a couple of times and suddenly everyone starts believing in the original theory and, at that point it's just as likely to hinder progress as to assist. This is a thorn in the side of an otherwise really good system.



I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
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walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 19, 2012, 03:03:35 PM
belief = trap.

OP illustrates this perfectly but still nobody noticed. Instead the impetus is - "well if I can't trust experts where should I get my beliefs from?"

Wrong question!

Beliefs aren't something you should be collecting. They're dumb fucking shit that you should be purging. Hunt them down. Annihilate them. Replace them with models that may be upgraded given better information.

Even fucking science, which does it's best not to be a belief system, suffers because of this innate human obsession with believing things. A theory gets made and tested and proven and this is good. Then another theory is piggybacked or dovetailed into that first one. Repeat a couple of times and suddenly everyone starts believing in the original theory and, at that point it's just as likely to hinder progress as to assist. This is a thorn in the side of an otherwise really good system.

Well, there's beliefs and there's beliefs.  It is absolutely impossible not to gather and maintain some amount of beliefs. 

There's even a place for them in physics.  For example, the math is quite clear on what happens inside the event horizon of a black hole...But you can't LOOK to verify your model.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 04:04:23 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 19, 2012, 03:03:35 PM
belief = trap.

OP illustrates this perfectly but still nobody noticed. Instead the impetus is - "well if I can't trust experts where should I get my beliefs from?"

Wrong question!

Beliefs aren't something you should be collecting. They're dumb fucking shit that you should be purging. Hunt them down. Annihilate them. Replace them with models that may be upgraded given better information.

Even fucking science, which does it's best not to be a belief system, suffers because of this innate human obsession with believing things. A theory gets made and tested and proven and this is good. Then another theory is piggybacked or dovetailed into that first one. Repeat a couple of times and suddenly everyone starts believing in the original theory and, at that point it's just as likely to hinder progress as to assist. This is a thorn in the side of an otherwise really good system.

Well, there's beliefs and there's beliefs.  It is absolutely impossible not to gather and maintain some amount of beliefs. 

There's even a place for them in physics.  For example, the math is quite clear on what happens inside the event horizon of a black hole...But you can't LOOK to verify your model.

I tend to downgrade ideological beliefs (things are wrong, etc..) to opinions. Makes it easier for me to deal with people believing the opposite. I'm much more open to changing an opinion. My brain seems to be hardwired to protect beliefs on a whole other level which is why, if I find one lurking in the quagmire of bizarre and disturbing shit that comprises my psyche, I put my efforts into destroying it completely, rather than pointing it somewhere different and, potentially,  also wrong.

Sciency stuff I don't tend to think of as believing, either. In the absence of an alternative explanation it's how it seems. Historically, some of the coolest science things have happened by challenging a scientific "belief" and finding a better way of doing it. Science seems to happen whether I believe it's for one reason or another. Some explanations lead to cool shit like internet and tide prediction. I don't need to believe in these for them to be useful.

The only thing I tend to believe or disbelieve is people telling me things where I need to make an informed decision as to whether they're lying or not.


I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Cain on December 19, 2012, 09:39:04 AM
Sure.

But the existence of academic cartels even within the hard sciences, and these cartels being aligned with media personalities and end up promoting the same mediocrity seen within the social sciences isn't too impossible.  There would be more pushback, because the facts are more readily available, but they are mostly unaccessible to those outside of those sciences because they don't have the necessary background or training to fully understand the terms of the debate.

Not to mention even scientists can fall prey to hearing something and internalizing it without actually verifying it first.  The placebo effect, for example, was widely believed to have an effect on 1/3 patients.  This number was based off a single experiment done in the 1950s, which was then repeatedly cited by the academic community without it actually being verified.  Two large-scale meta-experiments showed that this number was....a little optimistic, to put it mildly.  But the number is still cited to this day, especially in the media.

That's also true. Or shit like the Bering Land Bridge, which is a complete nonsense hypothesis with no foundation and yet is STILL widely believed to be true. The problem is, there is so much information available and we have to sort it somehow, and the alternative to NOT believing what you read or hear is to not learn.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 19, 2012, 03:03:35 PM
belief = trap.

OP illustrates this perfectly but still nobody noticed. Instead the impetus is - "well if I can't trust experts where should I get my beliefs from?"

Wrong question!

Beliefs aren't something you should be collecting. They're dumb fucking shit that you should be purging. Hunt them down. Annihilate them. Replace them with models that may be upgraded given better information.

Even fucking science, which does it's best not to be a belief system, suffers because of this innate human obsession with believing things. A theory gets made and tested and proven and this is good. Then another theory is piggybacked or dovetailed into that first one. Repeat a couple of times and suddenly everyone starts believing in the original theory and, at that point it's just as likely to hinder progress as to assist. This is a thorn in the side of an otherwise really good system.

I think we may be having semantic difficulties here with the definition of the word "belief". If you go around not believing anything all the time, you can't learn.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:47:11 PM
That's also true. Or shit like the Bering Land Bridge, which is a complete nonsense hypothesis with no foundation and yet is STILL widely believed to be true.

Clovis man took Jet Blue, maybe?   :?

Not arguing the point, really, I just never knew it was even in question, let alone being absolute crap.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 04:04:23 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on December 19, 2012, 03:03:35 PM
belief = trap.

OP illustrates this perfectly but still nobody noticed. Instead the impetus is - "well if I can't trust experts where should I get my beliefs from?"

Wrong question!

Beliefs aren't something you should be collecting. They're dumb fucking shit that you should be purging. Hunt them down. Annihilate them. Replace them with models that may be upgraded given better information.

Even fucking science, which does it's best not to be a belief system, suffers because of this innate human obsession with believing things. A theory gets made and tested and proven and this is good. Then another theory is piggybacked or dovetailed into that first one. Repeat a couple of times and suddenly everyone starts believing in the original theory and, at that point it's just as likely to hinder progress as to assist. This is a thorn in the side of an otherwise really good system.

Well, there's beliefs and there's beliefs.  It is absolutely impossible not to gather and maintain some amount of beliefs. 

There's even a place for them in physics.  For example, the math is quite clear on what happens inside the event horizon of a black hole...But you can't LOOK to verify your model.

I would argue that there's faith and there's beliefs. Belief is based on something, even if it's just the word of an expert. Faith isn't based on anything, that's why it's faith.

People around here like to use the word "belief" a lot when the correct word for the phenomenon they are describing is "faith".
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 05:49:30 PM
Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:47:11 PM
That's also true. Or shit like the Bering Land Bridge, which is a complete nonsense hypothesis with no foundation and yet is STILL widely believed to be true.

Clovis man took Jet Blue, maybe?   :?

Not arguing the point, really, I just never knew it was even in question, let alone being absolute crap.

Evidence points to boats, and to the settlement happening from south to north, not north to south. The mental acrobatics indulged in by people trying to defend the land bridge theory has been amusing... "well, the oldest settlements are way down south because.... um... because they came across the land bridge and walked to Central America, and then turned around and started forming settlements as they migrated back northward".

Clovis is so not at all the oldest known settlement anymore, either.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Anna Mae Bollocks

Yep, boats.

They've found ancient Japanese pottery in South America, and there's evidence that some Australian Aborigines may have settled in Tierra del Fuego before the Ice Age.
Scantily-Clad Inspector of Gigantic and Unnecessary Cashews, Texas Division

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: TEXAS FAIRIES FOR ALL YOU SPAGS on December 19, 2012, 05:56:32 PM
Yep, boats.

They've found ancient Japanese pottery in South America, and there's evidence that some Australian Aborigines may have settled in Tierra del Fuego before the Ice Age.

Yeah, one thing that's interesting that I've been reading is that there hasn't really been much archaeological exploration in South America, for various reasons including the assumption that there's nothing of archaeological interest there. It's nice to hear that researchers are finally giving it more exploration.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:53:32 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 05:49:30 PM
Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:47:11 PM
That's also true. Or shit like the Bering Land Bridge, which is a complete nonsense hypothesis with no foundation and yet is STILL widely believed to be true.

Clovis man took Jet Blue, maybe?   :?

Not arguing the point, really, I just never knew it was even in question, let alone being absolute crap.

Evidence points to boats, and to the settlement happening from south to north, not north to south. The mental acrobatics indulged in by people trying to defend the land bridge theory has been amusing... "well, the oldest settlements are way down south because.... um... because they came across the land bridge and walked to Central America, and then turned around and started forming settlements as they migrated back northward".

Clovis is so not at all the oldest known settlement anymore, either.

Ah.  I stopped following that sort of thing a while back, after the whole brouhaha with the Kennewick Man.  The fact that it went from "amazing and interesting archeological find" to "ridiculous 9 year long political football" sort of completely turned me off of the whole thing.

Funny thing is, he was apparently (most likely) Polynesian, and showed up in Washington State, which is evidence aplenty of widespread boat use as early as 7600 BCE.

Also, I checked wikipedia, and they're pretty sure the landbridge itself did occur:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_land_bridge
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 06:02:37 PM
Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:53:32 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on December 19, 2012, 05:49:30 PM
Quote from: hølist on December 19, 2012, 05:47:11 PM
That's also true. Or shit like the Bering Land Bridge, which is a complete nonsense hypothesis with no foundation and yet is STILL widely believed to be true.

Clovis man took Jet Blue, maybe?   :?

Not arguing the point, really, I just never knew it was even in question, let alone being absolute crap.

Evidence points to boats, and to the settlement happening from south to north, not north to south. The mental acrobatics indulged in by people trying to defend the land bridge theory has been amusing... "well, the oldest settlements are way down south because.... um... because they came across the land bridge and walked to Central America, and then turned around and started forming settlements as they migrated back northward".

Clovis is so not at all the oldest known settlement anymore, either.

Ah.  I stopped following that sort of thing a while back, after the whole brouhaha with the Kennewick Man.  The fact that it went from "amazing and interesting archeological find" to "ridiculous 9 year long political football" sort of completely turned me off of the whole thing.

Funny thing is, he was apparently (most likely) Polynesian, and showed up in Washington State, which is evidence aplenty of widespread boat use as early as 7600 BCE.

Also, I checked wikipedia, and they're pretty sure the landbridge itself did occur:

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

Wikipedia? Dude. C'mon.

Anyway, the land bridge may indeed have occurred, but the evidence is against it being the conduit for human settlement of the Americas.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."