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o11c 4 days ago

To be fair, there often isn't as much a distinction as we'd like. Even ignoring soft sciences ...

how often is there an HN post linking to a paper about some great new battery technology?

When the in-group fails to police itself sufficiently, it is inevitable that the out-group will do so coarsely.

▲ eggnet 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

This comment is too indirect to be useful. Can you be more explicit?

▲

o11c 4 days ago | parent [-]

To the people at large, a lot of "science" consists entirely of "hey look, a blessed paper says so; anyone who disagrees is a heretic", which is exactly what the atheists (and other-religion-ists) see for insert-religion-here.

	▲	cloverich 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Religion is dogmatic about its static, mutually exclusive, non falsifiable position(s) over extremely long periods of time. The topics you are alluding to are usually novel, complex, changing, and subject to healthy debate. They are quite different. I agree there is an aspect of belief amongst lay persons that they both share which i feel is the more subtle but valid aspect of your argument, but separating it from the initial part of my comment i feel invalidates its usefulness.
	▲	4 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	schmidtleonard 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Their schooling taught them better than that. They choose to forget.

▲ Teever 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

People posting astroturfed links on HN about new battery tech is not directly comparable to people refusing to vaccine their children against measles because of religious reasons.

▲ schmidtleonard 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nope. Experiments are the opposite of faith, and a collection of social mechanisms to encourage experimentation, long-form debate, and useful + correct results is fundamentally different from a collection of social mechanisms to encourage faith and obedience.

▲ pstuart 4 days ago | parent [-]

The weasel wording around "belief" doesn't help.

The two use cases of the words are not the same:

  1. belief: a world view that exists without needing external validation (i.e., "faith")
  2. belief: an understanding of some kind, based on some collection of evidence

Some of that confusion is just ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills, but it's also done in bad faith to muddy the waters to discredit the other side.

▲ o11c 4 days ago | parent [-]

A believer might say there's no difference at all: "just because there's not enough proof that you will accept doesn't mean there's no evidence."

Though I'd actually use a different definition still:

  3. belief: an idea upon which you have the confidence to act

▲ schmidtleonard 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

So a sufficiently confident idiot is equivalent to https://xkcd.com/54/ ?

▲ o11c 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well, I would have suggested an experiment, but if we're still at the "idiot" phase that might be a bit premature.

Instead, I'll offer some general questions that can be answered without experiments, only research.

For each faith X:

  0. Note that each line depends on previous lines.
  1. Who and what defines X-ism?
  2. How exactly do you determine if someone is an X-ist?
  3. What immediate claims does X-ism make about you, me, X-ists, non-X-ists, people at large, the world in general, etc.
  4. What are the greater (long-term, conceptual, metaphysical, etc.) implications of 3?
  5. If X is true, what prior assumptions and values will I have to discard? Am I willing to do so?
  6. What kind of signal-to-noise ratio can I expect due to uncertainties when calculating the above in practice?

▲ pstuart 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Words can have different meanings dependent upon context and audience. Again, the point is just because the same word is used in different contexts doesn't mean the word means the same thing.

Let me try to clarify: I believe in lots of things, but I'm ready to change that belief when presented with compelling evidence. A person of faith believe things and that belief is not going to change despite plenty of evidence.

See, I used the same word but it meant something else. This whole exchange is about the false equivocation of science and religion; (good) science embraces the notion of falsification, because it wants to "believe" in whatever truth presents itself.

This distinction is paramount, because religious fundamentalists believe that their faith trumps science. And yes, there's a bitter irony in the wording I just used.