It All Comes Down to the Plates

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Rivendale
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Rivendale »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 2:37 am
Well, that is your opinion, and that is all fine and good, but none of us really know where his inspiration came from. Not really.
Right. Which is why you don't believe in things until you know.
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Kishkumen
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Kishkumen »

Rivendale wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 2:52 am
Right. Which is why you don't believe in things until you know.
Everyone believes in things before they really know. That is part of life.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Rivendale
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Rivendale »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 1:26 pm
Rivendale wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 2:52 am
Right. Which is why you don't believe in things until you know.
Everyone believes in things before they really know. That is part of life.
I would say every one has a level of confidence about certain things. Knowledge is a subset of beliefs and people believe false things there can only be confidence levels.
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Physics Guy
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Physics Guy »

Sure, there are degrees of confidence, which should probably never hit either zero or one, because there's always some chance that we are all insane and all our perceptions and thoughts are sheer nonsense, which we only falsely imagine to make any sense at all. In another thread a while back I even tried to estimate the chance of this, and found that it was not nearly so astronomically low as some of the chances that certain Mormon apologists had computed.

As Pascal pointed out, though, belief is a strategy. We can ignore Pascal's further notions about exactly what risks and rewards are attached to specific beliefs, but his point stands that belief is a strategy, in the following sense.

Suppose I have one opportunity to choose between two options, and one seems 55% likely to be better. I don't roll percentile dice and try the poorer option if the dice come up 56 or higher. I go with the better option. I act, in fact, exactly the same as I would if the 55% chance were 100%.

Even thinking is an action, with opportunity costs. I will only have so many seconds to think in this life. If an option is 45% likely to be better, does rationality dictate that I devote 45% of my thought to that possibility? No, it doesn't. There can be cases where I would be wise to invest a lot more thought than that (the option that is a bit less likely to be better at all could potentially be better by a lot), and there are cases in which I would be foolish to invest any thought at all in the less likely option (successfully seizing the better option is going to demand all my attention).

How confident one is that an idea is true is not the same—nor should it be the same—as how seriously one takes the idea. We can say, "I know this might not be true, but I believe it." And in fact we all do that, all the time.

Concerning Kekulé's snake: Kekulé had certainly studied benzene a lot at that point, and thought a lot about its structure in particular. But it seems too true-Scotsman-ish to me to ask for truth coming from fiction alone with absolutely no input at all from anything non-fictional. What human being has ever been completely uncontaminated by any contact with objective reality? If we deny all credit to fiction whenever non-fiction might have helped even a bit, then it would be just as reasonable to deny all credit to non-fiction whenever fiction might have assisted—and then neither fiction nor non-fiction will ever have gotten us anywhere, because human thoughts are all at least as tainted with fiction as with objective experience. The specific idea that benzene could be a ring came to Kekulé, by his account, in a daydream about a purely imaginary snake. No doubt this was only the keystone of a nearly-finished mental structure that he had built by rational thinking, but it was the keystone—a decisively important piece. Other people had done the same kind of preliminary thinking that Kekulé had done. They didn't guess the ring structure. They did not see the snake.
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Rivendale
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Rivendale »

Physics Guy wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 7:57 am
Sure, there are degrees of confidence, which should probably never hit either zero or one, because there's always some chance that we are all insane and all our perceptions and thoughts are sheer nonsense, which we only falsely imagine to make any sense at all. In another thread a while back I even tried to estimate the chance of this, and found that it was not nearly so astronomically low as some of the chances that certain Mormon apologists had computed.

As Pascal pointed out, though, belief is a strategy. We can ignore Pascal's further notions about exactly what risks and rewards are attached to specific beliefs, but his point stands that belief is a strategy, in the following sense.

Suppose I have one opportunity to choose between two options, and one seems 55% likely to be better. I don't roll percentile dice and try the poorer option if the dice come up 56 or higher. I go with the better option. I act, in fact, exactly the same as I would if the 55% chance were 100%.

Even thinking is an action, with opportunity costs. I will only have so many seconds to think in this life. If an option is 45% likely to be better, does rationality dictate that I devote 45% of my thought to that possibility? No, it doesn't. There can be cases where I would be wise to invest a lot more thought than that (the option that is a bit less likely to be better at all could potentially be better by a lot), and there are cases in which I would be foolish to invest any thought at all in the less likely option (successfully seizing the better option is going to demand all my attention).

How confident one is that an idea is true is not the same—nor should it be the same—as how seriously one takes the idea. We can say, "I know this might not be true, but I believe it." And in fact we all do that, all the time.

Concerning Kekulé's snake: Kekulé had certainly studied benzene a lot at that point, and thought a lot about its structure in particular. But it seems too true-Scotsman-ish to me to ask for truth coming from fiction alone with absolutely no input at all from anything non-fictional. What human being has ever been completely uncontaminated by any contact with objective reality? If we deny all credit to fiction whenever non-fiction might have helped even a bit, then it would be just as reasonable to deny all credit to non-fiction whenever fiction might have assisted—and then neither fiction nor non-fiction will ever have gotten us anywhere, because human thoughts are all at least as tainted with fiction as with objective experience. The specific idea that benzene could be a ring came to Kekulé, by his account, in a daydream about a purely imaginary snake. No doubt this was only the keystone of a nearly-finished mental structure that he had built by rational thinking, but it was the keystone—a decisively important piece. Other people had done the same kind of preliminary thinking that Kekulé had done. They didn't guess the ring structure. They did not see the snake.
I don't consider looking at a particular problem and using imagination or creativity as fiction. Problem solving involves using ideas that are orchestrated in minds. Sure minds are tainted with input from the natural world starting early on. When I say fiction I am talking about a heuristic built on metaphysical claims.
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Gadianton »

It doesn't really come down to the plates, because even if the plates were ancient, it's more likely aliens are interfering with humanity than Mormonism is true.
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by bill4long »

I would say this,

It depends on what your game is.

If you wanna believe something strong enough you'll stand on your head to justify it.

Maybe Joe was a pious fraud con-man, but a con man nontheless.

I tend to agree with Dan Vogel that Joe was a pious fraud, but you have to add another variable into the mix to sufficiently explain it, in my humble opinion.

Not merely a pious fraud, but a pious narcissistic fraud. That's the full monty right there.

Maybe Dan added to that to his description since I read about it. I am not aware.

I'm just a drunken slob hoping to add something to the conversation.

Keep up the good work, brothers and sisters.

P.S. I posted this several weeks ago, and would like some serious consideration. Think about it. It's proof that it's a gosh darn fraud. There's a fairly interesting story how I happened upon this. At the MTC. On my way to Japan on my mission.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=154254

Mike
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drumdude
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by drumdude »

It’s a really powerful testimony that so many posters here freely gave two of the best years of their lives to the church, often in far away foreign lands like Japan, and still came to the conclusion that the church is a fraud. In spite of all the sunk cost, in spite of such a deep connection to their religion, the evidence against the church was so strong that it could not be ignored any longer.
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by Philo Sofee »

drumdude wrote:
Sun May 22, 2022 2:14 am
It’s a really powerful testimony that so many posters here freely gave two of the best years of their lives to the church, often in far away foreign lands like Japan, and still came to the conclusion that the church is a fraud. In spite of all the sunk cost, in spite of such a deep connection to their religion, the evidence against the church was so strong that it could not be ignored any longer.
A VERY profound point!
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Re: It All Comes Down to the Plates

Post by doubtingthomas »

Gadianton wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 11:23 pm
It doesn't really come down to the plates, because even if the plates were ancient, it's more likely aliens are interfering with humanity than Mormonism is true.

What you said is perfect for apologists to quote.

Apologists: Look, the critics are trying to explain away the Book of Mormon evidences with an awful alien theory.
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus. :roll:
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