Arouet continued. “Let's break it down more simply: If you believe that belief is a choice, then try this little experiment. Take the red colour that is on your screen right now. Choose to believe that it is green. Report back.”
It works. It just takes a lot more time than that. I alo rec'mend a different test. I had to stop driving until I could read traffic lights again.
As anecdotal evidence I am not just bs-ing, here is a poem I wrote referencing the experience.
http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=17 ... 7058113119
Ellie, I am proud to say that I took only one hit on the quiz about the consistency of one's beliefs, and that was because I misinterpreted the question.
Statistics: Posted by Twain Shakespeare — 30 Oct 2010, 13:53
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I have been enjoying this thread, although I can't tell if you think I am a valid skeptic or a nut case.
One last explanatory point. You seem to think we are our beliefs, while I think we merely have beliefs. As a method actor, however, I have been everything from a catholic priest to a vampire, and when I am on stage, I am those, right down to the beliefs. Theatre works on a distinctly different set of premises than my skepticism. That is why I call myself both Twain and Shakespeare (plus they are my name)
Vonnegut seems to have commented on both sides of this perception when he said "We are what we seem to be, so we must be careful what we seem to be."
(Mother Night)
Statistics: Posted by Twain Shakespeare — 15 Oct 2010, 03:21
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2. I think where you use the word "belief" I use the word "superstition". I don't find either word satisfactory, and I can talk only in terms of my limited understanding. My "superstitions" are thoughts that do not consciously form part of my world view, but emerge spontaneously in the special circs of, for example, having my life is threatened. This reaction seems instinctive. At the next level, there are the core beliefs of my mother's cult Xian/Sci, which I consciously reject, but which nonetheless always infiltrate my rationality to the extent that I just do not see doctors. This is not instinctive.
3. My premise that humans have value is also a conditioned reflex, one I worked hard to establish without any plausible evidence outside of human opinion that humans had “intrinsic” value.
4. RE: Free will. I do not “believe” in it. I suspect that both it and the concept of predestination are based on false questions. Given I do not believe either term has meaning, I may not be qualified to talk about either, and it gave me a head ache just to try to wrap my mind around it again. The whole subject produces so much cognitive dissonance in me I have gotten nauseous thinking about it.
5. “Then we can re-examine our beliefs to see if they have changed.” I would read this final step as “Then we can re-examine our (premises) to see if (our grounds for accepting them) have changed.” Again, I never had any grounds for believing I should thank Henry Ford for brakes, but I have the urge. I know my “hatred” of doctors is a conditioned reflex, but the only way I have ever reduced it is by hating my mother. It ain't worth it
My belief that human had no worth was my null, until I decided to try the experiment of believing the opposite The experiment worked in the sense my Beta hypothesis improved my fit with reality, and my “premise of (intrinsic?) value” moved closer to a probabilistic certainty. I think now I have “graven them on my heart.” The process was similar to what you described.
This relates to my “experience” of “free will”. The process of my becoming and ceasing to be a Xian is even closer to the process you described, but in the former, I was very aware of having a choice when I could have accepted the credo, or could have ignored the fact I found it plausible and declined to take the “leap of faith” Once I accepted the hogwash, its false premises quickly infiltrated my reasoning processes until basically I once again believed humans are sinful bags of shit with no intrinsic worth, being valuable only because they belong to YHWH, and if he said killing civilians with cluster bombs was fine, but aborting a life threatening pregnancy was wrong, I had no grounds to argue. Fortunately my wife left me, and I no longer had any earthly incentive to believe that hateful, anti-human bs. I begin to practice the zen of radical agnosticism. In seven years, I have found four things that strike me as being an epistemologically valid set, or as you would say, I “re-examine(d my) beliefs (and saw) they have changed.”
Of course, people think and experience differently. Here's to those with the skill and courage to keep reexamining.
Statistics: Posted by Twain Shakespeare — 15 Oct 2010, 03:05
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