From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Fri Aug 17 2001 - 11:34:53 MDT
lcorbin@tsoft.com ("Lee Corbin") writes:
>Peter C. McCluskey writes
>> I believe it normally does follow that you should do so (i.e. increase
>> your estimate of the probability that God exists).
>
>There are some issues about which I would agree with you: if more people
>came to believe that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy, or if more began
>to believe that it was hazardous to use airplanes, or if more people came
>to doubt the Many-Worlds interpretation, then I might be swayed.
>
>But on other issues, I wouldn't be swayed (and on many issues, neither
>would you).
There may well be issues on which I ignore some people's opinions, but
I don't think I should believe I am motivated by a desire to find the
truth on those issues.
> For me, it wouldn't matter whether ten people believe in
>UFOs or ten million do: my total "web of belief" about the supposed
>reality of UFOs together with my beliefs about how gullible people are
>concerning these issues that the skeptics routinely discuss, preclude
>me from being influenced.
Your reasoning here appears to be of the type that produces only probabalistic
estimates, and the hypothesis that some UFO reports represent real alien
contact does not appear to be an issue on which certainty is currently
possible, so I am fairly confident that your certainty is strong evidence
that you are not a truth-seeker on this issue.
>It's very difficult to explain. One's understanding of the world arises
>from a vast, vast number of impressions. According to pan-critical rationalism,
>which I also believe, most of one's beliefs have in essense "stood the test
>of time".
Standing the test of time says useful things about the probability of a
belief being wrong and about the expected harm associated with such errors,
but I don't understand how a truth-seeker could derive certainty from that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter McCluskey | Free Dmitry Sklyarov! http://www.freesklyarov.org/
http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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