Posts by Elayne

This is the kind of thing that made Epicurus say (to paraphrase) that if we can't agree sugar is sweet, we might as well not talk at all. Mine would be that if we can't agree that some evidence is more reliable than other evidence, there is no point in discussing science. It would be meaningless.

That doesn't mean everyone is going to agree on feelings about the evidence or how much they want to know it. But without some baseline agreement that we are going to communicate about evidence reliability and that there is such a thing as being more or less reliable, there's simply no point in talking about it.

Quote from Cassius

This the the direction that needs exam I agree. How does one articulate "enough" in these issues

Enough is subjective as a sensation, and it also has real world consequences for the person... AND, when a person is talking to other scientists, they should not be surprised to be laughed at if they say "a dream is enough for me" when there is more reliable evidence to the contrary of the dream.

If a person is choosing to rely on evidence that is comparatively less reliable than other evidence, in order to make life decisions, that person is risking their pleasure. Epicurus had no hesitation in labeling people unwise who did not make decisions that were based on reality. If they spent their time worrying about punishment from supernatural gods, for which there is no evidence, that would be an unwise decision for their pleasure.

So in choosing what is enough evidence, I propose that a wise person considers the feelings involved in taking time to learn, how much information is enough to give them feelings of confidence, AND the potential effects of basing decisions on evidence which is comparatively less reliable. Perhaps they will decide to drink a glass of OJ for their cancer because they feel least anxious about that and it doesn't matter to them that it's statistically likely to shorten their life. Or perhaps they will even drink poison which has been shown to kill people, based on a dream that it will not kill them. IDK. These are personal decisions.

How much is "enough" for a person does not change the _actual_ comparative reliability of the evidence in question, and that is an important point to keep in mind. If a person decides it is enough for them to believe in magical flying unicorns, well ok then, and it doesn't mean that we would assess the complete lack of evidence for those unicorns on the same basis as the evidence for existence of trees.

And accepting pragmatic fact differs from the Skeptics, who were obsessed over uncertainty. It's philosophy ocd to be a skeptic.

A way of stating my hypothesis is "most people do not require 100% certainty in order to not worry. Of those who do, no amount of checking will remove the worry (as in OCD)."

Oh, I do think Epicurus would agree with me, if he had access to what I have access to. I think if he knew about pragmatism and "certain enough to use for decisions", he would be fine with that. I don't think stats are a regression unless people don't understand what they are doing. I strongly suspect Epicurus would understand the uses of stats in the way I have outlined.

I think the real underlying question is "what degree of confidence do most people need before they can stop being anxious about other possibilities?" It is a totally different question from "how can we be 100% certain", a question which has the answer "we can't, but our confidence can be strong enough that we can forget about our worry."

A person with OCD can check that the stove is off 100x and still be uncomfortable with uncertainty the instant they leave the room. A typical person will go about their day, maybe checking once. This is a question for human psychology research. You have to do it as an experiment to know what works for people's loss of anxiety.

We have some loose observations about people in predominantly atheist countries-- that they are less anxious. Do all of them understand physics or do they just trust the physicists? Did Epicurus' students all understand him, or was he charismatic?

My working hypothesis is that any explanation must be as reliable as possible for all types of students. Some will believe in science based on credibility assignment alone. Others need to have it explained in a way that makes sense to them, like with Stenger's books. Others need to visit your lab and inspect your equipment. Some will never be able to use their sense observations to modify their conclusions.

As a modern example-- I have a friend who goes to a nun who sexes ginkgo seedings with a pendulum. If it swings one direction, it's male-- another, female. Apparently it's difficult to tell, and a lot of people want to avoid smelly fruit in their yards 😂.

My spontaneous question was "Interesting! What's her success rate?" We have studies showing these pendulum things are like a ouija board-- the pendulum swinger obviously causes the direction. I wondered if the nun was noticing something about the seeds with her "fast brain", her pattern recognition.

My friend looked at me with total confusion and then said "oh! I get it! You are doing science. This is not about that."

And I realized it was the experience she was going for, the sense of believing intuition was correct. She didn't want to submit it to experiment because no amount of data could override her sense of certainty.

Cassius, yes-- that's what I've said-- but it's not arbitrary whether one p value gives more statistical confidence than another. So for someone to say "I'm going to drink OJ for my cancer because I had a dream it will work" is not nearly as likely to yield the desired results of a cure as saying "I'm going to try this treatment which has worked for 95% (or 60% or whatever is the number you can get) with side effects x percent, a risk which is acceptable to me."

If we have many large studies saying OJ has never worked for a single patient, then it would be even more foolish... but if we have studies showing it's no different from chance at the same p value where prune juice is different from chance, then I'd drink the prune juice.

I would avoid making the error of saying that because we can choose the level of confidence, there is no difference between one level of confidence and another, which is like saying a single view of the straw in a water glass is as accurate as making multiple observations.

Is everyone clear on the difference between analogies, making observations before conclusions, and the scientific method, which is a more accurate way of testing observations? It's hard for me to tell from the conversation so far.

Observations would be:

I've observed that on the visible level, everything I see is made of parts, and those particles have various features like being smooth or rough, heavy or light, etc. I haven't seen any exceptions.

Analogy based on observations would be: I've also seen phenomena that could only be explained if these visible particles were composed of particles too small to see. I am concluding that the smallest particles also have features like smooth, rough, different shapes, etc, like the visible ones, and many visible behaviors of matter would make sense to me if that is correct. This is the kind of process we see outlined in Lucretius.

A modern analogy would be: I have tested this drug in mice, which are mammals, and it works, so it will work in humans. Or, I've tested this drug in a bunch of humans and it worked for them so it _will_ work for you. Which many people, including some doctors, think is what we do, but it's really not, lol.

The modern process that I have not seen in Epicurus is: I've made a lot of observations about matter. I have some ideas about how that might be happening-- about the mechanisms and the composition of matter too small to see. I am going to form a specific, falsifiable hypothesis which makes a prediction about how matter will behave under certain circumstances-- how it would behave if my hypothesis is right-- and I'm going to run experiments. I'm going to repeat those experiments many times and see if other scientists can repeat them and get the same results. I'm going to get direct sensory observations by building instruments sensitive enough to register what my eyes can't, as an extension of my senses. I will be using my senses to make direct observations under strictly controlled conditions.

I'll remain aware of possible confounding factors I haven't controlled my experiments for, and I will also do other experiments to test my hypothesis. After multiple different types of evidence have been obtained by multiple people, I will accept the conclusions as factual enough to use. The science definition of fact is pragmatic, neither skeptical nor dogmatic. But once a fact has been repeatedly observed as reliable, very strong evidence would be required to falsify it. For instance, now that we have observed electrical activity in the brain to cause seizures, and even in some case particular genetic mutations resulting in ion channelopathies and seizures, if someone wants to say naw, it's demon possession, they need to produce a demon.

This difference between the simpler observation to conclusion process vs observation to hypothesis to testing process is in the reliability of the conclusions, something which has also held up (that's a sort of meta experiment-- what kind of data collection turns out to be reliable over time).

This is so well established that doing "post hoc" analysis of data collected to test another hypothesis is called derisively the "spaghetti method." This is why it is standard in meta-analysis to exclude post-hoc papers. In the publish or perish world, researchers will mine their data for other patterns. Intuitively it seems that should be fine, but it is notoriously unreliable. Instead, the reliable approach is to take any post hoc observations as a new hypothesis and design tests for it.

Cassius, what you will immediately notice is that there is the issue of exactly how many times and in how many ways results need to be replicated before we are going to accept them as reliable. That is an important issue, and it's where statistics come in. We use things like p values and control groups to tell us how likely it is that our results are to be different from chance. We can choose how certain we want to be about a particular conclusion.

That issue is present always, but the point is that we can compare reliability, not that we can make anything 100% reliable.

For some hypotheses only one counter example is required. For instance, the plane crash. Those are the always/never type hypotheses. But usually in biology, it's more about "will this drug work for more people than not using it, or for more people than a current treatment?"

As far as levels of evidence-- because we are not typically using always/never hypotheses, in medicine we have levels which are not arbitrary but based on how reliable conclusions are from each type of evidence. Some people include expert consensus but I think that's silly-- I would only include the level of evidence they used.

The lowest level of evidence in medicine is the kind that is historically least likely to be correct. For example, if one person given orange juice recovers from flu. We don't have enough data to decide if that is different from chance. But a single case is sometimes enough to be attention grabbing. What if we give someone OJ for a disease no one is known to have survived, and they survive? It's a hypothesis worth testing, but since OJ itself isn't known to be risky unless you are allergic, there would be a low threshold for using it before any controlled study-- and depending on how that went, you might decide it is unethical to design a higher level of evidence study.

Case series are the next level, more reliable than one case. And so on up to double blinded, randomized, controlled studies with replication _and_ a documented mechanism of action.

So when we are looking at the conclusions, it is not consensus whether a level of evidence is more reliable than another. That's something we have directly observed by comparing methods. That's the case even though sometimes a single case will turn out to be reliable but a large study turn out to have unexpected confounding variables.

This is what lets us say with confidence things like "there is a plausible mechanism for seizures that does not involve demons, so we are going to disregard your demon idea unless you produce evidence" or "there are plausible mechanisms for the repeated observations we've made about the neuroscience of dreams which do not require a missing element of some particle or energy transmission from outer space penetrating the skull, and furthermore, we have evidence that people often erroneously perceive agency where none exists upon closer examination, so we are going to disregard that idea unless you can produce evidence stronger (more replicable) than what we have so far."

As far as analogy having been a stopping place back then, I should qualify that by saying sometimes it was. Definitely there were very detailed observations also. But sometimes, at least in Lucretius, analogy is used to assert a conclusion, and we've seen that many of those details concluded from only analogy were incorrect. I would use analogy as a hypothesis generator though.

So far I have not seen a clear example of Epicurus testing a hypothesis by making a prediction and then seeing if experimental observations fit. If he did, that would be amazing, but I think that method came about much later.

Quote from Cassius

I think that's really the issue here, that of grasping a workable understanding of the issues involved that can be understood by a normal person and applied in real life -- because if all we come up with is a hugely complicated formula with a lot of variables, our result isn't usable in real life, and we are left back with a "faith" issue of how to pick those scientists whose methods we don't understand, but whom we decide to trust.

I think a quote commonly attributed to Einstein but which has an unknown source is relevant: everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Part of our difficulty showing modern humans that the universe is material is that so many people lack adequate science and math education. To get the evidence they need, now that we know more, people are going to need to put in some effort. Fortunately, there are many excellent popular physics books out there, very readable, such as Vic Stenger's work.

To try and reassure people with explanations we know are outdated and not accurate is a bad idea, because it erodes trust and leaves them with no good arguments against supernaturalists. Giving people reassuring sounding but incorrect information is no better than false religion. It leaves them open to believing in things like ESP type images of gods and so on.

People who are not able or willing to learn some physics are likely not going to be able to withstand supernaturalists anyway, I suspect, because a savvy supernaturalist can give arguments against the outdated details in Epicurean philosophy and cause the person to lose confidence. But that is a hypothesis which could be tested-- what approach provides the most resistance to supernatural fears and to further incorrect ideas about material reality? What inoculates people against woo that could backfire on their pleasure? That's a social science question to study-- not something to guess at with logic. Sometimes the answers to that kind of question are surprising!

"As long as the differences are uniform" is a critical clause. A single exception _can_ disprove a general hypothesis in some cases. It depends on the hypothesis, and on whether the exception is predictable/uniform. A single exception, if a clear mechanism can be found which has already been validated, could be called predictable.

For example, if the hypothesis is "Boeing jets never crash", one crash which can be clearly demonstrated by the black box to be owing to a mechanical failure known to reliably cause crashes, perhaps with evidence of a coverup, would be enough to disprove that general statement. We would have to change it to "they rarely crash."

The original hypothesis then must be modified to "x thing always happens except under y condition." Exceptions give us useful information, and they do require refinement of an initial "always" hypothesis.

If an exception is not predictable or explained yet, it can be held in reserve in case it isn't really an exception-- maybe something happened to make the original conditions different from the stated hypothesis, etc. An example would be if the black box can't be found or doesn't show an obvious problem, or it shows something that hasn't caused crashes before and investigators aren't sure if it crashed or was shot down, or maybe it was a counterfeit plane, etc.

*** One general rule being brought down by an exception does not mean all general rules will be-- only if exceptions were uniform would that be the case.

So far this looks to me like part of the history of science. Although reasoning by analogy was a stopping point then, continued observations of nature have taught us analogy is insufficient. It can generate hypotheses which then are tested. Testing of hypotheses-- making predictions based on a hypothesis and observing the results-- had not been discovered yet. Still, it's a direct descendant of the insistence Epicurus had on making observations directly, so I think it falls into the category of a detail that requires refinement but still consistent with the high level view.

This is the kind of thing I am talking about. There is strong data about Hyperactive Agency Detection in humans-- it's not something I made up. It means we have sense evidence that we assign agency where there is none, and to ignore that tendency is likely to lead us to accept conclusions about mental experiences that are false. False conclusions could in turn contribute to life choices not conducive to pleasure. If accuracy of conclusions didn't affect pleasure, the accuracy wouldn't matter, because mattering is the province of feeling.

So how do we accept any kind of prolepsis as true? We don't, in isolation. We accept it when it's in accord with the senses or at least does not contradict them. In this case, we have sense data that this particular type of mental experience can cause false opinions, we would be especially wary about those specific prolepses. So I think questioning those experiences is entirely Epicurean. Not cause for saying we are abandoning the philosophy in some way.

Quote from Susan

Quote

...but you suggested that we are hard-wired for animism in a way that deludes us about the existence or nature of gods, so how could you then accept any kind of prolepsis as conveying true information?

Cassius, I think the original writing leaves room for multiple interpretations, which is actually why I prefer the Greek lest our translations inadvertently close off interpretations prematurely.

I think it's ok to leave interpretations open IF we agree not to assume they are infallible, whatever they are, so that if one of us describes something we are calling a prolepsis, we agree it can be evaluated in context of all the senses.

I propose that we need some procedural agreements when evaluating the texts on statements about the gods. My suggestions are:

1) Epicurus' own words take precedence over all other source material. Anywhere Epicurus leaves room for different interpretations is not narrowed down by commentary from other sources, such as Philodemus or DeWitt. Neither will individual quotes be taken out of context with his whole body of work.

2) The process of determining what is real takes precedence over details of prior or current conclusions. When new data is available that Epicurus didn't have, we agree to present both what he concluded based on information available to him _and_ revisions which are necessary to continue adhering to his process of observing nature and trusting the senses. We agree that such revisions are an embedded expectation in a philosophy based on observations of nature, and that to ignore new data is to distort Epicurus' intentions beyond recognition.

3) Prolepses are subject to the same verification process as any other sense data and are not to be given special status when the combined sense evidence contradicts them, no matter how compelling they are. We will not say prolepses are infallible when the content is in the form of a conclusion about reality. This is the same as we do not say a straw in a glass of water is bent because it looks to be so from one view. Instead, we examine it from different positions and touch it. We combine our senses to test any conclusion. A sensation about gods from an intuition or dream is not a mistake in the same way seeing an optical illusion is not a mistake, but assumptions about the _cause_ of those intuitions and dreams is a matter up for verification by the other senses. We must especially beware of making assertions of material fact on grounds that we received special knowledge due to a prepared mind, because this closes off the importance of examination by the senses.

One more thought-- a philosophy that puts so much emphasis on observation of nature could never be expected to keep the exact details of how things work the same. Change in those details is embedded in the origin of the project.

This is not neo-Epicurean, because that would mean things like deciding virtue is absolute, without evidence, or that Epicurus wasn't really talking about pleasure, etc. Nothing about re-examining the prolepses is neo, because we are probing nature, as Epicurus did. It reminds me of Lucretius talking about him fearlessly penetrating what nature hides. If we think that need for fearless probing of nature, including our own brains, was a one and done deal, we'd be wrong.

Cassius, one of the most frustrating things about constructed meaning for me was always that it was so flimsy... I could never make existentialism work if I _knew_ I was "making my own meaning", because having to make it meant it wasn't real in some way.

Theologies about supernatural gods do the same thing to people. They get dumped unprepared into a world suddenly devoid of meaning. People who study neuroscience are among the highest percentage atheist groups, because they learn how we fool ourselves. Physicists are similar.

The sturdiest protection against disillusionment and fear of meaninglessness is always, IMO, reality. If meaning had to be found in something objective or had to be constructed, we would be hopeless-- nihilism would be the only choice.

But we have _feeling_. Which we don't construct-- it's aside from reason, irrational, impossible to invalidate. For me, feelings are what make nihilism fail-- nihilism has nothing to argue against the pleasurable feeling of life mattering, of people we love mattering to us, because we aren't appealing to reason anyway. Nihilism can do nothing but slink off to the corner and pout, lol.

If we try to base meaning in something without evidence, a sort of "god of the gaps"-- gaps which are steadily shrinking-- we put ourselves at risk.

The goal and guide of pleasure stands with or without gods, even material gods. Because of that, I am not bothered by whether or not they exist and am ok with leaving unknown things open... but I am a poet and have a high degree of what Keats called negative capability.

I think the material gods idea is interesting, and for some people it may be useful to think of them as examples. About the sensation of contact, I would say that if it doesn't cause an individual more harm than good, that's a personal decision whether to question it or not-- but I see a significant risk for many, upon exposure to neuroscience research.

Coming down on the side that they are definitely out there floating images to prepared minds, exactly as Epicurus thought, given how much more we know now, will send all the scientists running away. This image floating thing is now implausible, as much as dreams giving factual information. But straight up denial of the possibility that there are blissful extraterrestrials somewhere in the universe and that eventually we might communicate is also unscientific.

I know Epicurus didn't like leaving things open... but he wasn't faced with the knowledge we are faced with. I think honoring him and the philosophy has to include accepting that we can't always reconcile his desire for dogma with the data.

Don, one thing I always remember is that it was against the law upon pain of death to refuse to participate in worship and rituals. No doubt in those rituals, things were said which completely went against Epicurus' description of the gods, because the prevailing religions went against his framing. We don't have his explanations for his choice, but I would guess he didn't feel like being put to death over it. I'd happily chant with supernaturalists if someone said they'd kill me if I didn't.

I'm not going to go so far as to say his whole teaching about the gods was for self protection-- some have suggested it, but that doesn't seem as plausible.

I think all this is definitely worth discussing in detail.

One of the difficulties in quoting the texts is that cases can be made for conclusions out of alignment with the philosophy as a whole, if one is not cautious. Although I like DeWitt, I don't consider him necessarily accurate on every single issue, and I feel most confident taking the PDs, VS's, and letters as a whole than I do working from his quotes.

I could quote Epicurus on specifics about elementary particles which have clearly been shown incorrect by experimental data. If I insisted someone must adhere to that or not be considered Epicurean, I would think refusing to integrate new evidence would make _me_no longer Epicurean. Because I am using his basic process, I think needing to update specific details, such as about how the senses function, is in keeping with the original philosophy.

In the same way, we have new information about how the brain works that I think requires careful consideration of the details regarding the trustworthiness of individual prolepses. We clearly cannot say all intuitions are true-- no one here I think is arguing that. And now that we know humans have a documented tendency to assign agency, and we know more about dreams than Epicurus possibly could have guessed, I think it is not Epicurean if we fail to consider how this affects certain details about the prolepses.

For the justice prolepsis, and many of our deeply embedded patterns, there is not an outside standard which would contradict us. Justice has no meaning apart from prolepsis. For another example, simply the action of perceiving size along a spectrum is a thought pattern, a prolepsis. Assigning names to objects is a thought pattern. Where we see boundaries between objects-- a thought pattern. Object permanence is one. We couldn't even think at all in a way we would recognize as thinking without these thought patterns. Some prolepses are such a part of our thoughts that we literally can't encounter reality without them. We do not perceive "raw" sense data-- we automatically organize it, in species specific and sometimes individual specific ways. When I read about the prolepses, I thought Epicurus was absolutely brilliant for getting this. I knew it already, but I had access to so much research and didn't figure it out myself. It's old hat to modern researchers, but back then? It bowled me over. What an intellect!

Those are the prolepses without which we cannot function. They are fundamental and different from both feelings and senses. They are what keeps the philosophy from being entirely empirical, because they cannot be taken out of the picture.

There are other intuitions which make assertions about material fact, such as agency perception, sunk cost fallacy, proximity bias-- these prolepses had evolutionary advantages, but when held up to the light of evidence, they aren't as reliable. These are intuitions which can actually be overcome by repeated consideration of evidence. It's possible to function without them, but usually only by intentionally planning to do so.

I cannot imagine Epicurus ignoring research about hyperactive agency detection, the neurobiology of dreams, etc. It would be incompatible with the whole of his philosophy to stick with old explanations for those phenomena when we have newer evidence for other causes that fits our observations better, from a physics standpoint. To me it is nearly insulting to him to think he would not integrate the newer research.

That doesn't mean anyone has to outright ignore such experiences or that I can say "what you think is happening definitely isn't happening -- but it has to be on the table to question these reports, in light of evidence. To use science to study ourselves is Epicurean.

As to whether a pig could be a god-- IMO we can't say that isn't possible. We would have to establish a standard for rationality and virtue for another species whose minds we can only guess at. We do not propose any absolute virtues, so how would we know how to recognize them in another species?

The emphasis on natural science in his writing is much stronger than details about the gods.

"PD12. A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe, but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that, without natural science, it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed."

and here, when he talks about direct perception, I have read this as referring to the senses. We can't possibly refer opinion to unquestioned intuition when we know intuition is often counter to evidence. All would be "full of doubt and confusion" if we had to accept dreams on the same basis as physics.

"PD22. We must consider both the real purpose, and all the evidence of direct perception, to which we always refer the conclusions of opinion; otherwise, all will be full of doubt and confusion."

The bbc article I tried to paste in comment above-- idk why it didn't show up.

Don, evolutionary biologists think our innate sense of justice is symmetry. Tit for tat. Babies go through a phase where they love to hand items back and forth-- endlessly, lol.

It's different from innate empathy where they don't like to see harm, but it winds up connecting for many... not all. The prolepsis of justice for some adults includes empathy and for others, it remains more of a straight symmetry situation.

This is an interesting article about many facets of religious (here equated with the supernatural) belief and our neurology-- discusses our HADD, hypersensitive agency detection, which had evolutionary advantages even if factually inaccurate. That's what I'm talking about with vestigial animism, the HADD. The rudimentary basis for religion.

Midway through, there's a bit about humans using god concepts to back up their moralities. Which we need to take care to avoid in EP. We have recognized that pleasure is our goal, and that is how we would recognize a god, if we could communicate-- their skill at pleasure. No matter how powerful, vast, or complex a being is, if it isn't pleasure filled, by our criteria it isn't a god.

I would refrain from doing the converse-- from saying if a powerful, complex being chooses pleasure, that their choice gives us our rationale. We don't need a god to choose pleasure in order to choose it ourselves. We ourselves have created our definition of what we will call gods, if we encounter them. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190529-do-humans-have-a-religion-instinct

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190529-do-humans-have-a-religion-instinct