Simpler Question to Avoid PrayingMantis's Wrath

[PrayingMantis]

First, it might look strange to most of you, but I know very very little about the specifics of OJ trial, so this example doesn't mean much to me (if it matters to anybody), but of course I perfectly understand the context and therefore understand the structure of your question/argument here.

Anyway, here are a few specific thoughts with regard to this question/argument and the previous, "less simple", one (I'll show you in a minute that your new question is in fact more complex than the other one, and not more simple as you have titled it).

In your previous question you were asking a question that can be described as this:
If a person believes in A1, how good will he be as a P1?

For A1 you have used all kinds of religious traditions and "beliefs", and for P you have used a certain job.

Now you are asking:


If a person who is R, AND believes in A2, how good will he do as P2?

Now why the need to introduce that new variable R, which here is "white", into the question/argument? Couldn't you ask it without the R? Does it serve to confuse the readers, by giving them a piece of "irrlevant information", that is, an information that is not relevant to the core point you're trying to make here, or does it have anything to do with the question?

However, the more interesting thing in this structure is your assumption with regard to the nature of "belief", and the "exchangeability" of different variety of cases for A1 and A2, for which you assume your 2 questions are equivalent.

The problem with this, is in using the word "believe" (or more accurately, _thinking_ in terms of "belief") for cases where "belief" might mean very different things, and this without being aware, or not admitting those critical differences.

For instance, in (at least!) 2 cases out of the 10 possible cases you give in the first question, there's often no need in the assumption about "belief". These are (again, at least) "devout jew" and "buddhist". To be more specific (for the case of "devout Jew"): the question of belief is mostly _irrelevant_ for the practice of "being a devout Jew". This is a deep issue which I won't get into here, but the role of "belief" in one's religious life is in many senses an "invention" of Christianity. It is absurd to take this model and to impose it on other religions and practices, without considering the possibility that it might not "work" at all.

Another aspect (which is completely different) of this is in thinking about those structures as if "I think that X is true with very high probability, (OR: "I assign 'high probability' to X") is equivalent to "I believe in X", while in fact this is far from being necessarily true.

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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.

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They don't even have to be fundamentalist to be bad doctors.

*cough*BillFrist*sneeze*TerryShiavo*vomit*

[kbfc]

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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.

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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.

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Definitely possible. I wasn't trying to advance my particular 'guess' as to what the function is, just noting that David's assumption was unsupported.

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

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Eh, this line of debate is about using beliefs as indicators of intelligence, so for this discussion, 'what is believed' is the important factor.

[imported_luckyme]

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Eh, this line of debate is about using beliefs as indicators of intelligence, so for this discussion, 'what is believed' is the important factor.

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Hmmmm.. What somebody believes can only tell you something useful if you assume, usually correctly, that they used the normal method(s) of arriving at that belief. It's unstated in the OP but we're generally assuming all docs have similar enough knowledge of the case.
If some doctor had abnormal knowledge in some way connected to the case and was able to logically conclude that OJ was innocent then the fact that he believes him innocent doesn't matter because 'why' he believes that absolves him of the crime of sloppy thinking that such a belief usually would indicate.

[chezlaw]

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Eh, this line of debate is about using beliefs as indicators of intelligence, so for this discussion, 'what is believed' is the important factor.

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Any belief is dependent on our other beliefs. Only if you assume two people have the same experiences can you simply compare a belief to determine intelligence.

You could argue that the experiences of people is close enough to draw a meaningful inference just from the fact of belief but I doubt its very reliable.

chez

[kbfc]

I think somewhere in the past, before this seperate thread, David specified no special connection to the case. It was supposed to assume the same basic evidence anyone could have seen by watching CourtTV or whatever it was on back then.

[chezlaw]

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I think somewhere in the past, before this seperate thread, David specified no special connection to the case. It was supposed to assume the same basic evidence anyone could have seen by watching CourtTV or whatever it was on back then.

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Fair enough, I was talking about the general method.

chez

[imported_luckyme]

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David specified no special connection to the case. It was supposed to assume the same basic evidence anyone could have seen by watching CourtTV or whatever it was on back then.

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Fair enough. What that does is standardize the 'why' part which means we can substitute 'what belief' for 'why they have it' in this case. It is still the 'why' that is being tested, it's just buried in the premise.

[RJT]

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First, it might look strange to most of you, but I know very very little about the specifics of OJ trial,…

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No, doesn’t look strange, but from the next quote, can I assume you are not from the U.S (or maybe too young to remember - you seem old enough) ?


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Now why the need to introduce that new variable R, which here is "white", into the question/argument? Couldn't you ask it without the R? Does it serve to confuse the readers, by giving them a piece of "irrlevant information", that is, an information that is not relevant to the core point you're trying to make here, or does it have anything to do with the question?

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The word “white” is relevant. Most white people think OJ should have been found guilty (he was found not guilty). We tend to think that the evidence points in that direction. Most (at least many and a far higher % than white folk) black people think he was not guilty (There might be bias on their part or perhaps don't care that he "got off" and were happy he was found not guilty. One cannot assume that they didn't follow the logical train if we included black doctor...).

Therefore the white doctors who think he is innocent is akin to saying they just don’t follow logical trains of thought - the evidence logically points to guilty (is the assumption here).

[RJT]

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

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I understand “why they believe” to mean “how they come to believe”.

If the following is true (David admits to hyperbole for those who did not read the original thread):

Kbfc writes:

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"It takes a certain amount of logical strength to recognize when a psychological drive is affecting the way you address a position."

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David S. writes regarding kbfc's post:

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That is the most important sentence EVER written on this forum. Maybe ever written ANYWHERE. Which is why anyone who offers their take on any subject (that is not mainly a matter of opinion) that is controversial and emotionally charged, should basically be ignored if they are not well educated and/ or talented in logic/probability type concepts and puzzles.

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Then I nominate chez’s quote to be the 2nd most important sentence written on this forum (as far as the religion threads). Not sure whether I would admit to hyperbole or not. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]