Varying degrees of wrongness

I'm currently reading some of the entries at Less Wrong, mostly because the guy who posts there wrote an amazing Harry Potter fanfic, reinventing Harry Potter (by changing his upbringing) into a child prodigy and hyper-rationalist, armed to the teeth with methods of science and aversion to all possible biases and fallacies, and letting him loose on the world of wizardry and magic. Given that the writer is also a hyper-rationalist, armed to the teeth with methods of science &c., this counts as a shameless Mary-Sue. It is also extremely awesome and hilarious.

(Writer comment: I had a reputation as a "real" writer before I started writing Harry Potter fanfiction, and I did that with malice aforethought to intentionally drop myself down multiple levels on the Geek Hierarchy... I am offended by people who are prejudiced against beauty because of its form or its medium. I am offended by people who think "Calvin and Hobbes" can't be real art because it's a comic strip, and I can curse them with no darker fate than that they go look at some ugly, pointless, fake "modern art" that will impress their friends more. And I am equally offended by people who look down on fanfiction because it's fanfiction, who'd take something beautiful like "Always and Always" and turn up their noses at it. So I write Harry Potter fanfiction and be damned to them all. Someday, when I think I can get away with it, I will write deep intellectual self-insert pornography that is even better than MoR just so I can watch people's heads explode. I like this guy.)

Anyway, I will now drone on about a post there. Apparently religious types are dubious and untrustworthy scientists because, being irrational in big things they may well be irrational in little ones. This is one of those things it's easy to rationally demonstrate but which I somehow doubt correlates to reality in any meaningful sense. (I'm flicking through the comments and no-one's proposed testing it yet. I guess asking whether it's empirically verifiable means I've learnt scientific methods by rote or something...) It's also one of those things it's hard to care about. My first reaction is the sense that this kind of rationalism is grossly dehumanising, but this judgement is extremely problematic - it's obvious folly to declare that bias and fallacy constitute humanity. (Although that would be accepting the terms of this manner of rationalism, which would itself be folly if I'm not sure it's a sensible thing.) But there's also a qualitative difference between (this brand of) Reason and Wisdom - the latter is hard to nail down, gained by misery and mistakes, refined over years, generally conducive to good humour, and very hard to properly dismantle and dissect. You have to let your mind be shaped over years to the way of human interaction and of life in general; even if you could simulate Reason on a computer I very much doubt you could simulate Wisdom. I think that the contours of spiritual and divine things are probably better apprehended by what I'd think of as Wisdom than what this guy'd think of as Reason. I also realise I'm stating my opinion without having a definable reason, and should therefore try to find one if I can.

Best comment on the post:

Hmm. Personally, as a Christian and a student of science (doing a Bachelor of Aviation Technology), I have to say that my thought processes were entirely different from what you described in your article.

I went with Pascal's Wager, or at least a modified version of it. Any sort of existence is infinitely better than not existing at all; this eliminates atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism from consideration, along with other reincarnation-oriented religions. Judaism is almost impossible to convert into, so it's out of the running. Of the religions that remain, most of the pagan ones have relatively mediocre afterlives compared to the heavens of Christianity and Islam, and similarly mediocre punishments if I'm wrong as long as I live virtuously. If I do follow a pagan religion, and Christianity or Islam is correct, I'll suffer eternal hellfires. Therefore, I will be either a Christian or a Muslim. Since Christianity doesn't require me to attempt to overthrow Western civilization, has generally easier requirements to attain Heaven, and will probably allow me to avoid Hell if Islam is correct, I chose to be a Christian.

Of course, simply believing something to be true does not neccessarilly make it true, so I plan to put off testing that belief as long as humanly possible. Or, more accurately, as posthumanly possible, considering I plan to become a posthuman robot god and live forever.

(He later asks, "What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist?", to which someone replies "To avoid being punished by the God of Rationality. Since there's no evidence for gods, It sends all theists to Hell.")

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As mentioned, I'm not quite sure how to think of the kind of rationalism the Less Wrong guy's aiming for. On its own terms, or indeed on anyone's terms, reducing bias and fallacy and demanding evidence for everything is a good thing; although I'm pretty sure that if you started applying Bayesian probabilistic reasoning or whathaveyou to your personal relationships you'd end up with problems. (I'm not too clear on what Bayesian probabilistic reasoning even is, though, nor do I have a concrete idea of what Reason should be defined to be which would allow any kind of agreement or disagreement. Have to check what the Thomists say - they often have subtle and instinctively fitting opinions on these things - maybe check out a few other views as well. [Oh, hey, I just remembered there was a papal encyclical a decade back called "Faith and Reason"! Man, this papistry lark is just full of useful resources.]) (I assume the Less Wrong guy has also considered the application of ueber-rationalism to love, art and beauty, and I haven't come across it in the archives yet.)

One of the things that makes me very suspect of such an approach is the way that wonder and mystery are regarded as worshipping one's own ignorance, or somesuch. In terms of the normal way of the world, the course of nature, marking things off as "mysteries, not to be understood" is obviously a "semantic stop sign" because it constitutes god-of-the-gaps thinking, which is asking for trouble, is philosophically & theologically suspect (if you ask the Thomists, who are always ragging on ID) and is putting oneself in the "'SHUT UP!' he explained" camp, never a good thing; although I note that wonder and mystery and unexplained matters are positively pleasing in fiction, maybe it's the same instinct. Regardless, though, there's always going to be a big basket of Weird Stuff that Reason can't get to grips with due to a dearth of information - one-off events, miracles, uncanny predictive dreams, feeling a sense of loss or sadness when someone dies (but not finding they're dead till much later), divine promptings leading to useful information transfer with friends or strangers, &c. &c. Reason is useful for weeding out things with tenable mundane explanations; when it can't, it either shuts up or makes an idiot out of itself. Wisdom can handle these things a bit better at times, and the aesthetic/tragic/religious sense of life can respect them as part of the mystery of things and take comfort in the implied telos of life. Insist that Wisdom and Wonder have no place, though, and the Weird Stuff basket just becomes junk information, a pile of undelivered and undeliverable mail for previous tenants, destined to stay on your mantelpiece until you have to move out yourself and finally throw it all out (which, in our metaphor, would constitute forgetting the Weird Stuff or letting your Reason go into "'SHUT UP!', he explained" mode until you stop asking awkward questions).

(...I mentioned the "god-of-the-gaps" thinking maybe appealing to an aesthetic desire for mystery and things not being neatly defined and nailed down - this I think relates to a larger issue: as a Christian I assume that the true, the good and the beautiful are ultimately not separable, or not distinguishable, or something - I don't have the words; the point is that there are multiple compatible options for seeing the world: a work of art and beauty, a gift made in love (if subsequently damaged), a subject for scientific study. Negotiating between these views can be tricky, but they shouldn't exclude each other. In other worldviews things seem a bit trickier; but I don't hold those other worldviews, so it's a bit harder to judge. The ratio invictus types come across as denigrating beauty, art spirit, teleology, &c., and are often explicit in disdaining wonder and mystery and suchlike; and in reaction you get post-modern types scorning Reason in order to preserve these things. Although I note that ratio invictus worldviews tend to stress that they can handle at least some of the non-rational human-being stuff, and try to integrate morality and beauty into their worldview even if they hate mystery and wonder; and the post-moderns don't utterly despise Reason either, they just want it a bit more housebroken.)

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On a similar subject, totally different worldview: A Failure to Think:

Faith, according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph, is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. … Faith, if you like, can be defined like this: It is a man insisting upon thinking when everything seems determined to bludgeon and knock him down in an intellectual sense. The trouble with the person of little faith is that, instead of controlling his own thought, his thought is being controlled by something else, and, as we put it, he goes round and round in circles. That is the essence of worry.

C.S. Lewis had similar things to say. Certainly the things which damage my own faith are things which are contrary to the best urgings of my reason.

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Because I'm always saying "I need to learn about stuff" and "I will post on whatever soon", I shall try to get in the habit of making todo lists for myself. This post therefore requires me to look up the following:

1. Nature of Reason.
(a) Christian (& other holistic/integrated) worldviews:
- Read Fides et Ratio
- Check if Aquinas & the Thomists have much to say about it
- That guy who talked about "religious ground force" and suchlike had something to say about it too, I think
(b) Rationalist worldviews
- Read up on Bayesian reasoning, alternatives to same
(c) There should be a name for "philosophy of reason" which, once discovered, will allow me to waste days reading up on the subject on wikipedia...

2. Search out rationalist/materialist/&c. views on beauty, aesthetics