The Statistical Worldview

[integral]

The problem I have with this worldview is that it doesn't work in practice.

Go show me all the statistics on why cholesterol causes heart attacks, and then look at it again to understand all of it is wrong.

You can prove everything with statistics.

Edited Tuesday at 04:26 PM by integral

[zurew]

Some of you seem extremely confused about this.

The view is just something that represents credence in probabilities and affirms that there can be multiple contributing causal factors to things and it takes into account alternative hypotheses for any given thing.

 

You can have two people who have this view and they can still disagree on epistemic norms, epistemic approaches and they can disagree on the assigned probabilities to things.

The core idea is just to have a meta-frame that allows you to capture the nuance of the world. It doesnt gurantee anything about forming true beliefs about things in the world, its just given that it makes you entertain alternative hypotheses for any given thing, it gives you the possibility to explore more options (rather than just ignoring alternative options).

it makes you ditch the law of excluded middle and you represent most (if not all of your beliefs and hypotheses) in probabilities or credence talk (likely, not likely etc) rather than in a regular (true-false) dichotomy.

Edited Tuesday at 05:01 PM by zurew

[Joseph Maynor]

1 hour ago, zurew said:

Some of you seem extremely confused about this.

The view is just something that represents credence in probabilities and affirms that there can be multiple contributing causal factors to things and it takes into account alternative hypotheses for any given thing.

 

You can have two people who have this view and they can still disagree on epistemic norms, epistemic approaches and they can disagree on the assigned probabilities to things.

The core idea is just to have a meta-frame that allows you to capture the nuance of the world. It doesnt gurantee anything about forming true beliefs about things in the world, its just given that it makes you entertain alternative hypotheses for any given thing, it gives you the possibility to explore more options (rather than just ignoring alternative options).

it makes you ditch the law of excluded middle and you represent most (if not all of your beliefs and hypotheses) in probabilities or credence talk (likely, not likely etc) rather than in a regular (true-false) dichotomy.

Interesting.  But the statement X probability is reasonable to accept still obeys the true vs. false dichotomy.

[zurew]

53 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Interesting.  But the statement X probability is reasonable to accept still obeys the true vs. false dichotomy.

Thats just doing the move where you put the probability or the credence talk inside the proposition itself - and sure you can do that, and if you want I can make it more precise by saying  - if you include that kind of language inside the expressed proposition then those propositions will be true or false.

But my understanding is that ditching the excluded middle doesnt commit you to  saying that there isn't any single proposition that is true or false, its just saying "truth is not automatically bivalent for every proposition".  

But this is besides the point, the point is just to capture nuance, where there is nuance.

[zurew]

Carl is ducking an interesting talk about inference to the best explanation again .

This guy would rather waste his time arguing with Leo over confused "proper" definitions than possibly have a substantive and fruitful talk about IBE. 

[Carl-Richard]

On 12.5.2026 at 6:26 PM, integral said:

The problem I have with this worldview is that it doesn't work in practice.

Go show me all the statistics on why cholesterol causes heart attacks, and then look at it again to understand all of it is wrong.

You can prove everything with statistics.

You don't prove a causal relationship by finding a correlation. That requires a bit more. You're simply pointing out the difference between a causal relationship and a spurious correlation.

 

On 12.5.2026 at 6:43 PM, zurew said:

Some of you seem extremely confused about this.

The view is just something that represents credence in probabilities and affirms that there can be multiple contributing causal factors to things and it takes into account alternative hypotheses for any given thing.

 

You can have two people who have this view and they can still disagree on epistemic norms, epistemic approaches and they can disagree on the assigned probabilities to things.

They can even disagree on metaphysics, like "is the world physical or mental?".

 

On 12.5.2026 at 6:43 PM, zurew said:

The core idea is just to have a meta-frame that allows you to capture the nuance of the world. It doesnt gurantee anything about forming true beliefs about things in the world, its just given that it makes you entertain alternative hypotheses for any given thing, it gives you the possibility to explore more options (rather than just ignoring alternative options).

it makes you ditch the law of excluded middle and you represent most (if not all of your beliefs and hypotheses) in probabilities or credence talk (likely, not likely etc) rather than in a regular (true-false) dichotomy.

Pretty on point.

[integral]

12 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

You don't prove a causal relationship by finding a correlation.

In practice we use statistics to prescribe medication to patients

In practice doctors view all correlation as causation. They have no awareness of the difference

Huge chunks of societal belief systems are based on false causation from statistical correlation

At some point in the 70s it clicked that you could use science to run your scams, and they ran with it for 50 years

[integral]

On 5/8/2026 at 6:27 PM, Carl-Richard said:

When you're in the statistical worldview,

- you are acutely aware that many things can influence one thing, and their relationship is statistical (quantitative). Some things can have a strong influence, other things less of a strong influence, and some things only a weak influence (e.g. the butterfly effect). In reality, there is a huge web of influences, where each influence is a particular node or string on the web, and each node is weighted with a certain strength of influence or statistical value.

For example, ADHD can be influenced by beliefs, experiences, genetics, etc. Even if you think one of these things have a stronger influence, it doesn't mean it can only be reduced to that thing, and talking as if it can be reduced to that thing can lead to problems with accurately talking about and perceiving reality. Words like "partially", "mostly", "some of", "many", are often used.

- you often say things are "probably so", "most likely", "less likely", "probably not". It does not preclude you from making firm and exclusive analytical statements (e.g. "given x and y, z is true or false, coherent or inconsistent"). But you are very acutely aware when something is statistical and probabilistic so you don't overstep or overgeneralize or oversimplify.

- you realize a thing can be many things at the same time. There is often not just one way to do things, or one thing you can do at any one time. "Should I meditate every day or should I do retreats where I meditate more deeply?" Why not both? "That's the placebo effect". Why can't it be a real effect and placebo at the same time? "Trans is social contagion". Why can't some of it be real trans and some of it be social contagion (both within and across individuals)? "Yes — both" is very often realized to be the answer.

 

The statistical worldview is a way to conceptualize nuance and holism, as opposed to black-and-white thinking and naive reductionism. It's also related to the modern scientific framework of putting numbers and quantities to these relationships. Modern science, especially human-oriented science (e.g. medicine, psychology), primes this kind of statistical thinking where everything is viewed through statistical associations (mediation, moderation, correlation) and ways of quantifying them (effect sizes, correlation coefficients, measures of statistical significance). If you do enough scientific thinking, in the right fields of science, you will eventually end up viewing a large chunk of the world this way.

This is not the statistical worldview from a scientific lens. Statistics is the wrong word to use.

You're mixing, probabilistic thinking + a multifactorial thinking + dialectical thinking + holistic thinking

It makes more sense to call it probabilistic systems thinking.

True scientific statistics is much closer to reductionist thinking method, trying to narrow down a messy world into variables we can measure.

And then when you have no epistemic sense or integrity, they write a research paper pawning a correlation for causation 

Edited 5 hours ago by integral

[Carl-Richard]

On 11.5.2026 at 8:36 AM, zurew said:

Okay I grant that under most interpretations "actually breaking the laws of physics" is a gibberish statement, but I think I can give a sense  under  which it is intelligible.

Lets say that by nature we just mean the Universe, and the Universe has certain behavioral patterns (behavior that repeats and that can be observed and replicated given the necessary conditions universally everywhere) and that would be basically the "actual" laws of physics. "Breaking" it would mean changing those behavioral patterns, meaning - even if you replicate the exact same set of conditions, the behavior that applied before do not apply anymore. 

Regarding behavior that repeats: what about novel events like Michael Jackson being born? But isn't every birth also novel? Every cycle, every repetition? It's just a change in the particular configuration of the entire universe. Also, I don't see how you could separate behavior from the conditions. Like if an elephant spawned 40 ft up in the air in front of your front porch, how would you know whether that wasn't supposed to happen? "Laws" are just best guesses best on previous observations: per Hume, you can't say for sure whether you have found "the conditions" that produces the behavior. So not sure where we are going with this.

 

On 11.5.2026 at 8:36 AM, zurew said:

But we can do fine-tuning or miracle hypotheticals if they are easier to make sense (where lets say multiple limbs are fully grown back under 1 second).  

Im just curious how you run through miracle examples, and supernatural examples , and how you update in principle towards supernaturalism being a more probable explanation for any given event. Because, I have seen your criticism of Bernardo, and I genuinely struggle to see it in principle how you can update towards a more robust supernatural view using abductive or any kind of reasoning. And this isnt about closed mindedness for me, this is genuinely lacking the epistemic ability to deal with underdetermination issues (meaning any given observable event or state of affair will be compatible with both naturalism and supernaturalism). 

For instance - I dont understand how and why given NDE facts you update towards God having metacognition, values , desires rather than staying with God not having any of the listed things. Like why think that NDE facts are more expected under an agential God than under a non-agential one? And if they are not more expected, then what reasons can you appeal to that should motivate Bernardo to update towards an agential God given NDE facts?

Because if the agential God is merely  a just so story (its merely constructed to explain the set of facts on the table and it doesnt make any novel predictions) and it commits you to make trade-offs on other epistemic virtues ,then why would you ever update towards it being the case?

The NDE point I made that you're referencing was essentially this (and it's a bit more specific than "NDE events"):

If we find out we can see in a way that is not requiring sensory organs built through millions of years of evolution, then it makes you think that maybe other things we previously thought required evolution (e.g. higher thinking, planning, deliberation, intention) could also exist prior to evolution, and maybe that applies to God itself.

So it's not just thoughts and intentions floating around in the ether perhaps as non-physical formed etherial beings but they are at the foundation of the workings of the entire reality. It may seem like a big jump, but it makes you think in that direction.

As for assigning a probability to this suggestion, I have virtually no idea. But it seems like it opens you mind towards thinking in that direction. The alternative would be that you would not discover the way of seeing without biological sense organs and then the thought wouldn't even arise. Then you're certainly further from thinking about concluding in that direction.

 

Now, I deliberately avoided addressing the following issues for sake of clarity: I spoke about two types of naturalism in that thread, and in the response above, I talked about naturalism in the limited sense of biological evolution and other mainstream contemporary ideas being the "physical laws". While in the other sense of the word, I talked about it as being essentially compatible with what we now like to call "supernaturalism": i.e., if we were to deduce the laws governing the mind of God were the mind of God be agential and capable of planning and other higher thinking functions, then we have capitulated naturalism while still conceding to supernaturalism. So when you ask me how do I square naturalism and supernaturalism (or how do I move towards either and away from the other), we have to make clear what idea of naturalism we're using.

 

By the way, sorry for "dodging" the few last times, sometimes I just forget to respond (but I actually didn't forget this time, I just had to wait for the right time).

Edited 5 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, integral said:

In practice we use statistics to prescribe medication to patients

In practice doctors view all correlation as causation. They have no awareness of the difference

Huge chunks of societal belief systems are based on false causation from statistical correlation

At some point in the 70s it clicked that you could use science to run your scams, and they ran with it for 50 years

The way causality is claimed for a statistical relationship is when you can determine the timing of the cause and the effect (the cause must precede the effect) and you have a plausible causal mechanism that rules out other potential causal mechanisms. The problem with medicine is that the latter is rarely achieved. You usually at best get competing causal mechanisms.

 

3 hours ago, integral said:

This is not the statistical worldview from a scientific lens. Statistics is the wrong word to use.

You're mixing, probabilistic thinking + a multifactorial thinking + dialectical thinking + holistic thinking

It makes more sense to call it probabilistic systems thinking.

True scientific statistics is much closer to reductionist thinking method, trying to narrow down a messy world into variables we can measure.

I'm not reducing it to a "scientific lens". But what's a statistic?

If I say "ADHD has been especially linked to 32 types of events", or "it's been shown that young boys have a 31% probability to be diagnosed with ADHD in school", what's that called?

Edited 1 hour ago by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

By the way, sorry for "dodging" the few last times, sometimes I just forget to respond (but I actually didn't forget this time, I just had to wait for the right time)

No its fine, I wasnt serious about being mad about it and I didnt conceptualize it as a dodge, I took it more like you didnt have time to address things or that you wasnt simply interested in doing it (which would have also been fine ,you dont need to be interested in it).

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

how would you know whether that wasn't supposed to happen?

Thats the point,  that its hard (or maybe impossible) to solve the underdetermination issue. Epistemically you cant figure out whether a given thing supposed to happen (given that it could be the Universe's nature or it could be something from outside changed some fundamental law or some part of the Universe)

So you have at least 2 different hypotheses that is consistent with any given observable state of affairs, and the observed facts are equally expected under both hypotheses. (so this goes back to IBE and epistemic virtues, specifically related to how would you decide which hypotheses is more likely to be true -  like what epistemic virtues could you appeal to, to find a relevant symmetry breaker [ by symmetry breaker, I  just mean relevant difference between the two hypotheses, so that one becomes preferable over the other]).

The meta point is just about  how to solve underdetermination issues , because  every single observable state of affair is basically compatible with an infinite number of different hypotheses and we need ways to constrain down the set that contains all those hypotheses and we need ways to select from that set in clever ways and I just wanted to explore if you had unique thoughts about what you take clever ways to be/to mean.

5 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

per Hume, you can't say for sure whether you have found "the conditions" that produces the behavior. So not sure where we are going with this.

I know, it relates to the problem of induction and you can take an antirealist view on laws (thats a view that I take as well, I take it that the entities that we call laws are just statistical descriptions of observed repeating events  - but of course, none of that guarantees that those repeated patterns are supposed to repeat forever and from none of that follows that laws are some fundamental part of the Universe and that they exist in any non-nominalist way).

But for the sake of the example and thought experiment,  I tried to create a scenario where we assume a realist view on laws and given that philosophical context how would we figure out whether a given strange event happened because that was part of some given already existing law or whether something outside the Universe caused that change or event.

 

But we can ditch the example if you want and rather focus on the "seeing without eyes" problems, but they will create similar issues .

I think we should avoid defining natural and supernatural and simply just engage with  the two hypotheses, and this way it wont become a label battle  and this way it will be more clear in my opninion what is being talked about (regardless how we want to categorize the two hypotheses)

 

So we are going with Bernardo's model in the sense that we take it that the Universe is God and we have a fact "seeing without eyes" and we want to figure out whether this fact is more expected under the hypothesis H1) where God is agential or whether this fact is more expected under the hypothesis H2) where God is non-agential.

Here is my opinion and here is my problem: I dont think its more expected on either. I dont think that God being agential generates any unique expectation that God being non-agential wouldn't generate. I think the two hypotheses are way too ambigous. Now, ambiguity can be solved by added specificity and with that ad-hoc move  we can get to a point where both of those hypotheses will generate the expectation for creatures to see without eyes, the issue is just that its very easy to augment both of those hypotheses in a way where both of them will generate that fact (so selecting which hypothesis is better cant be done anymore just by the mere appeal that it generates the relevant expectation, because after augmentation  both of them will generate it ).

For instance, I can just augment the two hypothesis and say this: H1) The agential God had some already existing desire to create creatures that can see without eyes H2) The non-agential God had the predisposition to create creature that can see without eyes.

And here you will have issues figuring out which one has a higher prior probability. An agential God having the desire to create creatures that can see without eyes or a non-agential God having some predisposition that makes it so that it creates creatures that can see without eyes.

Edited 20 minutes ago by zurew