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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The dangers of reverse-reasoning: a Christmas parable
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The dangers of reverse-reasoning: a Christmas parable
“This time next year, we’ll be running the country”, as Jeremy Corbyn didn’t quite say a few days ago in his interview with Grazia. It’s a near-repetition of his prediction at Glastonbury this June – except that there he was talking about Christmas 2017 rather than 2018 – and for those not favourably inclined towards him, might bear a passing resemblance to the unsubstantiated optimism of another Christmas staple. Admittedly, Del Boy did eventually become a millionaire but it took him 15 years and an extraordinary slice of luck. Corbyn may also end up being right but if he is, it too will be more down to luck than judgement. The error in his prediction is in starting with a conclusion he wants to be true and working backwards from there.
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FPT those gleefully predicting longer EU immigration queues for British passport (of any colour) holders post Brexit seem unaware that that can cut both ways. Longer queues in the EU could mean shorter queues in the U.K....
Thought I'd beat Scott_P to it.:-)
The Nativity story is rather sweet, but does rather lack in historical verification. There is no record of such a census requiring a return to birthplace. Jesus was brought up in Gallilee in the north of Israel. There is also no verification of the massscre of the innocents or flight into Egypt. Jesus's first life experience was as a refugee it seems.
The Gospel of St Luke rather works backwards itself, so as to "prove" the lineage of Jesus as of the House of David, and neatly arrange for the Messiah to fulfil prophecy and to be born in Bethlehem.
The three astrologers who feature in the story bring unusual presents. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. The symbolism of these is the the recognition of the baby Jesus as in turn king (gold), prophet (frankincense) and corpse (mhyrr - used for embalming) thereby setting up the story that ends in the Easter Passion 30 odd years later. One would have thought Mhyrr a little inappropriate as a gift to a new mother!
The Nativity rather neatly sets up Jesus as meeting the criteria for the Messiah prophecied in the Old Testament, and that his life's purpose was to die as a sacrifice.
I am not a Biblical literalist, and find the emphasis wrong in the Gospels, with such a strong emphasis on the birth and death of Jesus. I find much more inspiration in the teachings that Jesus carried out during his time on earth, particularly in the preaching in Gallilee as found in the Sermon on the Mount. This is why He came.
DH is right on the money on working backwards to get to the "right" conclusion. The entire Nativity is based on it. It should be treated not as Fake News, but rather as a poetic or literary truth rather than a scientific one. We can learn a lot from stories and patables, indeed Jesus taught primarily by this means. As an even older writer wrote: there is nothing new under the sun.
Happy Christmas fellow PBers,
I shall stay with your Xmas theme and wish Merry Xmas to all PBers in case I do not get the chance later.
https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/944190246421450753
From what I heard on ITV news last night OLD EU passports would be allowed to be used until they expired, so where does Lammy's £500 million come in?
That being said the teachings - while inspirational - are only incidental to the story: ultimately it's about redemption through sacrifice: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).
The Lamb of God was the completion of the sacrificial requirement of the Old Testament, and the mirror of the story of Abraham and Isaac.
Happy Xmas.
I'm off overseas for Christmas today for a week, so will join others in wishing everyone on politicalbetting a very Merry Christmas.
To take a revolutionary perspective: The historical Jesus was probably from Nazarath, the son of a single mother, and whose family moved to Egypt as economic migrants rather than refugees. His message was a direct threat to both spiritual authorities in the Holy Land (the Sanhedrin) and to the political ones (the Roman puppet ruler, Herod). Jesus was genuinely of humble origin, and the Nativity story rather artificiallty designed to make him of Royal descent (though here there is a contradiction in that Joseph was not his father!).
Leftists should note however that Jesus's kingdom is not of this earth, he did not join the Zealot nationalist guerrillas. His message was far more revolutionary, and rooted in the ascetic spirituality of the Nazarene sect rather than nationalistic or class warfare.
A nice summary.
The Gospels were written for a purpose - to bring the good news to everyone. Matthew and Luke include the birth narrative for their purposes. Matthew in particular wanted to emphasise the foretelling in the OT. All four Gospels generally differ in details.
They were converts/enthusiasts, as are some of the Jezzarites.
The big difference - I don't think Jezzarites preach loving your neighbour as yourself, though, not when your neighbours include Tories. Even Andy Burnham hates them..
We know a little bit about some of the 5% of the universe we vaguely understand works. We may eventually understand what Dark Energy and Dark Matter do. The why is a different question.
Or maybe he's just showing Labour's usual befuddlement with big numbers.
Everyone staying put - enjoy the Christmas essentials: a tin of Quality Street and Die Hard....
Nice article, Mr. Herdson. It also reminds me of my Religious Studies class, which described religion as a posteriori (starting off with the conclusion you want then working backwards to look for evidence) and science [theoretically...] as a priori (looking at the evidence and then reaching a conclusion that fits).
One of them is literally backward. But still employed by a great many people in a great many ways. Leaving aside religion or the Cult of Corbyn, there's a suspicion in psychological circles that lots of the time we aren't reasonable, but start off with a gut response then seek to rationalise it.
That's not always wrong, as gut instincts can be right (although it can be argued that if you're thinking with your guts you have shit for brains), but taken beyond the realms of rationality you end up with craziness. Like thinking you can borrow your way to prosperity, or that your god wants you to murder everyone who doesn't worship him the way you do, or that Caesar was a better general than Hannibal.
I've always liked the fact that there is a universal speed limit. That means that if there are aliens, we may one day see them, through powerful telescopes, waving and mooning at us. But it may billions of years in the past. We will literally be seeing dead people.
I'm not convinced he was from Nazareth (it was a tiny village which few would have known) - more likely the medival monks mistranslated "Jesus the Nazarene" as "Jesus of Nazareth"
But yes his message was far more revolutionary than anything of this world
The problem then being he either didn't know or is being intentionally misleading.
Mr. CD13, indeed. Another fun fact of the speed limit is that if you put an infinitely powerful telescope at the far end of the universe it wouldn't be able to see the other side because insufficient time has passed for the light to reach the telescope.
Lights blue touch paper and runs like fool
I kid though. Peace and enlightenment to all people this holiday season and beyond, I hope.
I've come across people on both sides who argue this - one, a real crank called Steven Avery who is a Christian and claims to be married to a Galilean who says because there are no hills in Nazareth and the Bible says there are hills Jesus must have been born elsewhere (he picks an even more obscure site about ten miles to the north). When I asked him what I walked up to the Maronite Church if there are no hills he went ballistic. When I further asked him if, as he claimed, there were no cliffs what I was standing on when I took my panoramic shot of Nazareth he got madder still.
Then of course you have the really cranky fringe on the other side, in the long discredited but still oddly popular Jesus Myth coterie, who claim Jesus never existed so he couldn't have come from Nazareth. One (René Salm, a part-time professional musician and full-time untrained polemicist) even wrote a series of articles trying to prove Nazareth never existed as well - unfortunately for him that meant taking on the large and well-attested archaeological record of a small village in the period. In particular his spat with Ken Dark of Reading University didn't end well for him, although the moment when a man with Grade 8 piano who has never worked on an archaeological dig in his life criticised a Professor of Archaeology for not being qualified to excavate in Israel because his previous digs were in Greece and Turkey ranks as one of the great comedy moments of modern scholarship.
To sum up, there is no reason to assume Jesus did not come from Nazareth, and the sheer unlikelihood of it being put in as an error given its size and insignificance militate against other explanations.
Hope that is of interest.
God's to blame. It's not our fault the daft sod let a serpent into his garden.
I do occasionally leaf through my King James - poetic.
*an attempt to reconcile God's omnibenevolence with sending billions of people to Hell.
That could apply to many in the financial world.
Interesting header and discussion. Many thanks.
Joyeux Noel
Lammy's either deliberately misleading people or immensely stupid. His point is invalid.
If I said Corbyn would be a bad pm in my opinion, I might be right, but if I said it was because he would spend billions trying to clone Lenin to ask him for advice, that would rather undermine my earlier point, because I would be talking bollocks.
I'm not sure that the specific political example is the best one - an easier explanation of Corbyn's comment is that if you're asked "Will you win soon?" then politicians just can't reply "Nah, probably not." But it's certainly true of most of us that we work out (or just have a gut feeling) what we want to happen and then often interpret events as showing that we're right or, if we're optimists, as showing that we're getting there.
I'm not especially moderate in my opinions these days (too much wrong in our world to opt for tinkering), but one point that centrists get right is that we all need to be aware that our assumptions MAY be wrong, and we therefore shouldn't do anything that would be catastrophic if they were.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/12/23/santa-overweight-binge-drinker-risk-mental-health-problems-warn/
All I've said about DG is that it was right he was sacked for lying.
That's not all you said about DG though is it.
You said he was being truthful and should sue for defamation or some rubbish.
For a start, he's the world's most prolific vandal. How many homes has he broken into? Billions.
Then there are his personal vices. Asking kids to sit on his knee and telling them they'll get special presents if he thinks they're nice rather than naughty.
Last, but not least, his employment policies. Ruthlessly enslaving differently-sized people, deriding them as 'elves', forcing them to work year-round in his frigid sweatshop to produce presents with which to bribe small children.
Truly, a reprehensible man.
http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2017/12/momentous-panelbase-poll-suggests.html
No its 'My nationalism is better than your nationalism. Details to follow.'
"Lighten our darkness, we beseech the O Lord; and by thy great mercies defend us from the perils and dangers of this night; for the sake of your only Son, our Saviour"
If the story ends with the Scots having red passports and the English blue ones, something has gone wrong somewhere, surely?
“I’m in it for the long term,” May said when asked if she will lead her party into the next general election, scheduled for 2022. “I’m here to do the job I believe needs to be done for the British people and that’s what I’m going to focus on.”
https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/theresa-may/news/91664/theresa-may-eyes-2022-vote-after
Anything else would set dozens of hares running......
Do you really want me to cut and paste them all?
The nativity always struck me as an ex post rationalisation. This man was the son of God, how could he have a normal birth? The royal blood thing seems somewhat overstated. He was of the house of David, as were about 10% of all Jews. Mary must have been too, especially as Jews are wise enough to establish blood lines through the mother. What is more important is the symbolism. Poverty and a complete lack of worldly power and trappings shows vividly that he later promises a very different kind of Kingdom.
I agree with @foxinsoxuk that the sermon on the mount is the best and most important part of the New Testament but the skill and care used by the learned men who put the bible together was considerable. I find the idea that there were mistakes between Nazarene and Nazareth pretty unconvincing.
Not completely clear about the betting angles on this though.
How many former police officers decide to keep hold of information they've been told not to, on how many people? How much of that information is fortunate enough to them be able to be leaked to the press as in the public interest?
Should we now encourage all officers to retain information on all cases on their own moral judgement, since who knows what might be public interest later?
Green misled, and he's, been sacked, fine. But the implications are frightening. Former police making moral judgements to keep info on the off chance it will be useful years later. How,many other people, significant or not, have these officers kept info on? What exactly were there plans if it never came up again?
Merry Xmas to all