For example, if you were never taught that the Eifel Tower was in Paris, France, would it still be in Paris France? — IvoryBlackBishop

Of course.

Again, you're diverting the topic into something irrelevant.

one couldn't immediately dismiss the legitimacy of a belief simply because it was taught — IvoryBlackBishop

I never said one could.

You asked how someone could be born an atheist and still grow out of theism. I answered. The rest of this is you arguing against shadows.

I'm not equivocating the contents of the beliefs at all. Insert any belief you want into there, serious or frivolous, and the pattern still holds: nobody starts off believing that. They acquire it belief in it (through being taught it or otherwise). Early in life it's easy to acquire false beliefs because we're impressionable kids. As we get older we (hopefully) start to weed them out, and so (hopefully) grow out of those false beliefs.

You keep diverting the conversation away from this really simple statement into irrelevant other topics.

If your dispute is just that theism is not a false belief and so not something to be outgrown, just say that.

any system of axioms accepted on faith serves as a functional equivalent to religion; I see little difference between "religious fanaticism" and partisan politics, for example. — IvoryBlackBishop

This is largely the thesis of my essay Against Fideism that we're discussing in another thread, with an important caveat: there is a difference between accepting and asserting an opinion. To say that nobody should accept anything without sufficient reason is to assert the negation of everything, without sufficient reason. To say not to assert anything without sufficient reason is to say that everyone is free to accept whatever they want for no reason at all, until sufficient reason is given to reject it.

Being against appeals to faith means being in favor of freedom to believe what you will.

Sure, many people speculate about all kinds of things without being taught them. That doesn't make those beliefs that they were born with. People can acquire beliefs without being taught them.

Nothing I'm saying is specifically about belief in God, that's just a particular case of the general pattern. Like Artemis said:

Babies don't believe in tooth fairies or Santa either. — Artemis

Nothing I said has any implications about there being or not being universals. You seem to be talking about something entirely unrelated.

I wasn't arguing against "indoctrination". I didn't even use that word.

I was explaining how it can both be the case that babies are born atheists, and atheism is something people outgrow. If a false believe is instilled at an impressionable young age, someone will hopefully grow out of it as they mature and investigate their beliefs critically. Nobody is born with any beliefs though, so in that case the babies are born lacking the belief, get it instilled at a young age, and then grow out of it.

If the beliefs instilled at a young age are not false, then they are not so likely to be grown out of, and that's fine.

I'm not having this conversation again, it's dumb and you're just factually wrong.

There is "weak", "soft", or "implicit" atheism which is lack of belief in God.

There is "strong", "hard", or "explicit" atheism which is belief in the lack of God.

The former is just anyone who is not a theist. The latter are a subset of the former. Typical (but not all) agnostics fall within the former but not the latter. You're one of them I take it. I don't care what you identify as, that's what words mean.

I expect this has already been explained to you upthread, which is why I haven't been reading this thread until now. This argument is old and stupid and pointless because people like you aren't interested in productive conversation.

That's true, what's your point?

They easily can.

When one is born, one has no beliefs, therefore one has no belief in God, and so is an atheist.

In early life, one's beliefs are easily influenced by others, so traditional beliefs like in God are easily instilled in one. If such beliefs were not instilled, one would remain an atheist.

As one grows older, one's critical thinking abilities improve, and one begins to investigate the truth on one's own. So someone who had belief in God instilled in them at a young age would grow out of it as they matured and learned that those traditional beliefs were false.

If I must say anything at this point is that a theory that explains everything explains nothing. — TheMadFool

You could say the same thing about empiricism with equal(ly little) justification. Hedonism is just the empiricism of ethics: judging assessments of goodness based on the experience of them seeming good. It's not a statement about what people do value, meant to predict people's behavior, but about what is valuable, meant to adjudicate normative claims.

Anyway, I was agreeing with you (that meaningfulness is the highest pleasure), just with slight adjustments and elaboration.

Aren't those quite high expectations? Maybe some can get by with less? — Wallows

They're ideals, the furthest endpoints to aim for. Anything in that direction is on the right path; you don't have to go all the way.

Why would older Democrats’ Medicare be threatened by Bernie?

our highest pleasure is to be found in discovering the meaning of life and living accordingly — TheMadFool

I would instead say that the highest pleasure is for life to feel meaningful, the feeling I call ontophilia or love of being; and the meaning of life is to bring pleasure, to oneself and to others. The meaning of life is thus to make life seem meaningful. And there is nothing more to meaningfulness than the seeming of it: seeming meaningful is being meaningful.

All that’s left is to ask what, generally, seems meaningful, and I answer that is is learning, teaching, loving, and being loved: having both goods and truths flow through you, from the world into you and from you into the world.

The leading opposition candidate is a Democratic socialist, America's counterpart to Corbyn, and bound for the same result if he is selected — Wayfarer

Bernie getting the nomination is the only hope the Democrats ever really had for beating Trump. Winning elections is not about convincing people to change their minds -- that almost never works -- but about exciting people enough to actually go out and vote. The left half of America have been sorely disappointed with the Democratic party for a long time, and Bernie's loss in 2016 encouraged a bunch of them to vote 3rd party (which is fine in some cases, problematic in others), stay home, or worse, "burn it all down" and vote Trump in protest (which... what, I don't fucking understand that). Mainstream party-line Democrats will still vote for Bernie anyway, mainstream Republicans won't no matter what, there are apparently those wtf voters who prefer Bernie over Trump but Trump over anyone else, and most importantly, the many discouraged progressive youths will actually get excited enough to show up on election day.

Trump, meanwhile, was not impeached — Wayfarer

He was. The impeachment is what sent him to trial. He was just acquitted in the trial.

While that's better for accuracy, it's worse for usability (both compared to just "Against Certitude"), so I think it's still a no-go for me. Thanks anyway.

While awaiting feedback on that "dogmatism" vs "fideism" bit, I've updated the opening paragraph of the essay with some bits that are redundant with parts further down, but maybe will stem off the knee-jerk reactions that seem to be leading people to miss those there.

Does this make the thesis of this essay any clearer?

I am against fideism. "Fide" is the Latin word for "faith", so "fideism" means literally "faith-ism", and by saying I am against it, I mean I am against faith. But by "faith" I don't mean any particular religious beliefs, such as belief in gods, souls, or afterlives, but rather a more abstract methodology that could underlie any particular opinion about any particular thing. I also don't mean just holding some opinion "on faith", as in without sufficient reason. I am only against appeals to faith, by which I mean I am against assertions — statements not merely to the effect that one is of some opinion oneself, but that it is the correct opinion, that everyone should adopt — that are made not for any reason, not "because of..." anything, but "just because"; bare, unsupported assertions that some claim is true because it just is, with no further justification to back that claim up; assertions put forth as beyond question, for if they needed no justification to stand then there could be no room to doubt them. — "The

I am reading along, but so far no questions, or corrections, it's all clear and accurate as far as I can see. :-)

That's getting into the topics of later essays, but for now I'll just say neither of the two options you present sounds like my view.

The general direction seems to be towards reason and away from faith, yes? — praxis

Yes, though the move toward reason is decidedly not dogmatic or faithful itself; I give a practical reason why to reject faith or dogma at the end of the essay.

All I'm saying at this point is "be open to questioning everything". Authorities, popular opinions, your own gut intuitions, none of it should be held above question; and so none of it is good reason for someone else to change their mind if they disagree with you.

Thanks for the input. So that's two people who think "dogmatism" is a better term than "fideism"; and fdrake privately (for some reason) messaged me that another contemporary philosopher (Meillassoux) uses "fideism" the same way I do, at least.

Any other feedback on "fideism" vs "dogmatism"?

That doesn't sound anything at all like what I'm arguing against. Or what I'm arguing for, for that matter, if you've just confused the direction.

I want all of the positions to be something-isms, and I'm not certain that I'm completely against all possibility of certainty, when actual evidence is accounted for. So I don't think "Against Certitude" is for me.

However I did notice when going through my decade of notes to myself at the end of this past year's total rewrite that I had originally been calling the position in question "dogmatism", so I'm not completely against going back to it.

But I'm not certain that it's really adequate, and I don't remember (or have record of) why I changed away from it before. I think perhaps the reason I may have moved away from it was that "dogma" means "belief", and I don't mean this to apply to only beliefs but to intentions as well. I'm also not sure that it really serves any better than "fideism" in escaping religious connotations, since the term "dogma" is religious in origin, and I would argue that religion is in fact defined by its appeals to faith / fideism in the sense I mean, i.e. dogmatism. (Like I said with the Buddhist example earlier: if their beliefs really are testable, then they are amenable to science, and are not exclusively religious in character; it's precisely being not open to testing, questioning, criticism, that makes something religious. We even use "religious" colloquially as an adjective to describe someone's unquestioning devotion to things, even things not traditionally considered religious).

What does everyone else here think? Does "dogmatism" sound like a better name for this position I'm against than "fideism"? Do you think it encapsulates a broad enough concept, including appeals to authority, either religious or secular, on matters either descriptive or prescriptive (e.g. even appeals to secular governmental authority about what you ought to do), and appeals to popularity, and appeals to intuition or "gut feeling"? Does it actually avoid any of the supposed problems with using "fideism" for that same position?

The point which your essay glosses over in respect to fideism in particular, is the widespread view, typical of the new atheism, that any form of faith basically amounts to "clinging to propositional attitudes for which there can be no evidence as a matter of definition." — Wayfarer

I think, as we'll see in the next essay Against Transcendentalism, that the relationship goes the other way. Fideism as I mean it is methodological thing than can apply to things about which there could be evidence, if someone just refuses to consider that evidence, in favor of "because ___ says so". But things for which there can be no evidence as a matter of definition are things that we can only hold untestable, unquestionable, fideistic opinions about, so rejecting fideism means also rejecting opinions that feature such things. But we're getting ahead of the game here.

But I'm not sure if your point is that people will hear "fideism" and think that I mean something else than I do? I'm still curious to hear if what you think a better term would be for the view that I am against, if not "fideism". I'm only concerned with communicating clearly that I am against that thing you say you're also against, and I'm happy to call that thing we're against whatever would best avoid confusion and most clearly communicate that.

I don't think any hard-nosed empiricist would accept that Buddhism's claims amount to anything more than faith-claims, especially in respect of aspects of the Buddhist culture such as acceptance of rebirth. — Wayfarer

I can't speak for anyone else, but I consider myself a hard-nosed empiricist, and I can see three possibilities with regards to these Buddhist claims about things can be tested and needn't be taken on faith. Either they're really asking for, like in my analogy, only "faith" akin to being willing to look at the evidence, and I can go and do whatever things it is they say I need to do to experience the things that will prove their claims to me, and then I either (1) experience those things and believe them or (2) don't experience those things and disbelieve them; or (3) there isn't actually something I'm supposed to be able to do to check it myself, and it's really a fideist claim. If either of the first two, then that claim is not a "legitimate form of knowledge that can't be brought within the ambit of science", because that procedure to reproduce the experiences that justify the claim constitutes doing science to it (whatever the result may be); and if it's the third, then on my account against fideism, it's not a legitimate form of knowledge at all.

So I think rather than broadly saying that fideism simply amounts to any dogmatically-held belief in whatever domain, your essay, if it's going to be against fideism, needs to pay closer attention to the problems of epistemology and metaphysics that surround the 'faith vs reason' debate. — Wayfarer

I'm not interested in just arguing against any old thing called "fideism"; if it should turn out that the word "fideism" really refers to something I'm not against, that's fine with me. It's the thing that I'm trying to refer to with that word that is the topic of this essay, not some other thing the word might refer to, and if using a different word dissolves the problem then I'm fine to just do that. If you have any suggestions...

Do you mean ethically? — Wallows

You asked what good it is to oneself or the world, and ethics is the field concerned with goods, so yeah.

But I think it's also useful in non-ethical ways, too. I think philosophy has made me a better learner and a better teacher, and so made me better at doing even the physical sciences. I think that this is analogous to the ethical scenario, because I think much of ethics is properly outside the domain of philosophy: philosophy just tells you how to do that stuff, and it likewise tells us how to do the physical sciences too.

what use does philosophy have if not to myself then to the world? — Wallows

I think that philosophy has definitely made me a better person, and so enabled me to do better things both for my own life and for the world. Not that the latter is particularly impressive in any way, but I think it’s better than it otherwise would have been. And if more people had motive and opportunity to do more and better philosophy, they and consequently the world would experience similar benefits. They’re subtle benefits to be sure, but a lot of them add up.

The foundational principle of my own philosophy that I came up with in 2010 (“it may be hopeless but I’m trying anyway”) is what I credit with my success at completing, over the course of the past decade, an enormous to-do list of vast life improvements.

(Finishing off the philosophy book I had been starting to write back then is, poetically, the last item on that to-do list).

Therefore, you founded your own philosophy? — Wallows

No, that existential dread only hit me a little over a year ago, and I hadn’t even considered trying to “solve” that “problem” until it did. I started writing “my own philosophy” as such some 15 years before that, when it was just an interesting academic project for fun.

The two main schools of Contemporary philosophy are the Analytic and Continental schools, of which Hegel and Frege are (at least arguably) the first figures. I know there's debate about whether the Modern period has ended or not, but on those accounts where it has ended and we're now in the Contemporary period instead, Kant is usually seen as the end of the Modern period.

I guess I've also just implicitly answered my own question. The current period of philosophy will end once the Analytic-Continental divide is resolved, and this period will retroactively be called something else, while whatever is going on then will be the new "contemporary".

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not.

They were contemporaries of each other, but they are not Contemporary philosophers as in part of the period of philosophy that is contemporary with us right now.

(I wonder how long into the future we'll have to go before the likes of Hegel and Frege aren't considered "Contemporary philosophy" anymore; or if they'll remain "Contemporary" and we'll move on to "Post-Contemporary" philosophy the way the Continentals tried to do with Modern philosophy).

It's a mix of both for me, but on the whole I think it comes out on the positive side.

Depending on my mood, thinking too deeply or about deep topics can easily lead my mind into topics that, when I'm down, become traps where I spiral around into deeper and deeper anxiety and depression. In times like that, I wish that I could just "turn off my brain" and stop being such a philosopher, stop over-examining everything and just live, like any other animal, just be a dumb happy creature not frozen in the headlights of the apparently-doomed future.

But one of the things that best helps elevate my mood is feeling or seeing connections, of any kind, interpersonal, theoretical, historical, etc -- I'm coming around to the opinion that meaningfulness of any kind is literally all about connections, even my ontology is perhaps-not-coincidentally all about a web of relations between objects defined entirely by those relations. And the thing that I always loved about philosophy, the reason I got into it, is how it has connections to everything. So doing philosophy, learning it or teaching it, makes my life and the world feel more meaningful, and so makes me happier. Sometimes.

Despite prolonged failure to do so, philosophizing did eventually help me to partially think my way out of those depressed and anxious thought loops that I sometimes get stuck in, even though it was also trying to philosophizing my way out of them that got me stuck in them to begin with. Perhaps as an analogy, it's like I was a dumb mathematician trying futilly to work out a proof that a given program won't halt, and then I figured out a proof that such a proof either way is not possible. I still don't know if the program will halt or not, but I know that I can't know it, and so can give up trying to figure out whether or not it will.

As a Bernie fan, what's to say about Buttigieg? He's still better than Biden, and it was really close between him and Bernie, and this is just one state not the whole election, so I'm pretty happy with the Iowa results. Of course I would have preferred if Bernie had narrowly won instead of narrowly lost, but there's a lot more states to come, and next up is New Hampshire, where he's almost a shoe-in.

Thanks everyone for the flurry of replies! I didn't expect nearly this much activity after the thread lingered for days with nothing.

Just a brief reminder here that, as I said in the OP, I'm not so much looking to debate the ideas themselves right now, especially the ones that have already been long-debated (though I'd be up for debating the truly new ones, if any, at a later time). Mostly I'm just looking to make sure it's clear what my views are, and my reasons for holding them. But some of this attempt to debate the ideas has been helpful toward that end anyway, as it's clear that I've not been clear enough what it is I am or am not saying at this point, though I'm not yet clear how to make it more clear, and I welcome suggestions on that front.

Isn't <telling people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why> a thing people do? You just said you weren't against people doing things without any reason, so they wouldn't need a reason to tell people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why. If they don't need a reason to do that thing, then why are you using reason to dispute their doing so? — Isaac

There's two things here. One is to distinguish between the permissibility of the act of telling, which is not what I'm talking about, and the relevance of the thing being told, which is what I'm on about. I'm not saying "you morally ought not say this" per se, but more like "you saying that doesn't matter": you have no authority that others have any obligation to obey to tell someone they should do (or think) differently than they do, unless you can give them a reason. You're permitted to say that, but they're permitted to ignore you. I'm using very loose senses of permission and obligation here just trying to convey the general notion; I usually restrict those words to a narrower sense. We could also phrase things instead in terms of epistemic necessity and possibility, and epistemic rather than deontic authority. At this point in the essays I'm talking about very broad principles that flesh out into both epistemic and deontic principles later.

The second thing comes back to the main thrust here, distinguishing between doing/thinking things for no reason, and doing/thinking things against reason. I'm not <against people doing things without any reason>, but I'm not just saying "you have no reason to do that, so stop it". I'm saying "here is a reason not to do that". The reason given in the last paragraph of the essay.

Your comments seem to hinge on the same thing I apparently need to clarify a lot better in the essay, though you did say you didn't read it all so I guess you missed a couple of important paragraphs (paragraphs 5-7) to that point. I do say in those paragraphs that I'm not against people trusting in authorities or in popular opinion or in their intuition or anything like that to arrive at their opinions, just that they should always remain open to questioning those opinions later, and not point at authority or popularity or their gut as a defense against reasons to the contrary.

As instructed by you, and in fideist tradition, I am against and doubt this assertion. — unenlightened

And on my account that's fine, unless someone gives a reason to think otherwise. Which I do, in the last paragraph of this essay.

Consider the unwritten essay, 'against scepticism'. — unenlightened

There is a later essay I reference in this one called "Against Cynicism", which I think is probably exactly what you mean. I avoid using the word "skepticism" because there are at least two different senses of that word, one of which I am for and one of which I am against. I label the one I am for "criticism", and that is the opposite of "fideism": this essay against fideism is also an argument for criticism. The other one I label "cynicism", and I call its opposite "liberalism": my later essay against cynicism is also an argument for liberalism.

As always, I welcome suggestions for better, clearer terminology to help avoid this kind of confusion.

But no one does that. If I believe that Jesus was the son of God or that stepping on the cracks will bring bad luck, it is for the very solid reason that the tradition has is it so, and one needs a reason to doubt tradition. — unenlightened

What tradition one is born into is effectively random. Most people just happen to be whatever religion their parents were, for example. I'm not saying that there's any problem with that, and (later in Against Cynicism) I am saying exactly that one needs positive reason to doubt. All I'm saying here is that "but tradition says..." and the like aren't rebuttals against reasons to doubt, or reasons that anybody who disagrees should change their mind.

I think my rendering of the term is the mainstream one. — Wayfarer

Wikipedia calls it the view that "faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular truths", and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy similarly "that faith is in some sense independent of, if not outright adversarial toward, reason". That "independence" sounds to me that it does not imply that everything comes down to faith, but just that some things may.

Your essay echoes the motto of the Royal Society which was 'take no-one's word for it'. — Wayfarer

That's a very useful quote, thanks. I've made a note to incorporate it into the essay.

(And a reminder here that I'd love if anyone has any great quotes from famous people making my points in better words than I do, so I can include them in the essay).

The rest of your post about Buddhist principles sounds generally like something I agree with. If the opinions are ones that can be tested, tests that could in principle be failed, then they are not opinions asserted on faith, in the sense that I am against. The kind of "faith" they ask for is more akin to having "faith" enough to look into a microscope to verify what some scientist is telling you. "Trust me, if you look in here you'll see tiny single-celled organisms dividing!" It's not fideism just to "trust him" enough to take a look yourself. It wouldn't even be fideism to take his word for it and not even bother verifying. It would only be fideism is someone else gave some reason to doubt what's supposedly going on in that microscope slide, and you said "well this scientist says otherwise so you're wrong".

if you end up appealing to foundational knowledge items — fdrake

I'm explicitly against foundationalism, as is explicated in the later essay Against Cynicism.

It also might help, if you've not done so already, to have a very brief blurb before your epistemic theses on what you think an epistemology account should look like, as it stands it looks kinda via-negativa, though in the nice "vanquishing your enemies and assembling victory from their bones" sense rather than the theological one. — fdrake

That's correct. From the end of the introduction page:

In the essays that follow, I will begin by laying out very generally the broad kinds of philosophical views that I am against, leaving behind a picture of what kind of philosophical view I very generally support, which I will detail further in an essay of its own. — The Codex Quaerentis: Introduction

Maybe it would help to use an example that’s not about belief but about intention, as this principle applies to both. I’m not against doing things (or intending to do them) without any reason, just because you felt like it; I’m against telling people they should or shouldn’t (intend to) do things differently, without giving them any reason why.

I don’t think I disagree with any of that. I am not arguing against “faith” in the sense that you used the word there, but in the sense I explained extensively in the essay. Can you think of some better phrasing or terminology I could use that might help avoid confusing those two different things?

I don't have issue with belief without evidence, because I hold (and elaborate a few essays later) that all belief is held without (sufficient) evidence (for certainty). My view is that everyone gets to hold whatever opinions they like, in mutual disagreement with each other, until someone can show something to the contrary of some of those opinions. To insist that any opinions must be rejected out of hand unless they can be positively justified would be to assert the opposite opinion on faith. So rejecting assertions without evidence requires accepting belief (to the contrary) without evidence.

I understand that fideism is defined as 'the doctrine that all knowledge depend on faith or revelation — Wayfarer

I'm not familiar with a definition that says all knowledge depends on faith, just that some can, and the latter is the sense of it that I mean.

But your essay is only partially concerned with fideism regarding religion. Really it's more a criticism of certainty and unquestioning acceptance of authority - something I don't disagree with, but I don't feel the essay has a lot of point to it; the interesting question about faith, to me, is why people hold it, what is its substance. Of course the pat modern answer is that it has none, but rather than debate that point, you basically digress into a criticism of dogmatically-held beliefs of whatever variety. — Wayfarer

I'm open to alternative terminology if you can suggest something (supported by some literature so we're not just making something up) as a better name for the position I'm arguing against here. I'm really not attached to the words, just the ideas, and the idea I'm arguing for here is basically "nothing is beyond questioning, any claim might be wrong". The term I use later for that position is "criticism", but at this stage I'm arguing against the negation of that -- against taking anything as unquestionable -- and I'm not aware of a better term for that position I’m against than "fideism".

You're right that in a sense this point "doesn't have a lot of point to it"; that's what I meant by "low-hanging fruit" earlier. That why this is the first essay: it's the most basic stuff just to get out of the way first. But it's an important principle that gets applied a lot throughout the rest of the work so it's important to establish it up front. It is, for example, basically half of both my core epistemology and my core deontology, which in turn are really important in my philosophies of education and government; there are very, very few steps between this principle and, for example, the anarchism I argue for on that last topic.

Thank you both for your responses.

I'm sorry but I can't quite follow what you're saying or how it relates to the topic essay.

Your post is helpful because it appears I was not clear enough what my position is in the essay. I'm not against believing sans evidence, but only asserting sans evidence, telling someone else you're right and they're wrong without giving reason; or equivalently, believing contra evidence to the contrary. Paragraph 5 is the main place where I try to make that point, beginning the second half of the essay where I state the various things that I am not trying to say:

But, very importantly, I am not saying to automatically reject all opinions that you cannot ground with a chain of solid reasons, for as I will elaborate in my later essay Against Cynicism, I hold that it is impossible in principle to ever do so for any opinion, so to insist that you reject everything until you achieve that impossibility would be to insist that you reject everything, completely, forever. I am as against that as I am against fideism. I think it is fine, and necessary, to hold some opinions that you cannot justify from the ground up, just because they seem to be true to you. All I am against is holding those opinions to be beyond question. I maintain only that we must remain open to the possibility that those opinions that we hold without full justification might someday be shown false, and that if we are presented with reasons to reject them, then we must do so. But until we find reasons not to hold an opinion, it is fine to hold it, even if we also lack any particular reasons to hold it. It is only unwarranted to assert an opinion thus tentatively held, to push it on other people as a truth that they must accept over the alternatives. If you are to assert an opinion like that, then you need a reason; you need to be able to show the alternatives to be false, and your opinion the only remaining option. To do otherwise would be to demand that they accept your claims on faith. And to be extra clear: their lack of a reason to hold their opinions does not by itself constitute a reason not to hold their opinions (as down that road lies cynicism, which I am also against). If they have no reason to hold their opinion, then they have no grounds on which to assert it to you as an opinion you must hold as well; but unless you have reasons not to hold their opinion, beyond pointing out their lack of reasons to hold it, then you likewise have no grounds on which to assert that their opinion is wrong and they must abandon it. Until either of you has reason to show the other is wrong, you both remain free to hold your different opinions, in disagreement with each other, neither of you wrong for doing so. — The Codex Quaerentis: Against Fideism, paragraph 5

I welcome any suggestions on how I can make my view about this clearer, whether rephrasing things or restructuring the paragraphs, etc. (I debated either structuring it as it is, where I list examples of what I do mean and then example of what I don't mean, or else interleaving examples of what I do and don't mean throughout it. If I did the latter structure instead, the above paragraph would be the second-to-last paragraph instead, as the two below it would be interleaved below the paragraphs against appeals to authority and popularity above it).

Nate Silver's model expected Biden to do poorly in Iowa, but well nationally, like the polls. Iowa is relatively small as far as the number of delegates go, and only really important for its media impact.

The rationale Nate Silver gave in that article I linked earlier is that it was already expected that Biden wouldn't have great results in Iowa and that whoever else came out on top would get a big boost in their odds, because Iowa is mostly important just for being first and the surrounding media frenzy, not the actual number of delegates represented there. That's already dampened by the effects of being in the midst of the impeachment trial, the Superbowl, and the State of the Union address this year, and then the delay in releasing the results stole the spotlight of what media coverage Iowa did actually get, so the media boost that would have been gotten by the winner (who was not expected to be Biden) has been dampened, lessening their odds against Biden nationwide.

I feel bad for bumping my own thread, but I would feel even worse if I moved on to to the next essay after this one got no responses, and worse still if I just stopped completely because of that.

I know these early essays are taking on some pretty low-hanging fruit and so aren't super interesting, but could some people who participated in the first thread or otherwise expressed interest at least give this one a quick look? @Virgo Avalytikh, @ZhouBoTong, @BitconnectCarlos, @unenlightened, @Janus, @TheMadFool, @Jim Grossmann, @180 Proof, @christian2017, @Wayfarer ...?

When I was young, my default state of being, when nothing in particular was going on, was happiness. I was never really bored, I could entertain myself with just anything anywhere, or just kick back and relax.

Also, when a crisis or disaster happened, I would tend to shut down emotionally and just focus on doing whatever needed to be done to fix the problem. Even that was a weirdly positive kind of feeling, a kind of peaceful sense of purpose.

Of course at other times I felt despair about certain things that seemed hopeless in life, if something reminded me of those things. And at other times I would feel rage when I felt like I was personally under attack.

The kind of person I would like to be is someone like me when I was younger, minus the rage and despair, which were useless and did no good. I wish that by default, so long as nothing bad was happening, I was just happy, for no reason, though of course I would find things to be happy about. And when bad things happened, sure I wouldn't be happy happy anymore, but just have that calm productive focus on making them better again, so I could go back to being happy again.

Yeah no, you don't seem to understand what contemporary panpsychists even believe. It has nothing to do with quantum woo.

FiveThirtyEight predicts that the fuckup of Iowa (or a hypothetical election where Iowa didn't happen) actually boosts Biden's chances:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/iowa-might-have-screwed-up-the-whole-nomination-process/

Is this accounting for any superdelegates yet? Are they still a thing?

Care to elaborate on that / quote us a passage? Because from the title alone it sounds like they're not talking about the kind of consciousness that actual contemporary panpsychists are actually on about, if it's anything to do with cognition or computation.

...when Bernie is about to take Iowa the final poll disappears.. — Baden

Was there an ongoing accurate tally to support this? — creativesoul

According to Wikipedia, the preliminary results from the 2% of precincts that started reporting before the whole thing got shut down were showing Bernie in the lead, followed by Warren and Buttgeiger.

Jesus isn't saying anything about who is or isn't happy there. He's saying that various groups of people are blessed, as in fated to receive good things, which he lists. Some of them are people who are suffering in various ways, who are blessed with the alleviation of their suffering. Some of them are people doing good things / being good people, who are blessed with rewards for that goodness. Presumably, the things these people are blessed with are things that will make them happy.