[ExI] Belief in maths (was mind body dualism)

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Wed Jul 7 02:30:11 UTC 2010


2010/7/6 samantha <sjatkins at mac.com>

> What, you wait till you can take a physical trip yourself rather than claim
> maker to provide evidence?   In the meantime you do not believe this,
> right?  Is this a matter of mere faith or of applied rationality?
>
>
Apparently I have very little power to express a simple idea.  My original
assertion is that certainty that something does not exist based on the fact
that it has not been proven to exist is unfounded.  I agree that gravity has
reliably proven to explain falling at every occurrence.  I suggested the 99
throws of heads being suspicious because we're already familiar with the 1/2
probability of outcome on a fair coin.  Without a-priori knowledge of this
distribution, how do we determine whether the coin is fair or not based on
the only 99 observations being heads?  A model of coin flipping "yields
heads" was reinforced 96 times after the first 3 observations.  From that
model, there seems to be a consensus that "yields tales" is so absurd that
it should be discounted and those to posit any outcome other than heads is a
heretic.

In the example of dragons on Titan I suggest that Ben's opinion may be
informed by heresy, informed by experience and observation or informed by
speculation on universal dragon distribution.  Regardless, I accept the
truth of his statement with some modifier based on my trust in Ben:  is he
selling vacation packages to Titan?  Has he repeatedly tried to kill me by
asserting things such as 'there are no Lions in the Serengeti'?  Is he an
expert on dragons or on Titan?  These factors are considered when assessing
whether or not I should act upon the statement regarding dragons on Titan.
This conversation started regarding the existence of psi and our ability to
detect psi (or not) from statistical noise.  I posit that there are enough
opinions suggesting that it does exist to counter the opinions suggesting
that it does not exist that I will remain skeptical and reserve judgment.  I
feel like standing on either side of uncertainty requires a conviction that
I do not possess.

Comparing the [non-]existence of psi with either gravity or dragons seems to
have taken the analogy too far.

You called my coin-flip example a false analogy.  Maybe I did a better job
above.  Otherwise I must withdraw that example.  Hopefully the second
paragraph of this post was clear enough.

re: mere faith or applied rationality.  How does one know they have applied
rationality?  All wordplay aside, what method does one use to verify the
integrity of their own rationality?  If rationality is flawed, would the
rationality checker also be flawed?  To the extent that I believe myself to
be rational, I assert that I am so.  To the extent that we are in agreement
regarding my rationality, does this shared position certify rationality or
belief?
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