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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2290 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Let's say that the study really did prove that prayer works.

Okay. What kind of wording was used during the prayer? How many people prayed for the subject? Did they pray a long, individual prayer, a short, individual prayer, or multiple prayers throughout the days? Does length of time spent praying increase the statistical likeliness that the prayer works? Do acts of faith (fasting, attending worship, displaying faith artwork) improve the outcome? Does Biblical conduct (charity, honoring the Sabbath, honoring one's parents) improve the outcome? Does the intensity of the prayer (praying for one's child recovering from cancer as opposed to praying for one's stubbed toe to stop hurting) affect the outcome? Are people in the faith more likely to have a support group that helps them relieve stress?

Do you see that there are an impossible amount of factors involved in such a study? I guarantee the study was not so rigorous as to specifically probe every single aspect that I've listed here. Even if you asked them, you wouldn't get straight answers. People forget, people don't understand their own minds or why they think certain things or do certain acts.

Well, look, I don't put any faith in the study at all. I only brought it up to critique what I see as both typical, and extremely lackluster, commentary around that kind of study (and by extension, the quality of the studies themselves). Like I said, I'm sure either of us could absolutely tear it apart.

But these objections you've listed really aren't great. Just as quantum physics adds up to normalcy, all these factors add up to a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control. If it works, that's an enormously important thing to know about the world, and it would be worth first replicating, then attempting to control for each of these factors in turn.

Do you tally your successes to failures? For how long? Are they correlated at all with the other upswings of your life?

Yes, for a few weeks. I would have gone much longer but the results were extremely definitive quickly, to such an extent that continuing the test felt quite disrespectful. I recognize this means that the test really isn't worth much as far as evidence goes to anyone other than myself--I can only ask you to try to replicate it.

In my youth, I thought that when I was worried sick about my dog, calling for it to come back over and over, praying desperately for it to come back, that it was certainly a miracle when it did, in fact, come back. The problem is that there is no evidence for this whatsoever. There is no way to run two exactly matching sets of reality, one where I prayed that my dog came back, and one where I did not pray that my dog came back. For such a trivial matter, it is easy to say that my calling had more effect than prayer. What about for not-so-trivial matters? The feeling that a miracle happened would be even greater, but it would have no more basis than my dog anecdote.

Well this is why I made a list of things I wanted, estimated their outcome probabilities, chose half at random, prayed for them, and then compared my average error in that group to my average error in the group of outcomes I didn't pray for.

Human reasoning isn't perfect but I do think it's capable of overcoming this sort of error with enough study. The dog will probably come back eventually, so if you want to use [dog comes back] as your test of prayer then it probably needs to be focused on timing. How long does the dog normally take to come back? How long did it take to come back when you prayed for it? A few of my desired outcomes were this sort of test (though a bit less trivial). I certainly agree that the feelings themselves aren't good evidence.

I can tell you I prayed for a troubled girl once every night, and despite my devotion, despite pledging I would never ask for anything more besides if this wish was granted, she ended up shooting herself due to chronic abuse that I had no idea about. It was after some years of sustained nightly praying that her soul did not go to Hell that I realized the utter stupidity of such a venture.

I'm very sorry. I think this absolutely should reduce your faith in God. But it should take most of that probability mass from theories of God, and reality, that most strongly predicted otherwise. In this case, I'd say a lot of that probability mass should be taken from the theory that being alive was actually good for her--that what you were praying for is actually what you would have wanted with full knowledge of all the details.

It's pretty trite to say "she's in a better place now" but I truly do believe she is--with family members who care for her a lot more and a lot better than it sounds like her living family did. You were praying against that outcome, and God didn't answer your prayer.

This is the same problem we ran into last week with the gender dysphoria thing. It's impossible to look inside someone's mind.

I'm not asking you to--I wouldn't expect anyone to take my results on faith. In fact, not only would I not believe my own results if someone else told them to me, but I often don't believe they happened myself, and it takes a fair bit of convincing to remind myself they actually did happen.

In this case, I'd say a lot of that probability mass should be taken from the theory that being alive was actually good for her--that what you were praying for is actually what you would have wanted with full knowledge of all the details.

Ha. Haha.

I have sometimes thought that someone being dead means that you will never worry about them again, because their story has ended; they are right where you left them, and you will always know where they are, what their status is.

Offense taken, all the same. What an absolutely awful way to view life. I suppose everyone who is dead is better off dead, otherwise they wouldn't be dead, right? Not to mention the conclusion that perhaps the suicidal ought to take their own lives since their earthly ones suck so bad.

Regardless, I wish you the best in your theories, though I will continue to doubt them.

It always seems to boil down to theodicy in the end.

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