Richard Dawkins says maybe it is better if AGI replaces humans!

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ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
Sheldon said:

Sheldon said:

"1.) You need not pretend that I said that all beliefs are non evidenced."

Not once have I said this, and again I shall let others point out that you are shameless liar.

"2.) However, that some beliefs are well evidenced, does not remove that belief generally permits evidence ignorance."

Straw man as I have never claimed otherwise. All I have said is that beliefs are an essential component in how we use our cognitive ability to interact with the world, we can no more expunge these than we can stop breathing. All we can do is educate children to think critically and strive believe only ideas and claims that properly evidenced. An ability you clearly lack, given the bilge you have posted here.

Why did you then cite that "not all beliefs are non-evidenced"? Whose remark was that remark of yours attempting to negate, if not mine?

Randomhero1982's picture
Fuck me, you still churning

Fuck me, you still churning out the same old bollocks?!

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
Sheldon said:

Sheldon said:

Science does insist that things be properly evidenced before we believe they are true. Your website claims such beliefs are redundant though. I shall leave it to others to assess if such a claim adds anything to scientific methods, but I heartily disagree. A better approach as i have been saying is to highlight the need for proper evidence for all beliefs.

1.) Yes, my website underlines that beliefs falling on evidence are redundant, as evidence may persists regardless of belief.

2.) Yes, we could venture to re-establish belief, since it is already named to generally facilitate evidence ignorance, as the concept is now science-contrasting.

3.) Alternatively, new concepts or labels may be established, as is typically done in reality.

Randomhero1982's picture
And that is your belief.

And that is your belief.

Sheldon's picture
Belief is not science

Belief is not science contrasting, only ***some beliefs** or beliefs that are not properly evidenced and so are by definition unscientific. Can you really be this obtuse so as to not understand the word has a nuanced meaning? It's theists who always do this and insist atheists also hold beliefs, as if these must be the same as unevidenced religious beliefs.

"Alternatively, new concepts or labels may be established, as is typically done in reality."

You could invent a new language that had no concept of beliefs that are not properly evidenced, the problem is what you are claiming is an absurd oversimplification.

Sheldon's picture
"1.) Yes, my website

"1.) Yes, my website underlines that beliefs falling on evidence are redundant, as evidence may persists regardless of belief."

So will you stop believing such scientific facts? Or will you simply extirpate the word belief from your vocabulary and invent a new word for believing them? You'll have to call your bizarre idea of non-beliefism something else as well.

Christ on a bike....

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
The BlindWatchmaker said:

The BlindWatchmaker said:

The fallacy merry-go-round continues.. truly unbelievable.

Straw-man of Sheldon's points of view and wanting others to keep sharing links to your multiple mistakes, take a look for yourself!

Even a lay person with a thin grasp of debating/logical argument would find many of your post as laughable.

You talk a lot about evidence and never offer any of your own, simply hypothesis that rely on hypothesis which are unproven.

Your even trying to push a model that requires supersymmetry which has failed every test it has been involved in, and has no evidence to support it.

But alas, I'm sure you'll continue to spam your way around the internet, like on the numerous of others that you have posted this same drivel.. funnily enough, they haven't been bought on other sites either.

1.) I constantly offer scientific evidence/URLs in my responses. (Ironically contrary to your expressions, which tend to largely consist of non evidenced blather.)

2.) So you claim there is no scientific evidence wrt the mathematics of supersymmetry. Why?

Sheldon's picture
linking url's that

linking url's that regurgitate your ideas is not scientific evidence. Have your bizarre ideas about jettisoning the word belief from the English language been published in any worthy scientific journals and peer reviewed? LINK THOSE FOR US PLEASE.

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
Sheldon said:

Sheldon said:

linking url's that regurgitate your ideas is not scientific evidence. Have your bizarre ideas about jettisoning the word belief from the English language been published in any worthy scientific journals and peer reviewed? LINK THOSE FOR US PLEASE

See the references on the website.

Sheldon's picture
Read my post to see why that

Read my post to see why that is irrelevant.

TheBlindWatchmaker's picture
Use scientific evidence very

Use scientific evidence very loosely!! And I have offered evidence on numerous occasions, especially when you have misquoted me or misrepresented my stances, if you are that stupid that you cannot remember then scroll through the forums or go for a CAT scan.

There is no evidence to support supersymmetry, it has failed at every objective level, including at the LHC.

Sheldon's picture
"There is no evidence to

"There is no evidence to support supersymmetry, it has failed at every objective level, including at the LHC."

His command of science on a par with his command of English I'd say, sketchy at best.

I look forward to him petitioning the OED to expunge the word belief. I'd love to see a copy of that request. Or maybe he's going to use one of those pens from the film Men In Black, and remove the word from the minds of every living person?

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
There is no evidence to

Sheldon said:

There is no evidence to support supersymmetry, it has failed at every objective level, including at the LHC.

Is there evidence of stochastic gradient descent/Deep Learning at the LHC?

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
Sheldon said:

Sheldon said:

Well here's my post at the start of the previous page stating plainly that beliefs can be both unevidenced and properly evidenced. So you're lying again, and again I'm happy for others to judge who is being candid here.

Sat, 03/03/2018 - 13:39 (Reply to #57)
I am simply stating the fact that not all beliefs are held without proper evidence.

Why you must tell such blatant lies about what others have posted is not clear.

......
Belief is not science contrasting, only ***some beliefs** or beliefs that are not properly evidenced and so are by definition unscientific. Can you really be this obtuse so as to not understand the word has a nuanced meaning? It's theists who always do this and insist atheists also hold beliefs, as if these must be the same as unevidenced religious beliefs.

You could invent a new language that had no concept of beliefs that are not properly evidenced, the problem is what you are claiming is an absurd oversimplification.

Let's break things down toddler style.

1.) You "simply state" that not all beliefs are held absent proper evidence.

2.) You also ask if some beliefs are held with evidence, "how then can you make the blanket claim that beliefs contrast science?".

3.) In simple words, your mind is still focussing on the reality that some beliefs are evidenced based/science agreeing, but you blatantly ignore that the *concept* of belief is science opposing, as such a concept generally facilitates evidence ignorance.

4.) In even simpler terms, you confuse my expression: "the concept of belief is generally science opposing" with an expression I did not make: "all beliefs are science opposing".

Sheldon's picture
"Let's break things down

"Let's break things down toddler style."

If you think it will help you understand how bizarrely silly your claim is then I'm all for it of course, but I don't hold out much hope I must say.

"1.) You "simply state" that not all beliefs are held absent proper evidence."

No, I simply state that this is axiomatic from the clear dictionary definition, you know the one you keep saying is irrelevant to a discussion about the word you are trying to redefine.
-------------------------
"2.) You also ask if some beliefs are held with evidence, "how then can you make the blanket claim that beliefs contrast science?"."

Yes for once that is precisely what I asked. Now that you claim to have adopted toddler style reasoning perhaps we can expect you to progress to answering the question rather than just restating it?
---------------------------------
"3.) In simple words, your mind is still focussing on the reality that some beliefs are evidenced based/science agreeing,"

Silly me focusing on reality, but no this isn't true, I have clearly stated that the word definition encompasses beliefs held with and without proper evidence, it is you and not me who is trying to dishonestly focus on just the part of the definition that suits your agenda.

" but you blatantly ignore that the *concept* of belief is science opposing, as such a concept generally facilitates evidence ignorance."

No not ignore but rather reject your concept, since in the case of believing scientific facts this wouldn't be true would it ffs? Jesus wept this must be a windup?
------------------------------
"4.) In even simpler terms, you confuse my expression: "the concept of belief is science opposing" with an expression I did not make: "all beliefs are science opposing"."

No I'm not confusing those two expressions at all. Your first claim is a silly generalisation that simply ignores the axiomatic fact that **believing scientific facts** cannot by definition be "science opposing", and the second one is simply a lie you keep repeating about what I have claimed.

This is bizarre, part of me has the uneasy feeling I must have been completely taken in by a master troll?

TheBlindWatchmaker's picture
"This is bizarre, part of me

"This is bizarre, part of me has the uneasy feeling I must have been completely taken in by a master troll?"

Or a king croca-duck

Randomhero1982's picture
Or a total fucking plumb!

Or a total fucking plumb!

Sheldon's picture
The other alternative is that

The other alternative is that we're dealing with the Dunning Kruger effect of course.

TheBlindWatchmaker's picture
Quick, check his IP! Perhaps

Quick, check his IP! Perhaps its located at Cornell university! pah haha!

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
This is one of the funniest

This is one of the funniest threads I have read for ages!
Go Sheldon!!

Tin-Man's picture
Everybody! Sing along!

Everybody! Sing along!

"The wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round.... 'Round and 'round. 'Round and 'round...."

Old man shouts at clouds's picture
@ TM

@ TM
As usual I think only you and I are on the same wavelength here...ROFLMAO

TheBlindWatchmaker's picture
Any peer reviewed papers to

Any peer reviewed papers to back your assertions or any your hypothesis?

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
The Blind said:

The Blind said:
Any peer reviewed papers to back your assertions or any your hypothesis?

As per definition (as cited by Sheldon) and research belief is defined to generally permit ignorance of evidence.

Sheldon's picture
You could just have said no,

You could just have said no, people respect integrity, whereas strident arrogance is generally not so well received.

Have you worked out yet why believing scientific facts can't be science opposing?

Sheldon's picture
Have you actually read any of

Have you actually read any of that article you linked about belief? I'm not sure why you're citing papers that are so obviously at odds with your bizarre claims. Certainly even a cursory reading shows how absurd it is to suggest we could label belief a concept and suggest this 'concept' could be simply abandoned, as you keep claiming. How exactly do we expunge the cognitive processes that enable people to form beliefs, why would we want to anyway since that might well render humans unable to differentiate between true and false claims? The more espouse your idea the less sense it makes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327528/

DEFINING BELIEF
Belief can be defined as the mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of some idea (Schwitzgebel, 2010). According to many analytic philosophers, a belief is a “propositional attitude”: as a proposition, it has a specific meaning that can be expressed in the form of a sentence; as an attitude, it involves a mental stance on the validity of the proposition (Schwitzgebel, 2010). Beliefs thus involve at least two properties: (i) representational content and (ii) assumed veracity (Stephens and Graham, 2004). It is important to note, however, that beliefs need not be conscious or linguistically articulated. It is likely that the majority of beliefs remain unconscious or outside of immediate awareness, and are of relatively mundane content: for example, that one’s senses reveal an environment that is physically real, that one has ongoing relationships with other people, and that one’s actions in the present can bring about outcomes in the future. Beliefs thus typically describe enduring, unquestioned ontological representations of the world and comprise primary convictions about events, causes, agency, and objects that subjects use and accept as veridical.

Although obvious, beliefs are significant because they are held by us to be true and provide the basis for us to understand the world and act within it (Halligan, 2006). Beliefs, or perhaps more realistically belief systems, provide the ‘mental scaffolding’ for appraising the environment, explaining new observations, and constructing a shared meaning of the world (Halligan, 2007). Consider, for example, the fundamental and widespread effects of the transition from Ptolemaic astronomy to Copernican astronomy, from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian physics, or from a miasmatic theory to a germ theory of disease (see Kronemyer and Bystritsky, 2014). In a more immediate sense, beliefs allow us to interpret and appraise our ongoing experience, and to place our experience within a wider meaningful context involving the past and future. As such, beliefs can have significant emotional consequences. Beliefs also provide a basis for action by providing both a representation of the environment and a framework of goals and actions (Tullett et al., 2013). Given this overarching influence of belief on our experience, beliefs that are considered dysfunctional or inaccurate are often the target of psychological interventions (Beck, 1976; Young et al., 2003; Hofmann et al., 2012; Kronemyer and Bystritsky, 2014).

"CHARACTERISTICS AND DIMENSIONS OF BELIEF
Beliefs are best considered as being multidimensional. Beliefs share a number of common properties but can vary across dimensions within these properties. These include the following:

(1)
Beliefs have different origins. Beliefs, for example, can be formed through direct experience or by accepting information from a trusted or authoritative source (Hughes and Sims, 1997; Langdon, 2013).
(2)
Beliefs vary in terms of the level of evidence and support they command. Some beliefs have high levels of evidence, while others appear to be accepted without requiring much evidential support (Lamont, 2007).
(3)
Beliefs can said to be “held” at different levels of awareness. Whereas some beliefs may involve considerable conscious preoccupation and rumination (susceptible to reflective control), other beliefs may appear implicit, unconscious, and only evident by inference from behavior (not susceptible to reflective control; Young et al., 2003).
(4)
Beliefs vary considerably in generality and scope. Beliefs may refer, for example, to specific objects or individuals, groups of objects and people, or whole classes of objects and people (Freeman, 2007).
(5)
Beliefs vary in their degree of personal reference. A belief can be limited to the specific individual holding the belief (e.g., “I am unique”); extend to friends, relatives and other in-group members; or apply to other groups of people or all people equally (Freeman, 2007).
(6)
Beliefs can be held with different levels of conviction or degrees of confidence. This can range from firmly held (e.g., in the case of basic physical laws) to relative uncertainty (e.g., in the case of unfamiliar topics; Peters et al., 2004). In some beliefs, this conviction may even fluctuate over time or across different contexts (Bisiach et al., 1991; Connors and Coltheart, 2011).
(7)
Beliefs vary in their resistance to change in response to counter-evidence and social pressure. While related to conviction, people can also vary in how open they are to disconfirming evidence toward their belief and to considering alternative points of view.
(8)
Beliefs can vary in their impact on cognition and behavior. This may likewise be influenced by degree of conviction. Whereas people may act on some beliefs, they may fail to act on other beliefs that they verbally endorse (Bortolotti, 2013).
(9)
Beliefs can produce different emotional consequences. Whereas some beliefs may be relatively innocuous or even self-serving, other beliefs may cause considerable distress (Beck, 1976).
(10)
Beliefs vary in the degree to which they are shared by other people. Whereas some beliefs are very common, other beliefs may be comparatively unusual (e.g., in the case of some delusions; David, 1999)."

>>>>No, but I'm sure your idea to simply abandon beliefs and for humans to hold a non-belief state is a great idea.

TheBlindWatchmaker's picture
So that is a no, Glad we

So that is a no, Glad we cleared that up.

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
The BlindWatchmaker said:

The BlindWatchmaker said:

So that is a no, Glad we cleared that up.

1.) Yes, the answer is that this is not a hypothesis, for scientific research and dictionary definitions (as cited in my prior response.) show that belief generally permits ignorance of evidence.

2.) Thereafter, whether or not you choose to believe the above is irrelevant, for it obtains regardless of anybody's belief.

3.) Reference: "A cognitive account of belief: a tentative road map"..

Sheldon's picture
ProgrammingGodJordan "3.)

ProgrammingGodJordan "3.) Reference: "A cognitive account of belief: a tentative road map"..

Well since you have linked this paper again let's take another look as it is quite interesting:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327528/

"A FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON BELIEF
First and foremost, beliefs provide a consistent and coherent representation of a subject’s world and the subject’s place within it. Such an intuitively coherent and ever-present framework allows subjects to pursue goals, avoid threats, and regulate their behaviour in response to changes in their environment. This framework is presupposed by other higher-order cognitive functions, such as planning and decision-making, which require beliefs to conceptualise and evaluate the current situation, actions, and consequences. This framework thus provides the basis of action"

Now tell us again why you claim it's a great idea for humans to abandon the entire concept of belief? The pit you're digging is getting deeper by the post. Now that you are offering proper scientific citations your idea is not just obviously absurd, but scientifically speaking absurdly nonsensical. The concept of belief forming is an essential part of how all people interact with the world. What is it you suggest we so lobotomise everyone to achieve your goal of "non-beliefism"?

ProgrammingGodJordan's picture
Sheldon said:

Sheldon said:

ProgrammingGodJordan "3.)
ProgrammingGodJordan "3.) Reference: "A cognitive account of belief: a tentative road map"..

Well since you have linked this paper again let's take another look as it is quite interesting:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327528/

"A FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON BELIEF
First and foremost, beliefs provide a consistent and coherent representation of a subject’s world and the subject’s place within it. Such an intuitively coherent and ever-present framework allows subjects to pursue goals, avoid threats, and regulate their behaviour in response to changes in their environment. This framework is presupposed by other higher-order cognitive functions, such as planning and decision-making, which require beliefs to conceptualise and evaluate the current situation, actions, and consequences. This framework thus provides the basis of action"

Now tell us again why you claim it's a great idea for humans to abandon the entire concept of belief? The pit you're digging is getting deeper by the post. Now that you are offering proper scientific citations your idea is not just obviously absurd, but scientifically speaking absurdly nonsensical. The concept of belief forming is an essential part of how all people interact with the world. What is it you suggest we so lobotomise everyone to achieve your goal of "non-beliefism"?

Yes, let's take another look:
1.) How typical of the believer (I am referring to you). He or she identifies something that may align with his/her opinion, and stops there, not searching for opposing evidence.

2.) Wrt to those introductory descriptions you cited, article also went on to say:

Article further said:
"There is, for example, no philosophical consensus on what belief is (McKay and Dennett, 2009) or even what constitutes a delusion (Spitzer, 1990; David, 1999; Coltheart, 2007)."

3.) Beyond the above, the article went on to say:

Furthermore, the article said:

"Belief evaluation, even in the absence of frank pathology, has several limitations. People tend to adopt non-optimal hypothesis-testing strategies (Evans, 1989; Gilovich, 1991; Johnson-Laird, 2006; Nickerson, 2008). People, for example, tend to seek confirmatory information that supports their belief and be overly influenced by this information, but neglect information that is critical of their belief (Nickerson, 1998, 2008). People may also use inefficient strategies that waste effort on non-diagnostic data (Fischoff and Beyth-Marom, 1983; Evans, 1989; Johnson-Laird, 2006) or focus on heuristics (Kahneman et al., 1982; Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011; Kahneman, 2011; see also Gilovich et al., 2002). Indeed, the heuristic of anchoring and adjustment, which reflects the general tendency to rely on initial judgements and discount newly obtained information, means that knowledge received after the initial judgment may be distorted to fit the original hypothesis. In support of this, there is research suggesting that beliefs may persevere even when the initial evidence for the beliefs is discredited (Ross et al., 1975, 1977; Anderson et al., 1980). As a result of these biases, people can accept beliefs without sufficient evidence and also retain incorrect beliefs longer than would be case if they sought out diagnostic information. The collective impact of these tendencies is that people (i.e., their cognitive systems) are unlikely to seek information that contradicts their proto-belief, so long as the proto-belief is consistent with pre-existing beliefs or satisfies strong emotional drivers."

4.) Oh dear, does the embarrassment cease for you Sheldon?

5.) Advice: You ought to read beyond the introduction!

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