Are we doomed to exist with a brain full of failures and shortcomings, which insists on deceiving us every time the reality does not suit it?
One morning, in 1954, three psychologists came across an intriguing article in one of the newspapers. Marion Keech, a housewife from Chicago, claimed to have received messages from the star Clarion that the world was about to be wiped out in a great flood. The aliens gave Marion an exact date, the 21st of December, and promised to save from destruction whoever cleansed his soul in time. According to the article, Marion managed to gather several dozen believers around her and they are busy preparing for Judgment Day: they left their homes, resigned from their jobs and sold all their worldly possessions.
The three psychologists - Leon Festinger, Henry Ricken and Stanley Schachter - realized that they had an excellent research opportunity. The members of Marion's group were very committed, in deeds and words, to their faith. On the cautious assumption that doomsday will not actually come on December 21, what will be the reaction within the group? How will the believers resolve the mental conflict between their strong faith and the undeniable reality? The psychologists decided to join the group under the guise of true believers, and follow the events.
On the night between December 20 and 21 there was great excitement in the group. At midnight the flying saucer was supposed to arrive to pick them up, only a few hours before the great flood. For that matter, the believers removed all the metal objects from their bodies, including wrenches and buttons, and concentrated in one room inside Marion's house. The minutes ticked away. The wait was tense.
Midnight has arrived, and there is still no sign of the aliens. At five minutes past midnight someone pointed to another clock in the room, the hands of which showed 11:55. Smiles of relief: this is probably the real time.
Ten minutes past midnight. Inventory count: flying saucer - none. The group sat in silence, shock gripping their members. four in the morning Silence still enveloped the stunned members of the group. Have the aliens failed them and they too are going to die in the terrible flood? Marion began to cry. Forty-five minutes later she suddenly received another message from the aliens: the heroic efforts of the small group had convinced God to spare Earthlings, and the flood had been averted. The group members were happy. Except for a few who understood the situation well. The vast majority of believers embraced the new message with both hands and were very pleased with it. The world was saved, and all thanks to them.
What happened to the believers? Rationally, the mere fact that the world continued to spin on the morning of December 21st should have convinced them that their previous belief was mistaken, but that is not what happened. In other words, they experienced 'cognitive dissonance': a big and noticeable difference between the picture of the world they painted for themselves and the actual reality. Their solution to this problem—finding an alternative explanation that fits well with their previous belief—fit in with Festinger and Co.'s theory of how the human mind deals with similar conflicts. The mind will almost always prefer the internal continuity, the familiar picture of the world - over the external reality. He will ignore certain facts, paint other facts in new colors and, in principle, make eights in the air - but he will stick to his own. This behavior is especially noticeable when the person is already publicly committed to his previous positions, and a deviation from them may be interpreted as shame and an admission of failure.
The mind is a powerful tool, and in many ways surpasses everything that even our most powerful computers are capable of - but it is not perfect. It has bugs: built-in mistakes that we can't get around. Optical illusions are classic examples of a bug in the brain's hardware: the image that falls on the retina is always the same image - the brain is the one that gives them the wrong interpretation. This misinterpretation is known as 'cognitive bias': an error in judgment caused by an internal weakness in the processing and decision-making process of the human brain. Cognitive bias is like an optical illusion, only its effect is more subtle: it changes the way we understand the world around us.
Here is another example of conative bias. In an experiment conducted during the Cold War, some policy experts were asked to estimate the chance that next year the Soviet Union would invade Poland, and the United States would sever diplomatic ties with it. The chance the commentators gave for this happening was four percent. When the experts were asked what they thought was the chance that only part of this scenario would materialize - that is, that the Soviet Union would invade Poland and that's it, without severing diplomatic ties with it - the chance they gave was only one percent. This is, of course, impossible: the chance that two events will occur - the invasion of Poland and the severance of relations - must be lower than the chance that only one of them will take place. This is the 'combination fallacy'.
So what is the conclusion of all this? Are we doomed to exist with a brain full of failures and shortcomings, which insists on deceiving us every time the reality does not suit it? Yes. We all - me, you too - suffer and will continue to suffer from cognitive biases. And if we break down, succumb to the cognitive bias and convince ourselves that we have a real chance of winning the lottery just because every week there is someone who wins the lottery, we should at least take advantage of the weaknesses of others. It is a well-known fact that people tend not to mark lottery numbers that were drawn in the previous week. They believe, apparently, that the lottery balls know what happened last week and therefore there is no way that the same number will appear twice. We will actually mark the numbers that came out last week, so if we win - we won't have to share the winnings with many people. But if my tip helps you win - you will share a little with me, right? Don't be mean.
[Ran Levy is a science writer and hosts the podcastMaking history!', on science, technology and history. ]
61 תגובות
In short, and to the point, this is not the conciliation factory, it is the "Thieves Factory"
The paradox sends God to the trash…
Along with the programmer…
Along with all the amount of shampoo...
: )
Dan Welver:
You calculated how much shampoo he needed to repeat the action for a week.
We'll end with a joke:
A programmer who was absent from work for a week was found dead in the shower with a bottle of shampoo next to him with the following instructions:
Wet the hair, wash, rinse, repeat the actions.
Dan Welver:
Right. Meanwhile your paradoxes have gone to waste.
Someone has to hit the esc button to stop this loop...
When I spoke in the previous comment about "another dimension", I meant, of course, a metaphysical dimension.
To the best of my recollection, the Sages do not specifically refer to the Euphrates and the Tigris, but they appear within the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, which is perceived in many places in the interpretation of the Sages as an allegorical story. The Garden of Eden, from which, according to the biblical story, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Nile and the Gihon flow, does not exist in our world as we know it. He exists in another dimension. Obviously, in the dimension where paradise exists, the four rivers also come from one source, unlike our world.
Michael Rothschild:
I happen to know this thing about the rivers on their piriths. So I answered the matter itself.
But you may be expecting me to start explaining the whole thing to you in detail, I won't be able to do that here.
As you will not be able to explain on one leg the nature and details of partial differential equations.
Michael Rothschild:
You have a hard time believing this because all you know is to read Hebrew in fives.
But in this matter what I wrote is exactly what the Sages attribute to the matter of these rivers.
How do you even imagine that you can ask a question of taste on subjects you have no clue about.
And apart from wrong and messed up assumptions you never checked and researched beyond the most basic reading.
I see the evasions continue.
Good night.
I won't answer you anymore
Michael Rothschild:
Certainly the matters of these rivers are almost exclusively matters of Kabbalah dealing with understanding the ways of thinking, how the rules of thinking develop, this is a complete and broad subject. and appears in many places in Kabbalah literature.
And besides - specifically - what did they say about the hint, the sermon and the secret regarding the Euphrates and the Tigris?
Agnon:
Can you bring a serious reference to the place where sages say that what is written in the Torah is not necessarily true?
Michael Rothschild:
What they said in brief:
Large parts of the Bible including the act of creation in the book of Genesis and many others should not be understood as a story that existed at all.
but were written for the sermon only. The innocent belief as if what is written there is what really happened/happened is only for fools or Christians. Most of the things there were required for admissions and other studies.
As a general rule, the entire Torah is characterized by four dimensions: a simple hint, a secret commandment, and in each part there is a different combination of these dimensions.
abandoned:
I get all your bullshit.
Just please answer the question of your ignorant servant: what did the Sages say about the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Michael Rothschild:
About 41
You think yourself a superior kind of mathematician with grace.
We will see you as pretentious and belittle serious and experienced mathematicians.
Which again demonstrates your arrogant, disdainful and empty character. that it is your custom to multiply your greatness by the humiliation of others.
incidentally:
I'm really interested in what the sages said about the Euphrates and Tigris.
Let's even leave the idiotic assumption that this is irrelevant.
Are you ready to answer me or is it a secret?
I don't know why I kept trying to explain things to you logically.
You're just ignorant.
It matters what you want.
Michael Rothschild:
You keep changing the subject every time.
It's not a paradox, you can call any riddle as long as you don't have an answer to it a paradox.
Now you will see that you have not answered the matter to any claim refuting my claims.
But you allow yourself in most of your arrogance to bring up new topics again and again. and ask your spouse to refer to them.
Be honest and consistent and answer according to the order of the previous things.
Because otherwise, if I agree to address your riddle, you, as usual, will come up with another riddle again. There are many of these on the Internet.
And what did you bring up?
Unless I have to agree that you agree in my opinion that in order to beat the other party in an argument you have to show the flaw in the other party and that's why you act like that.
Agnon:
There are many people who buy meaningless experience.
For example - if you come to a Christian and tell him that Jesus did not rise from the dead, he will also refer you to other idiots.
By the way - come and tell us what the Sages claimed in this matter?
It just suits me to hear a good joke.
Michael Rothschild:
And the matter itself that you brought up is again meaningless because that's what you say but that's not what was really said.
Unless you claim that you know how to read and explain better than the terms and conditions and those that came after them
who interpreted exactly what is written there. They had a little more experience and knowledge in understanding everything written down to the details and all the various connections and conclusions. And you, the great expert, come and pretend that you know how to read and explain according to your crooked understanding what is written there. Come on.
Agnon:
As mentioned, you don't stop ranting and the only reason for that is that you don't have an answer.
I won't leave you hanging on this tree.
I will move you to another tree:
This time something for serious people, one that embarrasses even people who don't believe in nonsense like the Torah.
Come and use your method to solve the following paradox:
Any number can be described by a collection of words.
Sometimes this can be done in more than one way.
For example, the number four can be described, among other things, in the following ways:
1. "Four"
2. "Two times two"
3. "Two and two more"
4. "One plus three"
5. The smallest natural number greater than three.
6. ….and so on….
Now - think about all the numbers that cannot be described in less than twenty words.
Thought?
Beauty!
Now think about the smallest natural number among the numbers that cannot be described in less than twenty words.
Thought?
But how can that be? The phrase "the smallest natural number among the numbers that cannot be described in less than twenty words" describes this number in less than twenty words!
paradox.
Get out of it.
Michael Rothschild:
Regarding the example you gave.
I will answer you with humor from the experience of most married men.
As we know that when there is an argument between a man and his wife, the victory in the argument in many cases is the woman's.
Because she uses a simple tactic. When she notices that she is entering a logical contradiction, she changes the topic of the debate and inserts events and claims about things that happened a long time ago. And when the man is not enough to recover and try to answer that too, she changes again and brings another eye.
You transparently use such exercises when you bring stories from a long time ago from the Garden of Eden and the individual and the Tigris. Soon you will bring the stories of the flood and the Tower of Babel.
Agnon:
You don't stop talking.
Come and use your "general method" to solve the paradox in response 35.
Michael Rothschild:
Trying to dominate your way of thinking as having the only rights to solve problems is cumbersome not to mention ridiculous.
The people here are messing with you because you drag them down such a convoluted path.
You have no ownership of the ways of logic.
I'll be back again.
When you make a claim with the aim of creating a mess and refuting some logical order.
All I have to do is show that the rebuttal claim is messed up and flawed in itself and therefore has no validity at all.
What's simpler than that?
Of course, it turns out that you won't be right, and that's why you want to complicate matters in order to overturn the claims of the one in front of you.
Do it another time.
An example of a paradox:
First claim: God knows everything and he said that the individual and the Tigris come from a common source.
Second claim: The Euphrates and the Tigris as they appear on the map - do not come from a common source.
It is a paradox that for those who believe in the first claim cannot be resolved (unless he chooses not to believe his eyes).
Agnon:
You just don't understand.
What is it to show that there is a defect in a defect?
After all, it is known in advance that it is a defect!
It doesn't teach anything.
What needs to be done to solve the problem is to point out exactly the error and not to show that additional errors can be made.
A paradox is created when two ways that seem logical at first glance - lead to contradictory conclusions.
This shows that at least one of these two ways is wrong.
A solution to the paradox can only be by precisely pointing out the error - that is - pointing out the logical error that exists in at least one of the ways.
Michael Rothschild:
The paradoxes are confusing because their basic structure is an infinite loop.
Therefore, in order to structure it, it is usually necessary to expand the structure and add a matching inverse symmetry.
For example the book paradox of the famous village.
Shetla puts a sign in his barber shop announcing "Only those who don't tell themselves are told here"
(And then the book itself is in a loop - if it doesn't tell itself then it needs to be told and vice versa).
The dissolution was done, for example, when the head of the village established a new regulation and added it to the sign under the previous line.
"In this barbershop it is forbidden to tell those who tell themselves"
The negative supplementary condition closes the circle and stops it by stating that the book must not tell itself.
There are articles that are suitable for a conversation about God and there are some that are not.
This article is not.
I already said this in response 9.
Usually it's the believers of God who mix him up in conversation, but that's not what happened here.
God entered for the first time in Dan Welver's comments.
That's why - even though I don't believe in God, I tried to moderate Wolber's attack in some way.
Everything changed of course when the conditioned reflex owners joined the celebration and played the conditioned reflex I have against bullshit.
Why does God have to star in every list of responses to articles? It's just unrelated and repetitive. At least in the articles about global warming no one else has written that there is no global warming because God likes to play snowballs or something like that.
Michael Rothschild:
In the same way your baseless arrogance tries to undermine this logic. But the flaw is in the flaw itself.
Michael Rothschild:
These juggles are unnecessary because in the simplest way!!!….
The paradoxes are meant to show that there is a fundamental flaw in some logical order.
The contradiction for paradoxes to show that there is a flaw in a flaw. using the assumptions of the origin of the defect claim.
And again, Agnon:
When someone comes and tells you "I don't know X" - to come and tell him "so what - you don't know Y either" is not an answer to his question but just a gag.
I thank you for the instructive examples you brought in the matter because they explain to me how to train.
Agnon:
I am not deviating from the topic.
You avoid him.
You present a "general method for solving paradoxes" without this method solving a single paradox. It shows you don't understand what a paradox is. I tried to help you understand but the time I was willing to devote to you has passed.
Isaac:
What's the point of sticking something you didn't think of yourself.
The problem is that you use the concept of God and you have no idea what the relationship to the divine concept is.
Lights, sperms, painful soups:
"The essence of faith is in the greatness of infinite perfection. Everything that enters the heart is a completely void spark regarding what deserves to be presumed, and what deserves to be presumed does not arise at all in a kind of cancellation regarding what it really is. If one says about the good thing or the thing of grace, Justice, heroism, boasting, and everything that is life and the splendor of life, or about the matter of faith and divinity, - everything is what the soul covers in its originality above all. Even all the names and nicknames, both Hebrew and foreign, give only a small and dark spark of the northern light, That the soul stirs for him and says to him: "God"."
Expandable with appropriate description
Yosef Kellner - The Terrible Ice King
Michael Rothschild:
There is no need to deviate from the topic by investigating the word paradox, it is about the claims and their conclusions exactly the ones presented here. I have shown you that they are meaningless.
And regarding the handling of paradoxes in general, it was done this way in the Talmud two thousand years ago.
Long before Bertrand Russell Frege grew and more.
For example: a garden where knives grow and where they are harvested.
The answer is in Hamor's horn. And if you ask, a donkey doesn't have horns, so since when do knives grow in the garden.
Another example: white cheese from which was made from a black goat or a white goat.
Answer If you can answer from which hen the egg was born black or white you will also have an answer to the question.
This is on the edge of the fork. There are many types of paradoxes and their answers in the Talmud.
Not true, Agnon.
You are simply, frankly, rambling and in fact you demonstrate ignorance in every aspect in which you express yourself.
Presenting some paradox is not an answer to any paradox. It's just another paradox. How do you think it solves the paradox for which it was introduced?
Let's start with something relatively simple.
Tell me what you think is a paradox.
Michael Rothschild:
Since in your last answer you show senseless arrogance and you do not answer the matter, it means that you have nothing and a half nothing but baseless arrogance.
The rule is that you talk nonsense
The rule is that the answer to every paradox is in a derived or corresponding paradox.
Agnon:
You're rambling but you convinced me you wouldn't understand.
Good night
Michael Rothschild:
You should think before you speak
If you claim that one of its abilities is to stop it should also have a corresponding symmetrical ability not to stop.
If you want to lack this ability, you contradict your initial assumption that he is omnipotent.
So just a joke.
And regarding your numbered comments I understand that you need a qualification to use logic.
Allow me to express my opinion that even if you tell them like in the army they are meaningless.
By the way, Agnon, how do you deal with the paradoxes I mentioned or the paradox that Cain married a woman who was not born and was not created?
And what you said in response 14 is baseless, of course, for many reasons:
1. You have not defined what these paradoxes are
2. You have not proven that what you say in this matter is true
3. You actually proved that in the case of the current paradox you don't even know how to do it so you are certainly not qualified to talk about "these paradoxes"
Agnon:
You are rambling of course.
Once he ceases to be omnipotent he is no longer omnipotent and therefore cannot terminate his cessation.
It is always possible to show that all these paradoxes are meaningless because it is possible according to their own assumptions to show that they lead to self-contradiction.
Michael Rothschild:
Please specify the origin
Because the paradox you brought up has no way out.
You wrote-
"If God is omnipotent - one of his abilities is to stop being omnipotent."
Because that's how he can according to this assumption - stop the pause to be omnipotent.
And so your argument falls into a self-loop.
Agnon:
This paradox has a way out, if you had read the comments that preceded yours you would not have started berating comment 11.
Of course, the paradox that the creator of the world did not know that the rabbit he created does not rummage and that the Euphrates and the Tigris do not come from a common source and wrote in the Torah exactly the opposite has no solution.
Dan Welver:
The greatest paradox of all: can God create a stone that he himself could not lift?
Meaningless because it can be answered..
Yes. As much as God can find a stone that He cannot create.
or yes. As much as he can lift a stone he cannot create.
Since your paradox assumes that it can create anything it leads the paradox itself to indecision.
how do you know you know
Dan, you entered an interesting "branch" of philosophy called: "Ding on Sitch."
And I would perfect your paradox (which is quite familiar - sorry) and say that: "Almighty cannot be omnipotent"
Dan Welver:
What made you suddenly start talking about God here?
By the way - although I really think that God does not exist - I do not think that the paradox of the stone (which I always call Parados) is proof of that.
If God is omnipotent - one of his abilities is to stop being omnipotent.
Creating the same stone is one way to do this.
As George Costanza said in the Seinfeld series:
"The plan is about nothing. She must be about something... but still she is about nothing..."
or in translation:
"Belief in God is in nothing. She must be in something... but still she is faith in nothing..."
For Dan, the conclusion is different:
The concept of "omnipotent", at least in the human perception, contains an inherent paradox.
There is no way to describe an attribute of "omnipotence", regardless of God or faith, without entering into a built-in internal contradiction.
The fact that some concept cannot be described without a built-in internal contradiction indicates that it simply cannot be described, not that it does not exist.
I don't know where the assumption emerged that everything in the universe, imaginary or real, must be humanly describable and perceptible without creating paradoxes.
In other words, the concept of "omnipotent" is something that belongs to the long list of things that simply cannot be talked about, Wittgensteinian.
1. God is infinite, omnipotent and omniscient
2. There are no infinite, omnipotent and omniscient things that you can learn about from the reality around you
3. Therefore, you could not learn about God from the reality around you (he came from another place or cannot be invented based on the combination of organs of known beings)
In fact we cannot and do not create a concept that is not anchored in the reality around us or based on our description and conceptualization abilities. The concept of "time" is always described by us in terms anchored in these abilities and limitations (for example, time is long, short, fleeting, continuous, passing).
Each of us may build a "model of God" in our mind, but this model is anchored in our sensory ability.
Therefore, a logical formulation more true to reality would present the argument in a completely different light:
1. God is as great as the Azrieli Towers
2. You cannot learn how big the Azrieli towers are by looking at them
3. Therefore, you cannot learn how great God is based on observation
The biggest paradox of all:
Can God create a stone that he himself could not lift?
The answer is yes: God is limited, because he is standing in front of a heavy stone that he cannot face.
The answer is no: God is limited, there is something He is not able to do.
The conclusion: God is not omnipotent.
1. Your thoughts exist
2. You think about God
3. Therefore, God exists in your thought
Although both assumptions are (logically) correct, the conclusion (proposition) is not drawn from them. The confusion here is between subject and object, the thought and the object of the thought (God). Even if the thought itself exists (in such and such cells in the brain), this does not indicate the object of the thought. In a logically valid structure, we get a much more modest result than the original:
1. Your thoughts exist
2. You think about God
3. Therefore, the thought of God exists
Or, in another wording:
1. A exists
2. A in some relation to C
3. Therefore, A exists in some relation to C
In fact, the argument pretends to say something about C (God), but does not.
ו
Isn't it easier to take the classic example of them all???
The guy or girl who are the best friends and always live in a movie that something more than that will happen in a second and no matter how much crap is thrown at them they are always sure that here tomorrow the wow or the wow will open their eyes and understand the truth and love me...after all it happens all the time :)..
Eran M:
If you want to compare correctly - then don't add the word "just".
The second question should be "What is the chance that Israel will send tanks to Syria?"
Those who think about this question should ask themselves what are the circumstances under which Israel sends tanks to Syria and these circumstances include:
1. The situation in which Israel is sending the tanks as part of a war against Syria
2. The situation in which Israel is sending tanks to Syria in the absence of a war with Syria (either because there is already peace or because the US ordered Syria to allow Israeli tanks to pass through to strike at Iran).
Therefore the example in the article is good.
What is true is that the approach in the article is wrong because presenting the questions in close proximity to each other causes the reader to interpret them as you interpreted them.
This is not a mistake in consideration, but a mistake in the way the question is passed on to the questioner.
"Here is another example of conative bias. In an experiment conducted during the Cold War, some policy experts were asked to estimate the chance that next year the Soviet Union would invade Poland, and the United States would sever diplomatic ties with it. The chance the commentators gave for this happening was four percent. When the experts were asked what they thought was the chance that only part of this scenario would materialize - that is, that the Soviet Union would invade Poland and that's it, without severing diplomatic ties with it - the chance they gave was only one percent. This is, of course, impossible: the chance that two events will occur - the invasion of Poland and the severance of relations - must be lower than the chance that only one of them will take place. This is the 'combination fallacy'."
This is a bad example. And it can also be explained mathematically.
Let's say and ask you what is the chance that Israel will start a war with Syria in the next five years and during the war will send tanks - I would give let's say 10%.
What is the chance that Israel will just send tanks - the chance is more like 1%.
War-> sending tanks.
No war-> probably no sending tanks.
Unless here the reference is to "or" in the meaning of the world of computers ie either A or B or both, then this indeed cannot exist.