How is this definition of "belief"?

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

"Agenticity"

I like the concept. But if you ever meet that tiger in your videos, you'd better assume he's an agent with an agenda (which might include eating you), rather than assume he's just a mindless, aimless biological machine...

Also I found the example of the geometric shapes a bit disingenuous, in that the persons who produced the animation evidently made it look like the big triangle had some quarrel with the small one. There were real people animating those shapes, and those people did move the shapes with some sort of motive. If the movement of the shapes had been totally random, I guess fewer of the tested people would have been tempted to attribute motives to them, but the experiment would have been more genuine.

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

No, I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing without certainty

The way I see it, we have beliefs because we are subjected to sentience long before we gain any mastery of our own intellect. There is an enormous amount of knowledge needed to understand the world in terms of natural science. But humans have a need to understand the world, at least their world, long before they have the ability to grasp Newton's laws of motion, for instance.

Thor, the god of thunder, served a purpose in old Norse society. It was the story that was told to children when they asked why the sky exploded.

Seems to me the most obvious reason we have beliefs is that parents don't want their children to be afraid.

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@Cyracuz,

Sociologically speaking I agree with you but my take was on another level about the development of our species...rather then saying that believing is stupid we ought to question why so many people have belief systems about almost anything, and how come did they get here without being extinct in the first place...I reason that is the correct approach to understand the problem rather then pushing blame to this or that institution, that's an hobby for politics n layers and similar games of power...not interested in taking any part in that thank you...
So I addressed my approach to criticize the now popular idea that we can purge out believing by attacking religions, as the "great devil" are now religions themselves... go figure atheists talking about great devils, the world is full of irony's...a very naive conception of the problem to say the least...anyway I am so fed up of seeing this beaten to death horse everywhere I couldn't stay still...

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Also I found the example of the geometric shapes a bit disingenuous, in that the persons who produced the animation evidently made it look like the big triangle had some quarrel with the small one. There were real people animating those shapes, and those people did move the shapes with some sort of motive. If the movement of the shapes had been totally random, I guess fewer of the tested people would have been tempted to attribute motives to them, but the experiment would have been more genuine.

I agree with you on this one, they could have achieved a better result making it simpler or through other means like giving the classical child example about the bigger "anything" being always the "mother" of the smaller "something else" for instance...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

The bottom line I derived from the article was: there are situations (like hearing something that sounds like a predator) where it's best to err on the belief side rather than on the doubt side of mental processes -- I suppose you will agree that every human mind has both the innate capacities to believe and to doubt -- because that allows you to make a clear and rapid choice. Doubters can procrastinate, even when the best line of action is rationally obvious.

In my mind, that goes well beyond evolutionary genetics. We all have to make fateful choices once in a while: take a job (or not), marry a girl/boyfriend (or not), procreate (or not)... Not all these choices end up right perhaps, but we'd better keep making choices. Even not making choice is a choice, in any case, so we have no choice but make choices. And sometimes it's just a bet, as Frank says, and sometimes it's stuff that people are genuinly motivated to do. And more often than not, they are motivated because they believe in it, they believe it will work out. And they try to love someone for a few decades, which is a frequent aspiration probably entirely based on illusion. Or they try to be a rock star. And if they fail, they try again, and again until maybe they stop believing in it. But there's no doubt beliefs (political, religious, personal) are powerful and long-term motivators.

Now, motivation or persistence (or commitment) are not always a bad thing to have... What great feat can be achieved without them? What great work of art was ever achieved by a person who doesn't believe in art? Would skeptics have built Venice, where it stands? Would doubters have done the French or American revolutions?

At a higher, systemic level, it's all a Darwinian game: whether it's the economy, or science, or nature: new stuff needs to be tried all the time by individuals for the whole system to work. And they will be many losers and few winners... but we all, from the flower to the tiger to the scientist to the business man to the kid with a garage band, we all keep trying, caught in the illusion (perhaps, but a fruitful, productive one, overall) that it will work out just fine.

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@Olivier5,

Here:

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

To which I replied:

"Yes quick decision making often requires you to straight believe or assume something is true rather then to pounder something might be true a far weaker response...

No, I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing without certainty while relate the problem of mythology's, and not just religious ones, with the problem of symbolic explanations, the use of simplified theoretical generalizations..."

...might I ad now "Agenticity" being one of the possible lot of pattern seeking behaviours !

Fight it as much as you like, but you and I agree on far, far more than we disagree.

Specific points where we disagree:

"quick decision making often requires you to straight believe or assume something is true"

Please demonstrate that necessity. I don't seem to experience it. If you're making a claim that this is universal and unavoidable, then I offer myself as an invalidating example. The school of Pyrrhonism, according to the history books, lasted for hundreds of years and they trained themselves to be free of any beliefs. Sextus Empiricus left detailed instructions, and in my experience to date, they seem to work.

"I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing"

I'm willing to listen, if you'd provide evidence for this assertion.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

An optimistic take on optimism, overall. Thank you, that's exactly what I was driving at.

In short, doubters are losers... ;-)

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@FBM,

I said :

Quote:

"I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing"

You replied :

Quote:

I'm willing to listen, if you'd provide evidence for this assertion.

I (and a bunch of videos back there) did several times...
In life and dead situations where a quick decision is required on which you don't have time for intellectually engaging a problem doubting instead of believing may well land you dead !

From Michael Shermer itself:

Quote:

a type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not; a type II error, or false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is. If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a type II error). Because the cost of making a type I error is less than the cost of making a type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real.

Link: http://www.michaelshermer.com/2009/06/agenticity/

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Again, we agree on more than we disagree.

But this does not demonstrate that beliefs are a necessary element of the human consciousness.

I grew up in a place where there were lots of snakes. If I walked through underbrush and heard a rustling sound, I would jump away in a split second. Without thinking. I didn't have time to believe anything about that particular instance. All I needed was the prior experience of having seen lots of snakes in the area and the knowledge that the likelihood of encountering another one was high. You and Shermer are using the word 'belief' loosely here. Reflexively avoiding dangers in the immediate environment need not be a conscious belief itself nor evidence for one. It's just as accurately, even more so, described as somatic reflex, conditioned by experience.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I said :

Quote:

"I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing"

Hang on a second. Do you equate quick decision-making with belief? Or do you identify it as a precursor to belief? Your sentence seems ambiguous. Earlier, if I recall correctly, I objected to equating quick decision-making with belief itself. If you mean only to say that it is a precursor to belief-making, I'm perfectly fine with that. That may be the root of our mutual minunderstanding.

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@FBM,

By "primitive" I took him to mean something like "presuror". And I accepted it as a plausible speculation (what Frank might consider a 'guess').

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@JLNobody,

Yeah, I'd say that's plausible as a working hypothesis. Cool.

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@FBM,

Quote:

I grew up in a place where there were lots of snakes. If I walked through underbrush and heard a rustling sound, I would jump away in a split second. Without thinking.

A very foolish thing to do. You might as well jump on the snake as away from it if you do that. You know where you stand. You don't know where you will land if you leap without looking.

I am not sure I agree that quick decision making had much to do with how we have beliefs, simply because these kinds of decisions rely on perception, not conception. We act based on our beliefs, we don't believe based on our actions.

1 Reply

@Cyracuz,

Cyracuz wrote:

Quote:
I grew up in a place where there were lots of snakes. If I walked through underbrush and heard a rustling sound, I would jump away in a split second. Without thinking.

A very foolish thing to do. You might as well jump on the snake as away from it if you do that. You know where you stand. You don't know where you will land if you leap without looking.

Possibly. But like I said, it's a thoughtless reaction.

Quote:

I am not sure I agree that quick decision making had much to do with how we have beliefs, simply because these kinds of decisions rely on perception, not conception. We act based on our beliefs, we don't believe based on our actions.

Good point.

1 Reply

It is missing the entire point about pattern seeking behaviour as concepts are build upon percepts...the tbinking comes later...and from the assumption an automated behaviour...False pattern perception leads to a false conceptual build...that is precisely how mythology is formed and brewed...its not like you can cage a dynamic retro interactive system in separate draws...

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I said :

Quote:

"I equate quick decision making as being the primitive reason for believing"

Hang on a second. Do you equate quick decision-making with belief? Or do you identify it as a precursor to belief? Your sentence seems ambiguous. Earlier, if I recall correctly, I objected to equating quick decision-making with belief itself. If you mean only to say that it is a precursor to belief-making, I'm perfectly fine with that. That may be the root of our mutual minunderstanding.

It is a precursor to belief yes...I thought it was self evident...dwelling about this sort of detail either is just a door out or you need a step by step excessively detailed explanation to get points across..

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

I still don't understand the tone of personal animosity in your responses to me. I'm just trying to collaborate and get/give some good ideas, but you seem dead-set on putting me down. It's a pity, because I can tell that you have a lot of good ideas that I'd like to be exposed to in a mutually respectful dialog.

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@FBM,

Quote:

Possibly. But like I said, it's a thoughtless reaction.

I understand. Also, with that remark, I did not mean to imply that you are foolish.
Once I stepped into the road, meaning to cross, and just as I did, a car came around the corner, at high speed.
My initial, thoughtless reaction was to freeze where I stood, directly in the path of the car.
Perhaps that was foolish. I sure felt like a fool at the time. But then again, standing still might have been the best thing I could do, because I would not be able to turn and run back the way I came in time to avoid getting hit.
If I had tried to run across, that might have gone poorly, as the driver of the car turned to avoid me. Had I moved, I would have walked into it's path, but since I didn't, he was able to drive around me.

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@Cyracuz,

Oh, I didn't think you meant I was foolish. I took the generic 'you.' Smile

I've had similar experiences to what you describe. I don't know what determines when you freeze and when you jump. When I was in university, a friend of mine threw a football to me from about 30~40 yards away, but didn't notice that I'd turned away and was looking in the other direction. He yelled at me after the ball was already in the air, and when I turned around the ball was only a couple of feet from my face. The next split instant, I was face-down on the ground and the ball had gone safely over me. At first, I didn't even know whether I'd ducked the ball or been knocked down by it. I checked my face for pain and blood, but it was OK. Weird.

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