The Belief Engine

[Mr. P]

I learned of this through Shermer's "How We Believe" and saw this article recently. I have not read the entire article yet, so I will not add any input aside from posting an excerpt and link.This is what I mean by the mediocre con of the human belief system.Quote:The Belief EngineOur brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, a system that evolved to assure not truth, logic, and reason, but survival. The belief engine has seven major components.James Alcock --------------------------------------------------------------------------------The following beliefs are strongly held by large numbers of people. Each of them has been hotly disputed by others: Through hypnosis, one can access past lives. Horoscopes provide useful information about the future. Spiritual healing sometimes succeeds where conventional medicine fails. A widespread, transgenerational Satanic conspiracy is afoot in society. Certain gifted people have been able to use their psychic powers to help police solve crimes. We can sometimes communicate with others via mental telepathy. Some people have been abducted by UFOs and then returned to earth. Elvis lives. Vitamin C can ward off or cure the common cold. Immigrants are stealing our jobs. Certain racial groups are intellectually inferior. Certain racial groups are athletically superior, at least in some specific sports. Crime and violence are linked to the breakdown of the traditional family. North Korea's developing nuclear capability poses a threat to world peace. Despite high confidence on the part of both believers and disbelievers, in most instances, neither side has much -- if any -- objective evidence to back its position. Some of these beliefs, such as telepathy and astrology, stand in contradiction to the current scientific worldview and are therefore considered by many scientists to be "irrational." Others are not at all inconsistent with science, and whether or not they are based in fact, no one would consider them to be irrational. Nineteenth-century rationalists predicted that superstition and irrationality would be defeated by universal education. However, this has not happened. High literacy rates and universal education have done little to decrease such belief, and poll after poll indicates that a large majority of the public believe in the reality of "occult" or "paranormal" or "supernatural" phenomena. Why should this be so? Why is it that in this highly scientific and technological age superstition and irrationality abound? It is because our brains and nervous systems constitute a belief-generating machine, an engine that produces beliefs without any particular respect for what is real or true and what is not. This belief engine selects information from the environment, shapes it, combines it with information from memory, and produces beliefs that are generally consistent with beliefs already held. This system is as capable of generating fallacious beliefs as it is of generating beliefs that are in line with truth. These beliefs guide future actions and, whether correct or erroneous, they may prove functional for the individual who holds them. Whether or not there is really a Heaven for worthy souls does nothing to detract from the usefulness of such a belief for people who are searching for meaning in life. Nothing is fundamentally different about what we might think of as "irrational" beliefs -- they are generated in the same manner as are other beliefs. We may not have an evidential basis for belief in irrational concepts, but neither do we have such a basis for most of our beliefs. For example, you probably believe that brushing your teeth is good for you, but it is unlikely that you have any evidence to back up this belief, unless you are a dentist. You have been taught this, it makes some sense, and you have never been led to question it. The Belief EngineMr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[marti1900]

Interesting article. the guy says:Despite high confidence on the part of both believers and disbelievers, in most instances, neither side has much -- if any -- objective evidence to back its position.But a fast, and I do mean fast, read of the article in the link does not seem to produce any objective evidence to back up his claims concerning a belief engine. I don't doubt he is on to something, just not sure exactly what and where he came up with that idea.I am going to read that article more in depth tonight.Marti in Mexico

[Mr. P]

I made my first pass through the article and made some highlights. I will read it again.I think the paper is good at explaining the idea, but I agree there is not much theory to back it up. But perhaps this is just a introductory piece. I will look for more on this topic, but in the meantime, we can at least discuss the article as it stands on its own.Much of it makes sense to me on some level...I can grasp the concepts and accept that they warrent further exploration. I do not agree with it all, but when does that ever happen!Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[Mr. P]

I have pulled out Shermer's "How We Believe" from my bookshelf. I will post from that as well.Ha...It must be a sign from the gods...my wife went to the library last night and the library had a sale on old magazines and books...12 for $1. She bought two Scientific American mags for me. Shermer has a monthly column in the magazine. When I opened the first mag and went to his column, lo and behold...it was an article about the belief engine!She did not know I was in the middle of a conversation about this.This is funny as a coincidence, but I wonder how many people would be led to believe that this was indeed a sign and imbue the occurence with superstition or some kind of wonder.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[Mr. P]

Quote:In September 1969. as I began ninth grade, a rumor circulated that the Beatles' Paul McCartney was dead, killed in a 1966 automobile accident and replaced by a look-alike. The clues were there in the albums, if you knew where to look. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's "A Day in the Life," for one, recounts the accident: He blew his mind out in a car / He didn't notice that the lights had changed I A crowd of people stood and stared I They'd seen his face before I Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords. The cover of the Abbey Road album shows the Fab Four walking across a street in what looks like a funeral procession, with John in white as the preacher, Ringo in black as the pallbearer, a barefoot and out-of step Paul as the corpse, and George in work clothes as the gravedigger. In the background is a Volkswagen Beetle (!) whose license plate reads "28IF"Paul's supposed age "if" he had not died. Spookiest of all were the clues embedded in songs played backward. On a cheap turntable, I moved the speed switch midway between 33 l/3 and 45 to disengage the motor drive, then manually turned the record backward and listened in wide-eared wonder. The eeriest is "Revolution 9" from the White Album, in which an ominously deep voice endlessly repeats: number nine ... number nine .. , number nine .... Played backward you hear: turn me on, dead man .. , turn me on, dead man ... turn me on, dead man .... In time, thousands of clues emerged as the rumor mill cranked up (type "Paul is dead" into Google for examples), despite John Lennon's 1970 statement to Rolling Stone that "the whole thing was made up.' But made up by whom? Not the Beatles. Instead this was a fine example of the brain as a. pattern recognition machine that all tob often finds nonexistent signals in the background noise of life.What we have here is a signal~to-noise problem. Humans evolved brains that are pattern recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world. This capability is association learning - associating the causal connections between A and B - as when our ancestors associated the seasons with the migration of game animals. We are skilled enough at it to have survived and passed on the genes for the capacity of association learning. Unfortunately, the system has flaws. Superstitions are false associations-A appears to be connected to B, but it is not (the baseball player who doesn't shave and hits a home run). Las Vegas was built on false association learning. Consider a few cases of false pattern recognition (Google key words for visuals): the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich; the face of Jesus on an oyster shell (resembles Charles Manson, I think); the hit NBC television series Medium, in which Patricia Arquette plays psychic Allison Dubois, whose occasional thoughts and dreams seem connected to realworld crimes; the film White Noise. in which Michael Keaton's character believes he is receiving messages from his dead wife through tape recorders and other electronic devices in what is called EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVP is another version of what I call TMODMP, the Turn Me On, Dead Man Phenomenon-if you scan enough noise, you will eventually find a signal, whether it is there or not. Anecdotes fuel pattern-seeking thought. Aunt Mildred's cancer went into remission after she imbibed extract of seaweed-maybe it works. Bur there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognirion, and that is science. Only when a group of cancer patients taking seaweed extract is compared with a control group can we draw a valid conclusion. We evolved as a social primate species whose language ability facilitated the exchange of such association anecdotes. The problem is that although true pattern recognition helps us survive, false pattern recognition does not necessarily get us killed, and so the overall phenomenon has endured the winnowing· process of natural selection. The Darwin Awards (honoring those who remOve themselves from the. gene pool),. like this column,. will never want for examples: Anecdotal thinking comes naturally; science requires training. Reprinted from Scientific American 5/2005.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[marti1900]

Thanks for that material by Shermer.Well! This whole topic is getting interesting! I may have to give up my delving into the First World War and seque over to this topic. LOLHere's some scientific datawww.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2589This one is very similar to the link in the original post.www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/beliefs.htmlBeliefs and Brain States. Now it's getting complicatedhome.comcast.net/~erozycki/BeliefsEntailments.htmlHard-wired for religious beliefswww.saliu.com/bbs/messages/615.htmlNow here's an intresting guy...cogweb.ucla.edu/Abstracts/Ramachandran_98.htmlNifty coincidence about the mags and our discussion! I believe your wife was directed by an unseen force to go to the library and find those magazines. And there are a bunch of links to more articles by Shermer which I did not post.Marti in Mexico

[Mr. P]

Thanks for the links Marti...I will delve as time permits.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[marti1900]

Quote:Las Vegas was built on false association learning. Actually, Las Vegas was built on the almost inextinguishable psychological force of intermittent positive reinforcement.Marti in Mexico

[Mr. P]

I must admit this quote means nothing to me...can you enlighten me?Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[scrumfish]

Slot machines.