Overcoming Bias

The Problem at the Heart of Pascal's Wager

It is a most painful position to a conscientious and cultivated mind to be drawn in contrary directions by the two noblest of all objects of pursuit -- truth and the general good.  Such a conflict must inevitably produce a growing indifference to one or other of these objects, most probably to both.

- John Stuart Mill, from Utility of Religion

Much electronic ink has been spilled on this blog about Pascal's wager.  Yet, I don't think that the central issue, and one that relates directly to the mission of this blog, has been covered.  That issue is this: there's a difference between the requirements for good (rational, justified) belief and the requirements for good (rational, prudent -- not necessarily moral) action.

Presented most directly: good belief is supposed to be truth and evidence-tracking.  It is not supposed to be consequence-tracking.  We call a belief rational to the extent it is (appropriately) influenced by the evidence available to the believer, and thus maximizes our shot at getting the truth.  We call a belief less rational to the extent it is influenced by other factors, including the consequences of holding that belief.  Thus, an atheist who changed his beliefs in response to the threat of torture from the Spanish Inquisition cannot be said to have followed a correct belief-formation process. 

On the other hand, good action is supposed (modulo deontological moral theories) to be consequence-tracking.  The atheist who professes changed beliefs in response to the threat of torture from the Spanish Inquisition can be said to be acting prudently by making such a profession.

A modern gloss on Pascal's wager might be understood less as an argument for the belief in God than as a challenge to that separation.  If, Modern-Pascal might say, we're in an epistemic situation such that our evidence is in equipoise (always keeping in mind Daniel Griffin's apt point that this is the situation presumed by Pascal's argument), then we ought to take consequences into account in choosing our beliefs. 

There seem to be arguments for and against that position... 

Where Does Pascal's Wager Fail?

The topic of Pascal's wager has been mentioned several times before on Overcoming Bias, most notably in Eliezer's post on Pascal's mugging. I'm interested in discussing the question with specific reference to its original context: religion. My assumption is that almost all readers agree that the wager fails in this context -- but where exactly?

Fear, God, and State

A stunning hypothesis from the latest Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

High levels of support often observed for governmental and religious systems can be explained, in part, as a means of coping with the threat posed by chronically or situationally fluctuating levels of perceived personal control. Three experiments demonstrated a causal relation between lowered perceptions of personal control and ... increased beliefs in the existence of a controlling God and defense of the overarching socio-political system.  A 4th experiment showed ... a challenge to the usefulness of external systems of control led to increased illusory perceptions of personal control. ... A cross-national data set demonstrated that lower levels of personal control are associated with higher support for governmental control.

It seems we hope a stronger and more benevolent God or State will protect us when feel less able to protect ourselves.  I'd guess similar effects hold for medicine and media - we believe in doc effectiveness more when we fear out of control of our health, and we believe in media accuracy more when we rely more on their info to protect us.  Can we find data on which beliefs tend to be more biased: confidence in authorities when we feel out of control, or less confidence in authorities when we feel more in control?

Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom

Followup to:  No Universally Compelling Arguments, Passing the Recursive Buck, Wrong Questions, A Priori

Why do I believe that the Sun will rise tomorrow?

Because I've seen the Sun rise on thousands of previous days.

Ah... but why do I believe the future will be like the past?

Even if I go past the mere surface observation of the Sun rising, to the apparently universal and exceptionless laws of gravitation and nuclear physics, then I am still left with the question:  "Why do I believe this will also be true tomorrow?"

I could appeal to Occam's Razor, the principle of using the simplest theory that fits the facts... but why believe in Occam's Razor?  Because it's been successful on past problems?  But who says that this means Occam's Razor will work tomorrow?

And lo, the one said:

"Science also depends on unjustified assumptions.  Thus science is ultimately based on faith, so don't you criticize me for believing in [silly-belief-#238721]."

The Moral Void

Followup to:  What Would You Do Without Morality?, Something to Protect

Once, discussing "horrible job interview questions" to ask candidates for a Friendly AI project, I suggested the following:

Would you kill babies if it was inherently the right thing to do?  Yes [] No []

If "no", under what circumstances would you not do the right thing to do?   ___________

If "yes", how inherently right would it have to be, for how many babies?     ___________

Happy Conservatives

At Freakonomics, Arthur Brooks on why conservatives seem happier:

In my last post I showed the large happiness differences between religious Americans and secularists, and argued that this is a big part of the reason conservatives are so much happier than liberals. But I also noted that religion and other lifestyle distinctions still only explain about half the gap. ...

In my book I argue that conservatives are more optimistic about the future than liberals are, and believe in each individual's ability to get ahead on the basis of achievement. Liberals are more likely to see themselves and others as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help.

I wonder:

• Would you or I be happier if we let ourselves think more conservatively, such as by attending church more and believing we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?
• Would society be happier if we encouraged more conservative thoughts?
• If so, who wants such outcomes?  (Or, are they good outcomes?)

Me, I want to believe whatever is true even if that makes me unhappy.  And with that attitude, I doubt attending church would make me happier.

Added 13May: Tyler suggests "Robin could play up the relatively conservative thoughts he already believes in."  But playing up particular beliefs will give them more weight in my mind, and move me more to similar beliefs. 

Faith in Docs

Today is my health econ final exam.  I also return their last paper, on faith healing.  After an entire semester hearing how we get little health value from a wide margin of medical spending, almost every student (21 undergrads & 9 grads) said that a big argument against legal faith healing is that it can discourage people from going to regular doctors.  Most also said it is hard to evaluate faith healer quality, and to know if they are just in it for the money.   

Sigh.  Regular docs are mostly in it for the money, and are also hard to evaluate.  If we on average get near zero health from our last units of medicine, we are better off replacing those units with anything cheaper, at least if it also gives near zero net health effect and similar non-health benefits.  Faith healing seems to fit this bill. 

Sure, we vary in how much medicine we get, and in how much we would substitute legal faith healing for medicine.  So yes a general trend toward more faith healing would no doubt produce a few people who sometimes get too little medicine.  But that harm should be far outweighed by a reduction in harmful overtreatment.  Alas, apparently even econ students after a semester of my indoctrination can't see this (only two mentioned it) - we all just love docs too much. 

I'm struck by how emotional was the opposition to faith healing and how timid were its supporters.  Most people believe prayer can make you well, but few believe religious specialists can use such powers to similarly help others.  Yet our faith in docs is so strong that when considering medical quantity variation, a few getting too little dominates our attention - we just can't see most getting too much.

Quantum Non-Realism

This post is part of the Quantum Physics Sequence.
Followup to:  Bell's Theorem

"Does the moon exist when no one is looking at it?"
        -- Albert Einstein, asked of Niels Bohr

Suppose you were just starting to work out a theory of quantum mechanics.

You begin to encounter experiments that deliver different results depending on how closely you observe them.  You dig underneath the reality you know, and find an extremely precise mathematical description that only gives you the relative frequency of outcomes; worse, it's made of complex numbers.  Things behave like particles on Monday and waves on Tuesday.

The correct answer is not available to you as a hypothesis, because it will not be invented for another thirty years.

In a mess like that, what's the best you could do?

Expelled Beats Sicko

Metacritic (a review aggregator) gives Michael Moore's latest movie Sicko a 74 out of 100, while the new Expelled gets only a 20.  Expelled, however, is a better movie.

In Sicko, Moore shows US folks facing high prices for docs, drugs, and surgery.  Sad anxious people find that if they can't pay, they may not be treated.  But then we see happy glad folks in England, France, and Canada getting all the medicine they want for free.  Free good, expensive bad -- that is the depth of Moore's celebrated case for universal care.

Sicko makes Expelled seem like a graduate seminar.  In Expelled, experts on many sides speak at length in their own words.  The movie makes a good case for its main claim, that intelligent design advocates are shunned by academia.  And they get opponent Richard Dawkins to admit a 1% chance of God, and a higher chance Earth life may have been designed by distant ancient higher powers.  Both these estimates justify devoting higher-than-now fractions of origin-of-life research to such possibilities.  (And I estimate betting markets would endorse >1% chances for these.)

For my taste, the movie overdid threats to a mythical "academic freedom" that supposedly made the US great, but probably never existed.  It also overdid how understanding Darwin leads people to reject God, and emboldened Nazis to brutality.  These claims are not relevant to the truth of intelligent design, but they are admittedly true and relevant to most viewers' desire to avoid beliefs with such consequences. 

Sadly, it seems reviewers praised Sicko because they agreed with universal care, and panned Expelled because they disagreed with intelligent design.  The tug-o-war continues.

Should-be-unneeded disclaimers: There are good arguments possible for universal care, and in a betting market I'd probably be short both God and universal design.

Ramone on Knowing God

Riffing off Eliezer on consciousness, here is (my alter-ego) Ramone on spirituality: 

We are souls who know we are spiritual.  Since we can conceive of mere non-soul "animals," physical bodies without spirit, spirituality must be a non-physical "something more."  (Until someone proves this is not logically possible, we assume it is.)  We call this something more "God", or at least a part of God.  So our full selves, which we call a "soul", contains both a God-part and an animal-part.

We know God is real and that we are not animals.  Skeptics ask: how do we know?  Our God-part, being God and spirit, can directly see God and that it is spiritual.  What could be simpler?  But skeptics persist; they correctly note that it may well be that the spiritual, or God, part of our soul has no causal influence on the body, or animal, part of our soul.  If so, they wonder, how could our animal-parts know about God?  Their mistake is to think that animals "know" anything - clearly only souls know anything.  We obviously use words like "know" and "think" to refer only to high noble things, not base lowly things; there is only a superficial analogy between signal processing in animal bodies and the what spiritual souls know or think.   

But base skeptics persist with their base analogy, asking how our animal parts can process signals to see they are part of a soul with a spiritual part?  After all, skeptics sneer, if spirits have no causal influence on bodies, and if in some alternate evil universe our bodies were in fact not parts of souls but lone animals, would not those bodies process the same signals the same way?  If so, would they not then incorrectly "think", with their animal pseudo-thoughts, that they were part of a soul?  Yes, such imagined abominations could have abominable pseudo-thoughts, but since in our actual universe we actually are spiritual souls, why is it so strange that we actually think that we are what we in fact are?

To belabor the obvious, Ramone's God argument is intended to mirror Chalmer's qualia argument.  Accept both or neither, or show the difference.  (FYI, Chalmers and I exchanged about twenty emails last fall.)