Destroy My Belief System, Please!

yes, I can see that.

I thought factual repeats help get the point across.

There are times in life you will be forced to take action with limited information, and the course of action producing greatest happiness is uncertain. At these times how will you make your decision for how to proceed? Will you proceed blindly, or as most do follow some transcendental belief in evidence unconfirmed?

Say you are diagnosed with a cancer. You have the option of undergoing chemotherapy. WHether the chemotherapy will work is uncertain. It may only bring more misery into your already short life, and then you die all the same. Or it may kill the cancer, and allow you to live.
It is uncertain which will happen and, after thinking about the probable outcomes, by your assessment the risk / reward probability ratios come out even between the two choices. Given no other outside factors for consideration, how do you proceed? How do you make the uncertain choice between chemo and no chemo?

I think the answer to your question must be very personal (sans categorical imperatives). For me the major considerations are the strength of my desire to live versus my fear of death (the latter has been greatly reduced in recent decades). Then there is my desire to live long enough to complete projects versus my desire to avoid pain (i.e., the process of dying and treatment); and there is concern about the financial burden medical treatment might place on my wife (not to mention the desire not to leave her alone).

Okay, but we're assuming the risk/reward ratios come out even in your mind. Your wife, your desire to live, all that... after considering it, you are still stuck, unsure of how to proceed. Because you are overwhelmed by uncertainty... you do not know what the outcome will be.
Some transcendent belief is required in order to proceed. Maybe the belief that you can overcome your cancer. You may have no factual evidence to support that belief, but that could be a basis of your decision.

I think there is a difference to be made between having a belief and having a desire or expectation. You act both accordingly with your level of knowledge on a potential best path to follow and an expectation that such path is right. You don't have to believe anything about it you just have to expect. The difference might seem subtle but its there. It makes quite a difference in distinguishing rational from irrational people.

Every time I come to this thread starting by reading the tittle and associate it with Thomas I unavoidably get a smile into my face.
The wording and the sentence comes out as somewhat childish but human and tangible.
This was the only time I can recall Thomas coming out as a seemingly human n exposed character in my eyes as mostly he sounds like a robot full of trivial consensual extremely defensive clichés. Its fair I haven't had much interest on all the stuff he rights down, so I may and probably am talking through my azz...nevertheless it makes me smile all the time, I like it.

I will make my decisions based on rules of thumb that have, in the past, produced more good than harm. Maybe they won't this time --- but that's a risk you always run when you act on less than perfect information.


I'm not sure that I agree with the premise of your question. Doctors usually can give you probabilistic information on how chemo will affect your life expectancy and life quality. And they do have evidence, admittedly short of absolute proof, to back up what they say. With this in mind, I would start by listening to the doctor, maybe getting a second opinion too. Then I would balance the statistically-expected pain and suffering from the chemo against the statistically-expected gain in life expectancy and life quality, and decide accordingly.

Is it? If all the substantive evidence leads me to a tie and all I need is a tie breaker, why wouldn't I just flip a coin?

And just why would you feel compelled to tie break it for that matter ?
While you don't need a belief you certainly need expectations.

WHat is, to you, an example of an irrational belief? People are very talented in rationalizing any kind of belief. Given some uncertainty anything can be rationalized. It is impossible to rationally discriminate between uncertainties.

It's true some things are more or less likely than others, so there is a probability threshold you can use to distinguish what's more likely from less likely under uncertain conditions. But you can never arrive at certainty this way. THis is how dogmatic religious thinking operates.

Belief is always irrational. A belief can be considered more or less probable....

There is no discrimination, having expectations hoping for a chance of being lucky when uncertain on the outcome is not irrational. Now having to believe they can be met in order to move forward when you can't be certain that is irrational for sure. I don't need to believe to take a chance I just need a fair amount of hope.

Okay. Does anyone really believe something with certainty while they are uncertain of it? Fundamentalist Christians for example. I don't think it's possible they actually believe, with certainty, their own ideas. I think they desire to believe it, and this desire penetrates them so deeply they become seemingly irrational... unyielding to more probabilistic inference. On the deepest level they are as uncertain as anyone... but they proceed, like you say, with expectations hoping for a chance of being lucky. Isn't this true for every belief?

ALso... when I say a belief is irrational, I don't mean it is logically incoherent. I mean that belief is not rationally arrived at. Belief precedes reasoning. It produces reasoning.

Now we are getting somewhere...yes I agree with you to an extent. Some people use the word I believe more like a social standing and not so much because they actually believe something for sure. This is why debating Religion related problems becomes tricky because many times we are addressing the wrong issues...
...people will defend their culture n folklore as they defend their house...the problem of believing publicly A or B is more related with territorial fights then it is with Religion per se or any sort of intimate strong conviction...the irrationality is not so much in defending nonsense as if they actually believe it but rather is on an unwillingness to negotiate with reason for the sake of protecting one's culture.

Nonetheless n back to the starting point I still think is important to educate people on distinguishing hope n moderate expectations from believing...

Okay. In your last sentence, where you distinguish moderate expectation from belief. It implies belief is an extreme expectation. ANd you may be separating moderate expectation from faith, which I'd rather say still is a faith, and refer to as moderate faith. Between moderation and extremism the mechanism of faith remains unchanged. But it is extremism you seem to have a problem with. Is this correct?

Or are you arguing that faith is, by definition, an extremism?

ALso... I do not consider it irrational to defend ones cultural territory / belief system, however outwardly meaningless the beliefs or the lines between cultures may appear. Because globalizing culture / expanding government structures restrict freedom and standardize life into a tedium. There is something personally liberating about psychotic tribalism, superstitious belief in sun worship, and the way of life that supports. In some ways natural man led a superior lifestyle to modern man. I know that statement is highly debatable and subjective... But the native americans definitely agree with it. I'd also argue these obscure, tribal beliefs are transcendentally true; and that standardizing an objective belief system strips away personal meaning from life, but that's a big tangent.

No there is a fundamental difference between the two. Expectations hopes are based on passive stance that does conform with progressive information and it does conform with known probability. While I might hope to win the lottery I don't believe I will win the lottery, but I just happen to know the chance is there and I more or less know its scope. When I hope for something I am agnostic to the outcome I wait for resolution. In the realm of belief the hoping crystallizes into some form of wilful delusion on witch the outcome is no more open for resolution. It becomes a singularity in itself and that's where irrationality springs from it. As you said on another hand it may be helpful it may be liberating and it may be creative like telling tales at the night fire can be, its certainly a cultural vehicle, but simultaneously, crystallized beliefs are by definition the source of pre concepts, resistance to change, and the opposite of the scientific inquisitive spirit. Now if you ask me why did faith has evolved n survived, why belief is important in human history I would go with the current explanation that sometimes in split second decisions of life and death having a strong conviction without having full disclosed information is actually convenient. Take for instance the situation when our ancestors heard the rustling of the wind in the Savannah high grass... it was a far better option to always assume there was a Lion around then going for checks...people prone to believing there was a Lion there no matter what survived more then people willing to check...so its no wonder we have now a bunch of believers all over the world willing to throw rocks at each other n worse.

Beliefs, in the context in which you are placing them, are GUESSES about the unknown.

To talk about them being rational or irrational as a group...makes no sense, unless you are saying that they can be rational or irrational...based on some evidence, or on almost none of any value at all.

What is your point?

Okay. Religious belief is also, within the core of the believer, a passive, agnostic stance; but it appears otherwise due to its extreme nature. The endless uncertainty permeating the universe abounds with the question of Gods existence. With your lottery ticket there are many probability thresholds which may be used to reasonably infer you aren't going to win the lottery. With the God question, these probability thresholds break down as the question is universalized. This is just the nature of the question. Rationalizations universalize, forming extreme positions which disregard most probability inferences.. Resolution for Gods existence, as with whether you win the lottery, is impossible; or at least does not happen until death. So God is the source of the utmost extremism..
As you also say, there is willful delusion. But your mildest hope in winning the lottery is a mild delusion. Due to the nature of religious thinking, this mild optimism transforms into an extreme hope in remote probability.
Religious believers are not certain of their belief; nor can they be. The belief does not crystalize into a certainty. It only appears this way due to the extremism.

These religious questions and considerations of extremes are unavoidable. I agree it is a liability, and how individuals resolve this defines their path in life and has plagued cultures... Within the self resolution is still necessary. Transcendentally I reconcile all beliefs as true in their own psychic senses. Their apparent logical incoherence is a communication problem.

Any idea of God that goes behind an abstract idea of union in reality any animist anthropomorphizing idea of God is in my perspective totally irrational.
My best shot at the idea of God is very close to Einstein's perspective on God.
To resume it with a few words, n starting by explaining that thinking is a property of incomplete beings looking for resolution. God is resolved it does not need thinking because it does not need problem solving. As source it does not think it does not grow it does not shrink it does not even move, rather is the reason, the ratio, the measure, for thinking and for all sorts of process at large. God is nothing more then the biggest set there is and the pattern the order of such set throughout all spacetime.
In that bounding very abstract sense, God is Love.