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'Lazy learner'


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54 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I do wonder if they know though. And could they be lazy learners more so than your average doubter.

Do you wonder because they don't have doubts and you think that anyone who doesn't have them must not know much?  I'm trying to figure out why you think they would know so little.

But I think that anyone could be a lazy learner.  Not sure why the average doubter would be more immune to that than anyone else.

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3 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

It is not intellectually dishonest to sincerely believe in something that is not independently verifiable, but it can be intellectually dishonest to treat something that is not provable as provable.

What if you believe that if you can know something, everyone else can know it as well, even if it's not provable by scientific standards?  Is that belief intellectually dishonest?  

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The notion that building faith requires effort is hardly novel ground, theologically speaking.  But insofar as Nelson phrased it even more innocuously than usual and yet still managed to elicit weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects, I can only conclude that this was some prophetic-level trolling.

Maybe even presiding-high-priest level trolling.

Edited by mgy401
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30 minutes ago, bluebell said:

What if you believe that if you can know something, everyone else can know it as well, even if it's not provable by scientific standards?  Is that belief intellectually dishonest?  

And that thing *just happens* to be what you believe you know? Yes, that would be intellectually dishonest.

Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias.

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4 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

And that thing *just happens* to be what you believe you know? Yes, that would be intellectually dishonest.

Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias.

I decided to see just what intellectual honesty was so I did a search and found this on Wikipedia:

 

Quote

Intellectual honesty is an applied method of problem solving, characterized by an unbiased, honest attitude, which can be demonstrated in a number of different ways:

  • One's personal beliefs or politics do not interfere with the pursuit of truth;
  • Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may contradict one's hypothesis;
  • Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to support one view over another;
  • References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagerism is avoided.

Harvard ethicist Louis M. Guenin describes the "kernel" of intellectual honesty to be "a virtuous disposition to eschew deception when given an incentive for deception".[1]

Intentionally committed fallacies in debates and reasoning are called intellectual dishonesty.

 

Are you thinking about it in a different way than Wikipedia has it?  Real question.  Because from what I am reading here what bluebell is saying works.  There is not a problem with having a belief in something.  The problem comes when you let your beliefs "interfere with the pursuit of truth;". I know that is easier said than done, but at least theoretically it seems the definition allows for one to have those beliefs and still be intellectually honest.

Sorry about the problems with fonts, sizes etc.  

 

Edited by Rain
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4 hours ago, Rain said:

I decided to see just what intellectual honesty was so I did a search and found this on Wikipedia:

 

 

Are you thinking about it in a different way than Wikipedia has it?  Real question.  Because from what I am reading here what bluebell is saying works.  There is not a problem with having a belief in something.  The problem comes when you let your beliefs "interfere with the pursuit of truth;". I know that is easier said than done, but at least theoretically it seems the definition allows for one to have those beliefs and still be intellectually honest.

Sorry about the problems with fonts, sizes etc.  

 

Nope I'm not, and I explicitly said intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias, which is part of the definition.

Edited by Meadowchik
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On 4/6/2021 at 6:45 PM, ttribe said:

Perhaps, I need to elaborate - as my faith was falling apart, I was pleading with God for help in reaffirming the truth.  I was pleading for guidance.  I was willing myself to believe, every day, for at least a year.  I was evaluating my life to determine if I was doing something to cause the heavens to be shut to me.  No answer ever came.  Ever.  I became dangerously depressed and finally had to stop.  The point to my admittedly rhetorical question is that such a prescriptive answer on how we are supposed to get answers from God makes God seem like a vending machine and if we don't get the predetermined answer then it must be the case that we simply aren't putting in enough money (continuing the vending machine analogy).  I find these prescriptive lists to be dangerous to people like me who tried and tried and plead and wept only to have no response because it casts the blame right back at our feet.  Maybe, just maybe, the problem is with the prescription, not with those of us who are taking the prescription.

I had much the same experience when I was told by Church leaders that if I just prayed hard enough, fasted, and even take the leap and marry a woman, then God would bless me and take away me being gay.  That was the promise, and when I still had feelings for those of the same sex, the answer from Church leaders was to pray harder.  I too became depressed, and felt like I was unworthy.  That the windows of heaven were shut against me.  That something was wrong with me because these were men who claimed to speak  for God.

Then all the sudden, pray the gay away stopped becoming a thing.  I had been conned into thinking it was my fault for being gay.

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On 4/6/2021 at 10:46 PM, teddyaware said:

You were looking to be rescued from your burgeoning unbelief through a manifestation of proactive divine intervention, when, in reality,  the answer you were seeking was within you all along. All you had to do was choose to believe. And yes, believing in God is a choice.

Perhaps unlike yourself, I Instated out as a hardcore, proselytizing atheist but eventually came around to making the very conscious decision to believe in spite of the fact that I was surrounded with a million different reasons not to believe. Why did I choose to believe? Because I found it very detrimental to my mental wellbeing to believe that death, oblivion, futility and meaninglessness were going to win in the end. Talk about a party pooper!

Remarkably, after making the conscious decision to believe the “good guys” are going to win, the very signs every sign seeker and every individual enmeshed in a faith crisis hopes to receive descended upon me like pure life-giving rain from heaven that has continued to flow down upon my soul for over 50 years. I know of a surety that those coveted, consoling signs of God’s sovereignty, power and love really do follow those who choose to believe.

And I must say that it hasn’t been too difficult for to stay on track as long I continue to consciously choose to believe that light, life, goodness, virtue, mercy and love are going to win a most glorious ultimate victory in the end.

It’s such a wonderfully liberating idea to come to the realization that belief is a choice, and the only one who can rob me of that belief is myself. Because he is a moral agent, even God himself must consciously choose to live a life of faith, hope and charity because even he is perfectly free to choose the way of life or the way of death. Because the powers of the priesthood flow without compulsory means, even God must choose to confidently believe that the right will always win in the end. 

 

So if I had just chosen to believe I was not gay, then I would have become straight?  Is that what I did wrong?

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1 hour ago, california boy said:

Why did I choose to believe? Because I found it very detrimental to my mental wellbeing to believe that death, oblivion, futility and meaninglessness were going to win in the end. Talk about a party pooper!

This is the core of where Pragmatism and religion meets

One believes because belief in God is itself beneficial.

And THEN comes the testimony 

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19 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

And that thing *just happens* to be what you believe you know? Yes, that would be intellectually dishonest.

Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias.

So, if I believe I know that watering a plant with distilled water is less healthy for the plant than tap water, and that belief is confirmed through experimentation, that would be intellectually dishonest?  I don't think so.  I don't think anyone else would think so either.  That doesn't even make sense. 

If we seek knowledge that ends up confirming a belief, that is not in itself intellectually dishonest, as long as we didn't let the bias negatively or falsely impact the results of our seeking.

Edited by bluebell
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4 hours ago, bluebell said:

So, if I believe I know that watering a plant with distilled water is less healthy for the plant than tap water, and that belief is confirmed through experimentation, that would be intellectually dishonest?  I don't think so.  I don't think anyone else would think so either.  That doesn't even make sense. 

If we seek knowledge that ends up confirming a belief, that is not in itself intellectually dishonest, as long as we didn't let the bias negatively or falsely impact the results of our seeking.

Who can confirm that you used the distilled water? Who can confirm how the plant responded? Who can repeat such an experiment where the type of water used and plant response can be confirmed by others?

 

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7 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Who can confirm that you used the distilled water? Who can confirm how the plant responded? Who can repeat such an experiment where the type of water used and plant response can be confirmed by others?

And who cares?

Try it and see if it works.  

Do you ever try recipes? I guess that requires intellectual dishonesty ?

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35 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And who cares?

Try it and see if it works.  

Do you ever try recipes? I guess that requires intellectual dishonesty ?

I love trying new recipe ideas, and I am quite open about it.

I have also cooked to accommodate people who are vegan, vegetarian, Muslim, severely allergic, and don't consume products bought on Sunday. My intellectual honesty as someone preparing their food is important to them, even critically important.

That said, there are fundamental differences between Bluebell's plants example and the topic of religious claims.

Her experiment of watering plants with distilled water or tap water, as described, is not intellectually dishonest. She and others can repeat it and observe results without dependence on her personal bias or their own.

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2 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I love trying new recipe ideas, and I am quite open about it.

I have also cooked to accommodate people who are vegan, vegetarian, Muslim, severely allergic, and don't consume products bought on Sunday. My intellectual honesty as someone preparing their food is important to them, even critically important.

That said, there are fundamental differences between Bluebell's plants example and the topic of religious claims.

Her experiment of watering plants with distilled water or tap water, as described, is not intellectually dishonest. She and others can repeat it and observe results without dependence on her personal bias or their own.

I notice you have a personal bias against personal biases.

Objectivity is an illusion.  Positivism is dead.

Google those three words for quite an education

Here's a start

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Edited by mfbukowski
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3 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

I notice you have a personal bias against personal biases.

Objectivity is an illusion.  Positivism is dead.

Google those three words for quite an education

Nope, I don't. Everyone has personal biases and they cannot be completely avoided. Yet people can be aware of their own biases and how they use them when making claims, especially claims much broader than their personal spheres.

You can read the entire conversation for context if you like. 

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On 4/9/2021 at 3:27 PM, Meadowchik said:

And that thing *just happens* to be what you believe you know? Yes, that would be intellectually dishonest.

Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias.

Emphasis is mine.

Where is there objective evidence for these statements?

Where is it experimentally shown that "Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias." ?

That  is itself an unfounded personal bias which is self contradictory.

 In fact it is a lot like a religious belief.

Edited by mfbukowski
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20 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Emphasis is mine.

Where is there objective evidence for these statements?

Where is it experimentally shown that "Intellectual honesty requires effort to seek knowledge without personal bias." ?

That  is itself an unfounded personal bias which is self contradictory.

 In fact it is a lot like a religious belief.

You should probably go further back in the conversation than that. Again, for proper context.

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17 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Who can confirm that you used the distilled water? Who can confirm how the plant responded? Who can repeat such an experiment where the type of water used and plant response can be confirmed by others?

 

None of that has any impact on whether or not something is intellectually honest though.  Something doesn't have to be provable to be intellectually honest.

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11 minutes ago, bluebell said:

None of that has any impact on whether or not something is intellectually honest though.  Something doesn't have to be provable to be intellectually honest.

Like I said earlier,

"It is not intellectually dishonest to sincerely believe in something that is not independently verifiable, but it can be intellectually dishonest to treat something that is not provable as provable."

Your plant example is one of a provable claim. The process can be independently verified and it does not rely on personal bias.

Yet religious claims like in Nelson's talk are not provable, cannot be independently verified, and do rely on personal bias. Yet they are spoken about otherwise, as if they are provable. Furthermore they are presented to the world as if they are accessible to everyone, with the implication that there is something lacking in the person who tries but does not prove them. The message becomes something like, try harder, be more faithful, learn more, be more devout.

Then people who "fail" to prove the claim for themselves are considered to be in the wrong, instead of an open acknowledgement that there can be something wrong with the claim.

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

You should probably go further back in the conversation than that. Again, for proper context.

Not really because you keep repeating the same error again and again 

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2 hours ago, bluebell said:

Something doesn't have to be provable to be intellectually honest.

Exactly.

How do we know murder is wrong?

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36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Not really because you keep repeating the same error again and again 

Feel free to elucidate, but so far your posts don't indicate that you understand the conversation. You just seemed to pick at a couple posts out of context and misidentify the topic.

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

 Something doesn't have to be provable to be intellectually honest.

36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Exactly.

How do we know murder is wrong?

This is ironically just another example of the bolded. I'm not saying that "something [has] to be provable to be intellectually honest."

If you want a summary, it's on this page, just above your last two posts, where I clearly correct Bluebell's mischaracterization of my argument for a second time:

3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Like I said earlier,

"It is not intellectually dishonest to sincerely believe in something that is not independently verifiable, but it can be intellectually dishonest to treat something that is not provable as provable."

Your plant example is one of a provable claim. The process can be independently verified and it does not rely on personal bias.

Yet religious claims like in Nelson's talk are not provable, cannot be independently verified, and do rely on personal bias. Yet they are spoken about otherwise, as if they are provable. Furthermore they are presented to the world as if they are accessible to everyone, with the implication that there is something lacking in the person who tries but does not prove them. The message becomes something like, try harder, be more faithful, learn more, be more devout.

Then people who "fail" to prove the claim for themselves are considered to be in the wrong, instead of an open acknowledgement that there can be something wrong with the claim.

 

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3 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Like I said earlier,

"It is not intellectually dishonest to sincerely believe in something that is not independently verifiable, but it can be intellectually dishonest to treat something that is not provable as provable."

Your plant example is one of a provable claim. The process can be independently verified and it does not rely on personal bias.

Yet religious claims like in Nelson's talk are not provable, cannot be independently verified, and do rely on personal bias. Yet they are spoken about otherwise, as if they are provable. Furthermore they are presented to the world as if they are accessible to everyone, with the implication that there is something lacking in the person who tries but does not prove them. The message becomes something like, try harder, be more faithful, learn more, be more devout.

Then people who "fail" to prove the claim for themselves are considered to be in the wrong, instead of an open acknowledgement that there can be something wrong with the claim.

The claims of the Restoration are provable through the religious process. Those who fail to prove the claims for themselves have simply opted for another process, such as those who replace or conflate the Restoration with science or an opposing religious principle. Everyone has to manage their personal bias and critical thinking, which are both subjective of themselves, in applying these processes. Choosing which process to use is a subjective process, and the processes are subjectively used. Thus different conclusions can be drawn between those following different processes and among those following the same process. The only harm is lacking the integrity to stick with what you know to be right, correct, true, etc. which is subjectively prioritized with all that you know to be right, correct, true, etc.

So President Nelson counsels choosing a religious process for religious purposes. Personal bias and critical thinking are a given for everyone so engaged.

Edited by CV75
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42 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I haven’t misunderstood your claim, I’ve pointed out (twice) that none of that makes a claim intellectually dishonest.

You can believe the claim is wrong.  The claim can even actually be wrong. But none of that means it was intellectually dishonest for the person to make the claim. 

According to this description, the reasoning (not the bias) has to be intentionally fallacious to qualify as intellectual dishonesty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_honesty

President Nelson’s 5-point method favors intellectual honesty as indicated by the highlighted words: Prayerfully study the scriptures. Given that belief in Christ is a subset of all that you know, prayerfully choose to believe in Jesus Christ (allow the Lord to lead you). Act accordingly, in good faith. Practice your religion. Ask God for help.

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