Q&A: Probabilistic Quantitative Truth
Probabilistic Quantitative Truth
Question
I’m currently reading a book by Eliezer Yudkowsky about rational thinking. Its main emphasis is on trying to avoid and notice the biases we have. He touches on the point that truth should be viewed quantitatively, in terms of degrees of certainty, and then one should choose what seems most probable to us—which sounds obvious enough.
As a result, he argues against, for example, the phenomenon of assuming the conclusion and then trying to rationalize it. Rather, one should start from the beginning and from there choose the option that seems entirely most plausible.
So my question is this: after your extensive writing about why there is a very logical side to Judaism (the first book in the trilogy was amazing in my opinion), do you think you rationalized an assumed conclusion? In your estimation, if you truly started from zero, would you arrive at Judaism? (If you somehow have such a process in mind—of getting to Judaism from zero—I’d be happy to hear it.)
Answer
There is no such thing as coming in as a tabula rasa. Every discussion is based on assumptions, and adopting them depends on my initial intuitions. It is always some version of assuming the conclusion.
Discussion on Answer
Trying to be more objective is always right, but that is an undefined claim. In any case, what I call “theological” (or “revealing”) arguments are an inseparable part of philosophy and are not essentially different from “philosophical” (“inferential”) arguments.
Yes, but you can still reduce biases through a different way of thinking. Obviously there will always be some tendency, but you can try to be as objective as possible. I’m not talking דווקא about the axioms themselves, but about how likely it is that the views I hold are correct, and really to examine them from the ground up on the basis of those axioms…