these debates remind me of...

[furyshade]

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essentially, everyone below the level of "complete logic" has a 50-50 chance. if there is a chance your logic is complete, then yes, you have a better than 50-50 shot. (if your logic is definitely complete, then you have a 100% shot) everyone who is definitely below that plateau is 50-50, regardless of how much more logical they are than the people below them.

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So given an infinite number of possible religons then anyone who believes there's is right has a 50:50 chance of being correct.

Surely that cannot be what you're saying

chez

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"so what are your roots?"
"half black, half white, half cherokee"

[willie24]

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essentially, everyone below the level of "complete logic" has a 50-50 chance. if there is a chance your logic is complete, then yes, you have a better than 50-50 shot. (if your logic is definitely complete, then you have a 100% shot) everyone who is definitely below that plateau is 50-50, regardless of how much more logical they are than the people below them.

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So given an infinite number of possible religons then anyone who believes there's is right has a 50:50 chance of being correct.

Surely that cannot be what you're saying

chez

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the question must be a yes or no question.
as thinkers' logical ability increases, there must be shifting back and forth and back again between the answers yes and no.

"is my religion correct?" doesnt really work - because its hard to imagine any intelligent logical debate about the subject - at least any that goes beyond 2 levels. (back and forth and back again)

but let's try. the question is : is everything taught in the Catholic church 100% correct? my dog says no, because he's never heard of church. my mom says yes, because God is the only way she can explain her own existence, and her parents told her that Catholicism is right. my lawyer says no, because he can point out inconsistencies in Catholic teachings. for simplicity's sake - lets assume that we, as outside observers, can agree that the lawyer has reached the highest known level of logic on the subject- by that i mean: no one can think of reasonable a way to counter the lawyer's argument with a superior argument which says "yes."

the lawyer, having reached the highest known level of logic, might be right - therefor his answer might be right for the right reason (X). even if this is not true, his answer also might be right for the wrong reason. (50% because there are 2 possible answers and he picked one. ill try to better explain why its exactly 50% later) his chance of being right is (X+.5)/1.

now, take my mom. since we know that her logic is flawed, we know that she is never right for the right reason. because we know that the lawyer is better than 50% to be right, and because we know that my mom has the opposite answer, we know that she must be worse than 50%...but if we didn't know her answer relative to the highest level answer, we would have to assume she was 50%.

for example: my dog and my mom are both logically inferior to the lawyer. We will call them Group I, and the lawyer Group S.

what is the chance that a random member of group I has the right answer?

i think this argument about 50% is a matter of communication about what the % actually refers to, rather than actual disagreement.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">but this is an example in which level of logic is limited. </font>

It's an example of where information is limited, but not logic. Theoretically, it's possible to out-think the guy when it comes to which glass contains the poison. The only time this wouldn't be true is if he used some random device beforehand to determine which glass he tainted.

All this reminds me of a childhood memory too... My best friend and I would often settle things by playing a game called odds and evens (best out of 5). I'd beat him almost every time. We joked about this, long after he moved away. Odds and evens is supposed to be 50/50. Clearly, it wasn't. But if my friend were smart enough back then to flip a coin to decide how many fingers he'd put out, it would've been.

[willie24]

the only thing i'm saying is this:

If there is a True/False question on a high school test, and you don't have the knowledge/logical ability to find the answer the right way...we have to assume you have a 50% chance, unless we have more information.

[chezlaw]

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my dog says no, because he's never heard of church.

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That makes no sense. Even your dog would do better [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[willie24]

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but this is an example in which level of logic is limited.

It's an example of where information is limited, but not logic. Theoretically, it's possible to out-think the guy when it comes to which glass contains the poison. The only time this wouldn't be true is if he used some random device beforehand to determine which glass he tainted.


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exactly. "but this is an example in which level of logic is limited. " refers to the mount everest example. the poison example was supposed to be a better example, with near-infinite logical possibilites

[Lestat]

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but this is an example in which level of logic is limited.

It's an example of where information is limited, but not logic. Theoretically, it's possible to out-think the guy when it comes to which glass contains the poison. The only time this wouldn't be true is if he used some random device beforehand to determine which glass he tainted.


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exactly. "but this is an example in which level of logic is limited. " refers to the mount everest example. the poison example was supposed to be a better example, with near-infinite logical possibilites

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I just don't understand why you view the level of logic as limited, whereas I see it as infinite. Using your example: The most obvious thing would be for him to put the glass containing poison in front of me. Unless he knows I know he's trying to poison me, then he'd put it front of himself. But if he knows I know he knows that, then he'd put it in front of me, etc., etc.

Yes, it's an either/or proposition, but I certainly don't see the logic as being limited. Again, I see it as almost infinite. Of course, this doesn't mean the correct answer is easy (or even possible), to arrive at.

[willie24]

lol. are you messing with me? re-read my quote in your post. i agree. i'm not sure what you think you are disagreeing about.

[madnak]

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now, take my mom. since we know that her logic is flawed, we know that she is never right for the right reason. because we know that the lawyer is better than 50% to be right, and because we know that my mom has the opposite answer, we know that she must be worse than 50%...but if we didn't know her answer relative to the highest level answer, we would have to assume she was 50%.

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Would we? Even if we know there are dozens of such questions that are mutually exclusive? And an infinite number, at the theoretical level?

If your mother can be assumed (even in this context) to be 50% right, then so can the followers of all the other mutually exclusive faiths (at your mother's level of functioning). But of course this is absurd - the total probability can't exceed 100%. You want to give your mother 50%? If you do that, you are necessarily suggesting that Catholicism is the belief system most likely to be true. So you can't do that.

This is relevant for two reasons. The first is the point that a yes/no question can have implications that go beyond the yes/no context of the specific debate. Just because a question is yes/no and has a "back-and-forth" doesn't mean it's sensible to give it a weight of 50%. It would be more appropriate to say that we can't weigh it at all.

More importantly, the argument regarding Catholicism can be easily applied to show that the probably of any specific belief system judged according to a general approach is 0. This doesn't necessarily mean much - probability 0 isn't the same as impossibility, and it frequently indicates that the question can't be answered probabilistically. However, this little point shows that any specific belief must be either inherently superior to the alternatives in some way or extremely arbitrary.

If we abandon the idea of inherent superiority (which is almost impossible to logically support - though legitimate "faith" experiences could qualify) that leaves us with belief systems that are wholly arbitrary. And while proving that Catholicism is arbitrary isn't the same as proving Catholicism false, it is pretty damning (no pun intended).

[madnak]

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I just don't understand why you view the level of logic as limited, whereas I see it as infinite. Using your example: The most obvious thing would be for him to put the glass containing poison in front of me. Unless he knows I know he's trying to poison me, then he'd put it front of himself. But if he knows I know he knows that, then he'd put it in front of me, etc., etc.

Yes, it's an either/or proposition, but I certainly don't see the logic as being limited. Again, I see it as almost infinite. Of course, this doesn't mean the correct answer is easy (or even possible), to arrive at.

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Wrt this scenario, there is really only one logical step being taken. That it's being taken over and over against ad infinitum doesn't imply that it's "infinite logic." By correctly taking the next logical step the thinker should arrive at a more nuanced position.

For example, you might reason that a tricky person would put the glass in front of himself and a direct person would put the glass in front of you. Then the question is whether your opponent is tricky or direct. This can probably be described as "moving up a level" in terms of reasoning.

I'm not sure how far these situations can be taken - at some point it'll be a matter of information and psychological intuition. Then again, some people are very good at rock, paper, scissors. They successfully apply logic to win a fundamentally random game.