Posts Tagged With: Opinion

What evidence would a person accept to change their mind about their religious beliefs?

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One of the core principles of rationality is an ability to update your beliefs based on new evidence. Thus a good heuristic for a person's intellectual honesty, or rigor, is whether they've stated conditions which would lead them to change their beliefs. A rational person in favor of social promotion, for instance, should be willing to change her mind if evidence shows that social promotion is damaging to the schools where it's practiced. Reading through Eliezer Yudkowsky's FAQ page today got me thinking about what evidence would convince someone to change his mind about religion. If I was an atheist I would consider the ability to read my thoughts or determine information that I've never shared with anyone as good evidence, but then it's possible that technology will develop to the point where we can read minds easily. Maybe the ability of a prospective deity to answer scientific or historical questions that we don't have answers to in a logically consistent way, or the ability to control nature, cleave a playing card with a thunderstrike or something. Those aren't great tests, and they're also vulnerable to a jump from, "I can't explain this event" to "an all-knowing or all-powerful being must have done it." What evidence would a rational religious person have to accept to believe that there is no god? I'm not really sure, as much of religious belief is based on faith. I suspect you could get a good answer by asking people why they believe in their god and not in, say, Thor or Zeus.

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The data-driven approach is changing the world

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I was reading this profile of Esther Duflo in the New Yorker last night when I realized that rural development and the tech sector aren't too different in their approach to problems. In each one you're trying to convince the customer that what you're selling - immunizations, software - will make their lives better. Sometimes you're not reaching out to the customer that well, in which case you try experiments to make things better. In tech, this is pretty low cost - you segment the customer base, show the treatment group a revised page and then measure the differences. In development this is more expensive - you have to create a randomized controlled trial, divide your population in two and then measure the results later. The basic principles are the same, though. Most successful web designers and aid workers/economists believe the following: 1. We can be doing a better job selling our product 2. Our assumptions could be right or could be wrong, but we have no way to tell without testing them 3. Good data is essential 4. Opinions without data are meaningless 5. Experiment constantly to collect more data and find things that work The success of this approach has become so clear, and such a part of my approach to problems, over the past few years that it's hard to imagine doing things differently, or having a discussion with people that rely on their gut. Even having discussions with people is pointless, when you can go look up some papers or evidence that proves or disproves your point, but most people aren't willing to trust the data over their intuitions. There are two types of people who have opinions about social promotion in schools: people who have looked at the data and people who haven't. Overwhelmingly the people who look at the data are in favor of social promotion (as are school administrators). Institutions push back against the data-driven approach, however, because of its implications. Underlying the hierarchical system at most companies is a belief that the people at the top are better at making decisions, or their assumptions are somehow better than the people just starting. If we're trusting the data, then your guess as the CEO is just as good as mine, as the intern; the people at the top must be comfortable ceding power. Plus we have all these biases, like the ability to discern patterns out of random data and anchoring, and if you're not familiar with cognitive bias by this point go read this. In both the tech sector and in development, there are companies that - for the moment - aren't randomizing, and are still doing okay and collecting money. That's going to change, though, and soon, because relying on the data gives you such a clear advantage. Google's made billions with it. J-PAL's gaining on everyone else in development, only because their experiments are demonstrating results. If you've got nothing else to go on, evaluate the future success of an organization by how it makes decisions, and how open it is to change.

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One failure of globalization

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Earlier I wrote a post on the benefits of globalization and free trade. Here's a story about globalization gone wrong in Ladakh:
Most important of all, I have been able to witness first-hand the evolution of tensions between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Ladakh, or `Little Tibet', in the western Himalayas. For more than 600 years these two groups lived side by side with no recorded instance of conflict. They helped each other at harvest time, attended one another's religious festivals, even intermarried. But within a decade of the imposition of western-style `development', Buddhists and Muslims were engaged in pitched battles — including the bombing of each other's homes — that took many lives. Even mild-mannered grandmothers — who a decade earlier would have been drinking chang, eating tsampa and laughing with their Muslim neighbours — told me, “we have to kill all the Muslims or they will finish us off.”
Hat tip Jenny B.

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Poor people are probably not happier, or better off, than we are

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One thing that's really gotten on my nerves recently is when other volunteers or people I know talk about how happy people in the rural villages are. The person who brings this up usually goes on to imply one of two things: a) these people are happier than people in the West, and we should be embarrassed to have so much and yet so desperately seek happiness, or b) in absolute terms, their lives are better. Sometimes this is accompanied by the speakers longing for simpler times, without so much technology. This is also the premise behind the ending to the final season of Battlestar Galactica; the space folk find a planet inhabited by simple people, with limited technology, and decide to abandon their sophisticated, space-faring ways and lead pastoral lives. We're led to believe that millions of people voluntarily give up their technology for a fresh start. This is also the message that Jesus had for the tax man when he said, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Granted, Jesus may have been discussing a gate rather than a sewing needle, but the message remains: to earn eternal life, you have a better chance if you give up your possessions. Presumably giving up your possessions makes you less selfish, more aware of suffering, or merely benefits others enough that it's worth it for you to do. Given this evidence, the way people talk about the poor, and the urging of a figure hailed as a savior by billions, I would expect rich people to abandon their possessions in droves. Surely if being poor, and lacking possessions, was so much better for peoples happiness, or if they were serious about gaining eternal life, then they would shun new technology, give up their things and live among the world's poorest. Even if a fraction of a fraction of Western civilization acted on this idea, we're still talking about a hundred thousand people or more. The fact that virtually no one from Western civilization actually does this, to my knowledge, leads me to conclude that pretty much everyone prefers having more money, and more possessions, to having less money and fewer possessions. This is backed up by the Stevenson study showing that everywhere around the world higher income is related to higher levels of happiness. These both suggest that development measures tied purely to increasing levels of income among rural villagers aren't terrible. Why do so many rich people talk like that, where they imagine that poor people are relatively happy? I can think of two reasons. One, it's extremely difficult to imagine what life is like as a poor person. If you've always earned a steady income, had access to food, and/or had health insurance, it might be hard to imagine life where you earn 70% of a meager yearly income in only two months, where you may have to skip meals, or where a simple trip to the doctor can waste a months salary. Furthermore, the consumption margin for the rich is things like iPhones, more clothes, or a fifth TV. The relevant consumption margin for the poor are goods like a laundry machine or dishwasher, a first TV or mobile phone, or a first two wheeler. These are all goods which we use every day and can't really imagine what it would be like to live without. Doing laundry by hand for three months has taught me that it really sucks, both in terms of time and effort, and I don't doubt that having the means to save time and acquire a laundry machine would make people happier. The second reason might be an attempt by rich people to rationalize vast differences in wealth by noting that the poor are happy. From a utilitarian perspective, a marginal dollar gives more benefit to a poor person than a rich person, putting the rich in an uncomfortable position. Any measure which allows people to justify not immediately giving all of their money to the poor is usually welcome.

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Correlation Does Not Mean Causation. Correlation Does Not Mean Causation. Correlation Does Not Mean Causation.

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Apparently a degree does not bestow logical thought to the people pursuing it, as this article from today's Daily Pennsylvanian shows. This writing is unacceptable, not only because it's biased but because the main argument has no basis. The number of swimming pools people own is also positively correlated with longer life, more community service, more political involvement, and less smoking. We should all build more swimming pools, and wait for the benefits to come in.

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