Battleground God

[gusl]

If you haven't already, you should play Battleground God.

When I have some free time, I should formalize the "hit" (contradictions).

Can we automatically generate games like this, given some knowledge about a particular domain? Would they count as educational software?

Can we use this idea to make a tool for refining expert beliefs, or as a formalization tool?

Comments

[simrob.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I like such tools. Furthermore, I think you should read wjl's draft on classical logic, I think the work of formalizing the "hit" (contradictions) has been done for you, and so if you have said mythical free time, don't reinvent wheels :).

There are problems with this particular presentation, which is fun - half the awesome in these tools is investigating the corner cases where they brake down, such failures can be instructive. My main concern is that it would let me be agnostic about God but not about evolution. "Evolutionary theory maybe false in some matters of detail, but it is essentially true."

Make no mistake, I've never heard anything about evolution that doesn't make sense, and it certainly makes way more than any other explanation of observations I've ever heard! However, I realized five years ago that, while I'm very inclined to believe in evolution, and the crappy reasoning of the I.D. people is something that I'll rant about for a week given a chance, the evolution debate is not my battle - from my perspective, my task as a computer scientist is the same whether the world is 8 billion, 6 thousand, or .4 years old and was created with my memories in my head and the dinosour bones in the ground and me at age 23. So I like being officially agnostic, because 1) I believe in professing beliefs that one has thought about some and questioned seriously, and 10th grade biology doesn't cut it and because 2) it helps remind me that I don't want to get into long arguments with intelligent design folks because I'll get stomach ulcers. Furthermore, I don't have any sense of scale for "false in some manners of detail." I imagine the model of evolution could well be deeply flawed; I imagine we'll fix it, be smarter for the fixing, and I imagine that the new model still won't look anything like, say, intelligent design.

So, for fun I decided to go for "false" on evolution - agnositcs or slackers are usually more closely affiliated with athiests in matters of religion. However, this gets me in troblem with them with their example of the serial rapist with "firm inner conviction" that they're doing gods' will. I don't think he's justified in thinking that, because he's part of a community (you know, the world) that, well, takes issues with his convications, to say the least. At this point the website says I've been shot - I'm willing to say this lone nut is wrong when everyone else says no, but also willing to say that the lone nuts denying evolution are right when all the scientists agree that evolution is right.

Ouch, getting shot hurts! But the problem is that they didn't let me be "agnostic" on evolution, while politely deferring to the really smart evolutionay biologists unless and until I give it more thought. My way out is both that community is important and humility is important - and so you don't go against the world and kill people because you have strong internal conviction when you have no other basis for that conviction. Gee, you might be wrong, listen to everybody else! If you want to argue based on strong internal conviction against a disagreeing world, be my guest. But, friend, be careful. And if I'd just said I believed in evolution then I wouldn't have gotten "shot." If they'd just said "Evolution is way awesomer an explanation for everything than anything else you've ever heard of" rather than "Evolution is The Truth, though we may need to work on details," the I would have said "yeah! sign me up!"

I'm not sure this is a way of putting the world together that a decision tree captures well. So using them to refine expert beliefs? Maybe, but be prepared for a lot of long-winded subtelties like mine. Of course, maybe that in itself is a good thing! As a formalization tool? Well, the fewer long-winded subtelties you get, the better the formalization tool is, so go forth and collect emperical data if you wish!

[shaktool.livejournal.com]

I received one hit. (and two "bitten bullets", but I don't mind those, aside from the connotation that they are a bad thing)

I said "If, despite years of trying, no strong evidence or argument has been presented to show that there is a Loch Ness monster, it is rational to believe that such a monster does not exist." and "As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality."

So, in hindsight, I can see why that caused a problem. But I would like to say that I believe that there are things that are neither rational nor irrational. You know... like the color blue. There's no good reason why it should be what it is, but there's no good reason why it shouldn't either. In the Loch Ness monster example, I would like to revise my statement to be "It is not irrational to believe there is no Loch Ness monster" rather than "It is rational to believe there is no Loch Ness Monster." I do not believe it is rational to believe that there is no Loch Ness monster, unless there is evidence against its existence... which there is, but the prompt did not specify that there was. So it can be rational to believe it doesn't exist, but it isn't necessarily. It may or may not be rational, depending on factors that weren't stated in the prompt. But I had to pick an answer, so I gave my character the benefit of the doubt, because I didn't want to imply that my character was irrational. It is definitely not irrational to believe that there is no Loch Ness monster, based on the prompt.

[jbouwens.livejournal.com]

Nice:

"The fact that you progressed through this activity without being hit and biting very few bullets suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and well thought out."

[fancybred.livejournal.com]

Yes, formalization would make this game less annoying. I answered False to both:

• "It is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that God exists."
  
• "As long as there are no compelling arguments or evidence that show that God does not exist, atheism is a matter of faith, not rationality."
  

One of these answers led it to claim (after I also answered False to the rapist question), "Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction."

Huh? How do either (or the conjunction) of my answers imply that "it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction"? Show me a proof.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity of this conviction

uhm... this is question 7. You probably answered it without noticing.

[fancybred.livejournal.com]

aha. I was wondering why the game started at Question 13... Check your link -- the test is rigged!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

No hits, one bullet. OK, I had a little practice on the rigged version.

Anyone get no hits, no bullets? Seems like it should be possible.

[jbouwens.livejournal.com]

I did the test again, to see if I got the same result, and I did: no hits, 2 bullets.

The second bullet is near the end:

"If God exists she would have the freedom and power to create square circles and make 1 + 1 = 72."

If I answer true (Which is my "real" answer), I get a bullet because it says that God has the freedom to do the logically impossible and therefore "any discussion of God and ultimate reality cannot be constrained by basic principles of rationality".

When I answer false, which I tried for kicks, I get a hit because in an earlier question I posed that a God is able to do anything they want.

The only way to avoid this is by changing my definition of God in earlier questions such that "God" is not all-powerful.

And I always bite a bullet at question 13:

"It is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that God exists."

I answer true here, and I get a bullet because I demand a higher standard of proof for the existence of God than for the general correctness of Evolution (Which I happen to think is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect, by the way).

[loveguide.livejournal.com]

Good writing gustavo;)