It was obvious to many ancients that the world is flat, the Chinese didn't learn otherwise until visited by Jesuits. It was obvious to many who knew the world is round that it was the center of the universe, with other astral bodies rotating around it. It was obvious that the species which exist on Earth have always existed, and have always been separate. It was obvious to pre-modern people that medicine aided their health, and your colleague Robin Hanson has written about how we evolved to show that we care via medicine, even when it doesn't work (as was generally the case prior to the 20th century). It was obvious that solid objects were not mostly empty space before we discovered electrons. It was obvious to Aristotle that some humans are naturally slaves. Modern science overturned so many of these beliefs because it helps make more accurate predictions. Many of your philosophical beliefs don't do that, and skeptics can stand on no less solid ground.
Notice that in order for those beliefs to no longer be obvious, there were even more obvious reasons that took their place. Those more obvious reasons are what we now believe. Is it reasonable to question the round earth in favor of the flat one because the foundations that the round earth rest on are simply obvious? Such as the fact that our observations are reliable. Less obvious beliefs get replaced by more obvious ones. The obviousness is still paramount.
This entails radical skepticism, since we should be skeptical that we have reached the most obvious beliefs for any given belief. How do we know we have achieved the correct level of obviousness? For example, the Philosophy of Bah is much less obvious than basic addition to most people, so how do we know that there is not a more obvious epistemology (this implies that this modification to the Philosophy of Bah undermines itself).
I don’t believe it does entail skepticism. If you already believe that “we should be skeptical that we have reached the most obvious beliefs for any given belief”, then I don’t think basing your foundational beliefs on obviousness changes anything. However, if you don’t already believe that, then basing your foundational beliefs on obviousness doesn’t automatically introduce skepticism. Notice how the beliefs are revised upon having more obvious experiences that replace the less obvious ones and that is what drops them from being reasonable to hold. There becomes a reason to doubt them.
Thank you for the response, and I believe I understand what you are saying, but correct me if I misunderstood. I think we are moving away from the Philosophy of Bah here. The Philosophy of Bah purports to be the solution to skepticism, since the foundation of knowledge is "Bah" level obviousness. There cannot be anything more obvious than "Bah" level obviousness, since otherwise, there would be some justified reason to be skeptical (even if just a little bit skeptical), which is what "Bah" level obviousness is supposed to avoid, so if there is a level of obviousness beyond the supposed Bah level, then it was never Bah level to begin with, which implies that our Bah intuition is actually not reliable after all.
I think what you are describing is closer to William James style Pragmatism. Sure, you can hold that, upon gathering new data, we should believe what is now more obvious. However, the challenge is to get to an epistemology that escapes skepticism: why does holding the next most obvious belief actually give us knowledge, and did we have knowledge beforehand, despite holding what was once the most obvious belief (as we ought to)?
I think holding the most obvious beliefs give us knowledge as long as there aren’t reasons to doubt them. We are justified in holding beliefs as long as we aren’t aware of the reasons to doubt them. When there are reasons to doubt them that we aren’t aware of yet, then we wouldn’t have knowledge, but we’d still have justification.
To add, if there is a single obvious counterexample (you listed many), then the Philosophy of Bah is false, since something cannot both be "Bah" level intuitive and false under the Philosophy of Bah.
Nice read, but perhaps you do not love philosophy as much as you think- Bah seems like an excellent conversation stopper! A resort to common sense, like a resort to logic, science, rationality, etc. are all parcel to the epistemological tradition of foundationalism. This leaves you with a series of other problems, I.e. how do you find which beliefs are foundational, but you may consider or ignore this at your own leisure.
The insinuation that existential risk from AI is a “secular miracle” is unfortunate, and is at odds with how both the median AI researcher and the CEOs of frontier labs have publicly characterized the risk.
Further, there is an obvious difference between existential risk and any other class of risk in how well base rates can help you in taking the outside view: whenever you ask “well how many times has the world ended before?” the answer will always necessarily be zero, no matter how risky the thing in question actually is.
Yes, I think anyone dismissing the idea that AI poses an existential risk is either dismissing the importance of intelligence or for some reason asserting that machine intelligence is impossible - which at this point is dismissing what anyone can see with their own eyes.
I understand the temptation of literally saying "Bah!" to a stupid proposal. At the same time, I think I would prefer sticking with your follow-up, “The premises of your argument are much less obvious than [my alternative premises]." Or, in Bayesian terms, "Your priors are less reasonable than my priors."
You’re going from the (IMO) correct point of "trying to justify more obvious propositions with less obvious propositions is pretty stupid" to jumping into the absurdity heuristic. By that count, you should just dismiss the obviously ridiculous idea that "humans ancestors are apes".
> Much the same goes for claims about secular miracles, like alien visitation or AI annihilation.
None of them are "secular miracles". Both of them are very firmly compatible with how the physical world works. For both of them, the answer is "look at the evidence" (including negative observations, of course), not "just dismiss them out of hand, a priori, without evidence, just because they sound silly".
I agree the evidence quite strongly points against alien visitation. Direct evidence is weak, absence of evidence is evidence of absence ; if aliens were here without much care to hide, you would expect to see much more evidence ; if aliens where here with care to hide, you wouldn’t see so much evidence.
AI annihilation is not. The observations we have is _entirely_ compatible with it. If AI were to annihilate humanity, you would obviously observe AI from becoming "sci-fi" to "toy" to "useful tool" to "good assistants" (<= YOU ARE HERE) to "on par with humans" to "on par with best humans" to "on par with focused groups of good humans".
The case for certain miracles, like Barbara Snyder’s miraculous healing and Jesus’ resurrection, is far better than alien visitation. But other than that, yes, good article.
Most people who do exactly this are the type of people who don't want to wrestle with counter-intuitive proposals, experience cognitive dissonance, and dismiss the whole thing as obvious or silly.
Take your statement: "If you’re excited by the latest UFO evidence, I’m happy to outsource my dismissal to Mike Huemer. But if Huemer didn’t exist, I’d just exclaim “Bah!“"
You're used to looking at issues, assessing the pros and cons, and then coming to a conclusion. Are rent control laws good or bad on net? Is immigration good or bad on net?
Your research is thorough and clear enough that you can make a firm conclusion. However, there are a thousand topics for which you haven't spent the hundreds of hours of research necessary to form a firm conclusion.
The correct position in those cases, as Socrates would have advocated, is to say you don't know. Saying "bah" means you know the answer and the answer is no. But you don't know. You should be honest and say so.
Suppose I tell you there's a man who works at a hardware store in Des Moines, Iowa who can shoot 3-point shots better than most NBA players. Is that true or false? You could put the time into researching this question, but you probably won't want to make the investment, which leaves you with an uncertain state of information. When one has an uncertain state of information, they should say they don't know.
"I’ll believe that aliens are visiting Earth when I hold their super-tech in my own hands and examine it with my own eyes."
The invention of the transistor came several months after the famous Roswell UFO incident. The transistor led to the integrated circuit, then the microprocessor, and eventually to the phone on which you are probably reading this comment.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but the transistor and integrated circuit are the most powerful enabling technologies of recent history. The modern world would not exist without them and if there was anything reverse-engineered from a crashed UFO that could plausibly be credited as human invented, that would be it.
Several things you "Bah" are not only likely true, but are even commonsensical once accepted as such. Accordingly I have one, commonsense response to your Philosophy of Bah. "BAH!"
It was obvious to many ancients that the world is flat, the Chinese didn't learn otherwise until visited by Jesuits. It was obvious to many who knew the world is round that it was the center of the universe, with other astral bodies rotating around it. It was obvious that the species which exist on Earth have always existed, and have always been separate. It was obvious to pre-modern people that medicine aided their health, and your colleague Robin Hanson has written about how we evolved to show that we care via medicine, even when it doesn't work (as was generally the case prior to the 20th century). It was obvious that solid objects were not mostly empty space before we discovered electrons. It was obvious to Aristotle that some humans are naturally slaves. Modern science overturned so many of these beliefs because it helps make more accurate predictions. Many of your philosophical beliefs don't do that, and skeptics can stand on no less solid ground.
Notice that in order for those beliefs to no longer be obvious, there were even more obvious reasons that took their place. Those more obvious reasons are what we now believe. Is it reasonable to question the round earth in favor of the flat one because the foundations that the round earth rest on are simply obvious? Such as the fact that our observations are reliable. Less obvious beliefs get replaced by more obvious ones. The obviousness is still paramount.
This entails radical skepticism, since we should be skeptical that we have reached the most obvious beliefs for any given belief. How do we know we have achieved the correct level of obviousness? For example, the Philosophy of Bah is much less obvious than basic addition to most people, so how do we know that there is not a more obvious epistemology (this implies that this modification to the Philosophy of Bah undermines itself).
I don’t believe it does entail skepticism. If you already believe that “we should be skeptical that we have reached the most obvious beliefs for any given belief”, then I don’t think basing your foundational beliefs on obviousness changes anything. However, if you don’t already believe that, then basing your foundational beliefs on obviousness doesn’t automatically introduce skepticism. Notice how the beliefs are revised upon having more obvious experiences that replace the less obvious ones and that is what drops them from being reasonable to hold. There becomes a reason to doubt them.
Thank you for the response, and I believe I understand what you are saying, but correct me if I misunderstood. I think we are moving away from the Philosophy of Bah here. The Philosophy of Bah purports to be the solution to skepticism, since the foundation of knowledge is "Bah" level obviousness. There cannot be anything more obvious than "Bah" level obviousness, since otherwise, there would be some justified reason to be skeptical (even if just a little bit skeptical), which is what "Bah" level obviousness is supposed to avoid, so if there is a level of obviousness beyond the supposed Bah level, then it was never Bah level to begin with, which implies that our Bah intuition is actually not reliable after all.
I think what you are describing is closer to William James style Pragmatism. Sure, you can hold that, upon gathering new data, we should believe what is now more obvious. However, the challenge is to get to an epistemology that escapes skepticism: why does holding the next most obvious belief actually give us knowledge, and did we have knowledge beforehand, despite holding what was once the most obvious belief (as we ought to)?
I think holding the most obvious beliefs give us knowledge as long as there aren’t reasons to doubt them. We are justified in holding beliefs as long as we aren’t aware of the reasons to doubt them. When there are reasons to doubt them that we aren’t aware of yet, then we wouldn’t have knowledge, but we’d still have justification.
“The Philosophy of Bah purports to be the solution to skepticism”
No, sir.
It purports to be the solution to extreme skepticism of everything.
Big difference.
It was because of our observations that people thought the earth was flat.
Yeah probably. What does that mean?
To add, if there is a single obvious counterexample (you listed many), then the Philosophy of Bah is false, since something cannot both be "Bah" level intuitive and false under the Philosophy of Bah.
Nice read, but perhaps you do not love philosophy as much as you think- Bah seems like an excellent conversation stopper! A resort to common sense, like a resort to logic, science, rationality, etc. are all parcel to the epistemological tradition of foundationalism. This leaves you with a series of other problems, I.e. how do you find which beliefs are foundational, but you may consider or ignore this at your own leisure.
The insinuation that existential risk from AI is a “secular miracle” is unfortunate, and is at odds with how both the median AI researcher and the CEOs of frontier labs have publicly characterized the risk.
Further, there is an obvious difference between existential risk and any other class of risk in how well base rates can help you in taking the outside view: whenever you ask “well how many times has the world ended before?” the answer will always necessarily be zero, no matter how risky the thing in question actually is.
Yes, I think anyone dismissing the idea that AI poses an existential risk is either dismissing the importance of intelligence or for some reason asserting that machine intelligence is impossible - which at this point is dismissing what anyone can see with their own eyes.
I feel like this Dilbert cartoon could be included:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/80616913@N00/4168356555
I understand the temptation of literally saying "Bah!" to a stupid proposal. At the same time, I think I would prefer sticking with your follow-up, “The premises of your argument are much less obvious than [my alternative premises]." Or, in Bayesian terms, "Your priors are less reasonable than my priors."
Great article overall, though you lost me with the "bah" to "AI annihilation".
If we homo sapiens were happily coexisting with Neanderthals, homo erectus, Heidelbergensis, etc., there might be reason to default to "bah".
However, as it is we know way too much about evolution by natural selection, its losers, and the power of intelligence, to be so dismissive.
You’re going from the (IMO) correct point of "trying to justify more obvious propositions with less obvious propositions is pretty stupid" to jumping into the absurdity heuristic. By that count, you should just dismiss the obviously ridiculous idea that "humans ancestors are apes".
> Much the same goes for claims about secular miracles, like alien visitation or AI annihilation.
None of them are "secular miracles". Both of them are very firmly compatible with how the physical world works. For both of them, the answer is "look at the evidence" (including negative observations, of course), not "just dismiss them out of hand, a priori, without evidence, just because they sound silly".
I agree the evidence quite strongly points against alien visitation. Direct evidence is weak, absence of evidence is evidence of absence ; if aliens were here without much care to hide, you would expect to see much more evidence ; if aliens where here with care to hide, you wouldn’t see so much evidence.
AI annihilation is not. The observations we have is _entirely_ compatible with it. If AI were to annihilate humanity, you would obviously observe AI from becoming "sci-fi" to "toy" to "useful tool" to "good assistants" (<= YOU ARE HERE) to "on par with humans" to "on par with best humans" to "on par with focused groups of good humans".
The case for certain miracles, like Barbara Snyder’s miraculous healing and Jesus’ resurrection, is far better than alien visitation. But other than that, yes, good article.
Did someone say "miracles"? Check out my pre-print "Evidence and Belief: David Hume in the Library of Babel": https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5243003
Are you sure you like philosophy?
Most people who do exactly this are the type of people who don't want to wrestle with counter-intuitive proposals, experience cognitive dissonance, and dismiss the whole thing as obvious or silly.
Bryan, I think you're making a mistake here.
Take your statement: "If you’re excited by the latest UFO evidence, I’m happy to outsource my dismissal to Mike Huemer. But if Huemer didn’t exist, I’d just exclaim “Bah!“"
You're used to looking at issues, assessing the pros and cons, and then coming to a conclusion. Are rent control laws good or bad on net? Is immigration good or bad on net?
Your research is thorough and clear enough that you can make a firm conclusion. However, there are a thousand topics for which you haven't spent the hundreds of hours of research necessary to form a firm conclusion.
The correct position in those cases, as Socrates would have advocated, is to say you don't know. Saying "bah" means you know the answer and the answer is no. But you don't know. You should be honest and say so.
Suppose I tell you there's a man who works at a hardware store in Des Moines, Iowa who can shoot 3-point shots better than most NBA players. Is that true or false? You could put the time into researching this question, but you probably won't want to make the investment, which leaves you with an uncertain state of information. When one has an uncertain state of information, they should say they don't know.
"I’ll believe that aliens are visiting Earth when I hold their super-tech in my own hands and examine it with my own eyes."
The invention of the transistor came several months after the famous Roswell UFO incident. The transistor led to the integrated circuit, then the microprocessor, and eventually to the phone on which you are probably reading this comment.
I'm not saying it was aliens, but the transistor and integrated circuit are the most powerful enabling technologies of recent history. The modern world would not exist without them and if there was anything reverse-engineered from a crashed UFO that could plausibly be credited as human invented, that would be it.
"It is absurd to seriously entertain claims about virgin births or demonic possession."
Demonic possession is completely real, though, with thousands upon thousands of attestations.
Several things you "Bah" are not only likely true, but are even commonsensical once accepted as such. Accordingly I have one, commonsense response to your Philosophy of Bah. "BAH!"
Economics, properly understood, IS philosophy. And vice-versa, often as not.
When I tell any Truth it is not for the sake of Convincing those who do not know it but for the sake of defending those who Do.
Public address, Blake's Notebook c. 1810