I'm not sure the Anthropic principle can be applied here. There is a broader data set than that which is relevant for that principle, based on my understanding.
"Against all odds" would seem to be the key words here. There are countless other ethnic and religious groups that were integrated into the larger Muslim culture when Islam was first spreading. The same is the case for Christian Europe. In fact, the Romani people may be a good example of what we would expect to naturally happen to a dispersed and oppressed ethnic group. They have no singular culture, principles, or beliefs; they assumed most aspects of the surrounding culture's mode of life and beliefs.
It isn't a stretch to call the survival of the Jewish people an unexplained historical exception. There are countless historians (Jewish and non-Jewish) who have researched and written on the topic.
Or, am I misunderstanding the application of the Anthropic principle as you are applying it in this context?
Just to throw in an additional perspective of what I find fascinating about this topic.
I don't think that all long lasting things are particularly interesting. Rocks have been around longer than the Jewish people but we don't celebrate that as extraordinary. It is considered perfectly natural. It is noteworthy when something is unnaturally long lasting; when other peoples/belief system were put under similar pressures the results have been drastically different. Imagine 50 people are dragged under water on a beach by a horrible undertow and held underwater for an hour. 2 out of the 50 survive while the other 48 don't; the 2 who survived are definitely of interest because we would want to know how they survived.
> Science isn't free. Also, how on earth does one go about such an experiment humanely and in a financially prudent manner?
I think it is outside the scope of this paper. But that is part of the thing that struck me as being so bizarre. This isn't a paper about the efficacy of the spell on an individual level. It seems to be a paper that is discussing how a belief in X may have high potential risk to the holder of belief X and, yet, be beneficial to a group of believers in X. That is an interesting but counterintuitive idea. I could see the same model being applied to experimental cancer treatments on a purely conceptual level.
> "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians"
This is admittedly 100% rhetoric on my part and may be "too much". However, there is really the way that authors' view of these villagers came across to me. I'm sure that is partly due to spending time in Africa and the very positive impression of the people that I came away with.
As you said the authors start by mentioning: "unfalsifiable religious claims". So, they seem to start the paper by classifying this a one of those "unfalsifiable religious claims". But, they then immediately classify it as a "false belief" without any evidence for such being the case AND the "false" modifier being irrelevant within the context of the paper.
> The authors come to exactly the same conclusion
Once again, that is what I find so bizarre about the article. I guess it is just me. But, it doesn't sound like a scientist conducting a study; it sounds like one part cultural commentary and one part science. The conclusion doesn't seem to require the cultural inferences about belief systems and their falsifiability or lack thereof. Hence, it struck the wrong chord with me.
I guess I would like to believe that we (i.e. all science lovers) are really looking for a better understanding of the world and that we can do so without pre-conceived judgements of something that is foreign to us.
I totally agree with you that is seems downright ludicrous to think that a spell will cause bullets to bounce off of someone. We have to take the author at their word that such is actually the belief of those using the spell. (My experience in Africa would tell me that may be a rather naive understanding of the villagers' expectations of the spell's effectiveness. From what I've seen in Africa, it seems more likely that the villagers believed that the bullets would miss them or go around them; it just strikes me as a little too stupid to be believable.)
All of that seems irrelevant for the conclusions that the author is trying to reach. The belief is labelled as "false" without any evidence given for such being the case until the conclusion where it is written as "(false) belief". In other words, the word "false" is an unnecessary modifier. Hence, it seems like it is being used as a rhetorical device rather than a meaningful addition to the article.
This paper leaves me feeling uncomfortable. There are so many problems with it on so many levels and, yet, I think it is fascinating in the sense that it is applying a well known concept to a novel context.
Personally, I have a hard time seeing how this "bulletproofing" technique could possibly be true. However, I find it incredibly disrespectful and lacking in basic scientific integrity to go into a paper with the assumption that it is a false belief and then making no attempt to justify why it is a false belief other than "duh...because they are superstitious barbarians". Whether the belief is false or not seems to be totally irrelevant in trying to show that the authors' conclusions are valid. Clearly, the members of the village believed that it was true. Because of their belief in the effectiveness of the "treatment" the results were x, y, and z.
As an aside, it seems weird to start with the premise that the belief is inherently false when the village was able to protect and free itself. You could very well make a claim that the "treatment" was effective from a scientific perspective; it would require replication in order to be validated. Why should I automatically assume it is invalid? That strikes me as the opposite of scientific enquiry.
The cultural hubris contained in this paper overshadows the conclusion. This sounds more like a piece of literature from an "enlightened" European priest visiting a wayward tribe of "barbarians" during the 19th century colonization of Africa than a modern, scientifically-rigorous scholarly article.
Lighten the mood and then talk to the universe/world (whatever you want to call the something that we are all a part of).
I know. I know. That might sound weird and all. But, it is the only thing that helps me. I grew up a very calm person but after many years in the military and a couple of combat deployments I seemed to develop a very strong aggression issue. I'm calm most of the time, but when something gets to me I can get into a deadly loop where it just gets worse and worse. It starts to feed on itself. Then, my wife can say something small and my internal monologue gets darker and darker and whinier and whinier.
So, yes, don't let it get to the "edge point"...that is hard. That takes a long time of understanding yourself (talking to the universe or journaling is the best way that I feel I make progress in that area too.) So, the first step when you get to the edge is to return to being happy. It doesn't matter what it takes. Watch a stupid video on YouTube. Just get back to a place of "happy" even if just for a moment.
Lighten the mood. Then, start journaling. But, the goal of the journaling shouldn't be whining: "why me, oh why me??" I've done that a lot. It is really not helpful at all. It makes it worse over the long-term.
So, what do you journal/talk-to-the-universe about? You start investigating who you are and why the current situation is making you upset. Start asking yourself: why am I angry. But ultimately, the goal is to drill down until you find the good in everything. For example: "Why am I angry that Joe is fighting me so hard with what I know is a bad direction as far as design patterns is concerned? Why do I care at all? Because I want to built software that I'm proud of. Don't we all want to build software that is well built and a meaningful creation? So, what Joe doesn't want that? Of course, Joe wants that as well. We just have different ideas about how to make the best software possible. By why am I so fired up and angry about it? Because I don't want to believe that I'm coming to work each day for nothing..."
Just keep going...even 15 minutes can make a major difference. I've had times in life where it took an hour and sometimes when it went on for over 6 hours. There isn't a goal in terms of what you are getting at. Productivity is certainly NOT the goal of the exercise. Just talking/writing is the goal of the exercise. In the end, my wife is happier and I feel that is the larger goal. I want to be kind to other people, especially my wife, rather than burdening people with negativity.
There seems to be a basic problem in this argument: a lack of definition of distraction or any discussion of its value.
For example, lets assume the consciousness is an illusion, a sort of biological trick of evolution. In that case, I'm not sure why we couldn't say that all the stimuli from advertisements, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are equal in value to "focused conscious awareness". They are stimuli of a different sort but qualitatively no different than the stimuli of "focused conscious awareness". I'm not sure why we would inherently assume that "focused conscious awareness" is of greater value. There are tons of people now who are living in a permanently distracted state and they seem to have a conscious experience that is not qualitatively different than other people's. They don't slip into a coma or get concussions or die.
Heck, maybe distraction is a better state than attention. After all, don't people complain of headaches when they focus on a problem for too long?
Honestly, this wasn't calling you out at all. I think it is great. It is a very well done presentation. You did a good enough job that it made me interested in the product.
After signing up for the Beta, it hit me. Every single bit of this could have been staged without having done any coding at all!! Brilliant!!
I'm not sure if that is actually the case, but theoretically it is totally possible. This is a great example of the classic MVP pitch: validate interest before building.
Interesting article from an opinion point of view but I find very little real substance behind his arguments.
He is fight the original myth with his own myth except that his myth is founded upon his own assumptions and intuitions as opposed to those of someone else.
It seems more likely that we simply don't know the answer to many of these questions yet because we still have major disagreements around exactly what intelligence is. To use Richard Feyman's famous quote: if we can't yet build it, then we don't understand it.
> Basically, what I'm saying is that humans always describe things in terms of the technology of their age, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Better technology means better description. Birds are unlike planes, but analyzing them using the model of airfoil we developed is a good idea and leads to more and better understanding.
Totally. "Better technology means better description" is a great idea/concept here.
Since reading Michel Foucault while I was studying in the UK (someone I feel like I never even heard mentioned in US university), it made me rethink the "what/essence" of the things we do/build. Just like the supposed lesson-learned (or potentially still to be learned) in the finance world after the financial crisis: models are models not reality. We develop a culture around the descriptions that we use but in the end we aren't truly describing the essence of the "what (i.e. the thing described)". We are layering various descriptions, cultural-ideas, and pre-conceptions on top of the thing itself in order to better communicate some aspect of it to other people. In a sense, different technologies gives us a shared set of concepts with which we can communicate with each other.
Your point is great. Just because they are "descriptions" doesn't mean they are wrong/right. They are a shared language that we use to communicate with each other complex ideas and, hence, we better understand previously wish-washy concepts.
I'm not entirely sure that "optimal" has an agreed upon definition. At best, "optimal" is relative to the system within which it is being applied. "Optimal" in a Trump world is very different from "optimal" in a Bernie Sanders world. Optimization seems to require some objective. In a practical sense, you cannot optimize a piece of software if you don't know what you are optimizing for.
It is a bold premise that the evolutionary process and human technological civilization have the same optimization goals.
So true! 50 years ago they were using concepts from early computing to describe how the human brain works. With each new wave of advances in computing, there is a new set of analogies that philosophers and neuroscientists adopt to say: "See, the brain is like this". It Seems problematic to me. Models are models, not reality. They may be good for descriptive effects, but that doesn't me they are anything other than story-telling devices.
As a tangent, this seems to me to be a problem with Daniel Dennett's ideas and why, in the end, David Chalmers seems to be gaining ground with every passing year.
How is it that everyone (82% Nationally) seems to agree that the most critical step forward (Funding Research in Renewable Energy) is a good thing BUT we spend all of our time arguing about whether or not global warming is happening??
This reminds me of a failing, early-stage start up. Rather than just getting to the grind and finding a way to make money, it is so easy to just spend time dreaming and argue about the way forward and spending your time ignoring complaining customers while I'm sitting around pondering how to change the world.
Of course, the irony is that Trump, an ardent capitalist and pursuer of wealth, ran on a platform of decreasing the influence of money in politics. According to his 100 day plan, he is going to put a number of serious barriers on lobbying.
I found this out after the election. It wouldn't have changed my vote had I known about it before the election (way too many other issues with Trump) but, at the very least, it is a hope that maybe something good will come out of this presidential cycle.
> If you throw a bag of a trillion^trillion^trillion particles into a purely self contained environment (i.e. the Universe), and let it stir for a while - whatever is going on - at least from a materialist perspective - is random.
This seems to lead to a meaningless/useless definition paradox. 'Randomness' comes to mean everything and nothing. This is one of the things that led me away from an interest in the materialist/physicalist position. Like you said elsewhere, it seems hard to swallow the idea that all that we can achieve in defining 'randomness' is a negative definition. Personally, I find it problematic that materialism has no positive definition of what 'randomness' is and does not seem capable of offering a meaningful/useful definition.
"Against all odds" would seem to be the key words here. There are countless other ethnic and religious groups that were integrated into the larger Muslim culture when Islam was first spreading. The same is the case for Christian Europe. In fact, the Romani people may be a good example of what we would expect to naturally happen to a dispersed and oppressed ethnic group. They have no singular culture, principles, or beliefs; they assumed most aspects of the surrounding culture's mode of life and beliefs.
It isn't a stretch to call the survival of the Jewish people an unexplained historical exception. There are countless historians (Jewish and non-Jewish) who have researched and written on the topic.
Or, am I misunderstanding the application of the Anthropic principle as you are applying it in this context?