Ben, you make a good case that intellectual honesty is neither humble nor arrogant, and in typical Objectivist fashion identified a false dichotomy here, with "(intellectual) pride" occupying the proper alternative to both humility and arrogance.
But what about faith? It seems paradoxical---you wrote that "faith is indeed the ultimate embodiment of humility" since it replaces one's own faculty with the arbitrary dictates of another person's, which does make sense. However, as I know Dawkins and other secularists have pointed out repeatedly, faith is *arrogant* in the sense that one's own assertions are "just true" and need no justification (i.e., don't need earned confidence). Google's definition of arrogant is "having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities". It seems to me that "arrogance" characterizes the religious bigot's intellectual approach quite well.
So is faith *both* humble and arrogant, depending on the perspective? Are we justified in accusing faith-practitioners of both vices?
This is a good question. In fact I think seemingly contrary vices (per Aristotle's scheme) often go together in the same person, if not at the same time. See, for instance, Ayn Rand's essay "The Metaphysical versus the Manmade":
"On the implicit premise that consciousness has no identity, men alternate between the feeling that they possess some sort of omnipotent power over their consciousness and can abuse it with impunity ("It doesn't matter, it's only in my mind")—and the feeling that they have no choice, no control, that the content of consciousness is innately predetermined, that they are victims of the impenetrable mystery inside their own skulls, prisoners of an unknowable enemy, helpless automatons driven by inexplicable emotions ("I can't help it, that's the way I am")."
This is what she describes as refusing in one way or the other to recognize the primacy of existence, the view that reality is what it is regardless of our consciousness, and hence pretending that consciousness has a power it doesn't to alter reality. All irrationality, and hence all vice, implicitly rejects the primacy of consciousness, so it's unsurprising if vicious people swing back and forth between arrogance (the feeling of omnipotence she mentions here) and humility (here a sense of impotence). Generally if you don't know that knowledge takes work, if you assume it comes to you ineffable, then when you emote that you're getting that ineffable feeling, you'll feel omnipotent/arrogant, and when not you'll feel impotent/humble as though there's nothing you can learn or do to get the knowledge you know you need.
If one has such an "anything goes" view of consciousness, I suppose one then has no choice but to be epistemologically second-handed when it's time to actually discuss an issue---hence such second-handers adopting "faith" (which means here: "just go with what other people say") in the first place. From this standpoint nothing stops one from swinging wildly among various, seemingly contradictory extremes.
It seems there is a parallel with morally second-handed people. I've seen such people in one instance act according to altruism, then in the next move take action that is entirely callous and self-serving in the short-term ("selfish" in the everyday sense). Their mode is apparently: "just go with what other people do".
In my experience the majority of people fall into the above two camps (i.e., they are both epistemologically and morally second-handed) and are unpredictable on a day-to-day basis, which makes it virtually impossible for me to relate to them.
It's ironic reading an article on scientific integrity by Ben Bayer. As far as I'm aware, he has yet to publicly apologize for all the COVID misinformation he spread. To take just one example, remember his ignorant defense of masking? It's obvious that he and everyone else at ARI were just parroting Dr. Adalja, as they refused to change their minds when presented with what the science actually says:
The Cochrane Report on Masking is DEVASTATING | A Prof of Epidemiology Explains
"How could you possibly use non-randomized data to make any conclusion? If you think you will, you're making a grievous mistake. And we've seen so many foolish analyzes ... I'm going to take this New England journal to task when they start publishing this observational garbage."
Changing the subject in a big way. But yeah, I proudly assert I will not apologize. Make the most of it. I never took a position on the science of masking, I said if masking prevents infection, there’s good selfish reason to use one. I also opposed mandatory masking. We’ve gotten more information since 2020, masking looks less efficacious than it was thought to be. But guess what Amar, my wife has Covid right now and we are wearing masks in the house, since I’d rather not get it! It’s just plain common sense to cover a cough. Physical barriers tend to stop physical particles even when they don’t work 100%. If you want to turn common sense hygiene into politics, go for it (and feel free not to cover you coughs, as I bet there aren’t RCT experiments about that). I have no interest in re-litigating Covid. I’m interested in reaching out to rational atheists and explaining what real scientific values look like.
Here's our previous discussion on masking from one of ARI's most embarrassing posts of the pandemic. Does that sound like "I never took a position on the science of masking" to you?
I'm holding you to what you claimed in that thread:
"If some good RCTs get published that show masks have no effect on COVID transmission or on variolation, I will change my view of them! Hold me to it."
If I lack "common sense" then I'm in good company with Dr. Prasad and Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane review. I'll let his own words refute your silly arguments:
JEFFERSON: There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.
Ben: We’ve gotten more information since 2020, masking looks less efficacious than it was thought to be.
JEFFERSON: Well, it’s an update from our November 2020 review and the evidence really didn’t change from 2020 to 2023. There’s still no evidence that masks are effective during a pandemic.
Ben: Physical barriers tend to stop physical particles even when they don’t work 100%.
DEMASI: Intuitively it makes sense to people though…. you put a barrier between you and the other person, and it helps reduce your risk?
JEFFERSON: Ahhhh the Swiss cheese argument….. I like Swiss cheese to eat — the model not so much …It’s predicated on us knowing exactly how these respiratory viruses transmit, and that, I can tell you, we don’t know. There isn’t a single mode of transmission, it is probably mixed. The idea that the covid virus is transmitted via aerosols has been repeated over and over as if it’s “truth” but the evidence is as thin as air. It’s complex and all journalists want 40 years of experience condensed into two sentences. You can quote the Swiss cheese model, but there’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.
Instead of pretending that I'm being political, demonstrate that you actually care about "real scientific values." Stop digging your heels in on COVID topics and admit that you gullibly listened to Dr. Adalja and other so-called experts. You don't even understand why you need RCTs for masks and not for something like parachutes. I suppose we'll also never get an apology from ARI for the pseudoscientific vaccine mandate during COVID OCON.
I could say all kinds of things here, but since you blatantly lie about ARI’s support for a vaccine mandate (I wrote an article specifically opposing it) I’ll ignore you.
You literally couldn't attend OCON during the pandemic unless you were vaccinated. Did you boycott that event in protest or did you comply like the rest of your colleagues? If you're going to accuse me of lying, at least get your facts straight.
I was clearly using mandate in the loose sense of "making something mandatory." There was never any scientific justification for discriminating against the unvaccinated, whether through public or private action. Even the CDC admitted this was nonsensical:
Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August 2022
"CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild (16), and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection (17)."
Ben, you make a good case that intellectual honesty is neither humble nor arrogant, and in typical Objectivist fashion identified a false dichotomy here, with "(intellectual) pride" occupying the proper alternative to both humility and arrogance.
But what about faith? It seems paradoxical---you wrote that "faith is indeed the ultimate embodiment of humility" since it replaces one's own faculty with the arbitrary dictates of another person's, which does make sense. However, as I know Dawkins and other secularists have pointed out repeatedly, faith is *arrogant* in the sense that one's own assertions are "just true" and need no justification (i.e., don't need earned confidence). Google's definition of arrogant is "having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities". It seems to me that "arrogance" characterizes the religious bigot's intellectual approach quite well.
So is faith *both* humble and arrogant, depending on the perspective? Are we justified in accusing faith-practitioners of both vices?
This is a good question. In fact I think seemingly contrary vices (per Aristotle's scheme) often go together in the same person, if not at the same time. See, for instance, Ayn Rand's essay "The Metaphysical versus the Manmade":
"On the implicit premise that consciousness has no identity, men alternate between the feeling that they possess some sort of omnipotent power over their consciousness and can abuse it with impunity ("It doesn't matter, it's only in my mind")—and the feeling that they have no choice, no control, that the content of consciousness is innately predetermined, that they are victims of the impenetrable mystery inside their own skulls, prisoners of an unknowable enemy, helpless automatons driven by inexplicable emotions ("I can't help it, that's the way I am")."
This is what she describes as refusing in one way or the other to recognize the primacy of existence, the view that reality is what it is regardless of our consciousness, and hence pretending that consciousness has a power it doesn't to alter reality. All irrationality, and hence all vice, implicitly rejects the primacy of consciousness, so it's unsurprising if vicious people swing back and forth between arrogance (the feeling of omnipotence she mentions here) and humility (here a sense of impotence). Generally if you don't know that knowledge takes work, if you assume it comes to you ineffable, then when you emote that you're getting that ineffable feeling, you'll feel omnipotent/arrogant, and when not you'll feel impotent/humble as though there's nothing you can learn or do to get the knowledge you know you need.
Hope this helps!
Yes, this makes sense.
If one has such an "anything goes" view of consciousness, I suppose one then has no choice but to be epistemologically second-handed when it's time to actually discuss an issue---hence such second-handers adopting "faith" (which means here: "just go with what other people say") in the first place. From this standpoint nothing stops one from swinging wildly among various, seemingly contradictory extremes.
It seems there is a parallel with morally second-handed people. I've seen such people in one instance act according to altruism, then in the next move take action that is entirely callous and self-serving in the short-term ("selfish" in the everyday sense). Their mode is apparently: "just go with what other people do".
In my experience the majority of people fall into the above two camps (i.e., they are both epistemologically and morally second-handed) and are unpredictable on a day-to-day basis, which makes it virtually impossible for me to relate to them.
It's ironic reading an article on scientific integrity by Ben Bayer. As far as I'm aware, he has yet to publicly apologize for all the COVID misinformation he spread. To take just one example, remember his ignorant defense of masking? It's obvious that he and everyone else at ARI were just parroting Dr. Adalja, as they refused to change their minds when presented with what the science actually says:
The Cochrane Report on Masking is DEVASTATING | A Prof of Epidemiology Explains
"How could you possibly use non-randomized data to make any conclusion? If you think you will, you're making a grievous mistake. And we've seen so many foolish analyzes ... I'm going to take this New England journal to task when they start publishing this observational garbage."
https://youtu.be/I5Xn7SeaUVI?si=tDnRj4ekCklDI7o9
Changing the subject in a big way. But yeah, I proudly assert I will not apologize. Make the most of it. I never took a position on the science of masking, I said if masking prevents infection, there’s good selfish reason to use one. I also opposed mandatory masking. We’ve gotten more information since 2020, masking looks less efficacious than it was thought to be. But guess what Amar, my wife has Covid right now and we are wearing masks in the house, since I’d rather not get it! It’s just plain common sense to cover a cough. Physical barriers tend to stop physical particles even when they don’t work 100%. If you want to turn common sense hygiene into politics, go for it (and feel free not to cover you coughs, as I bet there aren’t RCT experiments about that). I have no interest in re-litigating Covid. I’m interested in reaching out to rational atheists and explaining what real scientific values look like.
Here's our previous discussion on masking from one of ARI's most embarrassing posts of the pandemic. Does that sound like "I never took a position on the science of masking" to you?
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=343522410208726 (select "All comments")
I'm holding you to what you claimed in that thread:
"If some good RCTs get published that show masks have no effect on COVID transmission or on variolation, I will change my view of them! Hold me to it."
If I lack "common sense" then I'm in good company with Dr. Prasad and Tom Jefferson, lead author of the Cochrane review. I'll let his own words refute your silly arguments:
JEFFERSON: There is just no evidence that they make any difference. Full stop.
Ben: We’ve gotten more information since 2020, masking looks less efficacious than it was thought to be.
JEFFERSON: Well, it’s an update from our November 2020 review and the evidence really didn’t change from 2020 to 2023. There’s still no evidence that masks are effective during a pandemic.
Ben: Physical barriers tend to stop physical particles even when they don’t work 100%.
DEMASI: Intuitively it makes sense to people though…. you put a barrier between you and the other person, and it helps reduce your risk?
JEFFERSON: Ahhhh the Swiss cheese argument….. I like Swiss cheese to eat — the model not so much …It’s predicated on us knowing exactly how these respiratory viruses transmit, and that, I can tell you, we don’t know. There isn’t a single mode of transmission, it is probably mixed. The idea that the covid virus is transmitted via aerosols has been repeated over and over as if it’s “truth” but the evidence is as thin as air. It’s complex and all journalists want 40 years of experience condensed into two sentences. You can quote the Swiss cheese model, but there’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.
On the Mask Study: An Interview with the Author
https://brownstone.org/articles/on-the-mask-study-an-interview-with-the-author/
Instead of pretending that I'm being political, demonstrate that you actually care about "real scientific values." Stop digging your heels in on COVID topics and admit that you gullibly listened to Dr. Adalja and other so-called experts. You don't even understand why you need RCTs for masks and not for something like parachutes. I suppose we'll also never get an apology from ARI for the pseudoscientific vaccine mandate during COVID OCON.
I could say all kinds of things here, but since you blatantly lie about ARI’s support for a vaccine mandate (I wrote an article specifically opposing it) I’ll ignore you.
You literally couldn't attend OCON during the pandemic unless you were vaccinated. Did you boycott that event in protest or did you comply like the rest of your colleagues? If you're going to accuse me of lying, at least get your facts straight.
A condition for attending a voluntary private event is not a mandate. Or do you think anyone has the right to come to a private event?
https://newideal.aynrand.org/unjust-mask-mandates-distract-from-real-pandemic-priorities/
I was clearly using mandate in the loose sense of "making something mandatory." There was never any scientific justification for discriminating against the unvaccinated, whether through public or private action. Even the CDC admitted this was nonsensical:
Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August 2022
"CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild (16), and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection (17)."
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7133e1.htm