I had been an unintentional bayesian for my whole life!
What's your concept of a "bayesian"?
Somebody who incorporates evidence to update a belief's degree of truthfulness.
Does this explanation sound right?
If you compared probabilities of models based on consistency with the data and their overall plausibility, I'd call that close enough to be on the outskirts of Bayesian - and with the qualifier 'unintentional', which indicates that you're not going to be precisely formally correct, I'd say it fits.
Well, to actually call yourself a bayesian, some may say that you have to explicitly use Bayes theorem to do the updates. To avoid confusion, you may wish to use a more accurate term. Around here we use them term "rationalist" in the sense you were using "bayesian", and more people will understand you if that is the word you use. Ultimately, it's just a question of words, but you do want to avoid confusion and have people understand you, so it is a good idea to use words in the style others use them.
Duly noted.
I won't, however, replace the word 'bayesian' from this article's title and body with 'rationalist' so that others may learn from my confusion.
The irony here is that wanting to become more Christian-like led to my abandoning of Christianity.
Not so ironic. You're a guy who wants to know. Christianity is fundamentally opposed to eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
Eventually I stumbled on some articles regarding non-religion and discovered that my lack of religious beliefs are called 'atheism'
Well, weak atheism, or agnosticism, as opposed to Dawkins-style militant atheism, a belief in zero gods. The latter leaves little room for the simulation hypothesis.
Dawkins-style militant atheism, a belief in zero gods
Weird choice of label. Wouldn't you just call that something like "no-god-ism?" Perhaps with a latin translation?
Wouldn't you just call that something like "no-god-ism?" Perhaps with a latin translation?
Well, "no" would be "a-"
"-theism- actually contains two roots: -the-, meaning "god, divinity", and "-ism", which is a suffix used to create abstract nouns denoting a actions, conditions, or beliefs." - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_root_theism_mean
So "athe" would mean "no gods", and "atheism" would be that belief.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that, um, atheism already is the correct term.
I also learned that "athe" is a fun word to say ^_^
That "woosh" you heard was Manfred's point going over my head. shminux distinction seems entirely warranted in-context, since he's differentiating between "I believe there are no gods" and "I don't believe in gods", both of which are, technically, "atheism".
"no-god-ism?" Perhaps with a latin translation?
Funny. My point is the opposite, the term needs to be translated to English in order to avoid confusion.
Growing up in a very religious country, I was indoctrinated thoroughly both at home and at school. I used to believe that some Christian beliefs made sense. When I was 14 years old or so, I began contemplating death – I said to myself, “Well, after I die I go to Hell or Heaven; the latter is preferable, so I'd better learn as soon as possible how I can make sure I'll go to Heaven.”
So I went on to read frantically about Christianity. With every iota of information processed, I strayed away from this religion. That is, the more I read, the less anything pertaining to it seemed plausible. “Where the hell is Hell? Can I visit before I die? Why doesn't God answer my prayers to tell me? Why do some people get to talk to God but not me?”, I retorted. In retrospective, my greatest strength was genuine curiosity – I wanted to know as much as possible about the truthfulness of my religion.
The irony here is that wanting to become more Christian-like led to my abandoning of Christianity. But I continued to learn more about other religions as well, thinking that one might be truer than the other. Of course, none of them seemed every remotely plausible; I concluded that religions are false. I turned into an atheist without even knowing that that word existed!
Eventually I stumbled on some articles regarding non-religion and discovered that my lack of religious beliefs are called 'atheism'. Since then, I have abandoned more beliefs tied to, say, politics or nutrition, thanks to applying bayesian probability to my hypotheses.
I had been an unintentional bayesian for my whole life!
Have you had any similar experiences?
PS: This is my first article. I am looking forward to hearing feedback on it.
Edit #1: I should have used the term 'rationalist' instead of 'bayesian' because I didn't apply Bayes' theorem explicitly.