Comments on: Your Beliefs as a Temple

By: monkeywink

monkeywink — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 01:49:46 +0000

Wow, I really relate to this post, particularly because I independently came up with a similar model of my own belief structures. I focused on the foundational assumptions that all other beliefs apparently derive from.
In my own experience, I lost my religion fairly suddenly through reluctant introspection and honest enquiry, which meant that a large swathe of my beliefs suddenly became orphaned. In your model, one of my temple towers collapsed, and I had a distinct absence of opinion about a lot of things.
I think your psychological model is very useful, and one that I relate to. Here is a link to mine, which is similar:
http://deepreason.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/unfounded-fundamental-assumptions.html

By: Chana Messinger

Chana Messinger — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:01:43 +0000

Great post, Spencer! I completely agree. A vast weakness in the art of convincing, I think, is the lack of demonstrating the attractiveness of the alternative one is presenting. This makes everything ‘hold up’ much better, and is in line with various studies showing the importance of strengthening an identity before attempting to remove a key portion.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 05:38:31 +0000

I tried that first.
I stopped because people’s intuitions can see implications at effectively infinite distance, and can tell the new temple contradicts the old one. They instantly see the tactical switch coming.

I solved it personally by acknowledging what a small impact on my life any particular belief has. My life and my person will be pretty much the same, for almost all my beliefs. And if my social circle doesn’t like it…well, tough, I tell them I don’t care coming in the door.

You can test the technique by un-adopting a random belief. Play-act to yourself, “If I didn’t believe X, what would I conclude?” If I didn’t believe in Einsteinian gravity…I’d still believe things fall. I wouldn’t suddenly stop knowing how to use stairs and ladders. GPS wouldn’t fail in my vicinity. I would just be more ignorant as to how.

By: George Crews

George Crews — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:11:29 +0000

But aren’t our assumptions the main load bearing columns of our beliefs? The rational ones anyway. The ones we can reason about. (Which probably excludes politics by the way.) And you can’t argue assumptions, you simply assume them or not. After all, they are assumptions. So you’ll never actually be able to knock down a person’s political belief system with logical reasoning. (And I think the empirical evidence would support this.)

It’s not that these fundamental columns of the temple are under such great load that they can’t be changed out, it’s that they are so firm and unbreakable that they can be counted upon to bear great weight.

I know your point is to provide a way to approach trying to facilitate/help people change their own mind. I agree that is a good thing to try. And building a new tower is like giving a person a new perspective from which to see things. I agree with that too. But I don’t think it’s an exercise in finding the logical flaws in our beliefs. Rather, it’s facilitating a person changing the way they think. A change in process rather than conclusions. Like how the scientific method gave us a new way to think about nature. A very much better way. A way that resulted in great change about what our beliefs about nature are. (And note that the scientific method has two logical flaws! The big one is abduction – reasoning from the particular experimental results to the general theory.)

By: Ari J

Ari J — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:39:53 +0000

Poetically put, sir.