Some recommendations for evaluating your practice.

If you chance upon some form of practice - spiritual, personal development, otherwise - why would you want to evaluate if it actually works, when you can just go with it and see what happens? Here are some reasons: Because you've fallen for charlatans before. Because you have to invest your time and money, and both are precious to you. Because you know humans are biased. Simply because you're curious, and you want to know how the world actually works.

So... do you want to know if it really works, or do you just want to feel good? Both are fine, but if you do the latter, please don't pretend like you know. Be honest with yourself and others.

Journal your experiences.

Do you journal only the affirming experiences, or do you try to write down the negative too? Again, both can be good practice, but you need to be clear, be honest. Don't lie to yourself.

When you look for external proof, actively try to find sources that contradict, criticize, debunk your practice. Repeat that process after a while. New research may have surfaced, and your experience might have sharpened your eye.

Ask yourself: What do I do to account for the placebo effect? What do I do to counter my biases - most importantly, how do I deal with selection and confirmation bias?

Don't keep to your social media bubble. Try to actively seek out places where you are likely to encounter opposition, criticism, skepticism.

Do you try to be in-line with up-to-date, peer-reviewed science? If not, do you openly admit this being the case? Don't quote scientific literature if it agrees with you, but then when challenged, retreat to "it's not science, it's a lifestyle", "I really don't care about science" or somesuch.

Do check from time to time whether the ideas behind your practice are consistent with the rest of your worldview and generally accepted facts.

Perhaps the most important recommendation: Start prefacing your claims with "I think", "It might be the case", "I suspect", "I'm very confident" etc. Whenever you can, add the reason for why you think this way. It might seem silly, but it will change the way you relate to your own ideas - you train yourself to apportion your beliefs to the evidence and have good reasons for believing in them. I.e., it will make you more rational.

Are Atheists Mentally Ill?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100231060/are-atheists-mentally-ill/

This article, aptly titled "Are atheists mentally ill", informs us that, while nonbelievers are more intelligent than believers on average, they're also leading miserable, short lives spent in agony and depression. The article culminates in the claim that atheism is a form of mental illness, the implied conclusion being that one should start believing.

Now, like many commenters to that article, I sincerely do hope that the article is meant as satire. After all, the same site also features a rather clever article explaining why you can't use statistics to show that one individual person is more or less intelligent than one specific other person.

There is a lot to say about why such statistics are extremely dubious, my main contention being, as I've mentioned before, the suspicious absence of the standard deviation. There is also the issue of isolating one variable - faith vs non-faith - from all the others: In a culture where faith is accepted but atheism is not, of course atheists have good reason to be less happy than their religious friends; if you're more intelligent, it might imply that you see more clearly the evils in the world, therefore being unhappy, while at the same time intelligence might correlate with atheism (but not necessarily imply it); etc. etc.

And of course, every time someone mentions "a vast body of research", the dirty smell of a fish market on speed rises to the heavens.

The absolutely hilarious twist, though, is this: if you ask the question whether god exists, then "faith makes you happier" does not answer that question. If we were living in the matrix, controlled by machines, and the real world was a gehenna of destruction and chaos, then my belief in the illusory world created by the matrix does not change that fact. God either exists, objectively, or he doesn't. I I want to know the answer either way, both in case of the matrix and regarding god, even if the truth might make me extremely unhappy. Because, you know, if I don't know it I can do nothing about it.

No, faith is not a virtue, and trying to align one's worldview with actual reality is not "a tragic deficiency". It's merely an attempt to be honest. It's a form of humility strangely missing in those who place so much emphasis on following that most humble of godsons.

I don't get how people can believe that arguments like those are convincing.

It's not even about me defeding atheism against da evulz christians. I'd have exactly the same contentions with statistics biased in favour of atheism. (Only, somehow those rarely ever show up on my tiny screen. Probably because atheism really is inferior. Or because atheists are not stupid enough to even try...).

As I said, I hope that the article is satire. But I'm fairly certain it's not. And even if it were, for every Poe  there are a hundred people subscribing to such b.s. in sanctimonious, ernest sincerety. And that is just sad.

Unconscious Satanism vs. Free Will

Only recently, I encountered, once more, one of the oddest doctrines of christianity; which, even more oddly, seems to be very widespread, at least among literalists and fundamentalists. I don't know whether other mainstream religions have the same doctrine. It is, however, extremely popular with destructive and fringe cults.

I became interested, and I did a few google searches to find out about the history of said doctrine. However, I don't know its official name or proper theological terms to describe it, so my search was rather unsuccessful.

I'm talking about what I might call the "doctrine of unconscious satanism". In it, every non-believer is not only evil, but is a follower of Satan without even knowing it.

I will only touch the fact that the idea of unconscious, unintentional evil is somewhat dubious; or that, in the bible, god himself hardens the heart of the pharao, only to then turn around and punish his whole people in a true gorefest for the pharao's next actions; or that, back when I was a christian, there was also the opposite idea - Gorbachev, it was speculated, was an unconscious servant of god, much like Kyros in the old testament. (Yep, I'm that old, and that was indeed so long ago!)

Instead, let me focus on two highly interesting aspects:

1. This doctrine is almost unavoidable.

If it is true that one can only be in the Jesus camp or in Satan's host, and if it is also true that some nonbelievers claim to have nothing to do with the devil - then those people must either lie or not even know that they've been had. It is interesting to see that christians were not generally willing to presuppose that us puny nonbelievers are straight-out liars every time we open our mouth. Since they're essentially claiming that we're servants of the ultimate evil anyway, what difference does it make? Besides being a wee bit more polite, I mean. (But only really just a wee bit, if you think of it.)

I think the reason is more of a psychological than a theological nature: Christians were always forced to do business with non-christians, some might even fall in love with 'dem godless basterds, and it is just incredibly rude and impolite to accuse your local grocer (in my case, a muslim) of lying about having a contract with Old Nick, blood signature and all. If you think of them as completely deceived, that... well... it feels better. A bit. You're still surrounded by hordes of demon-ridden zombies. But at least they're not intentionally clearing the co-driver's seat for My Boyfriend When I'm In Hell.

And of course, you can't avoid it anyway. Once a dualist, always a scapegoater, as the old saying goes.

2. This doctrine is at odds with the christian doctrine of free will.

Once the devil has me, it is completely impossible to escape to find Jesus. The devil has complete control over the world; it's like the matrix, only even more so. The devil will always make me use the fiendish tools of logic and reason to convince me that there is not enough evidence, that auto-suggestion is not an adequate tool of determining objective facts, or that there are several major logical flaws in christianity's internal structure. Therefore, if the doctrine of unconscious satanism is indeed true, I have no chance, as an atheist, to ever decide that I want to become a christian.

So, how can a nonbeliever ever become a christian? After all, it seems that there are people like that. Does the devil trip up at times? How does one reconcile unconscious satanism with free will?

Of course, the easiest explanation is that ultimately, only god has the power to convert people. But that doesn't solve the problem - again, how does one reconcile that with free will? In what way is my will truly free, if it is simply a question of god intervening, or the devil gnawing away at my soul?

I'm sure there are numerous large theological volumes that have been written about just this subject. Sadly, my attempts at finding those have hitherto been very unsuccessful. If you have any pointers, please let me know - specifically, I would be interested in the history of this doctrine, since I have the impression that it is prefigured in the bible itself (god blinding pharao, Judas, etc.), and must also have its place in rabbinic thought in some form. I also hypothesize that it goes back to older, more rudimentary beliefs about spirits influencing people and demonic possession. I would really like to read something a bit more scientific about the subject.

"How To Change Your Beliefs And Identity"

Dear Stefan Pylarinos,

in our recent conversation on your youtube video about "How To Change Your Beliefs And Identity", you claimed that you can give me "hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes." From context, I infer that you are talking about people who have made changes following your own method which you detail in your videos and on your website.

Talking about your website, you claim there that you have a "7-Step Proven Method To Creating The Life Of Your Dreams" and that you know and can teach people "How To Change Any Negative Behaviour Or Emotion Instantly".

Regarding those claims, I have a challenge that I am sure you will enjoy to meet. After all, what's in it for you is nothing short of the best publicity you can ever hope to get: independently verified, irrefutable proof of your claims. You can find this challenge at the end of this blog posting, under the heading "The Challenge".

Before we start, I would like to make one thing abundantly clear: I do not doubt your sincerity. I am perfectly sure that you believe what you say, and that you are convinced that you're doing a tremendous amount of good for other people. The same goes for many other life coaches out there. To what degree that assessment is correct, of course, is an entirely different question.

A Few Remarks About Skepticism And Beliefs

Let's talk a bit about your latest contribution to our youtube conversation, and let me clarify a few things. Here is your text:

I have some feedback, if you're open to it. You have a very disempowering way of looking at things. You very much have a pessimistic or skeptical view of life coaches in my opinion, which is all fear based - it's a fear of being disappointed, or that change can't happen that fast. As long as you believe this, how is it going to help your life? How does believing what you just said going to empower you in any way? I can give you hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes.

First off, please stop calling this feedback. It violates pretty much every rule of feedback I ever learned in all the communication courses I took: It generalizes my remarks about self-help and life coaches to my overall worldview, it personalizes matters, it attempts to turn the factual problem I raised into my own personal issue, and most amusingly, it is an attempt at reading my mind. You don't know anything about my personal fears or disappointments, because I never talked to you about that. If you've taken any NLP course at all, you know that mind-reading is one of the main ways of distorting your internal representation of the world. It is also a good way of unnecessarily escalating a conflict, and in the case of a life coach, it is entirely unprofessional and unacceptable.

In short, I guess I might have struck a nerve there, ain't I?

Fast Change

Let's talk about "fast change" first, since it is a repeated topic here on my blog. (Probably even ad nauseam, sometimes, I'm afraid...) Do I believe that change can't happen "that fast"? (How fast is "that fast", anyway? Well, you claim instantaneous radical change on your webpage, so let's go with that.)

Well, I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility of very fast changes.

What I can say is that I have never witnessed any such change. What I can also say is that I probably should have witnessed at least a few, given that I have a sheet of paper in my drawer that says "NLP practitioner" in nice golden letters, that I have another certificate identifying me as a mediator, and I've looked into various "transformative" practices ranging from christianity to kabbalah to buddhism over the years. In my NLP class, there were about 30 peple, and we spent a lot of time with each other over the course of about 18 months. And yet, none of those 30 people ever reported any significant, mind-blowing, instant changes, even though NLP claims to be the most effective method ever, and the institute is probably the largest and most renowned NLP institute in my country. Are we to surmise that they all had those drastic mind-boggling revelations, but somehow all of them just kept their mouth shut about it? Perhaps they talked with each other and somehow kept me out of the loop? Possible. But not very convincing, if you ask me.

As I said, I don't even claim that instant, radical change can never ever happen. I'm sure it does. In fact, it happened to me, and I blogged about it here and here. I do think, however, that probably no-one has ever devised a fool-proof, 100% method of achieving it. If that were not so, how do you explain thousands upon thousands of self-help books and methods, all claiming total effectiveness, often contradicting each other? Don't start with "not everything is for everyone". The moment you admit that, you have essentially admitted that your specific method is not proven, not 100%.

In short, if anyone has a "100% proven method for achieving instant, radical and lasting change", where the heck do they hide their Nobel Prize, and why do they hide it in the first place? Looking around, this is the most sought-after knowledge since the goddarn frakkin' dawn of humanity. If you claim that you have a method like that, be prepared to back that up with evidence. This is a very, very, VERY extraordinary claim, almost as extraordinary as the claim of being able to walk on water or raise the dead. Evidence for this should be MASSIVE if you want it to be believable.

Change is chaotic and unpredictable, in my experience. We can learn how to ride the avalanche, how to steer it to a degree, and that's about all we can do.

Skepticism

You write that I have a "pessimistic or skeptical view of life coaches". You are spot on: In fact, I do, and it is backed by my own experience. Looking at the name of my blog, what else do you expect?

I don't claim that they're all completely bogus, and I do think that a lot of them actually have something useful to say. But I also think that most of them overgeneralize their own experience, have read a few books here and there, and create some brilliant positive, good-sounding, overly optimistic ideology from that, and then sell this as absolute truth. I also think that this is a devastatingly destructive way of going about things that ultimately hurts the customers way more than it benefits them.

But all that is just my own very personal rambling, and skepticism is not about that. Skepticism is about requiring evidence. You made a claim, you show us the evidence, we examine it. Simple, really, isn't it?

The Usefulness Of Beliefs

You asked me (rhetorically, I guess), "How does believing what you just said going to empower you in any way?"

I take from that that you have a very utilitarian view of beliefs. In fact, it is the view taught in NLP and next to all self-help and life coaching. I bought into that view myself, for a while.

Here's the catch: It is not TRULY utilitarian. It consistently overlooks the fact that beliefs, ultimately, are tools for survival. And they can't well function as that if they are not in some way realistic. Yes, beliefs can be disempowering, and we can rephrase and reframe a good many of our beliefs in better ways so as to better empower ourselves and others. But I have also found that I can not make myself believe something that I know to be objectively false. Have you ever tried to make yourself believe that you ate ice cream for breakfast, when you really ate toast? Go on and do it, I challenge you. I predict that you will fail. Your brain will simply reject it as not consistent with your experience.

How will my belief about life coaches empower me? By avoiding to fall for bullshit claims that don't actually work in reality. By avoiding to invest time and money in methods that fail to deliver.

And yes, I did try that stunt with the ice-cream, thanks for asking.

The Challenge

Okay, here's your challenge. As an honest entrepeneur, a decent human being and a great life coach, I'm sure you'll be happy to meet the following criteria:

1. Hundreds of Examples

Regarding the hundreds of examples of people that have made amazing changes, I am looking forward to having all of those reply to this posting. Specifically, I require that the following criteria be met:

1. Every entry has to come from a different person.
2. Every single one of them has to be properly authenticated, so we can make sure that none of them are faked. I am flexible about the method of authentication; however, I'm sure our audience and your prospective customers will have a keen and skeptical eye on any method you come up with.
3. In order to reflect permanent change, the radical instantaneous experience has to have taken place more than 6 months ago.
4. The report has to be detailed and sufficiently void of vague language.
5. The person has to attest that the change they achieved was actually the change that they planned to achieve before the experience.
6. Your influence on and involvement with the change have to be obvious in the report.
7. The challenge is met if there are at least 200 ("hundreds") such entries within the next month. For starters, I'll be happy to provisionally declare the challenge met if we have 50 entries within one week.

2. 7-Step Proven Method

Regarding your "7-Step Proven Method To Creating The Life Of Your Dreams", kindly answer the following questions:

1. Without revealing any trade secrets, what is the main psychological method that you base your method on?
2. What renowned institution performed the scientific tests necessary to devise the proof you claim?
3. What methods of psychological and sociological measurement were employed?
4. Were the tests double-blind?
5. Were the tests quantitative or qualitative?
6. How many subjects were tested?
7. What measures were taken to avoid, or at least account for, confirmation and selection bias?

I am looking forward to literally hundreds of replies...

With kind regards,

Betlamed

What's Wrong With Statistics (at least the ones you read in the news)

On the web or in newspapers, you can read excellent articles such as this. In it, you can read how the male brain is 10% larger on average, but the female brain has more connections. Men think more with the left side of the brain and are therefore more logical. But women have more nerve connections and a bigger corpus callosum (that's the part of the brain that connects the left and right halves), so they use both hemispheres of their brain more in-sync and are therefore better at intuition, communication... basically, women are better at everything that really matters, while men are good for the workforce, as cannon fodder, and for fixing your PC.

Well, the latter isn't even true anymore, now that the majority of 'puters are tablets that cannot be fixed if you don't have a contract with Apple(TM). D'uh.

Sounds about right, doesn't it?

Well... it doesn't. I often had this vague feeling that those claims were somehow wrong. Regardless of whether statistics were used to prove that men were superior (which is rarely the case nowadays) or (much, much more often!) that women are the epitome of goodness; or to show that immigrants are criminals; or that religious people live longer than atheists; or even when the statistics seemed to support my prejudices, showing that the roman catholic clergy are more prone to become child molesters than the rest of us. Something was... off.

Maybe it's just because I was brought up on the firm idea that stereotypes are bad, period. Or it's because I'm a Jewish Studies minor. At any rate, I tend to mistrust generalizations over large groups of people. The pharisees are hypocrites? Really? Every single last one of them did nothing all day except feigning learnedness and empathy, while really clinging to an absurd law and forcing it on others? None of them had families to support? None of them earned their living with hard work? They didn't build schools for the poor and unprivileged? Look up the facts and be surprised.

I'm getting off topic, yeah.

So, basically, I read all those statistical facts, had a hard time believing them, but never could I pinpoint exactly what was wrong.

Then, some fine day, I talked to a friend who knows her way around maths. I mentioned one of those suspicious statistics. One about men and women, probably. And, with a conspiratorial smile, after she had blown out the candle and looked around the room lest anyone should overhear what secrets she had to tell, she whispered the following words into my ear: "Standard deviation, my friend, standard deviation!"

This came as a huge revelation, which I am glad to pass on to you now.

Here's the deal:

Let's say you are trying to score a goal from the penalty spot. Let's also say that you're not exactly the greatest soccer player never to have roamed the field of the Allianz Arena. You shoot 10 times. 5 times, you shoot 10 meters to the left of the goal. The other 5 times, you shoot 10 meters to the right. Not counting those times when you didn't even manage to hit the ball.

So on average, you have hit the goal exactly 10 times. Right in the middle. That's a 100% success rate, right there.

And that's exactly what's wrong with the article quoted above. And that's exactly what's wrong with about 95% of all articles that quote statistics. They all tell you the average, but not the standard deviation. That's about as useful as telling you that the boiling point of water is 75.5°C.

It's not exactly relevant whether women have a, say, 10% larger corpus callosum on average, if the standard deviation is 2 times larger than that. It won't mean that any specific woman you meet will top any specific man in any one area with any reliability. It doesn't help us much to know that the female sexual partners of circumcised men run a slightly lower risk of cervical cancer (they don't, by the way). Not if sexual faithfulness, personal hygiene and the average time between sexual encounters are much more indicative factors.

So... don't believe me, I implore. But the next time you read your newspaper, look out for that standard deviation. I bet you won't find it.

By the way, the boiling point of water is 75.5°C, according to Wikipedia. At 8000 meters above sea level, of course.

The Münchhausen Trilemma, the First Cause and the Infinite Regress

This is yet another topic that I have put off for far to long. Initially, I wanted to make a youtube video on the topic, but it never came to be, so here it comes in written form, which is probably better anyway. It's going to be a long ride, please bear with me.

The Starting Point

One favourite argument of First Cause proponents is a reductio ad absurdum of the opposite. I get to hear it from theists, but of course you don't have to be a theist to put it forward (except in the strict philosophical sense, where god is simply the absolute, not necessarily a person or an intelligence).

The argument works something like this:

1. Every event has a cause.
2. An infinite regress of causes leads to an absurd result.
3. Therefore, there had to have been a First Cause.

The Reductio In General

A reductio ad absurdum is, of course, a valid form of argument - some go so far as to say that it's the queen of arguments. It works to exclude answers from the spectrum of possibilities. If an answer leads to impossible results, then that answer cannot be true. That's just simple logic.

This is not at all far-fetched or highly philosophical. Proofs of that nature occur, for example, in computer science, where it is customary to show that if a proposition were true, then it would solve the halting problem. Alan Turing proved that the halting problem is unsolvable, therefore the proposition in question is false. (If you suspect that I have a weird tendency to bring Turing into my articles, you're right. Read up on his biography - the guy was a genius, a war hero, an uber-geek, and a highly tragic figure. He committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple. No kidding.)

It's a way to rule out impossibilities - the Sherlock Holmes way of excluding impossible options so you can focus on those that are indeed realistic.

If you try to use this argument to prove one specific possibility, your success hinges on the following conditions:

1. The premises of your argument must be agreed upon.
2. Your argument must be consistent.
3. You must show that you have actually excluded all options except the one you're trying to prove.
4. The one option you're proposing must, itself, not lead to absurd results.

So let's have a look at the reductio argument for a First Cause to see whether it meets those criteria.

The Premises

"Every Event Has a Cause"

Can we agree that every event is caused by something else? At first glance, it certainly seems that way, as we would be hard-pressed to come up with an event of which we can show that it is uncaused. (As always in such discussions, I hereby make a sacred vow not to invoke quantum theory.) We know that everything is caused - we know it from our experience. Indeed, we know it from every experience that any human being ever had. That's an awful lot of experience!

Aye - but it's still experience. And that's a bummer.

It's called inductive reasoning. A synthetic proposition a posteriori, as Kant would have called it. What that means is that, while it seems extraordinarily probable that the next event we encounter will have a cause, just like all the events we encountered in the past, we don't know that for sure. We cannot be absolutely certain. We can predict, with almost 100% certainty, that it will be the case - but almost 100% is not the same thing as exactly 100%!

So, actually, no, we cannot agree on the first premise. Not to the degree that would be necessary for a point about the absolute, a priori, First Cause.

(Oh, and, by the way - if the First Cause caused everything else, where the heck did causality come from? If the First Cause caused it, then using it to prove the First Cause is, itself, circular. If the First Cause didn't cause it, then what caused it, and how can the First Cause be said to be... well... the First Cause?)

"An Infinite Regress Leads to an Absurd Result"

This is, obviously, the core of the argument. The logic here is pretty impressive and has fascinated me from my first adolescent forays into philosophy until now:

1. There is an infinite chain of cause and effect.
2. An infinite chain cannot be traversed.
3. In order to ultimately explain any given event (like, this moment right now), you have to traverse it's causal chain.
4. Therefore, you can never explain any event.

This is impeccable logic. For as long as I thought that ultimate explanations are a good and even necessary thing, it caused me lots of pain. Then I started to relax. Now I find it rather amusing.

Of course, on top of relying on causality being universal and absolute, this introduces even more premises that have to be agreed upon.

Sidenote #1: Is Causality a Property of Things?

It's an interesting question to ask yourself: What exactly IS a cause? When we say that B is caused by A, do we actually mean that B has an intrinsic property that can be called "is caused by A"? Is a cause a property of things?

I'd like to introduce a little example here. Picture a child throwing a stone at a window. Predictably, the window breaks. But what exactly is the cause of the window's demise?

• The child is the cause? That's one intuitively correct answer, of course.
• The stone? Yet another correct answer.
• The momentum that the stone put into the glass?
• The child's intention in throwing the stone?
• The child's brain's activity that represents said intention? (Note: it does not CAUSE the intention. It IS the intention, on a biological level.)
• The bad upbringing of said child by her parents?
• Society at large?

I'm sure that you can come up with a few more examples, some more useful than others. Some might even be comically absurd or mere esoteric hypotheses.

(And of course, you can put most of them into an order of temporary succession. Did I mention that causality is not necessarily temporal? I won't go into it here, it's a fun little riddle for long lonesome (k)nights.)

The point is, though, that you can invent any number of causes. Some are practical and some might be rather obscure, but they're still possible answers. Nobody can keep you from naming the air that the child breathed as one cause of the child's throwing the stone.

This may lead us to the hypothesis that causality is not simply an attribute of things. If it were, then how come we can come up with any number of possible answers to the simple question "What caused event X", all of which are equally true? If causality were a naturally existing, universal attribute of things outside our brains, then there should be exactly one answer to this question, and everyone should be able to agree on it (stupidity and willful ignorance aside).

I propose that causality is, at least partially, a result of human thought processes. Of course, our brains evolved to work in the real world, so most probably there is some kind of correlation to natural phenomena outside ourselves. But it is not fair game to simply call this outside factor "causality" and leave it at that.

Sidenote #2: Is Causality a String of Events?

In order for the original argument to work, causality must be thought of as a string of causation leading to the past. Picture it as a string of pearls put on a chain. A very long chain. Very, very long.

I think that this is an oversimplification. It is useful (and customary) to distinguish two different classes of causes: necessary and sufficient causes.

"The street is wet." - Well, it rained the whole day. That would be sufficient to explain the wet street. Since there were no other events to explain the effect, it is also its necessary cause.

On the other hand, picture a slightly more complex scenario: A wedding. It is highly recommended for the bride to be present. The same goes for the bridegroom, the priest, and the witnesses. On top of that, it's rather practical if they all agree to have a wedding, and if nobody shows up at the last moment to speak up now, rather than be silent forever. So we can easily say that every person's presence is a necessary cause (all of them, seperately), while the whole array of conditions together form the sufficient cause.

Ah-ha! It seems that there may be any number of necessary causes, and all of them together can be said to be the sufficient cause of an event.

So, if we look only at sufficient causes, then we do get our string back... or do we?

Remember the child from further up. The child had to throw the stone a certain way (necesary). The glass had to be there (necessary). The wind had to blow the right way and strength (necessary). Together, they form a sufficient cause. But every single one of those necessary causes depends on a new string of causation. It is not easy to see how this tree of causation would, at some point, magically collapse into one simple string that leads to one First Cause.

If causality were just a succession of pearls on a chain - shouldn't it then be trivially simple to point out the one cause that immediately precedes any given effect?

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it's yet another telltale sign that the idea of a string of causation leading back to the First Cause is just a bit too simplistic.

Sidenote #3: Do We Have Infinite Regress Anyway?

Furthermore, it seems to me that we can make up any number of causes in-between causes.

"The child threw the stone, and it caused the glass to break." - Yes, and in between this and that, the stone followed a certain ballistic curve. At about 1/3rd of its way, the wind moved the stone slightly to the left. So the position of the stone at this point, its momentum, and the wind, ultimately caused the glass to break. Yes, and about another 1/3rd from this point to the window, a bird flew by and caused pressure in the air, which moved the stone again. So ultimately, the bird caused the breaking of the glass.

See what I'm aiming at? At every single position along its way, it can be said that the stone's current position, plus its momentum, caused its further path.

Between any event and its direct necessary cause, you can always find another cause. Hypothetically, this goes on ad infinitum (again, not taking quantum mechanics into account).

It's a bit like natural and real numbers: Between any two natural numbers, there are always infinitely many real numbers. You cannot traverse them. You can only jump over them to reach the next natural number.

But if that is the case, then it doesn't matter whether we have a First Cause at the beginning. Right between the First Cause and its First Effect, there was already an infinity of causal relationships. We have an infinite regress anyway, always, regardless. So the First Cause doesn't actually solve the problem. Instead, it introduces one more problem by setting up a dogma for no good reason.

Did We Cover All Options?

As stated above, if we want to use our argument from absurdity to show that our favoured option is true, we have to make sure that we excluded all possible options.

The Third Option: Circular Logic

As the title of this article suggests, there is at least one additional option that we have not covered.

In its classical form, the Münchhausen trilemma states that, on top of infinite regress or a first cause, you can always resort to circular causality. Of course, as we all know, circularity is a logical no-go. So is the infinite regress, and so is dogma. That's the whole point of the trilemma: All options are equally absurd.

But I'm aiming at something else here. I'm not exactly certain whether the third option actually is one. Neither am I convinced that it's not. And, reading a few articles about it, I get the impression that really, nobody is to certain in that regard. Circularity might be seen as a variation of the infinite regress, but there is also a point to be made that it's a variation of setting up an absolute. Or that it's a third, independent option. I don't know. And as long as there is no good argument to exclude any of those options, we cannot exclude the possibility that there is at least one more possible answer to the question of the ultimate cause. Maybe there are even more? How would you go about showing that such a thing is impossible?

Ironically, the official doctrine of the catholic church, which obviously opts against infinite regress and in favour of an absolute First Cause, is suspiciously reminiscent of the circularity variation: All existing things need sustenance, but god provides its own sustenance and is therefore absolute... or... circular... or... infinitely regressing... or... To me, this has always seemed a lot like an excuse. They don't want to put the absolute First Cause right in your face, but they want to set it up anyway, so they invent something like an "additional realm of being", in which circularity is somehow allowed.

So, Do I Propose An Infinite Regress?

Short answer: no. I cannot stress this enough. My dear friends on the theist side always seem to get this wrong, pretty much regardless of what I say. I am not proposing that an infinite regress is a good solution. I concur that an infinite regress leads to an absurd conclusion. But I also state that setting up any one "thing" (i.e., god) as an absolute First Cause cannot save us from the anxious question of what caused it. And of course, circularity doesn't help us either.

I think it's an unsolvable problem. And I think that there is a very good reason for why it is unsolvable.

If Causation Is Not A Property Of Things, What Is It?

I think the answer lies in the fact that causation is not a property of things. We should treat it more like part of our model of the universe, rather than like part of the universe itself. A highly successful part of this model, mind you - but still, the model is not the airplane.

That way, we can opt for either one of the three options, depending on what is more practical in a given context.

For example, with regard to societies and human interactions, a somewhat circular approach is probably more than appropriate: Complex systems of interactions looping back to their causes.

With regard to classical Newtonian physics, of course, linear causality makes perfect sense: the ballistic curve is strictly deterministic.

I don't have an example for where it's useful to use a dogmatic First Cause. I'm hesitant to say it, but it might actually make sense in cosmology. It's perfectly okay to say that your model of the whole universe is based upon a First Cause, simply because it may be rather practical to do so - as long as you don't think that you're actually talking about actual properties of the universe itself, there is no issue with that.

Of course, there is probably a very good reason for why we don't seem to find the answer to Münchhausen's trilemma: Causality may be hardwired right there in our brain. The reason for that being that it just works great within nature. (Now we're close to circularity.) The reason for that being that there is a correlate of causality in the universe, which itself has no reason at all. (A dogma!) Or which is caused by something else which we haven't discovered yet, which is caused by something else which is caused...

Summing It Up

So... after all this long-winded talking, here's the executive summary of my contentions:

1. Causality is only derived from experience.
2. Causality is not necessarily linear.
3. There may be infinite causes between each pair of cause and effect.
4. Causality is not a property of the universe, but rather of the way our mind works.
5. All answers that we can give are equally unsatisfying.
6. There may not be an ultimate answer.

If you enjoyed this, you might want to take a look at the addendum here.

Evolution as a Study in Relativism

There is a lot of talk going on about creationism and evolution. A lot of it is politics, a lot is moneymaking, and another part is just bad science.

I always had the vague feeling that the loud protesting about 6000 years, fossiles and carbon dating overshadows an underlying issue that somehow seemed much more important to me.

After reading the first half of Dawkins' Selfish Gene, I think I can now point to what this issue is, and why I think it matters.

As is always the case with me, it's not so much about content, and more about forms of thinking.

See, when you start to understand what evolution means, it forces you to re-evaluate a few basic concepts. For example, what exactly does it mean to be alive? If life on earth started out as some "replicator molecules", who simply replicated themselves due to their chemical properties - can that be called "life" in a meaningful way? We might hesitate here. On the other hand, looking at the people surrounding me, I'm pretty sure that I can safely label them as "alive".

So somewhere in between, a line needs to be drawn. We need to be able to distinguish between not-alive and alive. A stone and a monkey.

Right? Right?

Well, in fact, no. I don't think so.

I'm sure that we can come up with some definition of life that would allow us to draw a line somewhere. I'm sure that scientists do that all the time. And that is a good thing.

However, I also think that those distinctions do not exist in nature. And evolution is like one big road sign pointing this fact out at every turn. It's like when you walk up a mountain and you're deeply given to all the nice flowers by the side of the road, and then at some point, you turn around, and suddenly you realize how far up you've already gone. It's almost like a shock. No one single step brought you there. It's not fair to say that the last step was the one that changed you from "not-there" to "there". Every little step contributed its part, and by themselves, none of those steps was too impressive. Only when you look at all of them, in the very order that they appeared, do they lead you up the mountain.

And this concept is pretty much unacceptable to any religious mindset, especially the fundamentalist one. For that mindset is deeply rooted in metaphysical, absolute assertions: Life is what god gave to Adam. Good is one thing, evil its opposite. Dogs are dogs, and cats are cats. There can be nothing in-between, so they cannot be related.

And, what matters more, knowledge is either absolute, or it is not knowledge. (In that one regard, I thank the presuppositionalists for being unusually candid about a subject that most christians like to sweep under the rug to some degree.)

When those assertions are shaken - who knows what might happen? Definitely nothing good, wholesome, healthy.

And so it goes, across the whole spectrum of human knowledge. It's not about whether the earth is 6000 years old, or 4 billion. Not really. I mean, sure, that's an interesting and important question, but - in everyday human experience, it doesn't really matter. The earth is not a sphere, either. It can be described, with some accuracy, as something resembling a sphere. But regardless of how accurately you phrase it, there will always remain some margin of error. And that, it seems, is completely unacceptable to our religious friends.

What DOES matter is to what degree you can accept that your knowledge is limited, your concepts are arbitrary, you are always wrong about everything to some degree, and you will eventually die.

Because that's the way to open your mind to new ideas, better theories, better solutions, which might perhaps help humanity survive the challenges that this century has in store for us.

ETA:

Incidentally, rozeboosje has just explained what I meant by that mountain-climbing metaphor in a very instructive video which you can view here:

Or in other words, evolution is a bit like the distant aunt visiting the family, who sees the family's youngest and goes "Oh my, how much you've grown" (while the child is desperately trying to escape her firm loving grip). And all the while, the child and his family haven't realized how he's grown, because they've been around him all the time and never noticed the bit-by-bit, gradual change that occurred.

I Do Not Believe In Energy

Okay, let's be more specific here.

Of course there is energy. It is equivalent to mass times speed of light squared. It is present as electromagnetism, the weak and the strong force, as sunlight and movement, and of course, it runs through all of our bodies in the form of chemo-electrical nerve impulses and chemically bound ions, as long as we're alive.

What I do not believe in is chi (or qi), a mystical fluidum that cannot be measured or otherwise objectively perceived, but is still supposed to somehow "be there", ready to be influenced and manipulated by puny humans.

I think that there is good reason to only believe what is actually proven to be there. And there is also excellent reason to mistrust anyone who claims to be able to manipulate unproven mystical powers, even moreso if they make a big fat show of it and have a huge flock of followers.

Ever wondered about those qi gong "masters" who are seemingly able to throw people around the room against their will and beyond any physical explanation - just by focusing their qi? Well, duh... perhaps it's time to look into why those "masters" only ever seem to be able to demonstrate their magic powers on their own followers - and how, as soon as they are to work their qi on a non-believer, they always come up with the wildest of excuses. Like, "today is a bad day for qi gong" (lame), "It would be unethical to show this to the uninitiated" (really? why?), or my all-time favourite "I would hurt him so bad it's not worth it" (at least that one's funny, albeit unintentionally so).

So... no qi going 'round. And still, I'm an avid qi gong practitioner, and as the title of this blog suggests, I'm also into tantra... an awful lot, actually.

So how can I rationalize this obvious contradiction away?

Umm... *rolls up biblical sleeves* well, it's all symbolic, ya knows?

Naaah. Not symbolic AT ALL. Quite the contrary, actually.

I like to distinguish three seperate elements: a) my actual physical/mental experience at that moment; b) my conscious visualisations; c) my theory and interpretation of the experience

In other words:

I feel whatever I'm feeling while I'm consciously breathing and working my PC muscle; this feeling is there whether I can explain it or not. If I start conceptualizing this feeling, I can compare it to other things - it feels LIKE an energy flow through my body. (That obviously doesn't mean that it IS an energy flow; big fat conceptual mistake there! Our inner perceptions are obviously flawed, as our nervous system isn't very much equipped for that - ever had a wound in your mouth, and touched it with your tongue? It feels much bigger than it really is, doesn't it?)

By visualising this energy flow, the feeling gets even more intense. The line between the feeling and the visualization gets blurred and sometimes completely vanishes, and thus in my mind at that moment, the feeling IS an energy flow. My mind has no other frame of reference, and thus, this is what it will come up with.

Now, when theorizing about it later on, one will most probably turn to the philosophical framework one is used to: If you're a christian, you might interpret this as the Holy Spirit moving through you (though I highly doubt that there are many christians out there practicing tantra, but what do I know). If you're a taoist, you might call it the qi flowing through your meridians. The yogi might find her kundalini awakening. And if you're a materialist like myself, you will perhaps look for clenched and stretched muscles, nerves transmitting signals of relaxation, and the reward center in the brain getting activated.

In all those cases, the experience itself can only be beneficial. Your ideology or your interpretation really doesn't change the experience, at least as long as it doesn't keep you from having it. (I have already been tempted to teach a few past-middle-aged christian ladies how to breathe into their pelvic floors... believe me, resisting this temptation wasn't easy... NOT AT ALL EASY!!!)

So the interpretation doesn't really matter, there might as well be none at all... does it?

Well, yes and no. Sure, we can all just join hands and enjoy.

But for one, as the buddha taught, coming up with explanations is so deeply human as to be almost unavoidable.

And secondly - and, I think, much more importantly - if we can come up with a good and solid scientific explanation, tested with the utmost scientific vigour, then we can use this knowledge for even more pleasure, even more healing, even better orgasms. Of course the trap is to make a sport and a tournament out of it and thus spoil the fun - but this trap is there anyway, even the most "spiritual" people somehow manage to engage in contests of who is "even more spiritual" than the next person.

So, to sum it up: Enjoy the experience, and enjoy making up an explanation for the experience later on! And if you cannot find any explanation, don't worry - it'll be fun anyway.