

Is There An Artificial God? - detcader
http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/

======
Hexstream
The best part is at the end:

"But the fourth, the many-to-many, we didn't have at all before the coming of
the Internet, which, of course, runs on fibre-optics. It's communication
between us that forms the fourth age of sand. Take what I said earlier about
the world not reacting to us when we react to it; I remember the first moment,
a few years ago, at which I began to take the Internet seriously. It was a
very, very silly thing. There was a guy, a computer research student at
Carnegie Mellon, who liked to drink Dr Pepper Light. There was a drinks
machine a couple of storeys away from him, where he used to regularly go and
get his Dr Pepper, but the machine was often out of stock, so he had quite a
few wasted journeys. Eventually he figured out, 'Hang on, there's a chip in
there and I'm on a computer and there's a network running around the building,
so why don't I just put the drinks machine on the network, then I can poll it
from my terminal whenever I want and tell if I'm going to have a wasted
journey or not?' So he connected the machine to the local network, but the
local net was part of the Internet - so suddenly anyone in the world could see
what was happening with this drinks machine. Now that may not be vital
information but it turned out to be curiously fascinating; everyone started to
know what was happening with the drinks machine. It began to develop, because
in the chip in the machine didn't just say, 'The slot which has Dr Pepper
Light is empty' but had all sorts of information; it said, 'There are 7 Cokes
and 3 Diet Cokes, the temperature they are stored at is this and the last time
they were loaded was that'. There was a lot of information in there, and there
was one really fabulous piece of information: it turned out that if someone
had put their 50 cents in and not pressed the button, i.e. if the machine was
pregnant, then you could, from your computer terminal wherever you were in the
world, log on to the drinks machine and drop that can! Somebody could be
walking down the corridor when suddenly, 'bang!' - there was a Coca-Cola can!
What caused that? - well obviously somebody 5,000 miles away! Now that was a
very, very silly, but fascinating, story and what it said to me was that this
was the first time that we could reach back into the world. It may not be
terribly important that from 5,000 miles away you can reach into a University
corridor and drop a Coca-Cola can but it's the first shot in the war of
bringing to us a whole new way of communicating. So that, I think, is the
fourth age of sand. "

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ErrantX
DA was a genius comic writer but I think he is never remembered for real
intelligence too. For example:

 _Now that was a very, very silly, but fascinating, story and what it said to
me was that this was the first time that we could reach back into the world._
#

That's the kind of thoughtful insight that just doesn't occur to many.

~~~
unalone
This is the tragedy of a lot of science fiction writers, many of whom are
incredibly bright and often better with nonfiction than they are with their
writing.

DA's fiction is good, but not particularly special. His style's a bit amateur.
On the other hand, his nonfiction from Salmon of Doubt is surprisingly
excellent.

~~~
detcader
The Salmon of Doubt pretty much changed my life when I read it at ~15. This
speech was included in it. I find myself frequently referring to it in forum
topics on the internet.

------
pbhjpbhj
_'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'Fine, I respect
that'. [...] I wouldn't have thought 'Maybe there's somebody from the left
wing or somebody from the right wing or somebody who subscribes to this view
or the other in economics' when I was making the other points. I just think
'Fine, we have different opinions'. But, the moment I say something that has
something to do with somebody's ( [...] irrational) beliefs, then we all
become terribly protective and terribly defensive and say 'No, we don't attack
that; that's an irrational belief but no, we respect it'._

In what way is it irrational? I think the author conflates apparent lack of
support with irrationality - the reason one shouldn't do the switch is that it
is a type of work, it requires effort that would otherwise not be expended,
Jewish scripture does not allow work on Saturdays, Rabbi's confirm that this
is work. Rabbi's are inspired by God, God created us and inspired scripture
and knows what is best.

Now we can pick all sorts of holes in that argument on lack of support. But it
is a rational argument, it applies known (to the subject) facts in a logical
manner to determine the true course to take.

You might argue that the premises are wrong, fine, but that doesn't stop the
reasoning from being logical - if I tell you I'm wearing a green hat, then I
ask you what colour of hat I'm wearing, you say green; but I'm not wearing a
hat, that doesn't make you irrational it just makes you wrong.

The question of whether God exists is not a scientific question, so a better
premise to attack would be that Rabbi's are inspired by God. "Rabbi's provide
bad advice" might be a good first hypothesis - eventually we see that Rabbi's
usually provide good advice, should we take that advice? Seems logical (within
this limited discourse). Now that doesn't prove the premise we held true
initially but it gives limited support to it and is of itself a good reason
for listening to Rabbi's.

So, then we might consider why we are protective of the Jews belief that they
shouldn't switch the light on Saturday. Well do we have scientific data which
somehow shows his premises to be wrong? Financial data is relatively simple -
did the pundits shares go up, etc.? I warrant that the reason we protect
beliefs that we ourselves consider wrong (or in the authors case irrational
(which I think is wrong!)) is because we don't have clear data. We _belive_
they are wrong but can't readily show they are objectively wrong.

If one could flip to a "metaphysical indicators" page of the newspaper (!
assuming we know its true) and look up "God: God is impersonal and does not
require one to abide by any specific framework of laws except the Golden Rule"
then we'd have a certain fact that we could rely on to demonstrate the
falsehood of this Jews position.

~~~
unalone
_In what way is it irrational?_

The fact that it relies on an absurd belief.

 _Rabbi's are inspired by God, God created us and inspired scripture and knows
what is best._

Yeah. That's the irrational part.

 _But it is a rational argument, it applies known (to the subject) facts in a
logical manner to determine the true course to take._

"God told us to" isn't logic unless God is first proven.

 _The question of whether God exists is not a scientific question_

Yes it is. If God exists, there should be a proof for it. If there is no
proof, then there is no God.

 _"Rabbi's provide bad advice" might be a good first hypothesis - eventually
we see that Rabbi's usually provide good advice, should we take that advice?
Seems logical (within this limited discourse)._

That's a non sequitur. If a rabbi (not a proper noun, by the way) provides
good advice, that proves that the rabbi as a human being is wise regarding
certain things. I can give terrific personal advice and still not be good at
playing the stock market.

 _Well do we have scientific data which somehow shows his premises to be
wrong?_

You're invoking Sagan's dragon. The burden of proof is on you, not on reality.
Until you prove it _right_ , you are wrong and have no argument to make.

 _We belive they are wrong but can't readily show they are objectively wrong._

But we can.

~~~
gloob
_"God told us to" isn't logic unless God is first proven._

Not really. This, for example, is a perfectly logical argument:

    
    
      All burritos are Platonists.
      Batman is a burrito.
      Therefore, Batman is a Platonist.
    

It does not require either of the premises to be proven (or even true, or even
semantically meaningful) to be rational.

To be _reasonable_ , on the other hand, is a much fuzzier concept.

 _You're invoking Sagan's dragon. The burden of proof is on you, not on
reality. Until you prove it right, you are wrong and have no argument to
make._

"Burden of proof" has no real connection to rationality as such (beyond
determining whether the logic itself is valid). It is fundamental to the
scientific method, but that's another thing altogether.

~~~
req2
You are using terms in a loose and nontraditional way.

The argument isn't logical so much as it is valid. It isn't sound, based on
the untrue premises, but it preserves the truth of the premises.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundness>

Occam's razor provides a reasonable metric for burden of proof. Any position
that requires Saturday to have a special property that affects light switches
is obviously more complicated than the null hypothesis that light switches are
agnostic with respect to the day of the week. The valid arguments in favor of
a special Saturday are not terribly satisfiable (in a technical sense), and
are thus unfavored.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
A series of statements that are valid are logical. The conclusions can be
wrong, as "anything follows from a false premise" (about the only actual
statement I recall from logic lectures; see eg
<http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/implication.html>).

Occam's Razor is unsound. The truth is not necessarily simple.

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cgs1019
Thank you so much for posting this. I had heard bits and pieces of it quoted,
but didn't know from whence. What an utterly astoundingly deeply brilliant
mind. So nice that there is audio to go with it.

------
known

       God != Religion

~~~
theblackbox
I've always gone for the prescription that Faith and Religion are two separate
but entwined beasts. Faith is the emotion that is shaped and controlled by the
political/social/cultural construct of Religion. I find it insulting that this
is so often disregarded by learned speakers such as Richard Dawkins.

I'm looking forward to giving this a thorough read, I always loved DA and his
method of communicating some deeply philosophical and scientific ideas with
the right amount of scepticism and curiosity to make something uniquely human
of it. As Boris Pasternak would say, DA incorporates his knowledge in Myth - a
master storyteller.

------
username
<http://www.freebase.com/view/en/god/-/base/argumentmaps>

~~~
ErrantX
DA is not actually discussing the idea of an actual god - i.e. a deity.

The thrust of the speech is about the idea that some of the crazy notions
humans come up with might have sound basis in facts we are only subconsciously
aware of (he has a couple of excellent examples).

The point being that we should be careful to dismiss it as unscientific bunk
without at least bearing it in mind in the future :)

