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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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What exactly is the problem with using with the world model imparted by some religion, in contexts where the world model of that religion has a track record of making accurate predictions and reason does not?

Well I personally think that's very sound, but there is indeed a problem still, which is that you have to be something first.

There's a specific color to your ultimate epistemology. There is one final arbiter to your internal thinking, one final authority, one personal catechism. And that is one's true faith even as you may recognize other frameworks to be instrumentally useful. When there's a conflict and your belief systems disagree, who wins? Much of the philosophical and theological debate isn't really about the modalities of applying belief systems in the nice conditions where they can be conciliated, but when they can't.

I do not mean to imply that it is not useful to have multiple lenses to view a situation from, it is in fact very helpful. But as you ask what the problem is, there it is: you may see they both have a point, but you can't serve two masters.

When there's a conflict and your belief systems disagree, who wins?

I think it's one of those "the hardest decisions are the ones that ultimately matter the least" sorts of things -- if there was some strong reason to choose one side over the other, the decision would be an easy one (unless it's hard because you're missing obtainable information, in which case you should maybe go obtain that information). In my case I'd say that generally, all else being equal, I'm going to go with whatever would sound intuitively right to someone unsophisticated (though all else is not equal very often). I'm not that attached to that approach though -- I have mostly settled on it as a matter of pragmatism, and it seems to be working pretty well so far.

You can't very well faithfully serve two masters but you can totally faithfully serve zero masters.