Given your articulation of answered prayer, this seems sound.
Just to point out for a general understanding though, not all conceptions of 'answered prayer' are humans crying out to venerate deities.
For example, one conception of prayer might be to align yourself with certain conceptions of goodness, work, order etc. In this sense, we observe 'sincere' prayers answered because the insincere ones by definition are not actually aligning an individuals actions with these structures.
Indeed, this is why you might observe certain individuals who pray to be preternaturally efficient, dedicated, joyful. It is because the act of prayer is tautologically aligned with being in such a mode. In the christian faith someone who achieves this is 'praying ceaselessly.'
This is more to do with the theology of a potential God in terms of 'necessary vs. contingent reality' as opposed to the potential deities of in-universe power.
To put it another way, I would posit you are engaging in a categorical error of ontology. If classical theism, which posits God as the ground of being itself rather than a powerful agent making choices is correct, then this line of argumentation simply doesn't land.
A few other considerations:
Not to flog a dead horse, but how are we supposed to infer what a transcendent intelligence would optimize for? This seems inefficient only really lands if you genuinely know the objective function.
If someone arrives at theism through other routes (cosmological arguments, fine-tuning, consciousness, etc.), the additional assumptions needed for prayer aren't costly. Why is this not really just restating "given naturalism, prayer seems unlikely?" Which is true but circular as a critique.
that meaning:
I find this true, but not interesting unfortunately. I hope it does not mislead others. Though it is a solid point to make against people practicing folk or a specific type of prayer.
It's interesting. You are IMHO the most original and perhaps deepest thinker alive, yet sometimes your cogitation produces something that has been obvious to many people since antiquity. This is one of those.
I've had some experience with weird things in different contexts. I won't enter into details about them, but what I can generalize from my own anecdotal experience is that, as a rule, attempts at testing supernatural/psychic/magical/whatever phenomena seem to suffer from a core problem in that the hypotheses researchers test for are their own guesses for how they presume such phenomena work. There are rarely, if ever, attempts to take into account the (supposed) rules those who practice such phenomena have themselves identified for them, and then to devise tests for those.
Since what ends up tested is not the same as that which is presumed to work by practitioners of this or that thing, the conclusions cannot be properly generalized.
Some more scientifically-minded practitioners have developed formal proposals on how to test what they actually do. Such proposals would be expensive, because they'd need to be large-scale, and not the kind of thing one can do with a few days of volunteers in a lab. And they'd run into a core problem in that it's strictly impossible to do them using the staples of double/triple-blind randomization.
My own, tentative, wild guess, is that any such study will be pursued once current sciences are completed. When there's strictly absolutely nothing more to discover in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Neurology, etc., and everything, everywhere, is recorded and constantly analyzed all the time by AI agents, records of all those tiny, seemingly one-off, weirdnesses, will accumulate, and prompt a second scientific revolution. But that's not for now, it's for a few centuries down the line.
Before someone asks: no, I cannot provide evidence; yes, I may be full of hot air; no, I won't provide details of what I went through, as that'd sound like I'm trying to convert people to something, which I am not; and yes, skepticism about this is indeed a virtue (I was a Bayesian rationalist before things went weird for me). So, to anyone reading this and wishing to counterargue, I agree with all such counterarguments, as they all make perfect sense.
The issue in a history was if medical doctors can save the life using surgery, then the faith God has absolute authority means that God makes this possibility to be so. This is why Unity School of Christianity departed from the dogma in Christian Science, that required healing by faith alone. Related to this modern Information Theory conventionally will debate around the saying, "Thoughts held in mind, produce after their kind." This hypothesis based on observation, is that the Olympic athlete who has focus, faith, discipline, years of training, and always affirms a new chance to enter the contest, is increasing the probability of accomplishing their award-winning experience of a goal in performance. A colleague of mine writes “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.” ― Richard Bach, (Jonathan Livingston Seagull); after the example in the history of an amazing talented circus acrobat. So, the problem is there unresolved by anything we can simply say, like God answers prayer. It is faith-based because the dynamics is a process we cannot predict any more than we can easily solve the three-body problem. Our 60-cycle-per-second brainwaves operates in five (or six, depending on if you trained with something like Monroe Institute) senses, real-time interfacing, between self and environment. We are co-creating our reality between three places of mind-action; self, society, and universal-mind. We know where our body is, and by science where our brain is at, but information theory includes where the "mind" is at? So, where does the prayer come from and to whom, and how does the "other" answer to the one who apparently makes the petition as in a relationship across some distance unto that location somewhere that is the other with the mind over there? Here is the one factor logical to see. Even if only felt as a single drop, once removed from the ocean, it means the ocean no longer feels whole. So, we have no basis to prove God does not answer prayer. The total-set exists only as that because it contains all possible sub-sets. That is the one proof we do have even now, with all the science around us.
I could swear I remember reading a blog post from you saying it would be rational to regulate prayer, since the small probability of prayers making any difference must be balanced against the potentially large harm of answered prayers, but I can't find it now.
I don't think most people who believe in answered prayers conceive that they are praying to natural, material powers which have arisen in the universe. Rather they conceive that they are praying to an entity which caused the universe to exist, and which exists independently of all material things. It's certainly possible to argue against this view, but those arguments would look much different than this one.
Stumbled across this via one of Yudkowsky's fictions.
It seems like this article is equating answered prayer with reality warping/probability manipulation. I believe this does correlate well with what a notable percentage of the population regards as the purpose of prayer, but does not match well with my own (if curious, see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/prayer for an introduction). I agree that arbitrary deities warping reality based on our desires should reasonably have very low priors :). I have a different understanding of God and prayer.
I testify that I know for myself that God, our Father in Heaven, is real, knows us individually, and loves us. He does answer prayers, and there is a testable experiment in Moroni 10:3-5, though note the three stated preconditions for receiving an answer: faith in Christ (can see Alma 32 for notes on developing that if not available), sincere heart, real intent. The verses outline how to construct the experiment (read the book, ponder, etc). The experiment is moderately time-consuming (reportedly 3-5 days of fairly focused time to read the book, though I personally spread those hours out over a longer period) and sincerity and intent may also take some time to develop, as also a particle of faith. However, I regard that time investment as valuable time well spent to learn more of the truth underlying reality, just as I appreciate physics and other research.
Tracked down a prayer quote today that I had in mind but failed to find earlier, re my own belief of prayer wrt reality warping/probability manipulation:
> Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them.
So, fairly the opposite of changing reality ("The object of prayer is not to change the will of God") - the focus is to better understand God's will. Sometimes there are miraculous interventions (occasionally documented, often disputed); more often the benefits of prayer are only internal - which is nevertheless measurable (more calmness, assurance, etc) but also not terribly exciting :).
I don't think prayer working via physical means, but more via simulation access (which, granted you should be able to recast as physical, but the effects would be strange).
But my long-held position is that evidence for the possibility of simulated humans is evidence for the existence of "gods".
What if the practice of prayer shifts mental states in ways that enhance evolutionary fitness in individuals and groups in traditional societies? It is simply too pervasive and ancient to be a fluke.
Dr. Ed Dutton (author of "Spiteful Mutants," "Genius under House Arrest," "Woke Eugenics," "Breeding the Human Herd," and other books) postulates religious observance (and -isms in general), which always includes "prayer" of some type, is often enough a mask for genetic markers. Religiously-inclined people tend to live longer, thrive more in adverse circumstances, and have more cohesive societies as groups. He marks it as an adaptive evolutionary adaptation - partly genetic, linked to health, fertility, cohesion, and survival under adversity. He makes good arguments and his claims are well-substantiated.
On that note, I've seen elsewhere as far as measuring objectivity, of religious observers, at least one study (I wish I could remember where I saw it... was it Dan Erickson? Joseph Bronski? Ryan Faulk? I don't remember - recalled from dissident psych talks) shows Christians on the "Right" tend toward more openness and tolerance in opinion than, interestingly, self-proclaimed atheists and secularists on the "Left" do. So my two cents is, organized religious observance is not necessarily the only place we see dogma, witch-burning, and intolerance of others' ideas. While your piece isn't about this, per se, it's about prayer - I find the above relevant because wishful thinking and prayer, in a sense, is not just something Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, etc. do. Many people "pray", I'd say. Of course it seems illogical in many respects. Why would we ever assume any presupposed deity is benevolent? Who says our gods are benevolent? Well, as Campbell and Jung might retort - we assume so because "our" gods are "ours." They belong to our group. And in that sense, prayer makes 100% sense - if Dutton is correct and it's an adaptive trait which furthers perpetuation of the group. Individuals do not exist in nature. They come from groups.
I'd add that it's also noteworthy individual and group meditation seems to have some value in the material realm - not just as a placebo effect on our sense of well-being (which nevertheless can be measured in stress reduction, for example), and this is, clearly, at least sometimes what prayer actually is. A good example would be Masaru Emoto's experiments on praying over water (published in "The Hidden Messages of Water"). Of course, some call his experiments pseudoscience - and non-reproducible under controls, dependent upon subjective judgment. I still think it's worth looking at and considering if more experiments under better controls are reproducible in the future. A thing observed changes under observation - and I think that positive affirmations and genuine efforts at homeostasis and balance likely have tangible results not simply for the human praying for himself or family or whomever, but even for animals, or trees. Or water. Why? I don't think it need be a mystery. But I also don't think it's "god" as some all-knowing and benevolent deity projected "out there". No. It likely works some other way because the former simply makes no sense - as you've layed out decently here. Thank you for the article.
The idea of great powers that answer prayer arose via the individual fitness goals of cultural elites who can benefit from controlling a populace. "God is the best punisher" (cognitive scientists).... "submissive and patient while here on earth" (Lenin)
This is why theorists do not say prayer arises simply out of wishful thinking. Prayer is too widespread and systematic for that to be sufficient. More importantly, humans are hardened reality-testers. Our ancestors didn't decimate the large mammals of Eurasia or navigate oceans with wishful thinking.
We can then ask: Religion has many components; why was it helpful for religions to be designed with prayer as a key component? What a brilliant control strategy: ask the Gods to provide, not your rulers.
Values shaping begins in childhood. God as father figure and authority figure. Just as people in traditional societies learned to obey and respectfully plead their case to parents and authority figures, so too could they turn to God when authorities said the matter was for God to decide, not them. The buck is passed and the ruler is immune from criticism.
True. If there is a God (as I believe), then the purpose of prayer would be for the benefit of the ones praying - for example to allow them to see God’s hand working and enhance faith - rather than as a way to direct outcomes in the world.
Given your articulation of answered prayer, this seems sound.
Just to point out for a general understanding though, not all conceptions of 'answered prayer' are humans crying out to venerate deities.
For example, one conception of prayer might be to align yourself with certain conceptions of goodness, work, order etc. In this sense, we observe 'sincere' prayers answered because the insincere ones by definition are not actually aligning an individuals actions with these structures.
Indeed, this is why you might observe certain individuals who pray to be preternaturally efficient, dedicated, joyful. It is because the act of prayer is tautologically aligned with being in such a mode. In the christian faith someone who achieves this is 'praying ceaselessly.'
This is more to do with the theology of a potential God in terms of 'necessary vs. contingent reality' as opposed to the potential deities of in-universe power.
To put it another way, I would posit you are engaging in a categorical error of ontology. If classical theism, which posits God as the ground of being itself rather than a powerful agent making choices is correct, then this line of argumentation simply doesn't land.
A few other considerations:
Not to flog a dead horse, but how are we supposed to infer what a transcendent intelligence would optimize for? This seems inefficient only really lands if you genuinely know the objective function.
If someone arrives at theism through other routes (cosmological arguments, fine-tuning, consciousness, etc.), the additional assumptions needed for prayer aren't costly. Why is this not really just restating "given naturalism, prayer seems unlikely?" Which is true but circular as a critique.
that meaning:
I find this true, but not interesting unfortunately. I hope it does not mislead others. Though it is a solid point to make against people practicing folk or a specific type of prayer.
It's interesting. You are IMHO the most original and perhaps deepest thinker alive, yet sometimes your cogitation produces something that has been obvious to many people since antiquity. This is one of those.
I also thought it was obvious before, but now I can be more explicit about WHY I think so.
Fair enough, but your reasons seem like the usual ones. I think you're correct - but I'm not sure it was worth posting.
That is why magic is often addressed to small local powers like a spirit of the river.
And what of two people who pray, unbeknownst to each other, both sincere, faithful supplecants, who pray for mutually exclusive outcomes?
I've had some experience with weird things in different contexts. I won't enter into details about them, but what I can generalize from my own anecdotal experience is that, as a rule, attempts at testing supernatural/psychic/magical/whatever phenomena seem to suffer from a core problem in that the hypotheses researchers test for are their own guesses for how they presume such phenomena work. There are rarely, if ever, attempts to take into account the (supposed) rules those who practice such phenomena have themselves identified for them, and then to devise tests for those.
Since what ends up tested is not the same as that which is presumed to work by practitioners of this or that thing, the conclusions cannot be properly generalized.
Some more scientifically-minded practitioners have developed formal proposals on how to test what they actually do. Such proposals would be expensive, because they'd need to be large-scale, and not the kind of thing one can do with a few days of volunteers in a lab. And they'd run into a core problem in that it's strictly impossible to do them using the staples of double/triple-blind randomization.
My own, tentative, wild guess, is that any such study will be pursued once current sciences are completed. When there's strictly absolutely nothing more to discover in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Neurology, etc., and everything, everywhere, is recorded and constantly analyzed all the time by AI agents, records of all those tiny, seemingly one-off, weirdnesses, will accumulate, and prompt a second scientific revolution. But that's not for now, it's for a few centuries down the line.
Before someone asks: no, I cannot provide evidence; yes, I may be full of hot air; no, I won't provide details of what I went through, as that'd sound like I'm trying to convert people to something, which I am not; and yes, skepticism about this is indeed a virtue (I was a Bayesian rationalist before things went weird for me). So, to anyone reading this and wishing to counterargue, I agree with all such counterarguments, as they all make perfect sense.
The issue in a history was if medical doctors can save the life using surgery, then the faith God has absolute authority means that God makes this possibility to be so. This is why Unity School of Christianity departed from the dogma in Christian Science, that required healing by faith alone. Related to this modern Information Theory conventionally will debate around the saying, "Thoughts held in mind, produce after their kind." This hypothesis based on observation, is that the Olympic athlete who has focus, faith, discipline, years of training, and always affirms a new chance to enter the contest, is increasing the probability of accomplishing their award-winning experience of a goal in performance. A colleague of mine writes “Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.” ― Richard Bach, (Jonathan Livingston Seagull); after the example in the history of an amazing talented circus acrobat. So, the problem is there unresolved by anything we can simply say, like God answers prayer. It is faith-based because the dynamics is a process we cannot predict any more than we can easily solve the three-body problem. Our 60-cycle-per-second brainwaves operates in five (or six, depending on if you trained with something like Monroe Institute) senses, real-time interfacing, between self and environment. We are co-creating our reality between three places of mind-action; self, society, and universal-mind. We know where our body is, and by science where our brain is at, but information theory includes where the "mind" is at? So, where does the prayer come from and to whom, and how does the "other" answer to the one who apparently makes the petition as in a relationship across some distance unto that location somewhere that is the other with the mind over there? Here is the one factor logical to see. Even if only felt as a single drop, once removed from the ocean, it means the ocean no longer feels whole. So, we have no basis to prove God does not answer prayer. The total-set exists only as that because it contains all possible sub-sets. That is the one proof we do have even now, with all the science around us.
I could swear I remember reading a blog post from you saying it would be rational to regulate prayer, since the small probability of prayers making any difference must be balanced against the potentially large harm of answered prayers, but I can't find it now.
I don't recall that.
as in, Pascal's wager?
A sort of negative version of that, involving externalities.
I don't think most people who believe in answered prayers conceive that they are praying to natural, material powers which have arisen in the universe. Rather they conceive that they are praying to an entity which caused the universe to exist, and which exists independently of all material things. It's certainly possible to argue against this view, but those arguments would look much different than this one.
Stumbled across this via one of Yudkowsky's fictions.
It seems like this article is equating answered prayer with reality warping/probability manipulation. I believe this does correlate well with what a notable percentage of the population regards as the purpose of prayer, but does not match well with my own (if curious, see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/prayer for an introduction). I agree that arbitrary deities warping reality based on our desires should reasonably have very low priors :). I have a different understanding of God and prayer.
I testify that I know for myself that God, our Father in Heaven, is real, knows us individually, and loves us. He does answer prayers, and there is a testable experiment in Moroni 10:3-5, though note the three stated preconditions for receiving an answer: faith in Christ (can see Alma 32 for notes on developing that if not available), sincere heart, real intent. The verses outline how to construct the experiment (read the book, ponder, etc). The experiment is moderately time-consuming (reportedly 3-5 days of fairly focused time to read the book, though I personally spread those hours out over a longer period) and sincerity and intent may also take some time to develop, as also a particle of faith. However, I regard that time investment as valuable time well spent to learn more of the truth underlying reality, just as I appreciate physics and other research.
This is your chance to know for yourself too.
Tracked down a prayer quote today that I had in mind but failed to find earlier, re my own belief of prayer wrt reality warping/probability manipulation:
> Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them.
Found at: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/prayer?lang=eng, ref from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2011/10/the-privilege-of-prayer?lang=eng.
So, fairly the opposite of changing reality ("The object of prayer is not to change the will of God") - the focus is to better understand God's will. Sometimes there are miraculous interventions (occasionally documented, often disputed); more often the benefits of prayer are only internal - which is nevertheless measurable (more calmness, assurance, etc) but also not terribly exciting :).
There have been studies on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer
I don't think prayer working via physical means, but more via simulation access (which, granted you should be able to recast as physical, but the effects would be strange).
But my long-held position is that evidence for the possibility of simulated humans is evidence for the existence of "gods".
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHv3gb3cwPg5EJxSx/baseline-of-my-opinion-on-lw-topics#:~:text=Arguments%20for%20the%20singularity%20are%20also%20(weak)%20arguments%20for%20theism.
What if the practice of prayer shifts mental states in ways that enhance evolutionary fitness in individuals and groups in traditional societies? It is simply too pervasive and ancient to be a fluke.
Did something specific motivate this piece? It seems so straightforwardly correct I'm wondering why you chose to write it.
Dr. Ed Dutton (author of "Spiteful Mutants," "Genius under House Arrest," "Woke Eugenics," "Breeding the Human Herd," and other books) postulates religious observance (and -isms in general), which always includes "prayer" of some type, is often enough a mask for genetic markers. Religiously-inclined people tend to live longer, thrive more in adverse circumstances, and have more cohesive societies as groups. He marks it as an adaptive evolutionary adaptation - partly genetic, linked to health, fertility, cohesion, and survival under adversity. He makes good arguments and his claims are well-substantiated.
On that note, I've seen elsewhere as far as measuring objectivity, of religious observers, at least one study (I wish I could remember where I saw it... was it Dan Erickson? Joseph Bronski? Ryan Faulk? I don't remember - recalled from dissident psych talks) shows Christians on the "Right" tend toward more openness and tolerance in opinion than, interestingly, self-proclaimed atheists and secularists on the "Left" do. So my two cents is, organized religious observance is not necessarily the only place we see dogma, witch-burning, and intolerance of others' ideas. While your piece isn't about this, per se, it's about prayer - I find the above relevant because wishful thinking and prayer, in a sense, is not just something Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, etc. do. Many people "pray", I'd say. Of course it seems illogical in many respects. Why would we ever assume any presupposed deity is benevolent? Who says our gods are benevolent? Well, as Campbell and Jung might retort - we assume so because "our" gods are "ours." They belong to our group. And in that sense, prayer makes 100% sense - if Dutton is correct and it's an adaptive trait which furthers perpetuation of the group. Individuals do not exist in nature. They come from groups.
I'd add that it's also noteworthy individual and group meditation seems to have some value in the material realm - not just as a placebo effect on our sense of well-being (which nevertheless can be measured in stress reduction, for example), and this is, clearly, at least sometimes what prayer actually is. A good example would be Masaru Emoto's experiments on praying over water (published in "The Hidden Messages of Water"). Of course, some call his experiments pseudoscience - and non-reproducible under controls, dependent upon subjective judgment. I still think it's worth looking at and considering if more experiments under better controls are reproducible in the future. A thing observed changes under observation - and I think that positive affirmations and genuine efforts at homeostasis and balance likely have tangible results not simply for the human praying for himself or family or whomever, but even for animals, or trees. Or water. Why? I don't think it need be a mystery. But I also don't think it's "god" as some all-knowing and benevolent deity projected "out there". No. It likely works some other way because the former simply makes no sense - as you've layed out decently here. Thank you for the article.
The idea of great powers that answer prayer arose via the individual fitness goals of cultural elites who can benefit from controlling a populace. "God is the best punisher" (cognitive scientists).... "submissive and patient while here on earth" (Lenin)
This is why theorists do not say prayer arises simply out of wishful thinking. Prayer is too widespread and systematic for that to be sufficient. More importantly, humans are hardened reality-testers. Our ancestors didn't decimate the large mammals of Eurasia or navigate oceans with wishful thinking.
We can then ask: Religion has many components; why was it helpful for religions to be designed with prayer as a key component? What a brilliant control strategy: ask the Gods to provide, not your rulers.
Values shaping begins in childhood. God as father figure and authority figure. Just as people in traditional societies learned to obey and respectfully plead their case to parents and authority figures, so too could they turn to God when authorities said the matter was for God to decide, not them. The buck is passed and the ruler is immune from criticism.
But what else would the UFOS be doing?
True. If there is a God (as I believe), then the purpose of prayer would be for the benefit of the ones praying - for example to allow them to see God’s hand working and enhance faith - rather than as a way to direct outcomes in the world.