Measuring Change

Also a good guess, but no that's not where I'm going with this. Think of the GA model, which starts their treatment regime by lying to people. It is still considered to be an effective treatment regime, for some people, irrespective of its methodologies veracity. Specifically, people that believe that they can't beat the casino resonate perfectly with the GA model and show improvement. For others the GA model does not resonate, and it is ineffective.

Got it yet?

~FK

When people were addicts they thought they thought they could beat the casino. Now, when told the casino can't be beat, they lose the will to try. It's a relearning?

Let try posing this question.

Is the true measure of a beliefs ability to effect positive change, whether or not that belief is "true"?

The 'measure' of a belief's ability to effect positive change is irrespective of the truth of the belief. The likelyhood of a true belief effecting positive change is greater than that of a false belief...because the truth will set you free.

Frank,

I am trying to follow your line of thinking, but I am having no luck. I am very much a left brain thinker and my guess is that you are a right brain kinda guy. It seems to me if you believe something and that belief can be beneficial the benefit is subject to a crash if the belief is not true. It doesn't have to be true to give the benefit; I'll grant you that point. If it is a correct belief however, my guess is that the benefit is equally achieved and there is no downside of basing the positive change on a correct belief.

BTW, while I have your ear. I would be very interested on getting your take on the changes at the Palms and here your reaction to the elimination of the M Progressive. These are topics deserving of their own threads. If you have time and do not want to put your views on this open forum feel free to PM me.

First: I'm glad you understand that something need not be completely true to be beneficial. As I pointed out this is actually the current GA model. As far as something that's false being more vulnerable to crash, I would be inclined to agree with you. There are times in life when the truth can also do more harm than good. It is a complicated subject.

The point of all this is that when I do my analysis of the RS system I will be looking at more than merely whether or not it is mathematically provable. I will be judging it on a verity of metrics, not the least of which is its ability to effect positive change. Another metric is its ability to reach people that would otherwise be playing with no system at all. I'm trying to look at every possible angle...and I'm doing it in proper scientific style by trying to disprove my theory rather than proving it.

I'll start a thread about the palms tomorrow.

Let's examine that for a moment. If you were having a problem with your Catholic neighbor, do you think you could improve his temperament towards you by extolling the virtues of evolutionary self determination and species survival driven congeniality?...or do you think it would be easier to just quote the Bible and say, "Hay Jesus said, 'you should love your neighbor like yourself', and 'to do unto other as you would have them do unto you.'"???

In order to effect change, what you say must be true to the person you are saying it to. Stray outside their belief system and you are casting your seeds upon fallow ground. You cannot improve the behavior of Muslims by reading them the bible. You can't improve the behavior of Christians by reading them the Koran, and you can't improve anything about an atheist by reading them anything from any religious book. One must work within the confines of each independent belief system.

~FK

It is common sense that the "changefulness" (or hopefulness or fearfulness) of an idea does not depend on its truthfulness. Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater. Starting a rumor that Walmart will give away 5 free TVs on Sunday. Bomb threats.

If people perceive that holding a belief is likely to help them, they will hold the belief. This is one of the themes of The Village, the film by M. Night Shyamalan. People have fantasies, BECAUSE THE FANTASIES MAKE THEM HAPPY, not because they are likely to come true. People will chose other fantasies if their current fantasies lose their usefulness. I.e. people fool themselves; this is an everyday occurance.

So a change to a new belief depends mostly upon the perceived usefulness (or futility) of the PREVIOUS belief, not on the relative truthfulness. I.e. people are pragmatic in their beliefs.

It's true there are weakminded people who believe in all kinds of fairy tales. They are generally closed minded. There are also people who are open to new ideas, can think logically and seek the truth.....otherwise education would be worthless because everyone would be locked into the preconceived notions of their belief system....We'd still be bleeding people to heal their infections and burning witches.

Also, I hardly think you can put Video Poker into the same category as a core religious belief. It's more like learning math. When you first learn math, you don't know how to add or multiply. Once you study it a little bit it makes sense and you accept it....because it's obvious and true. That's far different than convincing someone there's no heaven.

So some people start off thinking VP is just like a slot machine or you should play it just like you play a live game of poker...because they are uneducated about the game. When they educate themselves those notions evaporate. Now, if your whole purpose of this discussion was to show there is some value in a false system because it may provoke some positive change, wouldn't it be better to skip right over the false system and just focus on the change? It's like you're saying "Eat your peas and carrots bacuase it will put hair on your chest".

I suspect that beliefs, once established, are hard to change. Your mind is like a blank canvas, but once you paint a picture of a lake surrounded by mountains, it is hard to alter it to to be a still life of a fruit bowl. Neuron pathways are changed and re-routed to effect memory, habits, and beliefs. Reprogramming someone is hard as can been seen by cult initiations and especially deprogramming a cult member.

I still want to read The Believing Brain, but Amazon has it used for 15% more than new, and even the Kindle version is only .50 less than a new hardback.

For example, we all "know" that VP is random and the math is the math is the math and nothing can change that. But did you know that there have been studies going on for over a decade where peoples' thoughts and emotions are affecting random number generators? Maybe having the expectation of a win vs the expectation of a loss is enough for your mental energy to actually change your results? Not science fiction, but real science with charts and graphs and everything.