"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time.
Really?
Do you spend every waking hour fearing that your life could end at any moment?
Or do you walk out of your door not worried about it, not because of a failure to grasp the possibility of death, but the confidence that everything's going to turn out alright?
Don't make the same mistake the OP does, which is lumping all forms of faith and confidence together.
Assuming you're not going to die is based on apparently good odds. Confidence that you're not going to die is founded on years of experience not dying.
It's not like you walked down the driveway to pick up your newspaper, rubbed the sleep from your eyes, then noticed two of your neighbors lying face down on their respective strips of pavement, papers in hand, startled expressions. At that point it might be prudent to back away from the funny pages and stay inside until you know what the hell happened. Suddenly your routine seems risky.
It's not an act of faith to jump out of a plane with a parachute, or to go swimming in the ocean. That's not a significant risk. You could make the argument that climbing Mount Everest is an act of faith, and an increasingly nervewracking one as you pass the evidence of failed attempts strewn along the final ascent, but many of the climbers who take that on are ready to die. Some people engage in dangerous activities because they believe the experience is worthwhile. Most of us assume that going to the mailbox is worth the risk and we rationalize our way from there.
An act of faith would be to go into a church rather than a bomb shelter when the Germans are shelling your city, which is actually a baller move.
Assuming you're not going to die is based on apparently good odds. Confidence that you're not going to die is founded on years of experience not dying.
Except you don't know. Thus, confidence.
It's not an act of faith to jump out of a plane with a parachute, or to go swimming in the ocean.
Assuming you're not going to die is based on apparently good odds. Confidence that you're not going to die is founded on years of experience not dying.
Except you don't know. Thus, confidence.
It's not an act of faith to jump out of a plane with a parachute, or to go swimming in the ocean.
Actually, yes it is.
Highroller is right. There is risk of death for both of those things, and you are taking it on faith that you won't be the statistic.
Faith is probably best defined as believing in something despite the odds.
Not swimming in the ocean for fear of sharks or drowning is less rational than swimming in the ocean knowing that you are very unlikely to die or be attacked.
We need to decide what we're calling religious faith (belief without evidence), and confidence based on rationality and evidence. They are not even close to the same thing.
"stupid, childish, nonsensical, and logically erroneous" <- This is how I feel about faith most of the time.
Really?
Do you spend every waking hour fearing that your life could end at any moment?
Or do you walk out of your door not worried about it, not because of a failure to grasp the possibility of death, but the confidence that everything's going to turn out alright?
There have been a nearly infinite number of moments in my life already in which I have not died. Hence I assume that so long as nothing drastic changes my life won't end.
But I don't assume I won't die a moment from now. I could have a heart attack or a stroke or just die (it happens). My building could be struck by a bomb (I work on a government facility). My co-worker could go crazy and shoot me in the back of the head while I'm typing this.
All of this is possible. I don't assume it won't happen. I don't have faith that it won't happen. I know that there is statistically small probability that any of that will happen, so I don't worry about it. However, I DO worry about getting an accident on the way work, so I wear my seat belt, because I know that statistically I'm more likely to die without it. See the difference?
The confidence I have that I won't die comes from not dying over and over and over every moment of my conscious day. There is evidence to suggest that if I act accordingly, I can go a long way to prevent my death (eat right, exercise, don't step in front of a moving car, ect).
I don't worry all the much about things that are out of my control, I don't assuming that there is a magical deity controlling everything for me to make sure I stay safe (or to make sure I get abducted and abused for 10 years). I don't even understand why God makes people feel better. It's such a horrible idea.
Don't make the same mistake the OP does, which is lumping all forms of faith and confidence together.
I define faith as believing in that for which there is no evidence. Any form of faith that falls into that category can, in my mind, be lumped up and thrown in the garbage disposal on high.
Highroller is right. There is risk of death for both of those things, and you are taking it on faith that you won't be the statistic.
Faith is probably best defined as believing in something despite the odds.
This is inconsistant. When I went skydiving I knew there was a chance I would end up a red stain somewhere on the face of the planet. That was half the thrill. Anyone that assumes THEY won't die in the face of well defined stats is an idiot that never learned to think.
Just because I do something dangerous doesn't mean I assume everything will be OK. I know from evidence that most of the time it will be, but I also know the inherent risks, and that people die, and I do it anyway. That's what draws me particularly to certain activities. If I knew I couldn't get hurt, what fun would it be (clearly this idea doesn't apply to just anything like say, playing video games)?
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
I define faith as believing in that for which there is no evidence. Any form of faith that falls into that category can, in my mind, be lumped up and thrown in the garbage disposal on high.
Again, a claim that is demonstratively false by casual observation. You operate on faith, belief, hope, trust, and confidence routinely.
Herein we see the problem that so often plagues religious debates, observable in both the OP and in your posts: you are lumping all forms of the aforementioned together. You disagree with religion, therefore you make broad-based claims about faith as though such claims were ever applicable to every form of faith, trust, hope, or confidence.
Except they obviously are not. The faith that you will not get hit by a car on your way to work is not the same as faith in God, but, despite your attempts to claim otherwise, the word "faith" certainly applies to both.
Again, a claim that is demonstratively false by casual observation. You operate on faith, belief, hope, trust, and confidence routinely.
Herein we see the problem that so often plagues religious debates, observable in both the OP and in your posts: you are lumping all forms of the aforementioned together. You disagree with religion, therefore you make broad-based claims about faith as though such claims were ever applicable to every form of faith, trust, hope, or confidence.
Except they obviously are not. The faith that you will not get hit by a car on your way to work is not the same as faith in God, but, despite your attempts to claim otherwise, the word "faith" certainly applies to both.
Is there any danger or risk so negligible that putting it out of your mind is not a matter of faith?
Again, a claim that is demonstratively false by casual observation. You operate on faith, belief, hope, trust, and confidence routinely.
I don't actually operate that way unless you define faith in a way that is inconsistant with my definition. I just explained it in my last post. This is just contradiciton, not an argument.
Herein we see the problem that so often plagues religious debates, observable in both the OP and in your posts: you are lumping all forms of the aforementioned together. You disagree with religion, therefore you make broad-based claims about faith as though such claims were ever applicable to every form of faith, trust, hope, or confidence.
I lump faith or religion into catagories in which they fit. Fundimental Christian or Islamic faith might be very similar to each other, but they differ greatly from the progressive pro gay pro-science churches out there. They are different forms of religion, and I would deem one better than other.
You shouldn't jump to such conclusions about what I think and don't when you really don't know what you're talking about :P.
Nothing so far that you've posted makes a convincing argument that I engage in faith.
Except they obviously are not. The faith that you will not get hit by a car on your way to work is not the same as faith in God, but, despite your attempts to claim otherwise, the word "faith" certainly applies to both.[/
You're right, they are both forms of faith, but the difference doesn't matter because I have faith in neither.
Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
The faith that you will not get hit by a car on your way to work
If I had faith in that, why would I wear a seatbelt?
Because your faith that you won't get hit by a car while driving is not absolute, but it still is faith by the strict definition of the term.
Coincidentally, that's sort of how faith works. There are very few things in which we have absolute faith in, and those things that we do have absolute faith in, we really shouldn't.
I am a huge fan of what Alan Watts has to say about this distinction. This is NOT the common usage of these words, but I think the distinction he is making is very useful and I prefer these definitions of these words to the common ones.
"...because I believe that there is a strong distinction between faith on the one hand and belief on the other. That belief is as a matter of fact quite contrary to faith, because belief is really wishing, it's from the Anglo-Saxon root Leaf/ve = 'to wish,' and belief ... is a fervant hope that the universe will turn out to be thus and so, and in this sense therefore, belief precludes the possibility of faith, because faith is openness to truth to reality - whatever it may turn out to be."
In other words, the etymology of "belief" is that it means "to wish the world to be the way one thinks it should" which is what is going on when someone reads a book about God and decides that it must be THE correct truth of God, and that contradictory ideas about God must necessarily be wrong (despite any personal experience that might suggest otherwise). The etymology of "faith" on the other hand is that it essentially means "to trust that the world is as it should be," and as Alan Watts says, "faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception," because faith is the trust that there is a truth at all, and does not ascribe ANY specific content to that truth at the risk of allowing oneself to be clouded to it.
Basically people who have faith, as Alan Watts would say it, simply trust that things are going according to plan, and many of them are atheists who believe that there's no central divine "watchmaker" figure who planned everything out and that everything is going fine anyway, that the world essentially MAKES SENSE.
It takes faith to believe that the world makes sense, that it is internally consistent, and that the existence of life in this universe has anything to do with anything. Belief is just a bunch of assertions that get in the way, and most atheists who have a problem with religions have a problem with their beliefs, not their faith ... religious people who opt for faith over belief are unlikely to rankle even the most diehard atheist skeptic.
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Just because I do something dangerous doesn't mean I assume everything will be OK. I know from evidence that most of the time it will be, but I also know the inherent risks, and that people die, and I do it anyway. That's what draws me particularly to certain activities. If I knew I couldn't get hurt, what fun would it be (clearly this idea doesn't apply to just anything like say, playing video games)?
I think you have kind of missed my point. I'm not implying that doing things for adrenaline isn't fun. What I meant by 'faith is ignoring the odds' is that faith is a form of both strength and complacency we all have. Faith means believing everything will be okay when odds are it won't be. That can be translated to a lot of things - believing a seriously sick person will recover, striving to emerge from poverty, or simply getting in your car every day. If we worried about our chances all the time we'd be completely ineffective - but yet we still know there is a not insignificant chance that we could be crippled or killed.
I don't consider faith to be some sort of mysticism, but the human perception of 'faith' just seems to me like someone who believes in something a lot - most of the time something unlikely.
Is there any danger or risk so negligible that putting it out of your mind is not a matter of faith?
Maybe, but that's not the main idea here.
The core issue here is the simple fact that the future is unknown. Therefore we're all taking leaps here. None of us knows what's going to happen today, tomorrow, a year from now. We're all working through faith, hope, trust, and confidence.
Because your faith that you won't get hit by a car while driving is not absolute, but it still is faith by the strict definition of the term.
Coincidentally, that's sort of how faith works. There are very few things in which we have absolute faith in, and those things that we do have absolute faith in, we really shouldn't.
I don't understand the difference between that and having a rational understanding of the probabilities involved. Is it faith that tells me I almost certainly won't get hit by a car, or is it just my understanding of traffic statistics?
Faith is not mutually exclusive to religion or the belief in a god of some kind. I've seen it touted around that atheists have faith in various things like evolution or whatever, as though the idea of having faith in something was somehow wrong. We need faith, it can drive us, and push us to achieve greater things. Faith is the endgoal, faith is the hope or desire... Faith is many things to many people. You aren't a bad atheist for having faith, either, nor are you necessarily a good religious person for having it.
Understanding traffic statistics don't mean jack ****.
Just because there is a 1/1000 chance that a person will get hit by a car doesn't mean you have a 1/1000 chance that you will get hit by a car.
It's basically appeal to probability. Just because your chance of getting hit by a car is statistically low, doesn't mean that your actual chance of getting hit by a car is low.
And, so, you must either have a delusion that you special, or you have faith or confidence (I like this word better over faith in this particular case, cause it's about the same thing and less anger-inducing to people for some bull**** reason) that you won't get hit by a car, even though you have absolutely no rational information that dictates that you won't get hit by a car, or that your chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Just because your chance of getting hit by a car is statistically low, doesn't mean that your actual chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Er... that actually is exactly what it means?
Quote from magickware99 »
And, so, you must either have a delusion that you special, or you have faith or confidence (I like this word better over faith in this particular case, cause it's about the same thing and less anger-inducing to people for some bull**** reason) that you won't get hit by a car, even though you have absolutely no rational information that dictates that you won't get hit by a car, or that your chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Why don't the traffic statistics constitute "rational information that dictates that your chance of getting hit by a car is low?"
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Just because your chance of getting hit by a car is statistically low, doesn't mean that your actual chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Er... that actually is exactly what it means?
It most certainly would if every time you got into a car someone rolls a dice that determines whether you will get into a car accident that day with those particular odds.
Unfortunately that doesn't happen. Statistics don't mean much in the regard that you folks seem to think it does. They're deceptive (and useless) like that.
And, so, you must either have a delusion that you special, or you have faith or confidence (I like this word better over faith in this particular case, cause it's about the same thing and less anger-inducing to people for some bull**** reason) that you won't get hit by a car, even though you have absolutely no rational information that dictates that you won't get hit by a car, or that your chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Why don't the traffic statistics constitute "rational information that dictates that your chance of getting hit by a car is low?"
It most certainly would if every time you got into a car someone rolls a dice that determines whether you will get into a car accident that day with those particular odds.
Unfortunately that doesn't happen. Statistics don't mean much in the regard that you folks seem to think it does. They're deceptive (and useless) like that.
The more superficial answer is this: statistical reasoning is an attempt to model the universe, and like any attempt to model the universe, it is subject to actual testing and falsifiability. If you don't think statistics works, then falsifying it is the way to go. So how shall you proceed?
There is actually only one way, based on the framework you are outlining: if a person's actual probability of dying in a given traffic situation is different from what those foolish actuaries claim it is, then you should be able to point to an actual list of definite names (no wishy-washy probability stuff) of people who died in that situation, count them up, and get your radically different number rather than the actuarial figure. Can you do this? (Hint: don't bother because this is how the actuaries get those numbers in the first place. (But if it turns out you can, call me and we'll start an insurance company that will make Warren Buffett drool.))
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
From a Bayesian perspective, if we say that we have a 1/1000 chance of being hit by a car, that probability value is a representation of our state of knowledge and uncertainty. It says that, given the information we have, we should consider being hit by a car very unlikely. We can then recognize that the low risk of it actually happening is more than compensated for by the reward of going about our day instead of being a shut-in.
The information that tells us we are unlikely to get hit by a car is that:
1) People in general are unlikely to be hit by cars.
2) We are relatively average people.
Now, obviously, a few people's chance of being hit by a car will turn out to have been quite high (100%) in retrospect. However, since we don't know who those people are ahead of time, we have to model our uncertainty with a probability estimate. That tells us that, given our lack of perfect foresight, we should assume our chances are quite low.
Since I have absolutely no knowledge regarding the information in those wiki links you posted, mind explaining them? They look interesting, but I can't understand them =(
And, no, what I was disagreeing with was the idea that, since car accident statistics and rates are X, I can reasonably make an assumption of my own chance of getting into a car accident based off the previously mentioned X. I'm guessing you're saying that this very logic is sound, but then you went off and posted theorems that I can't understand and as such I can't respond to.
Regarding your last paragraph- I never actually argued against the fact that national statistics and calculations and such made by insurance companies off said statistics and other information are sound. Otherwise insurance companies would be losing a ****-ton of money like you suggested. However, I fail to see how those are meaningful to an individual. Those statistics are measuring an event on a very broad scale. They are, like you mentioned, modeling a particular part of the universe and how it runs at this particular scenario/time.
Please tell me how that is relevant to my chance of getting into a car accident while I am driving.
If the statistics are true at a global level, they must also be, on average, true on an individual level. While some people obviously have a higher chance and others a lower, we don't know who is who. Therefore, our estimation of any individual's chances must be the same as the global chance. This estimation incorporates both the global statistics, as well as our lack of knowledge about how they will play out individually.
In other words, while each individual's result is actually determined by their circumstance, and not by a global roll of the dice, the estimation which guides our actions is not only based on our future result, but also our own uncertainty about that result. Combined, these lead to an estimation that is in line with the global probability.
Since I have absolutely no knowledge regarding the information in those wiki links you posted, mind explaining them? They look interesting, but I can't understand them =(
Since Tiax basically answered the latter half of your post, I'll answer this half. I can try to explain those things as follows (though understand I am drastically oversimplifying):
The Born rule basically says that the universe can be correctly described by a certain type of statistical mechanics, not just in aggregate but all the way down to the level of individual events. In other words, there are a class of phenomena that are governed by probability in exactly the way that you say things can't be governed by probability. (and what's more, those phenomena are fundamental to the universe)
The Born rule has stood the test of a full century of experimentation and practical application, but some people believed that if they were sufficiently clever, they could write down quantum mechanics in a way that would omit the Born rule and all of the wishy washy probability stuff, but still be correct. One fairly well-known attempt to do this is the many-worlds theory. Gleason's theorem says that these folks will not be able to succeed -- absent radically new scientific knowledge, of course -- in actually eliminating the probabilistic element: given what we know about nature, no attempt to codify it can escape Born's rule, try as you might.
It's not like you walked down the driveway to pick up your newspaper, rubbed the sleep from your eyes, then noticed two of your neighbors lying face down on their respective strips of pavement, papers in hand, startled expressions. At that point it might be prudent to back away from the funny pages and stay inside until you know what the hell happened. Suddenly your routine seems risky.
It's not an act of faith to jump out of a plane with a parachute, or to go swimming in the ocean. That's not a significant risk. You could make the argument that climbing Mount Everest is an act of faith, and an increasingly nervewracking one as you pass the evidence of failed attempts strewn along the final ascent, but many of the climbers who take that on are ready to die. Some people engage in dangerous activities because they believe the experience is worthwhile. Most of us assume that going to the mailbox is worth the risk and we rationalize our way from there.
An act of faith would be to go into a church rather than a bomb shelter when the Germans are shelling your city, which is actually a baller move.
Except you don't know. Thus, confidence.
Actually, yes it is.
Highroller is right. There is risk of death for both of those things, and you are taking it on faith that you won't be the statistic.
Faith is probably best defined as believing in something despite the odds.
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I was not aware that skydiving and paddleboarding were dicing with death.
Good luck with your campaign to shut down the local bungee jump. It's clearly a front for euthanasia.
That's how I defined it before I entered this thread.
Now I know that it's faith to expect anything but the worst case scenario.
We need to decide what we're calling religious faith (belief without evidence), and confidence based on rationality and evidence. They are not even close to the same thing.
There have been a nearly infinite number of moments in my life already in which I have not died. Hence I assume that so long as nothing drastic changes my life won't end.
But I don't assume I won't die a moment from now. I could have a heart attack or a stroke or just die (it happens). My building could be struck by a bomb (I work on a government facility). My co-worker could go crazy and shoot me in the back of the head while I'm typing this.
All of this is possible. I don't assume it won't happen. I don't have faith that it won't happen. I know that there is statistically small probability that any of that will happen, so I don't worry about it. However, I DO worry about getting an accident on the way work, so I wear my seat belt, because I know that statistically I'm more likely to die without it. See the difference?
The confidence I have that I won't die comes from not dying over and over and over every moment of my conscious day. There is evidence to suggest that if I act accordingly, I can go a long way to prevent my death (eat right, exercise, don't step in front of a moving car, ect).
I don't worry all the much about things that are out of my control, I don't assuming that there is a magical deity controlling everything for me to make sure I stay safe (or to make sure I get abducted and abused for 10 years). I don't even understand why God makes people feel better. It's such a horrible idea.
I define faith as believing in that for which there is no evidence. Any form of faith that falls into that category can, in my mind, be lumped up and thrown in the garbage disposal on high.
This is inconsistant. When I went skydiving I knew there was a chance I would end up a red stain somewhere on the face of the planet. That was half the thrill. Anyone that assumes THEY won't die in the face of well defined stats is an idiot that never learned to think.
Just because I do something dangerous doesn't mean I assume everything will be OK. I know from evidence that most of the time it will be, but I also know the inherent risks, and that people die, and I do it anyway. That's what draws me particularly to certain activities. If I knew I couldn't get hurt, what fun would it be (clearly this idea doesn't apply to just anything like say, playing video games)?
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
Again, a claim that is demonstratively false by casual observation. You operate on faith, belief, hope, trust, and confidence routinely.
Herein we see the problem that so often plagues religious debates, observable in both the OP and in your posts: you are lumping all forms of the aforementioned together. You disagree with religion, therefore you make broad-based claims about faith as though such claims were ever applicable to every form of faith, trust, hope, or confidence.
Except they obviously are not. The faith that you will not get hit by a car on your way to work is not the same as faith in God, but, despite your attempts to claim otherwise, the word "faith" certainly applies to both.
I don't actually operate that way unless you define faith in a way that is inconsistant with my definition. I just explained it in my last post. This is just contradiciton, not an argument.
I lump faith or religion into catagories in which they fit. Fundimental Christian or Islamic faith might be very similar to each other, but they differ greatly from the progressive pro gay pro-science churches out there. They are different forms of religion, and I would deem one better than other.
You shouldn't jump to such conclusions about what I think and don't when you really don't know what you're talking about :P.
Nothing so far that you've posted makes a convincing argument that I engage in faith.
You're right, they are both forms of faith, but the difference doesn't matter because I have faith in neither.
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great
If I had faith in that, why would I wear a seatbelt?
Because your faith that you won't get hit by a car while driving is not absolute, but it still is faith by the strict definition of the term.
Coincidentally, that's sort of how faith works. There are very few things in which we have absolute faith in, and those things that we do have absolute faith in, we really shouldn't.
"...because I believe that there is a strong distinction between faith on the one hand and belief on the other. That belief is as a matter of fact quite contrary to faith, because belief is really wishing, it's from the Anglo-Saxon root Leaf/ve = 'to wish,' and belief ... is a fervant hope that the universe will turn out to be thus and so, and in this sense therefore, belief precludes the possibility of faith, because faith is openness to truth to reality - whatever it may turn out to be."
In other words, the etymology of "belief" is that it means "to wish the world to be the way one thinks it should" which is what is going on when someone reads a book about God and decides that it must be THE correct truth of God, and that contradictory ideas about God must necessarily be wrong (despite any personal experience that might suggest otherwise). The etymology of "faith" on the other hand is that it essentially means "to trust that the world is as it should be," and as Alan Watts says, "faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception," because faith is the trust that there is a truth at all, and does not ascribe ANY specific content to that truth at the risk of allowing oneself to be clouded to it.
Basically people who have faith, as Alan Watts would say it, simply trust that things are going according to plan, and many of them are atheists who believe that there's no central divine "watchmaker" figure who planned everything out and that everything is going fine anyway, that the world essentially MAKES SENSE.
It takes faith to believe that the world makes sense, that it is internally consistent, and that the existence of life in this universe has anything to do with anything. Belief is just a bunch of assertions that get in the way, and most atheists who have a problem with religions have a problem with their beliefs, not their faith ... religious people who opt for faith over belief are unlikely to rankle even the most diehard atheist skeptic.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
I think you have kind of missed my point. I'm not implying that doing things for adrenaline isn't fun. What I meant by 'faith is ignoring the odds' is that faith is a form of both strength and complacency we all have. Faith means believing everything will be okay when odds are it won't be. That can be translated to a lot of things - believing a seriously sick person will recover, striving to emerge from poverty, or simply getting in your car every day. If we worried about our chances all the time we'd be completely ineffective - but yet we still know there is a not insignificant chance that we could be crippled or killed.
I don't consider faith to be some sort of mysticism, but the human perception of 'faith' just seems to me like someone who believes in something a lot - most of the time something unlikely.
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Maybe, but that's not the main idea here.
The core issue here is the simple fact that the future is unknown. Therefore we're all taking leaps here. None of us knows what's going to happen today, tomorrow, a year from now. We're all working through faith, hope, trust, and confidence.
Yes, you very clearly do, just like every other human being does.
I don't understand the difference between that and having a rational understanding of the probabilities involved. Is it faith that tells me I almost certainly won't get hit by a car, or is it just my understanding of traffic statistics?
Just because there is a 1/1000 chance that a person will get hit by a car doesn't mean you have a 1/1000 chance that you will get hit by a car.
It's basically appeal to probability. Just because your chance of getting hit by a car is statistically low, doesn't mean that your actual chance of getting hit by a car is low.
And, so, you must either have a delusion that you special, or you have faith or confidence (I like this word better over faith in this particular case, cause it's about the same thing and less anger-inducing to people for some bull**** reason) that you won't get hit by a car, even though you have absolutely no rational information that dictates that you won't get hit by a car, or that your chance of getting hit by a car is low.
Edit- Added some things for clarification.
And lots of typos.
Er... that actually is exactly what it means?
Why don't the traffic statistics constitute "rational information that dictates that your chance of getting hit by a car is low?"
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
It most certainly would if every time you got into a car someone rolls a dice that determines whether you will get into a car accident that day with those particular odds.
Unfortunately that doesn't happen. Statistics don't mean much in the regard that you folks seem to think it does. They're deceptive (and useless) like that.
See above.
The deep answer is that that's kind of exactly what happens, at least on a fundamental level.
The more superficial answer is this: statistical reasoning is an attempt to model the universe, and like any attempt to model the universe, it is subject to actual testing and falsifiability. If you don't think statistics works, then falsifying it is the way to go. So how shall you proceed?
There is actually only one way, based on the framework you are outlining: if a person's actual probability of dying in a given traffic situation is different from what those foolish actuaries claim it is, then you should be able to point to an actual list of definite names (no wishy-washy probability stuff) of people who died in that situation, count them up, and get your radically different number rather than the actuarial figure. Can you do this? (Hint: don't bother because this is how the actuaries get those numbers in the first place. (But if it turns out you can, call me and we'll start an insurance company that will make Warren Buffett drool.))
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
The information that tells us we are unlikely to get hit by a car is that:
1) People in general are unlikely to be hit by cars.
2) We are relatively average people.
Now, obviously, a few people's chance of being hit by a car will turn out to have been quite high (100%) in retrospect. However, since we don't know who those people are ahead of time, we have to model our uncertainty with a probability estimate. That tells us that, given our lack of perfect foresight, we should assume our chances are quite low.
And, no, what I was disagreeing with was the idea that, since car accident statistics and rates are X, I can reasonably make an assumption of my own chance of getting into a car accident based off the previously mentioned X. I'm guessing you're saying that this very logic is sound, but then you went off and posted theorems that I can't understand and as such I can't respond to.
Regarding your last paragraph- I never actually argued against the fact that national statistics and calculations and such made by insurance companies off said statistics and other information are sound. Otherwise insurance companies would be losing a ****-ton of money like you suggested. However, I fail to see how those are meaningful to an individual. Those statistics are measuring an event on a very broad scale. They are, like you mentioned, modeling a particular part of the universe and how it runs at this particular scenario/time.
Please tell me how that is relevant to my chance of getting into a car accident while I am driving.
In other words, while each individual's result is actually determined by their circumstance, and not by a global roll of the dice, the estimation which guides our actions is not only based on our future result, but also our own uncertainty about that result. Combined, these lead to an estimation that is in line with the global probability.
Since Tiax basically answered the latter half of your post, I'll answer this half. I can try to explain those things as follows (though understand I am drastically oversimplifying):
The Born rule basically says that the universe can be correctly described by a certain type of statistical mechanics, not just in aggregate but all the way down to the level of individual events. In other words, there are a class of phenomena that are governed by probability in exactly the way that you say things can't be governed by probability. (and what's more, those phenomena are fundamental to the universe)
The Born rule has stood the test of a full century of experimentation and practical application, but some people believed that if they were sufficiently clever, they could write down quantum mechanics in a way that would omit the Born rule and all of the wishy washy probability stuff, but still be correct. One fairly well-known attempt to do this is the many-worlds theory. Gleason's theorem says that these folks will not be able to succeed -- absent radically new scientific knowledge, of course -- in actually eliminating the probabilistic element: given what we know about nature, no attempt to codify it can escape Born's rule, try as you might.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.