Didn't we have this thread? Disguised as a discussion of "outlandish things I believe" or something?

Kant convinced baa that the a priori was a dead letter?

that I am accomplishing something worthwhile by commenting on these threads.

Didn't we have this thread? Disguised as a discussion of "outlandish things I believe" or something?

Lamest Farb ever.

[Unjustly redacted w-lfs-n Indiscretion Error.]

1 - yes, we did, prompted by a Marginal Revolution post on the same topic.

I don't think I have anything in this category. While I'm absolutely certain that there are plenty of things I believe which would turn out to be false if I knew better, I tend to revert to doubt as soon as I become aware of strong counterarguments for something I believed. I know I've got major errors out there, but I don't know what they're likely to be.

is there any difference between compiling this list, and compiling a list of "thinks I believe with a vanishingly low subjective probability"?

(or vanishingly close to .5 if you prefer).

It strikes me that none of baa's beliefs are things that can be shown to be false.

"These beliefs all have a substantial empirical component, however, and are therefore less interesting. "

I believe that things with an empirical component are more interesting.

A more interesting discussion might be the craziest thing you used to sincerely believe true, but no longer do.

It's hard to pinpoint problems with things you currently believe, since, like LB in 7, if there're serious problems you're likely no longer to believe them.

9: Yeah, the things baa said are areas in which I tend not to form strong beliefs because I can't figure out what it would mean to be right or wrong.

As before, lizard people.

Did w-lfs-n really commit an error, or is that a joke comment?

It's possible that baa wouldn't care, but I thought it was an Error.

13--
it was something he once believed, but came to believe was false.

Thinking about it now I realize that there is a distinction between "things I believe to be true that are most likely to be false" and "things I believe to be true that I will likely have the greatest regret for having believed at some point in the future."

In the first category would be beliefs like, "my friends are exception people." In the second category would be beliefs like, "Ziggy Stardust is one of the greatest rock albums ever."

I know I've got major errors out there, but I don't know what they're likely to be.

Unknown unknowns?

That the commenters here are not all balding, 47-year-old single men in their mothers' basements?

What about things you believe, that you are conflicted about believing? I have a whole lot of these -- nothing is coming to mind at the moment, but it's a pretty ordinary experience for me to think something (which I will here characterize as "a belief"), then think but how can I be sure about that? and go back and forth for a couple of virtual minutes thinking about how the belief could be true or false.

Like here's something: I generally believe strongly that I am a good musician, and have the potential to be better at it than I am. This belief comes up against the reef of reality when i am playing my violin and not soundng very good or like something I would want to listen to somebody else playing. But.. well actually this is not really a very good example of what I was talking about in the first paragraph. I will think for a while and see if I can come up with something better.

I certainly have strong views about baa's 3, since I've long thought that everyone who holds to baa's 3 -- i.e. a huge swathe of contemporary thinkers -- have got it wrong.

I honestly believe that most people are as bright as I am.

I leave it to you to judge whether or not that belief is probably false.

baa's setup reminds me of this David Pennock post about prediction markets. If you think of your own mind/belief-system as a "Market of One," then I think you're getting closer to the truth...

21--
certainly false.
but yeah, I know what you mean. Didn't Freeman Dyson once say that he didn't feel exceptional, he just was constantly surprised that other people had difficulties?

9: There might be a difference between finding something interesting and considering it important. Since I spend my days doing sciency-type stuff and not philosophy, I probably find the former more interesting than the latter (there's also the fact that it's much easier to make money at it and that I sort of think that philosophy is just hopeless) but I can't say that I consider, say, "How many dimensions does the universe have?" to be anywhere near as important as, say, "Is morality real?". And this despite the fact that I don't really even understand what the second question means.

I struggle with 21. How could you not have had it rubbed in your face since your were little that a lot of people are really really dumb?

Note: I don't think that that matters a shit, and bright people aren't better people.

Why does the manifest inequality of grown persons disprove the created equality of new persons?

Perhaps B. believes that everyone is as bright as her, and that when they seem to be otherwise, it is because they are being willfully obtuse.

Okay -- still not the category I was thinking about in 19 but I think this belongs in this discussion: I believe in part of my brain that everybody I interact with is happier than I am. I know (of course) this is ridiculous and a bit insulting to the person of whom I am believing it -- but still there is that bit of brain thinking Gee, s/he must be happy.

11: exactly. Plus, I wouldn't even know how to figure out which way to believe.

23: Dunno about the Dyson line, but it sure makes sense.

1. Morality is real: I don't believe baa is right that he would be better off in some sense through dishonesty and betrayal. People don't like sociopaths. And real sociopaths have to pretend to not be sociopaths in order to succeed at anything other than being a criminal.

2. People are equal in some meaningful way: I think that the people being equal has always been a type of political fiction. Governments shouldn't make killing homeless people a misdemeanor.

Why does the manifest inequality of grown persons disprove the created equality of new persons?

I though baa's equality point was just weird. I mean, we all understand that "all men are created equal" is about worth (inherent human dignity...whatever you want to call it) and not ability, right?

31: Isn't there some close connection between what we believe people are capable of doing and how we treat them? I suppose this is in part a question about whether "inherent human dignity" is a fiction we all choose to believe.

Yeah, I couldn't figure out in what sense the strength of the moving guy was meant to be a counterexample to the equality of people generally.

25: God knows how, because my mom is a total snob. Maybe it has to do with having a lot of very, very bright relatives who believe very, very stupid things, mostly (it seems to me) out of a spirit of stubborn perversity. Then there's my dad, who's a very smart man whose emotional damage means he spends most of his time cruising on mental autopilot. He can say and think the most astonishingly idiotic things, but if you actually engage with him he sort of wakes up and the wheels turn and he remembers that he can too think.

Or maybe I'm just ridiculously optimistic, or have a ridiculously narrow range of acquaintance.

re: 26

I took it from the way BPhD phrased her claim that she was talking about extant adult individuals. Rather than potential individuals or 'individuals as they might have been given appropriate advantages and lack of disadvantages in their upbringing'.

If the claim was something like, 'I believe most people are born pretty much equal and it's developmental stuff that leads to the vast majority of inequity we see as adults' then that would be different (and I'd largely agree).

I honestly believe that most people are as bright as I am.

I honestly believe that BitchPhD hasn't spent enough time working retail. I promise you won't hold that belief past the first week.

OSTLPWHYB

Did w-lfs-n really commit an error, or is that a joke comment?

Baa has acknowledged the identity of his alma mater in these very comments, people. And look! So has ogged!

Isn't there some close connection between what we believe people are capable of doing and how we treat them?

But Tim, this is how you get from the Thomas Jefferson of "created equal" to the Thomas Jefferson of "Notes on the State of Virginia" (shorter "Notes": "um, except for blacks.")

Equal creation means equal before God ("Nature's god," of the Declaration) and thus before the Law. It's nothing to do with ability.

Of course the distinction I'm making is manifestly a nonsense (what about three-year-olds?) but it's the distinction we're supposed to make, I think.

30.1: "Real" in what sense? In the sense that social groups establish, teach, and reinforce behavioral norms and expectations? Or in some transhuman sense of Universal Moral Truth? I think Baa's using "morality" in the latter sense and saying that if it's not universal and transhuman, it's not moral, but merely arbitrary. I disagree with that definition, but I agree that what he's calling morality (if I understand him correctly) doesn't actually exist.

38 -- but there were two bits of indiscretion in 5, were there not?

Where Burge teaches is not a mystery.

36: I actually really like working retail. It's *way* better than waiting tables.

I guess what I'd say about people who seem dumb is that the vast majority of people spend a lot of time not really thinking much about whatever it is they're doing. God knows I can do and say some idiotic shit when I'm tired or distracted. Just ask my kid.

31: I though baa's equality point was just weird.

I think one fairly common means of attacking the equality-of-worth argument is to argue that inequality of ability renders it nonsensical.

Ben, what the fuck?

Yeah, but that's a dumb argument.

Of course the distinction I'm making is manifestly a nonsense (what about three-year-olds?) but it's the distinction we're supposed to make, I think.

Not just three year-olds, right? Laws, benefits, programs, etc., constantly distinguish between groups of people on the basis of ability, don't they?

36: Are you saying that people who work retail are stupid? Or simply, that workign retail exposes one to a lot of people, i.e., customers, many of whom are stupid. I'm willing to endorse the latter proposition, but not the former.

Apo, were your co-workers at Kinko's stupid?

Now I can't even remember what 5 said.

46: Of course it is. Doesn't stop some people, though.

Uh oh, this thread looks like it's getting ugly.

Hey, everyone, you're all sexist.

In my memory it had only to do with where baa went to school.

So if you were transported back to 1570 and forced to choose to have either the wee Shakespeare or some random other English kid run over by a highly prochronistic train, would the decision be arbitrary?

re: 48

My experience of working in the service industry is not so much that people (customers, I mean) are dumb, but that people (customers) can be really fucking nasty.

I think the equality of the Declaration ("created equal") has to do with our inalienable rights by virtue of that equal creation. We are all equally entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and further, equally entitled to a government that secures these rights to us.

The only argument against three-year-olds (or other minors) having a similarly equal entitlement has to do with their inability correctly to perceive their own happiness. Many would, unchecked, play in traffic.

I happen to think it's okay to make this point about three-year-olds, or other minors. I think it's a terrible idea to make it about grown persons. I think it's an especially idea to make it about black people (i.e., if they only knew what was good for them, they'd enjoy slavery/segregation etc.).

The reason I said it's manifestly a nonsense is, while saying "three-year-old" is essentially uncontestable, it gets blurry when you get older, and start talking about twelve-year-olds' inability to make informed judgments.

Definitely Shakespeare.

I think some of the confusion here stems from "believing your beliefs". You don't believe beliefs, you just have them. Say there are a thousand propositions, and you believe in each one of them with a certainty of .8. You still believe all of them, but also simultaneously believe that one out of five is not true.

55 -- the hassle of it (for me) is that "3-year-olds (or other minors)" includes a lot of people who are alder than 16, 15, and 14.

I don't understand to whom 53 is addressed, or why.

I'd choose the other kid, because I like Shakespeare's works. But that doesn't mean that the other kid is less bright, or not Shakespeare's equal, nor does it mean the decision's arbitrary. It just means that we value some things higher than others. In my case, Shakespeare's works. In another person's case, perhaps their ancestor.

Lucky for me I haven't got a drop of English blood. (That I know of.)

55: But plenty of adults do things that are clearly not in their own best interest: addiction, gambling, smoking, finding Ben attractive, etc. And an awful lot of 3yos seem perfectly capable of forming reasonable opinions on things if those things are explained using language and concepts they can understand.

I'm all for expanding suffrage to children. Honestly.

It's *way* better than waiting tables.

I consider that working retail. Perhaps mistakenly.

Are you saying that people who work retail are stupid?

No, that dealing with the public day in and day out will lower one's estimation of the intelligence of the general public quickly and sharply.

were your co-workers at Kinko's stupid?

Some of them, sure.

Restaurant work and retail work are pretty different animals.

Do we have any evidence that adults have found Ben attractive?

Whence this, JM?

60.

63 -> 60.

I'm just trying to respect the self-questioning ethos of the thread, Ben. Of course everyone knows that you're devastatingly attractive, but perhaps this knowledge is, like so many beliefs, false.

A lot of people in these here comment threads have said that he's attractive. INCLUDING ME, actually. And I *think* I'm older than you are.

"Do we have any evidence that adults have found Ben attractive?"

are you suggesting that it is predominantly *non-adults* who find him attractive?
Is this going to turn into the reverse of the thread on child-porn?

(yeah, so this pre-teen was hitting on BW. I mean, clearly not over 18. Under 8 years old? Hard to tell. What did you think, Ben?)

Ben is attractive in that lovable pug kind of way.

Is there any meaninful way in which way actually treat all people equally, simply on the basis of their being human? I can't think of any.

OMG, pugs are so cute. And I don't really even like dogs.

Btw, I got NO sleep last night, and a nap from about 6-7 am. So I'm probably a li'l punchy.

QED.

Is there any meaninful way in which way actually treat all people equally

It wasn't so long ago I would have said, habeas corpus.

(Although, even then I would have been wrong. Just not as wrong.)

I don't understand to whom 53 is addressed, or why.

Addressed to anyone who cares to answer, and to see what people think.

But that doesn't mean that the other kid is less bright, or not Shakespeare's equal, nor does it mean the decision's arbitrary. It just means that we value some things higher than others. In my case, Shakespeare's works. In another person's case, perhaps their ancestor.

Well, it does mean that he's not Shakespeare's equal in *some* sense though I guess you're right that that sense might not be a particularly profound one. If instead it was, say, my sister versus some random person then I'd choose to save my sister because, hey, she's my sister and I want to and barring any reason not to (e.g. the other person knows the cure to cancer and can save millions of lives) then I don't see any argument in the other direction. Chocolate versus vanilla, personal preference and nothing more.

But if it's Shakespeare versus some random person then I have a hard time seeing my choice as anything but a judgement that, yes, Shakespeare is worth more than your average person. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it but there it is.

(I chose Shakespeare because that was the first person who came to mind who's done something I consider objectively valuable. If one doesn't consider anything objectively valuable then I don't think discussions on whether all people are equally valuable really make much sense anyway.)

I'm all for expanding suffrage to children. Honestly.

One more bit in the by-now voluminous pile that Bitch is, in fact, insane.

I honestly believe that most people are as bright as I am.

This is one of mine, too. I get it from my dad. And it's simply amazing how many people, on learning one thinks that, insist on saying what an idiot you for thinking that, for not accepting your own superiority.

Bellow's character Herzog was the sort who provoked this kind of reaction from people, the hard-nosed "realists," who want to tell you, perfesser, what's what and how to tell up from down. He called them "reality instructors" and was pleasantly sardonic about them.

No, it's a judgment that *I personally* think Shakespeare is worth more than "some random English kid" about whom I know nothing. But I'd probably make the same choice about any named individual vs. any random, nameless person.

And I wouldn't say that Shakespeare's work is "objectively" valuable, no. What do you mean by "objectively," and how in the heck would you know?

76 - Is someone's legacy synonymous with their worth?

(pile of evidence, that is)

A lot of people in these here comment threads have said that he's attractive. INCLUDING ME, actually.

A lot of people have admitted to blogcrushes on him. INCLUDING OGGED, actually. But that's not the same thing.

Also, I want everyone to stop commenting on all the other threads, because the list of recent comments on the front page means that Everyone! Is So! Totally! Awesome!

Dirty pool, Bridgeplate.

I believe that pugs look like goblins.

In what fantasy world did you expect to live that comment down, ogged?

85 - That belief will never be proved wrong. Ugly little vacuum cleaners.

*None* of you had blogcrushes on me? Ingrates.

Anyway, O., I remember you saying that B-Wo was attractive, but am too lazy to track down the evidence.

85: But cute goblins!

The real test isn't between some random kid and Shakespeare, but between yourself and Shakespeare? Would you sacrifice yourself to enrich the lives of countless future generations?

Also, if anyone would like to have a blog-crush on me, I'll pass around the sign-up at the end of the thread.

Okay, I am now literally giggling and saying "cute!" at the screen because I did a google image search for "pugs."

I am really going to have a hard time staying awake until PK and I get home from his Taekwondo class at 5:30.

Come on, people. This is totally cute.

I'll have a crush on you, Scott. My love is cheap right now, though. So cheap I'm giggling at pictures of pugs.

I'm literally shaking my head and saying "You CANNOT divide by zero. You cannot divide by zero." Because I'm grading exams. "When you divide fractions, multiply by the reciprocal. THE RECIPROCAL."

College first-years say the darndest things.

I think some of the confusion here stems from "believing your beliefs". You don't believe beliefs, you just have them.

Not really. You can ask whether you are able to endorse your beliefs after reflection, and that's all this is. What is it, that I believe, that I believe is most likely to be false?

I was confused by baa's second point as I thought it was blindingly obvious that not everyone is created with equal ability, and that that fact has nothing to do with moral worth, and I wonder how baa could have conflated the two. And that is perfectly consistent with believing that society is constructed in such a way that reinforces some inequalities more than others, and that society should address that to benefit everyone. But all the training in the world isn't going to make me a champion basketball player or allow me to win a Fields medal.

Well, yeah, if you throw out anything objective then there's not much to be said. This thing started with the statement "All people have equal worth", which I don't think makes much sense without *something* objective. The only two interpretations I can come up with are, "All people have an objective value and that value is equal across all humanity" and "People only have subjective value but however you value one person, you should value everyone else."

How one knows anything about anything or what anything means is a mystery to me.

What's wrong with his tongue??? Did he eat a goldfish?

Pugs are only cute insofar as they resemble cats. However! Such a resemblance is against nature. The cuteness and the utter abomination kind of cancel out.

*None* of you had blogcrushes on me?

We would have, except they were obscured by the actual crushes.

The entire concept of "value" is subjective. Pretty much by definition.

96: I don't know, but is it cute, or what?

In what fantasy world did you expect to live that comment down, ogged?

In the fantasy world of mutual respect and fairness between blogizens. Sigh.

100: If you want that world, Ogged, you'll have to go back to washingtonmonthly.com.

B, I'll grant you that that ONE bug-eyed goblin vacuum cleaner is pretty outrageously cute.

97 is very funny, but sadly untrue. Cats are beautiful, and often cute, but the cuteness of pugs is entirely different than that of cats. Cats with smooshie faces like that are hideous and should be put out of their misery.

Assuming that I can retain some of Shakespeare's works either in printed form on my person or in memory, I'd off wee Shakespeare. I can get the credit for the Bard's best lines, and some other brilliant playwrights get a chance to shine and have their words immortalized in cliches and in titles of lesser works.

"I honestly believe that most people are as bright as I am."

Isn't this just another way of saying, I think I'm very bright, but I'm damn gracious about it? I mean, isn't there a third possibility we're leaving out here?

53 is a pretty great counterfactual. But now for some reason I'm sitting at my desk humming to myself, "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler as an infant, but only in a manner of killing that would also entail the simultaneous deaths of say 600,000 people, mostly Jews but some Roma and homosexuals as well, wouldja do it?"

I believe most people are as tall as me, but I'm not very tall.

103 is totally right, except I fear that the smooshie-face cats themselves aren't really miserable, I just become miserable looking at them, and I think slaughtering innocent little kittens just for my aesthetic sanity might be immoral, but then I mentally picture their ugly-little smoosh-faces and I'm like, 'fuck it."

Pugs are objectively adorable.

Text as Muscle.

85: I believe that pugs look like goblins.

I think they should be kept in tubes, to be squeezed out on crackers salvaged from under the seats when one has gone into a ravine off a dirt road in the boonies in a blizzard.

Speaking of Totally Awesome, from wikipedia on Yglesias: "Matt Yglesias(born May 18, 1981) is a popular American political blogger and a prominent voice on the liberal blogosphere. He is one of a new breed of "post-gay" homosexual intellectuals who have been seamlessly "mainstreamed".

Gone now, "thanks" to Sommer, apparently. And I just love the term "post-gay."

cats with smooshy faces are our masters.

Humming? Is it catchy?

To 106

105: Maybe I'm just really stupid.

108: The way they snuffle? And their eyes all bugging out? They can't possibly be comfortable living like that.

born May 18, 1981

Jesus H. Christ.

115 - And pugs don't snuffle and snort and make all sorts of freaky gagging noises while their eyes are a trifle bulgy?

117: Yeah, but they're not cats. Dogs snuffling and snorting is totally in character.

116: Gosh, Apo, thanks so much for making that unmissable. You fucker.

116: Yeah, somehow I ignored that. I'm going to continue doing so, too.

I thought everyone knew Yglesias was a mere child. That's part of the appeal, right?

118, yeah, I'm sort of intolerant about dogs/people/goddamn officemates making snorting sounds. Or smacking sounds. Or wet, adenoidal breathing sounds.

Well, like I said, I don't normally like dogs.

Yes, and I even knew his age. It's the whole "I've had adult political conversations with someone who probably can't even remember the Reagan administration" that made my head spin.

I imagine you could substitute "Nixon" for "Reagan" and the Emerson/Idealist cohort would say "Ayup."

113 -- you wouldn't think so, but...

Me neither. Nor office mates.

It's true, listening to other people snuffle and snort is about as close as I get to actually feeling like I'm gonna heave in public.

OMG! Sausagely and I share a birthday!

apo--I can barely remember the Reagan administration. I do remember all fo the kids running around school after the 1984 election saying, "We're all going to die in a nuclear war!" But the policy details. Not so much..

(Come to think of it, I think I knew that already.)

123: I don't care about remembering X or Y administration. It just freaks me out to think of someone as an adult when I could have been changing their fucking diapers for $2/hour in high school.

Bostongirl, da-dum dum dum, you'll be a Bostonwoman.....sooon.

92: Awesome, B. I don't mind cheap. After all, I buy love with cat food twice daily....

As for your alleged false modesty, isn't it more just a matter of general academic insecurity? When your baseline becomes "has and/or is working toward a Ph.D.," it's not false modesty to consider yourself middling. I mean, there are three or four people in my department clearly head-and-shoulders above the rest of us and the rest of us are separated more by work ethic (or the lack thereof) than anything else.

awesome.

129: I was running around the school saying that in 1980. So there.

134 -> 132

Since my beliefs tend to be probabilistic (for example I think there is about a 60% chance Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings) baa's question doesn't make much sense for me.

10 (craziest thing you use to believe) is more interesting. I once believed in Santa Claus which was pretty crazy but that was a long time ago when I was a naive and trusting child. I think I now have a pretty good bs detector but occasionally things slip through. Like the Cambodian fighting midgets or the Dave Barry cows falling from the sky story. However I don't think being occasionally taken in by a "story too good to check" is all that significant.

Probably the most significant set of erroneous beliefs that I have held recently was that cluster of beliefs that made voting for Bush in 2000 seem like a good idea.

136: And here I was thinking you were praising my exceptional mediocrity.

134: So very not.

YOU believed in SANTA CLAUS??????

about a 60% chance Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings

The other 40% is on Strom Thurmond fathering children with Sally Hemings.

137- yeah, in 10 I meant craziest thing you once believed as an adult. Obviously kids believe anything.

116: I like the fact that Yglesias is a year older than me. Every time I think about how much more than me the guy has accomplished I just tell myself that I still have a whole year to catch up.

The unlikeness of me doing said catching up in just one year doesn't seem to phase me.

139: sez you.

Shearer, you realize that, with that admission, you're now officially about 12 months from being in a street protest, shouting, "Power to the people!" right?

143: Until I hit my mid-20's, I liked doing this with NBA players. My sub-20 inch vertical never fazed me, either.

"You can ask whether you are able to endorse your beliefs after reflection, and that's all this is. What is it, that I believe, that I believe is most likely to be false?"

This looks like just a matter of terminology. The fact is, the act of reflection itself modifies your beliefs, directly, not as some sort of second order "believing in beliefs" thing. If you believe P at time X, and then reflect on it at X+1, then decide that it's likely to be false, then at X+2 you no longer believe P.

Of course, "most likely to be false" doesn't have to mean "likely to be false". You could believe something with confidence .51. But most of that kind of belief is boring, and not what I think baa was talking about.

And then there's the fact that human belief isn't actually 1-dimensional, like it is in Bayesian reasoning. You can believe something but continue to act as if you believed the opposite, and you can believe something in one context but not another, and you can believe something with your head but not your heart, whatever that means. But if that's what "belief in belief" is supposed to be talking about, then it's a horrible phrase for the purpose.

106: But now for some reason I'm sitting at my desk humming to myself, "if you could go back in time and kill Hitler as an infant, but only in a manner of killing that would also entail the simultaneous deaths of say 600,000 people, mostly Jews but some Roma and homosexuals as well, wouldja do it?"

Yeah, the problem with counterfactuals is that they require you to predict the future which is not always so easy to do. It seems pretty possible to me that, given the general levels of dysfunction and Jew-hating in Germany at the time, the untimely death of Hitler might just leave the door open for an equally bad but potentially less militarily boneheaded dictator. I'd feel pretty stupid if I ended up killing 600,000 people only to have it result in even more millions of deaths.

And who knows, maybe killing Shakespeare would be a great idea. Perhaps there was some even-more-talented writer who couldn't get his stuff staged because of that jerk Shakespeare and so decided to burn all his plays and kill himself. And, hey, maybe if he lived, one of his descendants would kill baby Hitler and that would turn out to be a good thing.

I think the point is not necessarily "What would you choose?" but rather "What kinds of factors enter into your decision process?" The fact that, in your example, I'd consider the lives that could potentially be saved says something to me about the viability of pacifism. The fact that, in my example, I'd consider Shakespeare's future work says something to me about...something.

148: Yeah, yeah! Just ask Ashton Kutcher!

Yeah, I think I'll go do that.

It seems pretty possible to me that, given the general levels of dysfunction and Jew-hating in Germany at the time, the untimely death of Hitler might just leave the door open for an equally bad but potentially less militarily boneheaded dictator.

That's the plot of Stephen Fry's brilliantly funny novel Making History.

It's probably been the plot of some not-so-brilliant, not-so-funny novels, too. But that doesn't make Fry's book any less intrinsically awesome.

It could be the premise for a wacky sitcom.

If you believe P at time X, and then reflect on it at X+1, then decide that it's likely to be false, then at X+2 you no longer believe P.

That just doesn't follow. I might have a belief about a certain medical treatment, viz., that it is the best treatment we currently have for the disease, and believe that in five years we will come up with something better, and that it's likely that this current treatment isn't really all that good, and likely to be the sort of thing we laugh about in ten years.

But that doesn't change anything about my belief that the treatment is, now, the best thing we have going. And I think that's what baa is projecting with his little essay here. He has a belief about some of his beliefs (there's your second-order), and that belief is that some of them he would not be surprised to discover are false.

If you don't want to call it 'believing in beliefs', that's fine, but it seems to me pretty clear second-order even if we call it schmecond order.

Cala, any chance you'll be at the UnfoggeDCon?

Unfortunately not. Holidays, etc.

143: faze, damned, faze.

I blame w-lfs-n. Just Because.

But that doesn't make Fry's book any less intrinsically awesome.

No, not even the subjectively awesome Stephen Fry is capable of infusing a book with intrinsic awesomeness.

153: I think it does follow. Your belief that the treatment is the best we've got and your belief that it's not likely to be very good are two separate beliefs.

The strength of your belief (how likely you think it's true) is a property of the belief itself, not a second order thing. Is that where our disagreement is?

But then you say "that belief is that some of them he would not be surprised to discover are false". Which is just the belief that, among a number of beliefs you're not extremely certain about, that many will turn out to be false. That *is* a second order belief, but it's not about any one individual belief, and it's a simple deductive belief about probability.

The entire concept of "value" is subjective. Pretty much by definition.

I am now screaming and clawing at the computer screen.

The entire concept of "value" is subjective. Pretty much by definition.

I've read this whole thread, but I admit that I skimmed certain comments. Who wrote taht ? Which comment is it?

Where does this whole "second-order" phrasing come in? Why do the two of you (153 and 158) think you need to appeal to "beliefs about beliefs" in order to explain what are essentially joint events?

I mean, maybe I choose to characterize my belief about proposition p1 as as numerical probability: Pr{p1}. And so with Pr{p2}. But if I want to talk about at least one of my beliefs being false, I'm just talking about Pr{not(p1 and p2)}, simple as that. No need to appeal to beliefs about beliefs, etc.

Now, if you wanted to talk about how your marginal or joint personal probabilities change when new data is introduced (the firmness of your beliefs), then I can see some kind of second-order thing going on here. But "one of the propositions that I deem (marginally) to be more likely than not is actually not true" doesn't seem like it needs a second-order thing here.

Or am I wrong?

159: Sorry about that, Labs. Not trained, plus no sleep. You might have to explain things to me very slowly and carefully, like I was a snotty coked-up undergrad.

160: It was me.

Speaking of, B, I have a story to email you...

Would you like to read that note to the whole class, Fontana?

But "one of the propositions that I deem (marginally) to be more likely than not is actually not true" doesn't seem like it needs a second-order thing here.

To me it just seems that it's a second-order belief because it's a belief about one of your beliefs, namely, that it is probably false. I have no idea what pdf is on about.

"But if I want to talk about at least one of my beliefs being false, I'm just talking about Pr{not(p1 and p2)}, simple as that. No need to appeal to beliefs about beliefs, etc."

Well, the fact that you've thought through Pr{not(p1 and p2)} means you have a belief about it. But Pr{not(p1 and p2)} exists regardless of whether you've though about it. Likewise, Pr(p1) and Pr(p2) (i.e. the strength of your beliefs p1 and p2) exist whether or not you reflect on them. But maybe reflecting on them does count as forming beliefs about them, and those beliefs would be second order. But their very existence isn't second order.

Oh, man. Okay, everyone, um, Labs and I have a . . . project. We have to do. 'Scuse.

Man. All the cool commenters are having sex with each other, and here I sit with a head cold.

I don't even have a head cold.

So obnoxious. My guess: Labs can't convince the Johns Hopkins people to finish his transgender surgery, and needs B to complete his emasculation.

I think that forestalls other guesses.

If you commented more, Labs, she could try to emasculate you right here, just like she does to the rest of us.

Is public emasculation really sanitary?

Dudes, Labs is not fucking me. My ass isn't nearly hairy enough.

B's gutter is deeper than my gutter.

It sure seems like a substantial portion of everyone, all across America, has a head cold this week. I shudder to think of its incubating silently inside me right this minute.

And emasculate him? With that cock? I'd sooner push Shakespeare in front of a train.

168: I'll have sex with you, LB.

My ass isn't nearly hairy enough.

We're just supposed to take your word for that?

With this cold you wouldn't want to, unless you have some sort of perverted lust for clowns. Come to think of it, you probably do.

In the Elizabethan era, courtiers frequently resorted to the demarche of pushing a rival off the railway platforms that had sprung up about London during the reign of Henry VIII. The crowded quays provided ample opportunity for unscrupulous schemers to shove enemies off bridgeplates. Engineers of the period exacerbated the problem: several accounts report them competing with one another to arrive in the station at speed, exhorting their firemen to pile more heretics under the boiler as they approached their stops in a squeal of brakes.

You just know that's going to turn up in an undergraduate essay somewhere.

Where do you think he got it from?

slolernr is talking to me in code.

I was just addressing 177, albeit obliquely.

182 to 174.

I'm amazed that it took nearly four years for the misdirection of comment references to be "discovered." It's like we just found flint.

It's like we just found flint

... and started using it to give each other hot-feet.

143, -6 -- For me it is authors. For me it was very humbling, but also liberating in a strange way, to realize that two of my currently very favorite novelists (viz. Gary Shteyngart and Zadie Smith) are the same age as I (who have not even one published short story to my name) am. Sort of made me reconsider my plan of one day being a famous novelist. (Let me hasten to add that I have not written much of anything; the plan to become a famous novelist somehow was very short on actual writing-a-novel details.)

nearly four years

Wow, yeah.

In reference to the long-passed "all men are created equal" discussion, I remember reading something about John Adams being uncomfortable with that particular phrasing. He preferred something along the lines of "all men are created equally free and independent", emphasizing equality under the law, rather than of ability.

Yes, it is very depressing to hit one's mid-20s and be faced with the realization that you are likely too old to accomplish anything meaningful with your life.

Wait, heebie. College students don't know how to divide by fractions?

Question: what's the point in talking about the second-orderness of a belief of the type Cala identifies in 153? I have a belief that p is true, and I have a belief that q might be false. Does anything interesting about this latter belief change if q s a belief?

to hit one's mid-20s and be faced with the realization that you are likely too old to accomplish anything meaningful with your life.

No more of that talk, you'll make me hit the bottle too early in the week.

Though I read a study of when researchers made their major breakthroughs, it found that it was almost always by the time the people hit their late 20s or early 30s. The speculation was that all the effort was to attract the opposite sex, and once you're married you're not going to work so hard. So you still have a few years left...

On a completely unrelated note, what, if anything, do you guys think we should give our UPS guy at holiday/New Year time? He's extremely nice and I buy an awful lot of stuff online, plus he's also the UPS guy who delivers to the campus where both Snarkout and I work. As a result, he sees us nearly every day, knows us, waves to us, remarks on whether he has a package to drop off for me at home later when he sees me at school, etc. It seems that it would be suitable to give him somthingorother, but I have no idea how this works and am (in so many ways) a poor excuse for an adult. Plz advise.

what, if anything, do you guys think we should give our UPS guy at holiday/New Year time?

Cash in an envelope. Seriously.

What if Micael Kinsley was a wingnut?

Christmas card with a twenty tucked in it is one way to go, to be handed to him when he delivers your next package. A box of cookies is also standard if you're the 'bakes Christmas cookies' type.

Standard there doesn't mean required or expected -- just that it's a conventional expression of good will.

Sex.

They get so tired by New Years, though.

Is that how we're calling 200 now?

But UPS guys already get so much sex, what would he possibly do with more?

Maybe I should be a UPS guy.

189: Thing is, you can reach just about any conclusion by looking at writers. I'm sure there's a whole range of famous names who didn't start writing seriously until their thirties. And if it makes you feel any better, some would say that Zadie Smith is overrated.

204 - I believe UPS guys are third, behind only Dallas Cowboys and plumbers on the bootsknocking hierarchy.

194- well, look, far be it from me to do anything to prevent anyone from hitting the bottle, but it's worth noting that we're trending away from the numbers you cite. According to "The Burden of Knowledge and the 'Death of the Renaissance Man': Is Innovation Getting Harder?", being in school until one's mid-thirties now is pretty much the same thing as going to school until about the age of twenty-six 100 years ago. (The reason being that there is simply more to learn now, so achieving the same true "level of education" -- defined as reaching the forefront of knowledge in any particular field -- requires more time than it used to.) Note along these same lines that the average age at which Nobel prize winners made their signature discoveries has been steadily creeping upwards over the history of the prize. In Einstein's day it was the mid-20s; now it is the early-to-mid 40s.

Still, I say if you've hit your mid 20s without accomplishing anything truly noteworthy, it's probably best to go ahead and off yourself, because it's all going to be downhill from there.

I do like to sknock a nice boot. But who doesn't?

WASPs.

Or a plumber! They make pretty good money, too.

I wouldn't be a Dallas Cowboy, though. I don't think I could live with myself.

I hear rock musicians pull decent tail, Teo. Maybe you could join a band?

First I'd have to learn to sing or play an instrument. I doubt it's worth the effort.

What? Plenty of rock musicians do neither.

Thanks for endorsing my natural inclination towards the card + twenty. (I'll save the sknocking for the spring.)

Although plumbing's probably better work. So stick with that.

214: How much tail do they get, though?

My dad's had to do quite a bit of plumbing in his life (though he is not a professional plumber). He says it's actually pretty satisfying.

And if it makes you feel any better, some would say that Zadie Smith is overrated

Ah but I am myself one of those who overrate her work. I think she is the cat's pajamas.

it's probably best to go ahead and off yourself, because it's all going to be downhill from there.

This is just a ploy to remove the competition, isn't it? Clever...

>Yes, it is very depressing to hit one's mid-20s and be faced with the realization that you are likely too old to accomplish anything meaningful with your life.

Jesus was almost completely decomposed by my age.

218- So he just, what, goes out plumbing occassionally on the weekends? "Bye, honey, I'm off to go plumb Ms. Mitchell's toilet?" Yeah, I bet that *is* pretty satisfying.

I believe in the Parking Gods. This would probably disappoint PZ, but I have empirical evidence of their existence, as the Biophysicist is always able to find a parking space, even during Gay Pride weekend, when there are about 400,000 extra people in a town of 1.9 square miles with a normal population of under 20,000. I'm not sure what he sacrifices to them, as that is a Mystery. Mithras may know. [The god, not the blogger.]

Re: Figuring out that much of the world barely has a two-digit IQ: Speed up your block, not noticing that the limit has been changed from 35 to 25. Attend traffic school at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Have most of your fellow sinners accuse you of "cheating" because you can figure out the pathetically simple wordplay puzzles the "comedian" running the thing poses, even tho' you're running a fever of 103 and have the flu. Have one person note that you've been doing the crossword in ink and have them all ask whether you're a college professor or rocket scientist or something. Deny being either and have them all move just a little farther away, lest your brain explode or an alien burst from your chest.

Or watch Jerry Springer, at which point the imposition of retroactive birth control will seem quite attractive.

Or work in a record store in NYC in the 70s, when disco was at its height, at which point a career in porn looks better and better.

[Note: The adorable round-cheeked guy who plays Hiro on Heroes is also a computer wiz with an IQ of 180. If I were 25 and single, I could so go for him.]

I hear resaurateurs get wicked laid. Direct quote.

Something to do with that waitress/crazy chick thing.

He says it's actually pretty satisfying.

It is pretty nice to be able to do basic construction/repair work yourself. I put in some crown moulding on my own a while ago, it really gives you that "look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!" sort of feeling.

I hear resaurateurs get wicked laid.

This might be the money thing. Opening a restaurant is expensive.

Teo, if just getting laid is your goal, you should totally go into porn.

222 - I believe the personal satisfaction came from plumbing her depths.

223 - Scuttlebutt (who knows, but passing on a salacious rumor is fun) was that he cheated on a lot of work as an undergrad. Gasp! But he worked at ILM, so he must have at least a little going on upstairs.

222: Nah, he would just have to go out and snake our own system when it would get plugged up (roots, usually).

Just getting laid is not actually my goal.

Then I have no advice for you.

230 -- no matter how often you say that my hunch is that certain filthy minds around these parts will never accept it.

That's okay.

233 to 231, but it works with 232 as well.

that waitress/crazy chick thing

I must've missed that discussion. Someone want to unpack this one for me?

Crazy chicks = teh hott sexx.

But I really came in to respond to 230. Teo, you say that as if "just getting laid" were inimical to your goal. Why be all binary about it?

217: I'll bet you that guy from the B-52s got laid plenty. (You know, that one, on the left.)

219: To put it another way, some people who might actually not have to live in a van down by the river think she's overrated.

Oh, and a lot of waitresses are teh hott, and a lot of them are headcases. Or so it has been claimed.

I just mean that getting laid is a goal that I would like to achieve in the context of achieving a bunch of other goals, not all by itself.

189.--Recently I realized that Moqtada al-Sadr is about 33. I have only a few more years to have the entire Middle East and a superpower wondering what I'll do next.

217: I'm not sure you want to know the answer to that one. It does seem to depend a bit on whether or not they are trying.

I'm not quite getting 237.

Crazy chicks = teh hott sexx

Yet another erroneous belief, as we discussed in the Modern Love thread, but true often enough that a person could be forgiven for holding it. Restaurant work is great if you're looking to get laid (or high) and is in any case objectively superior to retail. I had no idea that plumbers were alleged to be teh hott, but I assure you that cutting up cast-iron pipe with a sawzall is deeply satisfying.

I believe that, to the extent that I think I'm brighter than some other people, my self-loathing is a mitigating factor. Note to self-satisfied morons: we're even.

My brother worked as a waiter / bartender for years, as did his present wife. They met at work, got married, and rehabbed together. Waiting is a very demanding trade because of the social obligations.

Another advantage for straight men in restaurant work is that so many waiters are gay. Waitresses are normally at loose ends, which would include crazy, but mostly they're not married and not on the career track. Maybe students. A problem from the guy POV is that guys come to restaurants specifically to hit on the waitresses, but often they're pretty dorky.

UPS / Fedex guys do get hit on a lot, and several that I've known were pretty studly.

242: I suspect that would be because SNL references are teh suck. I've long since abandoned the belief that I have a talent for comedy.

Plumbers!? Do you all live in Pulchritudinous Plumbertown or something? Because all of the plumbers I've ever seen have been schlubby middle-aged guys with cringeworthy cases of plumbers' crack.

UPS/FedEx guys, OTOH, are h0tt the world 'round.

On behalf of schlubby middle-aged guys everywhere: Hey!

Come on, don't you think he's just a little hot?

Picture Not Available. There is this guy, though.

On the other hand, it seems DHL drivers get no love.

They're known worldwide as Drunken Heavyset Louts, afterall.

Thanks, all for engaging. I am sorry to have missed this thread.

Even though the conversations has since moved on, some responses:

1. To Ben W. It was the initial contrast between Hume and Kant that initially convinced me that the a priori was a dead letter. Then I wised up.

2. To LB I know I've got major errors out there, but I don't know what they're likely to be. Really, no idea at all? My instrospection leads entirely the other way. I know there are certain things that, in my secret heart , I want to believe. Clearly, my introspection yields different results from other people, as more then one commmenter here (apologies if I don't address all good points) found the basic concept of identifying likely errant beliefs as inherently quixotic. Maybe everyone here is just admirably dispassionate and admirably precise. Yet I find that, looking at my own beliefs, I do not believe certain things 53% and other things 90% I generalyl more or less believe them. And further, I find that while there are structutring beliefs/rules of thumb I gnerally hold to, I am more likely to suspend them or find exceptions when they run contrary to somethnig I deeply want to be the case. For example, I think that microeconomic arguments are generally perusasive. But I am much less sympathetic to Beckerian arguments about the economics of family structure than I am to arguments that price floors create inefficiency. Do other people really not have this same intuition of self-deception? (or at least, the emotional screening of belief?

3. ptm: yeah, I guess I do think emprical mistakes are less interesting than mistakes in what I might call "regulative" beliefs. Sure, I think nationalism has generally increased human happiness. And this is a dubious view. But this belief doesn't really have the same regulative function in my life as my belief in an equality of human dignity.

4. And on that point. Really, the human equality point is just a specification of the "morals are real" claim. I believe it's really true that we are in some sense of equal worth. Yet by any generally recognized measure of worth -- economic value, likelihood of producing great art, good temper, ability to dunk -- we see just enormous chasms of difference. That gives me pause in my Jeffersonian idealism. (so to Cala, it's not so much a inferential non-sequitor as a recognition of how unusual equality in any trait is.

5. Seriously, will no one (besides BPHD, and ClownA) fess up to beliefs they think are likely false?

Bitch, Ph. D. and I: the sole source of humility on Unfogged.

253: I'm not sure I understand everything you said in the original post, but I seem to be you with a mustache. I started pretty firmly in what I understand to be the "a priori" camp. Everything since the second half of college on has pushed me toward what I understand to be the Humean camp. I now have pretty strong mechanistic beliefs about human beings. But I admit that there is something about...and here I'm really foundering from a lack of vocabulary...a whole series of claims about constant and absolute truths that feel correct often enough to (a) worry me, and (b) force me to actively fight the pull. Cf. w-lfs-n on Authenticity.

Also, I believe in God. I occasionally wonder if I'm kidding myself.

will no one (besides BPHD, and ClownA) fess up to beliefs they think are likely false?

It's not a consistent belief (in that I am repeatedly proved wrong in the execution of it), but I tend to believe that I can regularly do large quantities of high-quality work at the last minute, based on erroneous perceptions of past experiences. I am suffering from this misconception now, actually.

Seriously, will no one (besides BPHD, and ClownA) fess up to beliefs they think are likely false?

One day, I will get a job.

Seriously, will no one (besides BPHD, and ClownA) fess up to beliefs they think are likely false?

I believe that 254 gets it exactly right.

223 -- You apparently share the traffic school experience with Charles Bukowski.

I wonder how many navel-gazing indie rockers discovered Bukowski only after discovering Modest Mouse. It must have been like finding Cheez Whiz™ after twenty years of dry crackers.

Bukowski!

260 -- That post does have an odd tone to it (wow, there's an actual person named Bukowski, and his first name's Charles).

But how does that compare to the experience of Replacements fans discovering Alex Chilton?

[pwned-feeling navel-gazing indie rocker googles {"alex chilton" replacements lyrics}, hangs head in shame]

I, of course, am immune to such experiences.

Teo takes his crackers dry, thank you.

The funny thing is that I really do.

I think Teo needs to spend a year or two abroad, in a country where it would be considered impolite to eat one's crackers dry, if you know what I mean.

I'm quite certain I don't.

263 -- why feel shame, it's never too late to discover the replacements (or Alex Chilton for that matteR).

Besides, I love 260 not only because someone actually followed the link in my comment, but because there is a subtle ambiguity to whether or not it is praising Charles Bukowski.

But wait, does 263 also imply that you, in fact, discovered Charles Bukowski after listening to Modest Mouse?

268: She means that you need to go to Bangalore with a backpack full of Handi-Snacks* and use the Magical Red Cheez Wands to deploy greatness. Clearly.

*No, I'm not shilling for Kraft, goddammit.

No, teo needs to pose as a rock journalist following a band on the road and let the groupies seduce him.

Now there's an idea. When's your next tour, Stanley?

269: Ha. Happy to please. I do like some Bukowski, but he's more than a bit sexist at times (same problem I have with Vonnegut). And I came to Modest Mouse late—later even than Bukowski.

272: Mid-March. You in?

Maybe. Where're you going?

What, you're pre-screening the groupies based on location? You're going to have to lower that bar, teo.

(Serious answer: mostly destinations east of the Mississippi River; nothing, of course, is booked yet.)

And I just realized that 273 implies that Bukowski got into Modest Mouse, about which I know nothing. Insert "to" before that second "Bukowski", internets.

Dude, I got classes and shit. I gotta be sure I know where I'm going before I blow them off.

(On rereading that, I realize it doesn't make any sense. Oh well.)

Yeah, but it's your last semester, right? Convince some open-minded prof that you're doing an independent study about the contemporary "gig" or some bullshit. Fuck, you could probably get funding for gas money. Of course, I say this all un-self-interestedly. It's all about getting teo to lay some pipe the research.

When exactly in March will it be? It might actually be my spring break.

The fact that you might actually be considering this is awesome. Probably starting around the 15th and running three weeks. We'd hit your (college) neck of the woods in late March/early April, but you could meet us along the way if you're serious about (I can't believe I'm about to type this) doing what Standpipe suggests.

(teo and I will take this thread to 300 easily; eat it up DHLurkers.)

I wasn't serious when we started talking, but that would actually be more convenient that I was thinking. We'll see.

Are you still coming to DC this weekend?

You could, at the very least, write an article for your humor mag about how humorously inept we are.

I'm going to try to convince the roommate. Coming up alone would be more intimidating and would leave me without a place to stay.

There's a thought.

I'm serious about the study-abroad thing as well. It's best to go to a fairly sexually liberated place whose codes of etiquette in no way resemble your own.

Do you have any suggestions?

286: Yeah, yeah, JM. There are more pressing demands. We need teo to drive the van and sell merch. Oh, and, um, research.

I'm not falling for the teofilo feint again. We're going to come up with a 300-comment plan of action, and then you're going to say, "well, that's not exactly what I'm after." Humbug!

I'll have you know that I asked a girl out last night.

If teo doesn't have an STD by summer, I will feel like a failure.

Woot! I take it back.

And?

She said yes; I'm waiting to hear back from her about scheduling.

Yeah, and dood, ogged, I'm talking about trotting the boy about the country with a rock band. He'll be fucking legion (or even fucking-legion) by the time we steam back into port. Stop crushing dreams, Lur.

Good work, dude.

Ok, I can go to sleep happy...

A year abroad would probably also be good for you in your field, unless you're sure you want to join the CIA.

As for the prospective date---hurrah! Just asking her is a great leap forward.

Now for specific advice: have you proposed a specific and fun outing, or have you simply indicated a general interest? If she's agreed to either, it's a good sign, but it's much easier to nail down a date if you have an idea for an outing already in mind.

With that, I'll stop giving advice to you for the night.

It's a little late for a year abroad within the framework of my college career, but it's certainly still an option in general.

This was mainly just indicating a general interest, but nailing down a date shouldn't be too hard. We're both leaving town soon, so there are a limited number of times available and I think we're pretty clear on the general outlines of the event.

Okay, since you're forcing me to break my word...

Dates don't happen when both parties generally agree that in principle a date is desirable; they happen when a specific course of action is agreed upon for a specific date and time. I've gone out with people I didn't particularly fancy because they had a great outing all lined up; my longest relationship to date started that way. So start proposing specific days for that event!

(And now I really am going to bed.)

(Me, too.)

300!

Good night.

just to out-cool you in indiedom, i "discovered" bukowski via the Boo Radleys.

and i prefer westerberg to chilton.

I've met Chilton a few times. The last time, I was with a friend who was a big fan. I'd mentioned I'd met him once.

"Hi, I'm Alex"

"Oh my fucking God, you're Alex Chilton. Matt said he was your friend. This is so cool"

[N.B. I'd said nothing of the sort. I'd said I'd met him. Once.]

Chilton (who has obviously has no memory of us ever having met, and in a sardonic tone of voice):

"And exactly when did we become friends, Matt?"*

One of those 'earth, swallow me up whole' moments.

* He was actually staying *in* my flat at the time but at the behest of my flatmate.

How did this get over 300 and no one mentioned that baa's original posting is actually a good example of the preface paradox, which is supposed to show it is rational to have logically inconsistent beliefs?

298 Jackmormon: You really shouldn't try to impose your archaic dating concepts on the young people of today. The world has moved on.

Yeah it's all hookups and rainbow parties in Teoville these days.

Hott, debauched, anonymous groping is today's Ivy League.

So start proposing specific days for that event!

Perhaps I wasn't clear. We're basically set on a day (Thursday), we're just working out a time and location. This is what I meant by "pretty clear on the general outlines of the event."

I believe it's really true that we are in some sense of equal worth. Yet by any generally recognized measure of worth -- economic value, likelihood of producing great art, good temper, ability to dunk -- we see just enormous chasms of difference. That gives me pause in my Jeffersonian idealism.

It should give you pause about the kinds of things we generally recognize as measures of worth, instead.

Ok, I'll bite. What then are the measures of worth that give you confidence in Jeffersonian idealism?

Well, see, this is why I said yesterday that value was essentially a subjective idea, and almost gave Labs a heart attack.

This gets back to the "I honestly think I'm no brighter than anyone else" thing. I think that there are a lot of different possible worth measures, and so assuming that X skill is "better" than Y skill is dumb. Like, my h.s. best friend's dad was a college dropout who sold insurance and had 4 kids by two different women and barely managed to pay his family's bills and loved Spanish literature and would, I think, have been a great teacher if he'd not gotten his first wife pregnant with my best friend when he was a college student. So, on economic value and likelihood of producing anything of lasting value he was pretty low on the scale. He also died of a heart attack in his 40s.

OTOH, he was a *fantastic* father and a really optimistic guy who seldom seemed, to me, to regret his life. I miss him terribly and think about him often. *To me* (and to my friend, his daughter) his life had great value. Then again, his relationship with his second son was really volatile, sad to say. Although I also know that his son loved and misses his dad a lot.

I don't think that that set of values--"great father"--has to substitute for the "economic success" set of values in order for it (the former value set) to be worth something. I'm just saying, different set of measurements. Even if you produce someone who is a great dad *and* an economic success, that doesn't negate the success of my friend; he's still more valuable *to me* than this person you're producing who never had any effect on my life, or the lives of the people who knew my friend.

I know this sounds all pie-in-the-sky, but it's the kind of thing that really does make it easy for me to shrug and say that the whole "I can't dunk, therefore Jeffersonian idealism is nonsense" kind of argument is silly.

Oh, plus his daughter (influenced by the things her dad did and loved) has gone on to be a fairly important academic in her field, which overlaps a lot with her dad's interests. Her research was based on some of his family history, and his picture's on the cover of her front book. So there's the Shakespeare argument for you: value = influence over the work of others. No?

Blah blah humility, blah blah lack of objective point of view, blah blah it's impossible to value the measure of a man, blah blah.

Well I agree with that, and it surprises me that it's being made to seem pie-in-the-sky or eccentric.

Just to clarify, my point was not to reify certain measures of worth as the one true measure. I don't think economic success, e.g., is a much of meaningful measure of human value. The difficulty is that *any* quality we value -- being a good father, being optimistic, influeincing other people in a beneficial way -- will be unequally distributed. And it's just not true to say that someone who lacks one will make up for it in another. Some people will lack all those worthwhile qualities. You name it, they don't got it. Yet, I still want to assert a fundamental equality between that person and everyone else. On what grounds? Hard to say. Hence, it's in my list of dubious things I believe.

I think asserting subjectivity about value doesn't help us much. Unless the point is that we're all equal because we're all equally worthless. That's an idea I can get behind.

Why do you need grounds for asserting fundamental equality? Why can't you just declare it by fiat?

That's an idea I can get behind.

baa! That's exactly one of the things I was going to say I believe, that probably isn't true!

311 -- but how do you translate this into setting goals for your own life.

Your comment clarified something that's been bouncing around in my head related to the "ideas you believe that are likely false" question.

One of the ideas that I cling to as an organizing principle of my life is the idea that if I make life decisions based on taking on chalenges and responsibilities that that feel relevent to my own personality that I will end up having an interesting life.

I have moments of doubt about this strategy.

I feel like I need to have aspirations in my life to provide some benchmark for progress but, for obvious reasons, most aspirations are suspect so it's difficult to know which aspirations to endorse.

311 makes me realize that it's easy to look at other people and find ways to value whatever they happen to do in their lives but how do we balance that with the need to have goals and a sense of successes and failures in our own lives?

Why do you need grounds for asserting fundamental equality? Why can't you just declare it by fiat?

Because if you can't point to anything backing it up, people will get suspicious of all your fiats.

Teo- the question is not whether we will treat everyone as having equal worth, but whether it is in some sense true that everyone *is* equally worthwhile. Meaning if someone else *denies* that everyone is of equal fundamental worth, are they saying something wrong or untrue, or just voicing subjective disagreement?

people will get suspicious of all your fiats

This phrase is begging to be lampooned but I cannot figure out how.

Codifying 317:

I believe in original sin, or the fallenness of all people; the intrinsic wickedness of persons.

And I suspect that it might not be true.

315 -- I may have missed it above -- did you ever respond to 31 et seq.?

I believe that best of all is never to have been born, and second best to die young.

322: You're a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, aren't you, slol?

Except that you don't really believe that.

5. Seriously, will no one (besides BPHD, and ClownA) fess up to beliefs they think are likely false?

I really can't think of any beliefs I hold that are obviously false. Over the last few years, I have given up many beliefs. I once read a quip that the way to certain beliers was to confine all your beliefs to a fixed set, and never to change them. The only thing you could permit yourself to do, and what you must do, is throw away a belief when presented with evidence that it's false, or probably false. You would probably end up a null set. The quip was that you must realize this is a feature, not a bug.

Anyway, I can think of some beliefs I have that I'm not 100% on:

1. Many people's ability to critically think is, for all intents and purposes, deficient. I have met many people who just do not process information well, or have horrible memories. As a fact of the matter, then, I believe many people are "stupid". (which isn't to say they don't have good morals, and aren't generally good people in many respects.) However, I do not believe this is a necessary condition. Idealistically, I believe that the potential for intelligence among people is mostly equal.

2. Even though religion as a general matters fails to interest me, I think John 15:12 ("this is my commandment, love one another as I love you") is some of the greatest advice ever, not just in spite of but because it's nigh impossible to live up to.

3. Almost contradicting the above, I think we need conflict. Mental, emotional, and physical. Life would be bland without it. Similarly, to a limited extent, pain, anguish, anxiety, depression, sadness, etc..., are good things.

4. Autumn is the best of the four seasons.

315: I don't see why saying that there are different measures of worth is essentially the same as saying we're all worthless. I mean, sure: in the sense of our all being equal, we are all also equally unequal--we all have both strengths and weaknesses. But acknowledging that doesn't make the weaknesses truer than the strengths.

319: Not necessarily. After all, the basis for our believing in equality is, literally, a declaration that it is so. Inasmuch as any ideological truth has to come from somewhere, you can argue that said declaration is based on a universal belief, or truth. But then I can point out that, in fact, it wasn't and isn't true, at least in practice. Sometimes a declaration of what we wish to be the case amounts to an assertion that it *is* the case, and that assertion becomes its own proof.

318: You recognize that "interesting" doesn't necessarily mean "good," and that any life (being too complicated to be reducible to x or y specific value set) is going to have different, often competing goals and achievements, as well as fuckups and failures. Nonetheless, one pursues goals and aspirations because one thinks that they are good, and valuable. But that doesn't mean that other goals and aspirations are valueless.

"interesting" doesn't necessarily mean "good"

By a curious coincidence, this very assertion is a belief I hold and think is false.

(Or maybe better, "the converse of this assertion" is a belief I hold and think is false.)

"Interesting = good"? Easy to disabuse yourself of that one. The torture policy is interesting.

In contrast, statements like "make love, not war" are mind-numbingly dull, but nonetheless true.

What about "War is not good for children and other living things"?

4. Autumn is the best of the four seasons.

Take this one off the list. No other season even comes close.

(A statement which bizarrely gets only 78 hits on Google -- did I misremember it?)

334: Spring? So much better.

328: It's very difficult to see how saying all value is subjective isn't just the same as that there's no such thing as value. I value X, you value -X: we're both right! Implication: there's no real thing out there that = value. Implication: we all lack value, because there's no thing out there which is value which we could possess. Multiple measures of value is, unfortunately, insufficient grounds for asserting equality. Someone will fail on all those measures.

323: I *agree* that equality is about equal worth/dignity, not equal ability. But then the skpetic says: humans aren't equal in *anything*. So then the question comes to me, what is my grounds for asserting equality? Tough one.

332: that's an imperative, so it doesn't have a truth-value.

335: "War is not healthy..."

336: Fuck off, commie.

335: Here's what you're looking for.

339: America is about hope, not our coming death, Frenchy.

Fall=Thanksgiving
Spring=May Day

Commie.

338: Okay, substitute 333 then.

337a: I'm not seeing it. Saying that X is subjective doesn't mean that X doesn't exist. All I'm saying is that there's no ONE real thing out there that = value, to the exclusion of all other things.

Except for 336, which is objectively false. Spring is wet and muddy and cold. Screw that.

Spring is wet and muddy and cold.

Also true of autumn; slightly less muddy but far more cold, if you include the chill one feels in the presence of impending doom.

All seasons are equally horrible and wonderful in their own peculiar ways.

Admittedly, the coming winter is the downside to fall. However, *in and of itself*, far superior to spring.

I say from long professional experience that conversations about whether something is objective or subjective really ought to start with a clarification of what's meant by these terms, or at least with a clarification of what it would take for something to be o/s in the relevant sense.

You recognize that "interesting" doesn't necessarily mean "good,"

Absolutely, though things have more or less worked out to date.

Nonetheless, one pursues goals and aspirations because one thinks that they are good, and valuable. But that doesn't mean that other goals and aspirations are valueless.

Yes and no. I certainly believe that other goals are valuable and one of the nice things about having, "make choices that are personally meaningful" as a standard is that it doesn't require me to dismiss the other options as bad, just not as what I want at that moment.

At the same time, I think aspirations have to mean more than just something that is personally valuable.

I believe I was just reading something on this recently (IIRC the Alan Ryan essay in the most recent NYRB, but it's not available online) that made the comment that many goals that we pursue are too difficult to justify purely on the basis of personal preference. It would be easier to change our preferences than to achieve the goals.

The example is that a scientist pursuing "scientific truth" has to believe that "truth" has value external to just satisfying the individual curiosity of the researcher. Because if the motivation is just curiosity it's too much work.

Also, I think the choices we make are frequently implicity criticisms of the alternative choices. See ogged, for example.

But all of that feels somewhat off topic, part of what I wanted to get at is just the question of how much tension is there between believing that there are a multitude of valuable activities that people can engage in while simultaneously valuing certain activites far higher than others in our own life. I don't believe that those two thought contradict, but I think there is tension.

You get to build fires and wear cozy sweaters in the fall. Fall rules, you haters.

192 - Ben, college kids have trouble with fractions. Especially fractions-within-fractions. They know the rules, but their understanding is so rigid that they can't apply it to slightly unfamiliar contexts.

(I'm not being fair to the kids who tested out of Precalculus, of which there are plenty. Because they don't cause such cosmic angst in me.)

Autumn is by far the best season.

Also, given the discussion of fall music, I am listening to Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs right now. At this moment I believe it to be excellent fall music.

337: sure, I'm all for value pluralism, but I don't think that helps on the equality point. If there are multiple things that = value, then someone who lacks them all, lacks value. If anything can be valuable, provided that someone finds them so, then we've either got a) a situation where x can be valuable just as well as -x can be valuable (which seems like a way of saying "value, not a real thing") or b) it's just that there is some one thing that's valuable, namely producing in other people the belief that you are valuable. (which again, some people will lack).

Sally just sent me an email! For the first time ever -- Buck must have set up an account for her! I'm so pleased.

Back to whatever you were talking about.

You get to build fires and wear cozy sweaters in the fall. Fall rules, you haters.

S/b "you get to pollute the atmosphere and wear itchy bulky clothes that cost a lot to clean."

Gimme a minute to parse 354, but in the meantime:

I *agree* that equality is about equal worth/dignity, not equal ability. But then the skpetic says: humans aren't equal in *anything*. So then the question comes to me, what is my grounds for asserting equality? Tough one.

But the skeptic's statement doesn't address the thing he thinks it's addressing. Humans aren't equal in any *one* thing, nor (if I can read the skeptic's mind based on the original assertion), are humans equal (for the sake of argument) in any one *ability*. The statement of equal worth isn't *about* ability, so who cares?

355: Teh awesome! I got PK one a little while ago if only to give him some reading/writing practice, but we don't check it very often b/c I'm greedy about my online time.

baa, there are still distinct kinds of value here. There's the kind of value you seem to be talking about, which has to do with what we esteem or produce, but there's another kind of value that's more relevant to "all men are created equal," which has to do with our inherent worth as human beings. Different traditions ground this inherent worth differently: your soul; your ability to reason; your ability to suffer; your ability to participate in the life of the polity, etc., but in each case, there's some basic trait that we think everyone shares, on the basis of which we consider them one of "us."

355 -- Yeah this is fun. I gave Sylvia an email account about a year ago, and she uses it a bit, mostly for communicating with her grandparents on my side, who live far away in Modesto, and with her best friend, whom we set up around the same time; but also for writing to me now and then.

Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoffs

That is an excellent album. In any season.

358: You realize we should totally set up an Unfogged kid's blog. Or at least an Unfogged kid's pen-pal system. They can start by telling each other stories of how weird their parents are.

359 -- indeed, but fall moods make me particularly appreciative of gentleness and casualness as virtues in music. In other moods I might be more interested in wit, or ambition, for example.

360: My son routinely tells people, not trying to be funny, that he has the two weirdest parents in the world.

362: He's probably a little old for the pen-pal list, but if he wants to moderate it....

357: Yes. I agree with this. It seems that this mysterious kind of value is really *different* from almost every other kind of thing we value. Hence, why it's so hard to explain what it is. Saying: no stupid skeptic, it's not *about* ability, or being a good father, or kindness, or moral action seems like a weak way out. The skeptic just asks: ok, then, what is it about? What's the freaking magic? It is the egalitarian (me) who is asserting this equality in the face of manifest inequality. That is why I consider this belief, which I hold, more dubitable than the belief that all humans are equal in needing food to live.

It is the egalitarian (me) who is asserting this equality in the face of manifest inequality. That is why I consider this belief, which I hold, more dubitable than the belief that all humans are equal in needing food to live.

Okay. But the problem with the contrast you're setting up here is that your statement about human equality therefore carries no actual importance: it's merely an article of faith. Whereas (ime) statements like "we're all equal b/c we all need to eat" are never intended as rationales for Jeffersonian idealism, but rather as reasons to extend Jeffersonian idealism and/or actually attempt to realize it.

In other words (and here we start fighting, I bet), it seems to me as if the only way you're willing to acknowledge that equality exists is to make that acknowledgment meaningful, but unimportant.

Summer is the best, haters:

Driving with the windows down.
Fishing.
Barbecue.
Cold beer after moving the lawn.
Lemonade.
Light out until 9:30.
Fresh sweet corn and strawberries.
4th of July.
State/County Fairs.
Amusement parks.

Barbecuing in the winter, provided there's snow on the ground but it's not actually snowing too hard, is better than barbecuing in the summer.

And best of all is eternal summer.

368: You're nuts.

369: How do you know that a year has passed?

It doesn't, which is how I stay perpetually youthful.

Or, more seriously, the fires in the foothills start up again.

369: How do you know that a year has passed?

They have these things called "calendars".

368: You're nuts.

Have you tried it?

My son routinely tells people, not trying to be funny, that he has the two weirdest parents in the world.

My older son would dispute this. Then the younger one would smash him in the huts with the light saber.

nuts with a light saber, that is.

Good thing your older son is both shorter than you, and smart enough to take shelter.

Fuck.

I still laughed, B.

351: I cannot believe that Apostropher chose fires and sweaters over warming temperatures and spring skirts. I deny thrice that you are the Apostropher!

I don't have the legs for spring skirts, Tim. Also, I like cold weather.

This is just so, so wrong. Spring is, by far, my favorite time of year. The sudden change in weather mirrors a sudden change in everyone's attitude--nature is happy and so are we. There isn't any comparable experience, except maybe seeing the ocean.

How terrible are the winters in NC, Apo? Because that difference might explain our differing choices. Either that or there's some French blood in there.

So your argument, Tim, is that spring is nice compared to winter. Sure, compared to hell on earth, anything looks good.

Winters are pretty mild in NC.

Have you tried it?
I'd guess that I've grilled outside in sub-freezing temperatures more than you've grilled total. Despite the awesomeness of grilled food in winter, the food is harder to cook, and you can't do it with your guests outside with you, sharing cocktails.

I think that Tim is arguing that coming after winter is an essential part of spring, and characterizing his argument as "spring is nice compared to winter" isn't really right—after all, it's not as if we can conceive of a "spring" that we don't compare to winter, a "spring" isolated from the pleasure of looking retrospectively on the winter emerged from and the changes that emergence involves, and the pleasure of looking prospectively on the coming summer and its attendant delights (but not its attendant crappinesses, eg, bug bites in excelsis).

Soothly we live in mighty years!

The only time I really think I like the weather is about nine days in October where the air is crisp and it's just cool enough to need a light coat but not so cold that your hands get cold.

you can't do it with your guests outside with you, sharing cocktails.

Sure you can, you just need the right sort of guest.

Plus, if you're one of the guests, how awesome would it be to be sitting inside and have a grilled steak brought in to you? At just the time of year when you pine the most for that sort of thing!

So your argument, Tim, is that spring is nice compared to winter. Sure, compared to hell on earth, anything looks good.

No no no, the argument is that spring is nice compared to winter, whereas autumn is bad compared to summer. Therefore, people's moods are improving in spring, and becoming worse in autumn. And mood affects the quality of the season.

Yes, but ned, for someone you adore, it's a pleasure to be sad.

Sure you can, you just need the right sort of guest.

I can imagine situations and guest where this might be true. I can not imagine those situations being preferable to doing the same thing in summer. Winter is for pot roast and roast chicken.

And if you want a steak in winter, you pan cook it (sear on the stovetop, finish in the oven) and make a nice pan sauce.

whereas autumn is bad compared to summer

But this is completely backwards. Summer is nice enough, but autumn is when the weather is actually enjoyable.

It's not just the steak. It's the whole thing—the fact that it's a grilled steak, the incongruity, the pleasure that the fact of a grilled steak in the winter gives you, especially if you've been missing that kind of thing in the dull dreary trudge through gray slush the color of the gray sky, walking by gray buildings, etc etc etc.

I think I would probably most like a climate that had a real winter and real summer, but only for about three to six weeks apiece. Enough to make spring and autumn distinct from one another, but not much more than that.

Winter is my favorite season.

What's your name? Who's your daddy?
Is he rich like me?

In other words (and here we start fighting, I bet), it seems to me as if the only way you're willing to acknowledge that equality exists is to make that acknowledgment meaningful, but unimportant.

I'm not baa, but I thought his worry, once he explained it, was pretty straightforward: what grounds the belief I have that every human being is equally valuable, in the sense of moral worth? Especially given that in every other aspect of life, talents and traits seem to be unequally distributed, and it's not as if a high concentration of specific talents or traits necessarily means a deficit in other areas. Sometimes the prom queen is the prettiest, kindest, smartest, and most well-read.

Now, talent isn't a proxy for worth. But that's not baa's point. If we have a world full of unique people (just like everyone else), none of whom are equal, and no evidence that people are all of equal moral worth.

Is it just a brute premise? It could be, but that's sort of unsatisfying. Is it that we're all children of God? It could be, but that's sort of out of fashion. Is it something to do with consciousness, or the ability to reflect? Can of worms, meet can opener. I'm inclined to make an argument that in order for me to flourish fully as a human being requires that I treat other humans as equal, but that only gets me as far as equal treatment, not actually equal measure, but in any case it's too much effort.

Anyhow, I think it's a leap from that discussion to conclude that 'equality is therefore unimportant.' Because surely we don't generally agree that every trait is balanced by an opposite one (leaving society to decide which is good or bad.) Heck, I'm not even sure how you'd do the math. One count of economic success equal 2 academic talents? Oh, the denarii.

Winter is my favorite as well (except for about a week and a half in early spring and mid/late fall). Oddly enough, I really like getting bundled up and going for walks in the cold.

autumn is bad compared to summer

It's like you're talking some crazy moonman language.

387: Admittedly, in places with evil winters, spring is a fucking welcome relief and fall is sadly marred by the knowledge that the fucking evil winter is right around the corner.

In other, nicer parts of the world, however, fall is nice because it cools off a little bit (being too hot is lovely, but after a few months one is glad for a bit of relief) and there's the opportunity to go out and buy new things for school, and maybe a jacket or something just to vary your wardrobe a little.

I'm with autumn. I get to break out the sharp coats, scarfs, and all the other lovely warm stuff. Plus, my extra body heat is an advantage in bed.

Also, hurrah for the end of Prohibition (73 years ago today).

400 - 400!

Is it just a brute premise? It could be, but that's sort of unsatisfying.

I think it is. I don't care if that's satisfying or not. I could, of course, be wrong.

Yeah. I mean, if it's brute, it's brute. But "it just is that way" sorts of answers don't generally stand up to investigation, though, I suppose if anything brute is going to stand up, it'll probably be in moral philosophy.

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248: Do the schlubby middle-aged guys you're defending charge a mint to show people the asscrack? Because really, the unsolicited asscrack as insult added to the injury of paying what plumbers charge is a bigger issue here than whether said crack is on a h0tt ass.

Cala's 396 hits the bingo. Exactly what I meant, expressed better. Thanks.

Also (re-reading the thread), good to hear from JoeO. Alas, I fear it is uncontroversial that I would be better off in some ways if I acted immorally...

Oh, the denarii!