User:Skepxian

About me

Skepxian is a rationalist from the Midwest, specifically the Milwaukee area. He joined LessWrong in July of 2010. He also finds speaking third-person about himself to be difficult, so the remainder will be in first person.

I have loved three things since I was young: science, religion, and mythology. I credit my love of science to Isaac Asimov, my Junior Science Kit, and my high-school Chemistry teacher. I credit my love of religion to my family and my high-school Physics teacher. I credit my love of mythology to The Clash of the Titans.

I figure, some people have already thought, "wait... religion and mythology are the same thing." I would disagree. Religion is a set of positive or negative personal beliefs and practices about the nature of God and/or other supernatural entities. Mythology consists of the popular beliefs and stories that grow up surrounding an entity - often religion. For instance: Christian mythology tells many stories about holy powers of artifacts, stories of people fighting off supernatural beings with faith, statues that cry tears of blood, etc. Christian religion tells about Jesus and the bible.

But enough on that. I am not here to challenge my religious beliefs - if you must read of my religious beliefs, I'll put them below, but they are not my focus here. I do, though, enjoy and welcome challenges to any of my beliefs, theological or otherwise. The sword untempered is weak and breaks easily, and the armor untested has no quality to be spoken of. Closer to why I am here is to improve upon my rationality. I have tried too long to work on my own to study the greats of the past, without community to help me along and bring my thoughts out of their internal, constrained loops. Here, at LessWrong, I find rationalists stating, that to be smart is not to be rational. That intelligence can aid rationality, but the two do not automatically come together. I am pleased to be able to find someplace where all the knowledge I seek is brought together for discussion and easy perusal, for many an enjoyable hour of consideration.

To this end, I thank Eliezer greatly. Even just reading his site has helped me tremendously, without the community. To have it set up for a community endeavor just makes it all the better.

On Methods of Discussion

Of my discussion, I strive to remain calm, though of course we are beings of emotion. I ask forgiveness in advance for mistakes I will undoubtedly make.

Some will notice that I will make frequent use of fictional references. (*wry grin* that is, other than how many of you will see my theological beliefs) I find that modern-day writers, science fiction and fantasy, mystery and otherwise, are the philosophers of our day. They explore the human condition, and human behavior, and the behavior of societies. Why take the time to give a generic theoretical situation, "What if we are caught in an elaborate computer simulation of reality, designed to keep our minds caught up in its intricacies?" when we could simply say, "What if we are in The Matrix?" Fiction not only has thought of many of these questions before, but also they offer a shared experience and familiarity with theoretical situations as powerful as those of ancient philosophers asking whether they are butterflies or men, and which is the dream?

On Christianity

Many here feel that Rationality and Theism run counter to each other. I would disagree - I do not begrudge them their own religious beliefs, I would hope they would not begrudge me mine, nor call them irrational. Certainly there is no 'proof' of a deity, nor of any specific religious faith, but there is nonetheless evidence to be had - the same as we have evidence of any other historical acts occurring. Like any other historical events, they can be shown through evidence, though never proved, and they can be denied by clouded evidence or the confusion of the mists of the past. It's no easier than events of today - where the simplest political event is obscured behind a tumult of propaganda, opinion, and speculation. We do the best we can to take the evidence before us and determine as close as possible the truth of matters.

My own specific religious beliefs are not bound to the reactionary and ill-researched opinions of the masses of very noisy theists out there today. I take more companionship from the great teachers, scholars, thinkers, and scientists of the past.

"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, 
about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even 
the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun 
and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, 
of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest 
certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. 
It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that 
he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on 
these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say 
that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error 
they are."
----- St. Augustine, De Genesi ad literam (408 AD)

It is in memory of men such as this, of Galileo, favored son of the Pope, who spoke with the authority of all the scholars of the Vatican, of the countless monks both Christian and otherwise, and Muslim shaikhs also, whose names have been lost to history, those who hid volumes and scrolls of knowledge within their walls while foul war raged outside - all these men, I take as examples.

It is of great sadness to me that I look at the world around me, where there is such a close history of religion and science growing together, despite the problems there have been, and see today such discord between the two. I see the religious zealots growing not only less scientific, but also less religious, less caring about their own religious history or tenets, and I see the scientific zealots growing not only less religious, but also less scientific, driven to ignore facts in order to condemn the groups they see as spawning such unscientific behavior. I merely wish we could all act a little more rationally, and that I could find some way to make everyone work together a little more.

As for further discussion, so far I've had interesting conversations:

In my Welcome to Less Wrong thread.

My favorite pages

Twelve Virtues of Rationality

Twelve Virtues of Rationality

The twelve virtues of rationality nicely codify something I've been trying to communicate for quite some time - my belief in how people *should* communicate with each other. I'd be happy if most people would just affect a select subset of the twelve, but the whole of it is magnificent.

I especially like the way it is written - it has such a literary and philosophical quality to it. It attracts attention.

1. Curiosity
2. Relinquishment
3. Lightness

I've had this one tried to be used against me. The thing people forget about being open to the facts is that there are lots of facts. Sure, person A likes to think that *his* facts disprove the conclusion of person B, and person B likes to think that *his* facts disprove the conclusion of person A. And both of them are actually right ... but they also think that since the other person's conclusion is false, that means their own conclusion is true. The truth, of course, is in a conclusion somewhere between the two extremes - but both sides view that as 'ignoring the facts'.

A rationalist's conclusions have momentum because they are built on facts. If a rationalist finds a fact that seems to disprove his earlier conclusions - this does not disprove his earlier facts. This means that conclusions must be modified, and freely, but one must be careful not to completely discard all the facts that had been found earlier. I see this a lot in 'converts' to new causes. They go from one extreme to the other, feeling betrayed that the earlier facts had not brought them the correct conclusions, and so they ignore the earlier facts to embrace all-new facts.

4. Evenness

The thing I like most about relinquishment is that it expresses a need for openness. No matter how ridiculous a claim someone might make, give them at least one chance to prove their claim. No matter how similar their claim to a claim you've heard a hundred times before, and never shown to be true, you give them one chance to prove their claim. This is something I remind myself of often when I find someone making an unlikely or annoyingly familiar claim.

5. Argument

Oh, wow, have I run into trouble with this one. There seem to be a lot of people who seem to feel that the essence of friendship is making everyone feel cuddly and warm with each other. My view of a friend is someone you can count on to challenge you when you're doing something wrong, to be honest and polite ... but who also shares interests.

6. Empiricism
7. Simplicity
8. Humility
9. Perfectionism
10. Precision
11. Scholarship
12. The Way of the Void

I run into this a lot. People start to get caught up in mental cycles, where theory breeds theory breeds theory, till they're in a very ideal world, in their mind. And they get upset when I ask, "But does it describe the truth?"