Simpler Question to Avoid PrayingMantis's Wrath

[David Sklansky]

You are confused. If believing in something that is farfetched might affect the chances you are a good doctor, then believing in something even more farfetched is more likely to.

[RJT]

Great subject title, btw.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, how many doctors do you think really had the time to watch the OJ trial or read much about it? That is, have studied it as much. I really think this is the case of geniuses too. You still have not addressed this issue. You take it as a given that they have a clue to how Religion works.

Are there any writings from geniuses who get past the God/no God issue? Unless you disagree (you don’t seem to) and say that we have to get past this issue first (that we cannot assume for the sake of discussion that one can start with the choice of there is a God) I am really interested in reading some geniuses work on the topic.

RJT

[David Sklansky]

What does your questions have to do with mine? I say for instance that devout Fundamentalist Christian doctors will be on average less good at making diagnosis than agnostic doctors, all other factors such, as geography etc, being equal. Because to believe these things is evidence that you are relativley stupid. I can't make it planer than that. Do you agree or not? And if you don't, do you still disagree if the doctor believed in astrology.

[RJT]

[ QUOTE ]
What does your questions have to do with mine? I say for instance that devout Fundamentalist Christian doctors will be on average less good at making diagnosis than agnostic doctors, all other factors such, as geography etc, being equal. Because to believe these things is evidence that you are relativley stupid. I can't make it planer than that. Do you agree or not? And if you don't, do you still disagree if the doctor believed in astrology.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course, I agree with you as a general rule. But then we have folk like NotReady who seems to me to be pretty intelligent (seems smarter than I am so, I would need your opinion on his intelligence assuming/given that you are smarter than he). I would tend to trust him operating on my diverticulitous if he were a surgeon. So, here I seem to be saying I disagree to an extent.

[David Sklansky]

I said on average. And I'd choose ALL Bran over Not Ready.

Seriously though, when it came to assigning probabilities to competing diagnosis, Not Ready would be incompetant. He might be a good surgeon though.

[RJT]

[ QUOTE ]
I said on average. And I'd choose ALL Bran over Not Ready.

Seriously though, when it came to assigning probabilities to competing diagnosis, Not Ready would be incompetant. He might be a good surgeon though.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL.

I understood your post to say exactly this anyway. That's probably why I didn't answer it in a direct manner - I had thought about the two (i.e. I decided upon the example surgeon instead of diagnostic.) I have to defer your to intelligence here and respectfully waive the opportunity to answer.

[kbfc]

I wasn't confused. I knew exactly what you meant. I just think your example is broken.

You are assuming some sort of continuous, monotonic function between 'farfetchedness' of belief and doctor ability, and a fairly linear one at that. I have doubts that this is the case at all. It could very well be something like a step-funciton, where goofy beliefs don't make much of a difference up to a certain point, after which one falls off the edge, so-to-speak. If this were the case, I would most likely put the crossover point well past OJ-innocence, but well before religion.

As I mentioned before, watch any number of Hitchcock films for outlandish "wrongfully accused" sorts of plots; the details of these plots may be pretty farfetched, but they are nowhere the level where a rational person couldn't see it as a reasonable possibilty.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
I wasn't confused. I knew exactly what you meant. I just think your example is broken.

You are assuming some sort of continuous, monotonic function between 'farfetchedness' of belief and doctor ability, and a fairly linear one at that. I have doubts that this is the case at all. It could very well be something like a step-funciton, where goofy beliefs don't make much of a difference up to a certain point, after which one falls off the edge, so-to-speak. If this were the case, I would most likely put the crossover point well past OJ-innocence, but well before religion.

As I mentioned before, watch any number of Hitchcock films for outlandish "wrongfully accused" sorts of plots; the details of these plots may be pretty farfetched, but they are nowhere the level where a rational person couldn't see it as a reasonable possibilty.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd guess its the other way round. The closer the far fetched belief is to normal life/medical science the more worried I'd be. A really far-fetched belief is likely to be be as a result of a completely different process.

There's two parameters both of which are ill-defined. How ludicrous the belief is, and how close the belief is to everyday/scientific activity. These may correlate but I don't see why they should.

Also it's not what is believed that matters most, but why they believe it.

chez

[imported_luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
The closer the far fetched belief is to normal life/medical science the more worried I'd be. A really far-fetched belief is likely to be as a result of a completely different process.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent point. It’s important that it’s the effective use of the same tool that is being compared. In the military example I suggested that it was at the level of strategy rather than tactics that DS’s ‘creative solutions via analogies and sound logic’ type of thinking is better tested. Here, I’d make a distinction between surgical skill and diagnostic ability. It’s the diagnostic ability that would be in the same arena as the OJ case, much more than surgical skill.

Fixing my car, replacing my kidney or charging up a hill all tap into an area that is more rote and arrived at via study and practice, regardless of how skillfully (sometimes amazingly so) it is done. As you move up towards the level of Sun Tsu and you’re freewheeling, that’s where you want a DS type of intelligence working for you. A boxer’s performance isn’t indicated by what he thinks of the OJ case.

It’s a bit simplistic, but it hard to understand how an inquiring mind that strives for logical conclusions built on investigating empirical evidence can coexist with a mind that puts a lot of emphasis on subjectiveness ( or dogma ) in problem solving. If that’s the general case DS is making (?) it seems reasonable if kept to fields where those skills are needed. If there really can be a different process at work to explain a far-fetched belief that doesn’t seem linked to rationality then DS’s claim perhaps doesn’t apply. We haven't sorted this issue out yet.

luckyme,
If I thought I was wrong, I’d change my mind

[purnell]

I ignored the whole spectacle.