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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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You can't act on disbeliefs.

Whenever someone uses the word "can't" when talking about the human mind, I get suspicious. What would you say about the following:

For my entire life I've had some relatively mild sub-clinical symptoms of OCD, particularly centered around the idea of keeping things symmetrical. Sometimes if I accidentally brush up against something with one hand for example, I'll suddenly be struck by the thought that if I don't touch it with the other hand as well, I'll die in my sleep that night. Of course I know and believe that this is false. I can even tell myself in the moment that it's false, and I believe what I'm telling myself. But nevertheless it really just feels like I should touch it with my other hand, so I do.

Rationally, I know that touching random benign ordinary objects in the environment can have no impact on my odds of sudden death. It's an absurd belief. I'm intelligent enough to recognize that there's no possible causal connection there. And yet I continue to act as though I do believe it.

I'll stand by my statement--I think it was accurate--but it was a bit of an oversimplification.

How much beliefs influence actions is a sliding scale.

  • Most actions are subconscious and do not rely on belief at all. Things like breathing and the individual muscle movements associated with any action.
  • Most of the remainder are semi-conscious and, while they rely on belief, do not involve a conscious decision in the moment. For example, if I decide to go to bed, I'll start the process of walking upstairs, brushing my teeth, etc., all actions which rely on my beliefs regarding where the stairs are, how to brush teeth, and so on, but which do not require conscious input.
  • A few of our actions are explicitly conscious to a large extent, but even then most of the beliefs involved in making the decision are subconscious. I don't need to consciously rehash modus ponens and all my other axioms before every decision.

Your example sounds like my second example. You have two conflicting beliefs, and while you believe one much more strongly, the other promises consequences dangerous enough that it cannot be ignored. It's possible to know something is false and yet believe in it (to a small extent) anyway.

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