Credences are coordination devices. You need coordination devices when you are collaborating with others. That's why reducing bullshit amounts to alienation. Every time you take out a credence, you reduce your ability to collaborate with other people of that credence. What you're missing is that your move against bullshit is driven by a worship of Truth. truth has value, but it's finite. Worshipping Truth to the degree that you're willing to sacrifice all potential collaboration assigns a value to truth that is too high. When you do that you're making truth into Truth. Credences are useful. It does not matter that they are bullshit, because the seeking of Truth at all cost is not objectively correct. It's a credence. You're doing this to gain status with other Truth seekers. You're doing this to socially demonstrate how much you're willing to sacrifice for the group that shares your credence that Truth is the highest value. Which is... bullshit, in the sense that truth is not really the highest value.
I actually agree with most of this. Except I think there are ways to collaborate around Truth that are perhaps better than collaborating around other types of bullshit. Science is collaborative, it’s not bullshit, and it has been a net positive for our species. Yes science is a status game too, but it’s a very good one as far as status games go.
The credence that science seeks "the Truth" is bullshit. Scientists seek to understand the mechanisms that characterize processes or elements that interest them. They think of these mechanisms as facts and they try to be objective about their search--to remove as much "noise" or bullshit from their search, and from the context in which their object of study is embedded--but the most objective scientists are aware that they are still human and fallible, and that facts are not Truth, even if they are true.
Some studies look at evolution and morality, values, etc., as I am sure you know, because those scientists/researchers are tickled by the apparent fact that having morality/values is a human universal, even though the content is not. Bullshit is inevitable, we are apparently built to choose bullshit--therefore, we cannot, in fact, not choose bullshit. Only which.
I am sure that you follow The Dissenter and his interviews...
It's interesting that two people can hold the same position, but for one person it's a belief and for the other it's a credence.
I grew up in an evangelical Christian culture. Christian high school, church all the time, etc. I bought in whole-heartedly. But I needed evidence to justify my beliefs. I was really into reading about the evidence for Noah's Ark, about intelligent design and the "fact" that biological evolution was impossible. Despite still being a full fledged Christian, I remember clearly having an argument with a friend where I claimed it was important to be prepared to defend our religion with facts (Jesus really rose from the dead based on X,Y,Z evidence...), whereas she said faith was more important.
Using your terminology, mine was a belief while hers was a credence.
Because of this, once I encountered reality and more evidence during college, I COULDN'T HELP but abandon my religion, whereas my classmate is still rolling right along with her faith.
Yes, very interesting. Van Leewen talks about this in his book. He claims that “think” (as in “I think x”) conveys the opposite meaning—implying a regular belief.
Interestingly, Svend Brinkmann (in a very different kind of book, Think), suggests the opposite: that "I think" is a way of hedging your bets by not committing to a real belief, but keeping it in the subjective realm of hypothetical opinion. So it's neither credence nor belief, more like deflationary quasi-belief.
Right on, brother. I've thought a lot about evolution and values and even written a bit on the topic. I find it an interesting challenge to be objective about topics that people are emotionally invested in, although I have little hope of changing anybody mind.
Beliefs, in the case of credences, don’t have to be BS. My faith in the divine, according to your explanation, is seen as credence. But this faith has changed my ways of living , maybe in ways that make sense to me, and could be in small ways .
It’s beliefs, as credence, that can motivate us to do great things that could benefit all humanity. Just my thoughts about this
Beliefs can have positive effects on us and still be false. And they can have negative effects on us (bumming us out) and still be true. I see my blog as defending the latter kind of belief.
My worldview has been as thoroughly informed by a Darwinian perspective. And credence is a useful concept, because it's always been baffling to me how people have these different kinds of beliefs; to me, a belief is just true or it's not. Saying "I choose to believe" always sounded literally insane to me.
But it hasn't made me more cynical or hopeless... To the contrary, by seeing through the leftist bullshit that I used to subscribe to has resulted in me living more in accordance with my nature, which seems to be inherently fulfilling. I've increasingly come to think that Christians are more-or-less right about a lot of things (at least compared to the secular left) when it comes to values, even though I still think their credences are bullshit. I see it as them being right for the wrong reasons. Family, community, work, and faith are the main things positive psychologists have found to be associated with subjective wellbeing/life satisfaction, and the evolutionary rationale for that is not particularly mysterious (except maybe the latter somewhat).
I guess you could say it's a sort of advanced hedonism; ultimately I say it's good because it feels good, but in a deeper and more lasting way...which is also associated with more win-win outcomes, with you being a more valuable member and positive influence on your community. In contrast with the short-term pleasures, ie vices, like addiction, promiscuity, gambling, enriching yourself at the expense of others, etc., that are traps, that feel good in the moment, but in the long run are bad for both you and your community.
But who cares? I have a great wife, a dog and two cats, and hopefully soon kids. I am a man; my purpose is to protect and provide for the ones I love. I have time to use my body to keep it strong agile. I walk, run, climb trees, crawl, punch, throw, shoot... I evolved to be a hunter/warrior, and I am fortunate to have never had to do either to survive, it is inherently fulfilling to cultivate the capacities that would make me good at those things.
It is fulfilling because that is the kind of creature I am. That is enough for me. What I do matters because it matters to those I am responsible for. Why should I care whether or not it Really Matters (TM) from the "perspective of the universe"? The universe isn't the sort of thing that can have a perspective. It's a nonsensical thing to expect, hence that much more absurd to be disappointed by the lack of it.
Maybe this is my spergishness speaking, and this is probably a normal part of human psychology that exists for evolutionary reasons, and that for other reasons, I don't feel as strongly as most, but...
I never understood this need people seem to have to believe in some sort of story in order to feel ok. The need to feel that "someone is out there" there. I do feel I am part of something bigger than myself, this unfolding process of reality, which is miraculous. But why the need for values to "Objectively True"?
If everything is bullshit, then so is your cynicism. It just seems childish to me to be bitter about not being able to get something you can't have because it doesn't exist, and is...barely even a coherent thing to want. It's a pointless, unnecessary problem that you manufacture for yourself as a consequence of being too much of an egghead. (If I sound harsh, it's because I can relate.)
This may be hypocritical bullshit, as I myself am a lax meditator and never been able to regain the enthusiasm for it I had in my youth, but I dare say I think you were missing the point. It's not about being "happy" all the time; it's about letting everything be what it is and being ok with that.
The greatest benefit is learning that you can "stare into" an emotion. When you bring mindfulness to an emotion, you can notice that what you experience is just sensations and sounds in your head. There are other changes in your functioning that may not be subjectively evident, because emotions are coordinating mechanisms designed to solve adaptive problems. Sometimes they are relevant/suggest something you should do. Other times, because of evolutionary mismatch or because of the fire-alarm principle, they are not.
If you feel negative feelings because of the stories in your head, then either there is something to be done, or there isn't. Maybe you could change the circumstances of your life so that it will be more fulfilling. Or you could tell a different story. You could reframe, as in CBT. Or maybe you need to accept that it's a normal part of being human. You could stare into the emotion, and realize that it's just sensation, like the warmth of sun on your skin or the pressure of your butt in a chair, and words, ie sounds, like the babbling of a brook.
I realize this may not work for a lot of people, or at least it can be really hard. I'd like to come up with some sort of a formula that would make it easier, but... I don't know. Maybe for some it is better to just accept a bullshit credence that helps them justify doing the right things to be a better person and live a better life. But for those like me who are incapable of believing, there's Stoicism and Buddhism, and evolutionary perspective to help me to understand and accept why things are the way they are.
David, if it makes you feel a bit better, I agree with the things you write (even though I'm typically not leaving comments). I didn't CHOSE to agree – your vision just closely resembles my own.
I don't remember if you touched this (even more tricky than usual) idea, but I think that "beliefs" are also bullshit. Not the ones coming from the world model (it's just our brain running the simulation of the environment, and if it's incorrect, it means that we didn't account for external factor, like my kid silently coming from behind and picking my cup from the table right and moving it to the left), but the credences. It's a very human way to shortcut the thinking process, as thinking is hard and requires a lot of energy and time.
"I believe that vaccine against Covid is increasing the chances of cancer" == "I did not bother to read the research; I simply heard a media person which I trust saying that, and I took it as a fact, for simplicity."
Since I realized it's all bullshit, I train myself to stop and think every time what I want to say, "I believe that..."
I symposize your path and search. I know it's hard, but you gonna make it. I have only one thing to add. Further.
So glad you credited Dan Williams at Conspicuous Cognition! I was halfway through your article, thinking “if your readers like this, they’ll bloody love him”.
"Genuine values are supposed to lie beyond self-interest, nepotism, and alliances, while being costly to their adherents, thereby ruling out the only possible ways they could have been favored by natural selection."
I think the correct conclusion is not that values are bullshit; they are products of mechanisms that evolved for purposes. What is bullshit is the assumption that in order to be "genuine", values must lie beyond self-interest.
Traits that mitigate against the fitness of the creatures that possess them are indeed non-starters. What I conclude from this is that If "genuine values", ie real goodness, necessarily entailed sacrificing one's own fitness, then it would follow that real goodness necessarily results in the diminution of the amount of goodness in the world. Which is a contradiction. Something that necessarily, reliably causes there to be less goodness and more badness in the world cannot be good.
It doesn't necessarily follow that there is no good at all. Only that "genuine values", as you define them, cannot really be good.
Which I think is consistent our moral intuitions. It's not supremely moral to abandon your family and commit suicide so that some vultures can have a meal. It is moral for a mother to care about her child above all else (with maybe some caveats). It is moral to be loyal to your friends and kin. Etc etc. These things benefit you and they benefit others, and they cause the scope of goodness, of win-win to expand. (A book I liked that defended this kind of common-sense pre-liberal morality was The Morality of Everyday Life by Thomas Fleming.)
This is why I think Robert Wright's Nonzero is the best attempt at grounding goodness in objective reality. Goodness is the expanding scope of non-zero sum interactions. (I also highly recommend his book, Why Buddhism is True, which is more relevant to my other comment.)
Of course sometimes these win-win scenarios between certain individuals are simultaneously win-lose from the perspective of others. Ie you cooperate with allies to prevail against enemies. It is what it is. The perfect is the enemy of the good. And in the long run, win-win tends to expand. I think that's what goodness is, and that's something is bigger than ourselves that we are a part of. I suppose that's the closest to being spiritual I can muster. But it works for me.
Speaking of universal acid... "There is no denying, at this point, that Darwin’s idea is a universal solvent, capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight. The question is: what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be regretted, but good riddance to the rest of them. What remains is more than enough to build on."
Dennett, Daniel C.. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life (p. 524). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
He argues that Darwinism requires us to re-evaluate everything, and understand it a new a light. Not ditch it all. Water isn't bullshit because it isn't one of four elements, and atoms aren't bullshit because they're not really atomic but are made of protons, neutrons and electrons which are made of quarks, etc. Meaning, truth, morality, etc. are real; it is only our pre-Darwinian understanding of what they are and where they come from that was bullshit. It seems silly to toss things out and say they're not good enough because they don't measure up to the fantasy/ideal we had as a result of insufficient understanding.
Very good points. I think there is a confusion on what I meant by “bullshit.” I’m not saying values are bullshit in the sense of being worthless—or that we should abandon them or anything like that. I’m saying they’re bullshit in the sense that they are not what we claim they are—that they emerge from bullshit stories we tell about ourselves. Some bullshit is good; some is bad. Some status games (and their sacred justifications) are good; others are bad. I guess what I’m saying is: I ultimately agree with everything you said. I’m also a fan of Robert Wright (I actually have a post “No Self, No Politics” that reviews his book), and I agree that positive-sumness is a good thing. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
"It is our credences—the thoughts we conspicuously think about abstract, distant, political, spiritual, groupy, or signaly things—that are full of shit. Which makes sense, because we pay no price for them being wrong." Three questions:
1) Isn't the problem with abstract and distant beliefs quite different from the problem with political, spiritual , group or signaly ones? If anything, the latter are BS by virtue of their proximity to concrete motives.
2) Is there a difference between saying we pay no price for credences being wrong, and saying they are unfalsifiable? One reflects personal incentives distorting evidence, the other reflects quality of that evidence
3):Could an "opinion" thus be understood as a belief reframed as a credence, or is it just a weak version of belief?
Good questions. I think falsifiability is a separate thing. The main distinction between beliefs and credences is that the former are involuntary and actively guide behavior while the latter are voluntary and insulated from behavior. Distantness, abstractness, and unfalsifiability are tangential—they’re just more credencey by virtue of them having less of an effect on behavior. There’s much more to say on this topic and I plan to write more on it in the future. As for opinions, I have a whole post about them called Opinions Are Bullshit that you might want to check out.
I see - thanks for elaborating. By the way, I really appreciated the personal anecdotes which are helpful for situating all this.
I do wonder how closely beliefs must track with "forced against your will" or "reality crashing into you." After all, sometimes beliefs are easy and intuitive to adopt *because* they are true, and truth has a pull of its own (even to us). For all our motives and social BS leading us places other than reality, we also have some capacity to recognize and seek reality, and this is not universally painful. That doesn't mean the believing itself is voluntary of course - but it may feel natural rather than forced. Likewise with credences, however voluntary at the outset, I could see this generating subsidiary commitments down the line that become increasingly rigid and involuntary, as people keep doubling down and personal stakes grow higher. So maybe it becomes less insulated from behavior, over time.
I've stumbled upon your blog a month ago and half ago, an I gotta say, despite my initial fear because of the title, I found myself quite impressed and hooked up on your work, gotta thanks Dan William for bringing me here 😁.
I got to admit it's sometimes hard for me to swallow fully your perspective on "everything is bullshit" personally, which doesn't mean I don't agree with the fundamental tenets of it, it's just I can't help but feel (or hope, really) that this worldview or persprctive isn't the full picture about human motivation or behaviour. Guess I can't leave my innocent or optimist side fully, for the sake of my faith in humamity.
In regards to you pointing out that you're open to any source that may challenge your worldview or change your mind, I found this article by CogZest about a review and critique by Luc P. Beaudoin about "The Status Game" book that is a cornerstone of this page's philosophy, so I will leave you the link to check it out, to see if it does shake your creedence a little:
Thanks, Gabriel. I happily checked out the review, and while I liked it, the small quibbles in there didn’t do much to change my worldview. I agree with the author that there are likely many kinds of social signals we send to each other, including signals of commitment, that lie beyond status per se (though I think you could ultimately tie a lot of it back to status—after all, there has to be some kind of reward for sending signals of commitment, and that reward is often status in one form or another). In any case, saying that most human behavior comes down to social signaling is still pretty cynical—almost as cynical as saying it all comes down to status. Such signal sending and status-seeking is very different from the high-minded values we claim to have, and it is those high-minded values that I’m still skeptical of.
Surprised you got through this without mentioning Dawkins. I'm still reading The Selfish Gene. But I wonder how our genes cause their survival machines to be so obsessed with status and so full of BS.
Yea Dawkins was very formative for me. Selfish Gene is a classic—maybe the best pop science book ever. As for your question, it’s pretty straightforward: status was correlated with fitness ancestrally, and much of our BS functions to seek, maintain, and defend our status.
Another challenging and super enlightening piece. Grateful for the insights on your intellectual journey. Here's what works for me: cultivate equanimity by avoiding desire (easy) and aversion (hard). Then reflect on the estimate that there are a billion other planets for each grain of sand on the earth. That's not bullshit, that's cool :-)
Amazing you keep exploring this topic and haven't hit a wall - look forward to the next one. So appreciate your gifts.
Thanks for your thoughts and the intro to Dr. Heyman. I think a conscious, observant, curious person who seeks this path of self knowledge will eventually come to your conclusions. I find it interesting to have investigated so deep that the whole construct falls in a heaps and you are still sitting there with yourself in this world. I agree it's painful.
I appreciate your thoughts and those of the counterpoint made in other comments. If find myself developing a personal scope of credence that is developed from trying on so many of others' that don't fit me. This keeps me here, in the world. If we don't have something to live for in that line of some kind of credence it seems difficult to justify the effort to be alive in the modern day.
Bless you! Bless us All in the unfolding of whatever is going on that causes us so much activity in this place. May it all go really well for all of us - except the oppressors, if that's you please quit.
This distinction about "credences" is an ancient idea that can be traced back to Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher from c 300 BCE.
The Pyrrhonists divided belief into things “delon” and “adelon” - evident/empirical/obvious and not-evident/not-empirical/not-obvious (aka theoretical). The Pyrrhonists said evident things were forced upon us. We have no choice but to believe them. Beliefs in non-evident things (technical term in Pyrrhonism is “dogma”) are choices. Pyrrhonist ethics call for suspension of belief any any dogma. What is called "credences" here are dogmas.
So you choose to call God dumb because your small logical brain can't comprehend 'God'? Shouldn't you be more excited at your insignificance and ponder that a God might actually exist. This will cause a humbling and I'm sure you'd begin to search and maybe rephrase your questions from the point of insignificance: "Oh, my brain lacks the power to comprehend. Maybe I'm the limited one here. I'm not at the center of the universe. Maybe there's a creator."
As an aside, think of this: "Whatever you can logically comprehend, you supplant. You can't logicize God." Leave logic and touch God.
I think belief in god is dumb, but I did not articulate the reasons why. Articulating them would require a whole other post, perhaps even a book. But rest assured, my reasons do not involve my small logical brain being unable to comprehend it. Being unable to comprehend something is not a good reason to reject it.
Credences are coordination devices. You need coordination devices when you are collaborating with others. That's why reducing bullshit amounts to alienation. Every time you take out a credence, you reduce your ability to collaborate with other people of that credence. What you're missing is that your move against bullshit is driven by a worship of Truth. truth has value, but it's finite. Worshipping Truth to the degree that you're willing to sacrifice all potential collaboration assigns a value to truth that is too high. When you do that you're making truth into Truth. Credences are useful. It does not matter that they are bullshit, because the seeking of Truth at all cost is not objectively correct. It's a credence. You're doing this to gain status with other Truth seekers. You're doing this to socially demonstrate how much you're willing to sacrifice for the group that shares your credence that Truth is the highest value. Which is... bullshit, in the sense that truth is not really the highest value.
I actually agree with most of this. Except I think there are ways to collaborate around Truth that are perhaps better than collaborating around other types of bullshit. Science is collaborative, it’s not bullshit, and it has been a net positive for our species. Yes science is a status game too, but it’s a very good one as far as status games go.
The credence that science seeks "the Truth" is bullshit. Scientists seek to understand the mechanisms that characterize processes or elements that interest them. They think of these mechanisms as facts and they try to be objective about their search--to remove as much "noise" or bullshit from their search, and from the context in which their object of study is embedded--but the most objective scientists are aware that they are still human and fallible, and that facts are not Truth, even if they are true.
Some studies look at evolution and morality, values, etc., as I am sure you know, because those scientists/researchers are tickled by the apparent fact that having morality/values is a human universal, even though the content is not. Bullshit is inevitable, we are apparently built to choose bullshit--therefore, we cannot, in fact, not choose bullshit. Only which.
I am sure that you follow The Dissenter and his interviews...
Science is not bullshit. Wait. How do we square that w the name of the blog :-)
By remembering that the title is also bullshit. :)
It's interesting that two people can hold the same position, but for one person it's a belief and for the other it's a credence.
I grew up in an evangelical Christian culture. Christian high school, church all the time, etc. I bought in whole-heartedly. But I needed evidence to justify my beliefs. I was really into reading about the evidence for Noah's Ark, about intelligent design and the "fact" that biological evolution was impossible. Despite still being a full fledged Christian, I remember clearly having an argument with a friend where I claimed it was important to be prepared to defend our religion with facts (Jesus really rose from the dead based on X,Y,Z evidence...), whereas she said faith was more important.
Using your terminology, mine was a belief while hers was a credence.
Because of this, once I encountered reality and more evidence during college, I COULDN'T HELP but abandon my religion, whereas my classmate is still rolling right along with her faith.
Good post. Isn't it funny how when people explicitly say "It is my belief that...", they are especially likely to mean "It is my credence"?
"Here at MegaCorp, it is our belief that..."
"It is my personal belief that..."
"In this house, it is our belief that..."
Yes, very interesting. Van Leewen talks about this in his book. He claims that “think” (as in “I think x”) conveys the opposite meaning—implying a regular belief.
Interestingly, Svend Brinkmann (in a very different kind of book, Think), suggests the opposite: that "I think" is a way of hedging your bets by not committing to a real belief, but keeping it in the subjective realm of hypothetical opinion. So it's neither credence nor belief, more like deflationary quasi-belief.
Right on, brother. I've thought a lot about evolution and values and even written a bit on the topic. I find it an interesting challenge to be objective about topics that people are emotionally invested in, although I have little hope of changing anybody mind.
Beliefs, in the case of credences, don’t have to be BS. My faith in the divine, according to your explanation, is seen as credence. But this faith has changed my ways of living , maybe in ways that make sense to me, and could be in small ways .
It’s beliefs, as credence, that can motivate us to do great things that could benefit all humanity. Just my thoughts about this
Beliefs can have positive effects on us and still be false. And they can have negative effects on us (bumming us out) and still be true. I see my blog as defending the latter kind of belief.
My worldview has been as thoroughly informed by a Darwinian perspective. And credence is a useful concept, because it's always been baffling to me how people have these different kinds of beliefs; to me, a belief is just true or it's not. Saying "I choose to believe" always sounded literally insane to me.
But it hasn't made me more cynical or hopeless... To the contrary, by seeing through the leftist bullshit that I used to subscribe to has resulted in me living more in accordance with my nature, which seems to be inherently fulfilling. I've increasingly come to think that Christians are more-or-less right about a lot of things (at least compared to the secular left) when it comes to values, even though I still think their credences are bullshit. I see it as them being right for the wrong reasons. Family, community, work, and faith are the main things positive psychologists have found to be associated with subjective wellbeing/life satisfaction, and the evolutionary rationale for that is not particularly mysterious (except maybe the latter somewhat).
I guess you could say it's a sort of advanced hedonism; ultimately I say it's good because it feels good, but in a deeper and more lasting way...which is also associated with more win-win outcomes, with you being a more valuable member and positive influence on your community. In contrast with the short-term pleasures, ie vices, like addiction, promiscuity, gambling, enriching yourself at the expense of others, etc., that are traps, that feel good in the moment, but in the long run are bad for both you and your community.
But who cares? I have a great wife, a dog and two cats, and hopefully soon kids. I am a man; my purpose is to protect and provide for the ones I love. I have time to use my body to keep it strong agile. I walk, run, climb trees, crawl, punch, throw, shoot... I evolved to be a hunter/warrior, and I am fortunate to have never had to do either to survive, it is inherently fulfilling to cultivate the capacities that would make me good at those things.
It is fulfilling because that is the kind of creature I am. That is enough for me. What I do matters because it matters to those I am responsible for. Why should I care whether or not it Really Matters (TM) from the "perspective of the universe"? The universe isn't the sort of thing that can have a perspective. It's a nonsensical thing to expect, hence that much more absurd to be disappointed by the lack of it.
Maybe this is my spergishness speaking, and this is probably a normal part of human psychology that exists for evolutionary reasons, and that for other reasons, I don't feel as strongly as most, but...
I never understood this need people seem to have to believe in some sort of story in order to feel ok. The need to feel that "someone is out there" there. I do feel I am part of something bigger than myself, this unfolding process of reality, which is miraculous. But why the need for values to "Objectively True"?
If everything is bullshit, then so is your cynicism. It just seems childish to me to be bitter about not being able to get something you can't have because it doesn't exist, and is...barely even a coherent thing to want. It's a pointless, unnecessary problem that you manufacture for yourself as a consequence of being too much of an egghead. (If I sound harsh, it's because I can relate.)
This may be hypocritical bullshit, as I myself am a lax meditator and never been able to regain the enthusiasm for it I had in my youth, but I dare say I think you were missing the point. It's not about being "happy" all the time; it's about letting everything be what it is and being ok with that.
The greatest benefit is learning that you can "stare into" an emotion. When you bring mindfulness to an emotion, you can notice that what you experience is just sensations and sounds in your head. There are other changes in your functioning that may not be subjectively evident, because emotions are coordinating mechanisms designed to solve adaptive problems. Sometimes they are relevant/suggest something you should do. Other times, because of evolutionary mismatch or because of the fire-alarm principle, they are not.
If you feel negative feelings because of the stories in your head, then either there is something to be done, or there isn't. Maybe you could change the circumstances of your life so that it will be more fulfilling. Or you could tell a different story. You could reframe, as in CBT. Or maybe you need to accept that it's a normal part of being human. You could stare into the emotion, and realize that it's just sensation, like the warmth of sun on your skin or the pressure of your butt in a chair, and words, ie sounds, like the babbling of a brook.
I realize this may not work for a lot of people, or at least it can be really hard. I'd like to come up with some sort of a formula that would make it easier, but... I don't know. Maybe for some it is better to just accept a bullshit credence that helps them justify doing the right things to be a better person and live a better life. But for those like me who are incapable of believing, there's Stoicism and Buddhism, and evolutionary perspective to help me to understand and accept why things are the way they are.
David, if it makes you feel a bit better, I agree with the things you write (even though I'm typically not leaving comments). I didn't CHOSE to agree – your vision just closely resembles my own.
I don't remember if you touched this (even more tricky than usual) idea, but I think that "beliefs" are also bullshit. Not the ones coming from the world model (it's just our brain running the simulation of the environment, and if it's incorrect, it means that we didn't account for external factor, like my kid silently coming from behind and picking my cup from the table right and moving it to the left), but the credences. It's a very human way to shortcut the thinking process, as thinking is hard and requires a lot of energy and time.
"I believe that vaccine against Covid is increasing the chances of cancer" == "I did not bother to read the research; I simply heard a media person which I trust saying that, and I took it as a fact, for simplicity."
Since I realized it's all bullshit, I train myself to stop and think every time what I want to say, "I believe that..."
I symposize your path and search. I know it's hard, but you gonna make it. I have only one thing to add. Further.
So glad you credited Dan Williams at Conspicuous Cognition! I was halfway through your article, thinking “if your readers like this, they’ll bloody love him”.
Yes, Dan’s the man.
"Genuine values are supposed to lie beyond self-interest, nepotism, and alliances, while being costly to their adherents, thereby ruling out the only possible ways they could have been favored by natural selection."
I think the correct conclusion is not that values are bullshit; they are products of mechanisms that evolved for purposes. What is bullshit is the assumption that in order to be "genuine", values must lie beyond self-interest.
Traits that mitigate against the fitness of the creatures that possess them are indeed non-starters. What I conclude from this is that If "genuine values", ie real goodness, necessarily entailed sacrificing one's own fitness, then it would follow that real goodness necessarily results in the diminution of the amount of goodness in the world. Which is a contradiction. Something that necessarily, reliably causes there to be less goodness and more badness in the world cannot be good.
It doesn't necessarily follow that there is no good at all. Only that "genuine values", as you define them, cannot really be good.
Which I think is consistent our moral intuitions. It's not supremely moral to abandon your family and commit suicide so that some vultures can have a meal. It is moral for a mother to care about her child above all else (with maybe some caveats). It is moral to be loyal to your friends and kin. Etc etc. These things benefit you and they benefit others, and they cause the scope of goodness, of win-win to expand. (A book I liked that defended this kind of common-sense pre-liberal morality was The Morality of Everyday Life by Thomas Fleming.)
This is why I think Robert Wright's Nonzero is the best attempt at grounding goodness in objective reality. Goodness is the expanding scope of non-zero sum interactions. (I also highly recommend his book, Why Buddhism is True, which is more relevant to my other comment.)
Of course sometimes these win-win scenarios between certain individuals are simultaneously win-lose from the perspective of others. Ie you cooperate with allies to prevail against enemies. It is what it is. The perfect is the enemy of the good. And in the long run, win-win tends to expand. I think that's what goodness is, and that's something is bigger than ourselves that we are a part of. I suppose that's the closest to being spiritual I can muster. But it works for me.
Speaking of universal acid... "There is no denying, at this point, that Darwin’s idea is a universal solvent, capable of cutting right to the heart of everything in sight. The question is: what does it leave behind? I have tried to show that once it passes through everything, we are left with stronger, sounder versions of our most important ideas. Some of the traditional details perish, and some of these are losses to be regretted, but good riddance to the rest of them. What remains is more than enough to build on."
Dennett, Daniel C.. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life (p. 524). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
He argues that Darwinism requires us to re-evaluate everything, and understand it a new a light. Not ditch it all. Water isn't bullshit because it isn't one of four elements, and atoms aren't bullshit because they're not really atomic but are made of protons, neutrons and electrons which are made of quarks, etc. Meaning, truth, morality, etc. are real; it is only our pre-Darwinian understanding of what they are and where they come from that was bullshit. It seems silly to toss things out and say they're not good enough because they don't measure up to the fantasy/ideal we had as a result of insufficient understanding.
Very good points. I think there is a confusion on what I meant by “bullshit.” I’m not saying values are bullshit in the sense of being worthless—or that we should abandon them or anything like that. I’m saying they’re bullshit in the sense that they are not what we claim they are—that they emerge from bullshit stories we tell about ourselves. Some bullshit is good; some is bad. Some status games (and their sacred justifications) are good; others are bad. I guess what I’m saying is: I ultimately agree with everything you said. I’m also a fan of Robert Wright (I actually have a post “No Self, No Politics” that reviews his book), and I agree that positive-sumness is a good thing. Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
"It is our credences—the thoughts we conspicuously think about abstract, distant, political, spiritual, groupy, or signaly things—that are full of shit. Which makes sense, because we pay no price for them being wrong." Three questions:
1) Isn't the problem with abstract and distant beliefs quite different from the problem with political, spiritual , group or signaly ones? If anything, the latter are BS by virtue of their proximity to concrete motives.
2) Is there a difference between saying we pay no price for credences being wrong, and saying they are unfalsifiable? One reflects personal incentives distorting evidence, the other reflects quality of that evidence
3):Could an "opinion" thus be understood as a belief reframed as a credence, or is it just a weak version of belief?
Good questions. I think falsifiability is a separate thing. The main distinction between beliefs and credences is that the former are involuntary and actively guide behavior while the latter are voluntary and insulated from behavior. Distantness, abstractness, and unfalsifiability are tangential—they’re just more credencey by virtue of them having less of an effect on behavior. There’s much more to say on this topic and I plan to write more on it in the future. As for opinions, I have a whole post about them called Opinions Are Bullshit that you might want to check out.
I see - thanks for elaborating. By the way, I really appreciated the personal anecdotes which are helpful for situating all this.
I do wonder how closely beliefs must track with "forced against your will" or "reality crashing into you." After all, sometimes beliefs are easy and intuitive to adopt *because* they are true, and truth has a pull of its own (even to us). For all our motives and social BS leading us places other than reality, we also have some capacity to recognize and seek reality, and this is not universally painful. That doesn't mean the believing itself is voluntary of course - but it may feel natural rather than forced. Likewise with credences, however voluntary at the outset, I could see this generating subsidiary commitments down the line that become increasingly rigid and involuntary, as people keep doubling down and personal stakes grow higher. So maybe it becomes less insulated from behavior, over time.
Hello, David,
I've stumbled upon your blog a month ago and half ago, an I gotta say, despite my initial fear because of the title, I found myself quite impressed and hooked up on your work, gotta thanks Dan William for bringing me here 😁.
I got to admit it's sometimes hard for me to swallow fully your perspective on "everything is bullshit" personally, which doesn't mean I don't agree with the fundamental tenets of it, it's just I can't help but feel (or hope, really) that this worldview or persprctive isn't the full picture about human motivation or behaviour. Guess I can't leave my innocent or optimist side fully, for the sake of my faith in humamity.
In regards to you pointing out that you're open to any source that may challenge your worldview or change your mind, I found this article by CogZest about a review and critique by Luc P. Beaudoin about "The Status Game" book that is a cornerstone of this page's philosophy, so I will leave you the link to check it out, to see if it does shake your creedence a little:
https://cogzest.com/humanism/the-status-game-by-will-storr/
Can't wait for your feedback 😋.
Greetings from Chile.
Thanks, Gabriel. I happily checked out the review, and while I liked it, the small quibbles in there didn’t do much to change my worldview. I agree with the author that there are likely many kinds of social signals we send to each other, including signals of commitment, that lie beyond status per se (though I think you could ultimately tie a lot of it back to status—after all, there has to be some kind of reward for sending signals of commitment, and that reward is often status in one form or another). In any case, saying that most human behavior comes down to social signaling is still pretty cynical—almost as cynical as saying it all comes down to status. Such signal sending and status-seeking is very different from the high-minded values we claim to have, and it is those high-minded values that I’m still skeptical of.
Surprised you got through this without mentioning Dawkins. I'm still reading The Selfish Gene. But I wonder how our genes cause their survival machines to be so obsessed with status and so full of BS.
Yea Dawkins was very formative for me. Selfish Gene is a classic—maybe the best pop science book ever. As for your question, it’s pretty straightforward: status was correlated with fitness ancestrally, and much of our BS functions to seek, maintain, and defend our status.
Insight can be destructive. As Darwin knew all too well, a powerful explanation can be like an acid that eats through everything..This is true.
Another challenging and super enlightening piece. Grateful for the insights on your intellectual journey. Here's what works for me: cultivate equanimity by avoiding desire (easy) and aversion (hard). Then reflect on the estimate that there are a billion other planets for each grain of sand on the earth. That's not bullshit, that's cool :-)
Amazing you keep exploring this topic and haven't hit a wall - look forward to the next one. So appreciate your gifts.
Thanks for your thoughts and the intro to Dr. Heyman. I think a conscious, observant, curious person who seeks this path of self knowledge will eventually come to your conclusions. I find it interesting to have investigated so deep that the whole construct falls in a heaps and you are still sitting there with yourself in this world. I agree it's painful.
I appreciate your thoughts and those of the counterpoint made in other comments. If find myself developing a personal scope of credence that is developed from trying on so many of others' that don't fit me. This keeps me here, in the world. If we don't have something to live for in that line of some kind of credence it seems difficult to justify the effort to be alive in the modern day.
Bless you! Bless us All in the unfolding of whatever is going on that causes us so much activity in this place. May it all go really well for all of us - except the oppressors, if that's you please quit.
This distinction about "credences" is an ancient idea that can be traced back to Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher from c 300 BCE.
The Pyrrhonists divided belief into things “delon” and “adelon” - evident/empirical/obvious and not-evident/not-empirical/not-obvious (aka theoretical). The Pyrrhonists said evident things were forced upon us. We have no choice but to believe them. Beliefs in non-evident things (technical term in Pyrrhonism is “dogma”) are choices. Pyrrhonist ethics call for suspension of belief any any dogma. What is called "credences" here are dogmas.
So you choose to call God dumb because your small logical brain can't comprehend 'God'? Shouldn't you be more excited at your insignificance and ponder that a God might actually exist. This will cause a humbling and I'm sure you'd begin to search and maybe rephrase your questions from the point of insignificance: "Oh, my brain lacks the power to comprehend. Maybe I'm the limited one here. I'm not at the center of the universe. Maybe there's a creator."
As an aside, think of this: "Whatever you can logically comprehend, you supplant. You can't logicize God." Leave logic and touch God.
I think belief in god is dumb, but I did not articulate the reasons why. Articulating them would require a whole other post, perhaps even a book. But rest assured, my reasons do not involve my small logical brain being unable to comprehend it. Being unable to comprehend something is not a good reason to reject it.
“Leave logic and touch God.” That’s a great phrase and pairs well with, “faith is the purposeful suspension of logical thinking.”