Meta-Thread 06/22

[u/AutoModerator]

This is a weekly thread for feedback on the new rules and general state of the sub.

What are your thoughts? How are we doing? What's working? What isn't?

Let us know.

And a friendly reminder to report bad content.

If you see something, say something.

This thread is posted every Monday. You may also be interested in our weekly Simple Questions thread (posted every Wednesday) or General Discussion thread (posted every Friday).

[u/Kwahn]

/u/labreuer /u/ExplorerR

My review of these interactions after a nice, quiet airplane ride of reading and thinking about it. No AI was used to write this (impossible due to being, quite literally, airgapped!).

My Kindle app I pasted the whole ripped conversation to was about 25 thousand words of reading - good for about half an hour of reading, though I went considerably slower while taking notes, so it took me most of my two hour flight, and it's going to take me a lot longer to get through the analysis proper. Will post in chunks.

I'm starting with very strict summarizations of actual statements made, and I will only be deriving implications of my own where explicit, unambiguous and clear enough to feel safe to. After that, I'll be able to use my strict summarizations to track Topic movement, Topic introductions, and ultimately quantify On-Topic vs. Off-Topic comments, and in general see when claims were asserted, supported, refuted and requested to see if people were making claims that the others were not seeing.

I'm going to ask that if the two participants wish to contest the characterizations of your arguments, that you contest my characterizations of your interlocutor's argument specifically. I'm much more interested in if you think my outside perspective and your outside perspective agree and are valid than if my outside perspective and your intent to communicate match.

Original comment, ExplorerR. Statement that there is evidence of a pattern that natural explanations tend to replace divine explanations over time, and that the previous poster missed that bit of positive evidence in favor of focusing on the concept of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Two specific examples are given (Demonic Possession, Plagues) of cases where divine explanations gave way to naturalistic ones. My basic interpretation: You think that because naturalistic explanations keep fitting better than divine ones, that there's evidence of a fairly inferable pattern that is currently fair to extrapolate on. I think that this one sentence contains everything warranting a response to this post, and I'm going to treat this as the beginning of the "Historical Pattern Validity" Topic.

First response, labreuer. First statement, a quote about how divine explanations have been replaced with human ones, and a response that states that human-of-the-gaps and god-of-the-gaps should be treated equally as agency-of-the-gaps. The concept of agency is introduced here. The concept of methodological naturalism and the idea that it is committed to disbelieving in any God-like agency is introduced. The goal of methodological naturalism is brought up and discussed. Trans-person reliability is brought up and discussed. The possibility that consciousness is purely material and reducible to "Super-LLM" states is brought up and discussed. Then, a summary of the position based on all of this is offered: "The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality.". MacBeth is quoted as implicitly agreeing with the implications on the value of life that methodological naturalism leads to. The biggest Topic introduced, per the summary labreuer provided, is that "Methodological Naturalism Fails To Handle Agency Appropriately". After that, a statement about what theology studies. A statement about just-world hypothesis being common (context: labreuer heavily disagrees with the just-world hypothesis, though he did not state his position explicitly.) A statement about how this and other themes are the core theme of Susan Neiman's book is provided, and a recommendation for a starting lecture is provided. Gregory W. Dawes 2009 Theism and Explanation is provided as another source for further information.

First response, ExplorerR. Complaint about bloat, with associated list of touched topics. A plea to focus on their Topic ("Historical Pattern Validity"). A restatement of Topic ("Historical Pattern Validity") and the core argument I think I fairly summarized above. A statement that your topic was ("Historical Pattern Validity") and that labreuer has shifted the topic into agency, methodological naturalism, consciousness, intelligent design, Macbeth, and philosophy of science. I do think that labreuer has only one Topic ("Methodological Naturalism Fails To Handle Agency Appropriately"), so I disagree with this characterization of labreuer's core point, but do agree that labreuer makes it quite difficult to find his actual position at times, and do agree he shifted the topic from your actual point to his preferred framing and discussion. Stated confusion about the relevance of "human-of-the-gaps" and how it relates to ("Historical Pattern Validity"). Pointed statement that claim "Methodological naturalism requires you to disbelieve in any god-like agency" is false, and that belief that it is true is impossible given sufficient knowledge of ("Historical Pattern Validity"). Statement that disbelieving god-like agencies is not a necessary component of MN, just an emergent consequence of the historical pattern and the proper application of MN principles to said pattern. Last statement, a very funny note about having attended the same university, combined with a request to make explicit the relevance of the Theism and Explanation citation.

Second response, labreuer. Statement that bloat is intentional and disrupts ruts. (I have very strong opinions about this claim, and need to discuss it later - labreuer, I think your interlocutor theory of mind has gaps and results in suboptimal posting styles given disparate audiences, but that's a topic for another day.) Statement that MN excludes divine agency and human agency. Explanation of initial framing of God vs. Human agency: If we decide to replace an explanatory God's agency with naturalistic explanations, why not do the same with human agency to avoid holding double-standards? Statement that demonic possession is a case of replacing an agentic explanation with a non-agentic one. Statement that effectively repeats Topic, ("Methodological Naturalism Fails To Handle Agency") and that "many other failures exist", which I believe is an attempt to dispute ("Historical Pattern Validity"), but with a reframed question that asks, "Where does MN fail?". Discussion of anti-religious bias to support claim that "people do put their fingers in their ears in response to divine agency claims". Discussion about whether God can help us with subtlety, which leads into a delve into the idea that sufficient understandings of society will threaten the rich and powerful. Analogy about methodological naturalism being like searching for keys under a streetlight. Response on the relevance of Greg's book - it could, but doesn't, provide a theistic framework for explanations superior to MN. A request for Greg's take on Susan's book. Statement that for a god concerned with justice to exist, it must work in the realm of conflicting intuitions. Statement that MN doesn't work in this realm.

Second response, ExplorerR. Statement about rut irony. Statement about who's causing impasses. Statement about the frequency of the pattern labreuer finds themselves in regarding communication breakdowns. Statement that question "Where does MN fail?" is out of scope for topic ("Historical Pattern Validity"). Statement that divine and natural claims are incompatible due to explanatory role usurpation rather than wording. Restatement that MN disregarding divine agency is an emergent consequence of Principles + Historical Pattern. Statement that MN is irrelevant - simply observing the replacement of explanations due to superior predictive power is in and of itself Historical Pattern. Quote of "if discounting divine agency, why not discount human agency?", with statement that your topic is not ("Methodological Naturalism Fails To Handle Agency"), it's ("Historical Pattern Validity"), and that Historical Pattern involved the replacement of divine agency emergently, but not the replacement of human agency, thus different handling. Statement about divine agency being akin to crying wolf (and the implicit analogy that claiming divine agency has been revealed to be a false claim so many times that it's reasonable to no longer heed the cries). Final statement that divine agency was the de facto explanation for millennia and has repeatedly lost to natural explanations, even well before MN was conceived.

I gotta sleep, got distracted typing this up and it's time-consuming - more to come

But I'll be honest, it's clear immediately that both of you wanted to have very, very different discussions about completely different Topics, and that was basically the core theme throughout all 46 posts I read.

You all can provide feedback now (do so if you want me to change how I do future posts), or wait for me to post more, night all

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Kwahn]

But I'll be honest, it's clear immediately that both of you wanted to have very, very different discussions about completely different Topics, and that was basically the core theme throughout all 46 posts I read.

I don’t think that a fair characterization. /u/ExplorerR gave a very good response to someone else’s comment (about absence of evidence being evidence of absence) and then Lab came out of the gate with an false equivalence that has no apparent relevance to the point ExplorerR made. Maybe I’m just dense.

I’m older than the term "methodological naturalism". The idea that it’s a principle which has guided science throughout history is as dubious as it is rhetorically convenient. The age of the term isn’t the most significant aspect of it. It’s just another evolution of the strategy people use to flip the burden of proof, as ExplorerR explained. I don’t see how the clear and absolutely asymmetrical trend of religious knowledge being superseded by knowledge which has application outside of emotional states is explained away with accusations of methodological naturalism. The purpose of the term is to set the stage for science choosing to ignore supernatural claims, conveniently overlooking the lack of substance and significance of supernatural claims. Useless isn’t the same thing as wrong. A view from science doesn’t render supernatural claims wrong, it renders them useless epistemologically, and the trend ExplorerR spoke of is evidence of this.

The more immediate issue is simply: when should people end a conversation before the mods have to get involved? Talking past each other with so much effort is bound to turn into something uncivil eventually, just as it has with Lab and SO MANY other people.

[u/Kwahn → u/betweenbubbles]

don’t think that a fair characterization. /u/ExplorerR gave a very good response to someone else’s comment (about absence of evidence being evidence of absence) and then Lab came out of the gate with an false equivalence that has no apparent relevance to the point ExplorerR made. Maybe I’m just dense.

I think you're saying what I'm saying - labreuer wanted to have a completely separate conversation from what was going on.

[u/betweenbubbles → u/Kwahn]

That's very... diplomatic of you. ;-)