Portrait: Allan Ramsay, 1766 (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons
David Hume public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Scottish empiricist (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748). The original skeptic about induction, causation, and miracle testimony. Positions from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before reading a particular study, you were skeptical of claim X. The study — large, in a strong journal — largely convinced you. It is now retracted for fabricated data. Stipulate: no other study has tested X, and nothing else you know bears on X beyond what you knew before. Where does your belief in X land now? | Back where I started — the study is simply erased | Enquiry (1748), §X — the maxim: a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence; remove the evidence and the belief returns to its prior proportion. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Picture an ordinary person in 1850, kind by their own standards, who took part in a practice nearly everyone around them accepted and never seriously questioned it. Stipulate: we now regard it as a wrong as grave as slavery, and our current judgment is correct. How blameworthy were they? | Slightly | A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), III.ii–iii — blame fastens on durable character judged from the general point of view; unexamined conformity to universal custom mitigates most of it. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | Probably no god, though I can't be certain | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). |
| Stipulate: you learn from strong data that, given your parents' views on God, there was about a 90% chance you'd hold your current view regardless of the arguments you've met since. Nothing else changes. Your confidence in your view should: | Drop somewhat | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Part I — the opening discussion of how piety is imprinted by early education before reason can examine it. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Before results, you strongly doubted this: a one-time, one-hour classroom exercise measurably raises students' grades a year later. Then a randomized trial reports exactly that, statistically significant. Stipulate: preregistered, a large multi-school sample, an independent team, analysis matching the preregistration, and no flaws you can find. Where do you land now? | Somewhat more likely than before, but still probably not | Enquiry (1748), §IV — induction has no rational foundation; experience moves us by custom, and one trial moves custom only part-way. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You disagree with someone whose broader worldview is close to yours on a factual question. Stipulate: on this topic they're as informed and skilled as you, your checked track records on questions of this kind are equal, neither of you has a stake, and you've exchanged all evidence and arguments. You hold your view with high confidence; they hold theirs with moderate confidence. Neither of you has moved. Your response: | I move substantially toward them | Enquiry (1748), §X — testimony and counter-testimony are weighed against each other; an equal's contrary judgment is real counter-evidence. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Five people you know well report the same event: one evening, an object hovered unsupported in a public square for about ten seconds. Stipulate: each has been reliable for years, none knows the others, each reported separately, there's no footage, and no one has identified a trick, wire, magnet or collusion that could explain it. How likely is it that the object really hovered, with no conventional explanation? | Essentially impossible — testimony never outweighs how the world works | Enquiry (1748), §X, "Of Miracles" — this item is nearly his own case: five reliable witnesses against the uniform course of nature; the wise man believes the lesser miracle, which is that the witnesses deceive or are deceived. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| An anonymous source with no track record alleges that about 200 people inside one institution have kept a specific, career-ending wrongdoing secret for 10 years. Stipulate: no leak, no documents and no other whistleblower so far. Before any investigation, how likely is the allegation to be true? | Almost certainly not — 200 people don't keep a secret like that for ten years | Enquiry (1748), §X — weigh the improbability of the fact against the improbability of the testimony; mass durable secrecy fails the test. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| When a major event dominates the news, how much of the official account is usually deliberate deception? | A small part — spin, not fabrication | "Of the First Principles of Government" (1741/42) — government rests on opinion; rulers manage narratives, but wholesale fabrication is neither needed nor typical. |
| You've taken a $20-a-month supplement for three months and feel clearly better. Stipulate: two large, well-run, placebo-controlled trials found no effect beyond placebo for the symptom you take it for. What do you do? | Keep taking it, but stop crediting it — treat the benefit as a placebo I knowingly enjoy | Enquiry (1748), §X — proportion belief to the whole of experience, not to one's own vivid slice of it. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| A physical-science theory you accept has passed every test for decades. Two independent teams, using different equipment and methods, now report the same observation that contradicts it. Stipulate: no explanation exists yet. Twenty years from now, how likely is it that the anomaly has been explained as error, or absorbed within the existing theory with no revision needed? | Likely | Enquiry (1748), §X — uniform experience outweighs anomalous reports until the anomaly becomes the experience. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Your 10-year-old asks you directly, "Is there a God?" Stipulate: no one else is listening, and they'll remember your answer. You say: | The main views fairly, and mine only if they ask again | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) — the book itself is his method: the main views presented fairly, in conversation, without an imposed verdict. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You clearly remember a conversation going one way; a colleague clearly remembers it going another. Stipulate: there's no recording, you're both usually reliable, and neither of you gains anything from either version. How likely is it that your version is the right one? | A genuine coin flip | A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), I.i.3 and I.iii — memory's ideas lose vivacity and are confounded with imagination; two honest memories deserve near-even odds. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| By 2200, nearly everyone regards a practice you take part in today as a wrong as grave as slavery. Stipulate: nearly everyone around you accepts it now, you've never seriously questioned it, and the 2200 judgment is correct. How blameworthy are you for your participation up to now? | Slightly | Same standard applied to himself, symmetrically. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| You disagree with someone whose broader worldview you think is badly wrong on a factual question. Stipulate: on this topic they're as informed and skilled as you, your checked track records on questions of this kind are equal, neither of you has a stake, and you've exchanged all evidence and arguments. You hold your view with high confidence; they hold theirs with moderate confidence. Neither of you has moved. Your response: | I soften a little | Enquiry (1748), §X — testimony from the interested and the zealous is discounted on stated principles (his treatment of miracle reports from religious devotees). (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Someone holds the opposite view on God from yours. Stipulate: strong data shows that, given their parents' views, there was about a 90% chance they'd hold it regardless of the arguments they've met since. Nothing else changes. Their confidence in their view should: | Drop somewhat | Same principle applied to the opposing upbringing, symmetrically. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Organized religion's overall effect on society has been: | Somewhat negative | The Natural History of Religion (1757) and "Of Superstition and Enthusiasm" (1741) — popular religion's documented tendency to corrupt morals and foment faction. |
| God exists | Probably false | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) — Philo's demolition of the design argument; Hume's own leanings ran skeptical. |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Probably false | "Of the Immortality of the Soul" (written 1750s; published posthumously 1777) — the standard arguments for survival examined and found wanting. |
| Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved | Certainly false | Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), §X, "Of Miracles" — no testimony establishes a suspension of nature's course. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Genuinely unsure | Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Part VIII — Philo floats a materialist cosmogony (the Epicurean hypothesis) without endorsing it; scored honestly unsure. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Genuinely unsure | A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), I.iv.5, "Of the immateriality of the soul" — the question, as posed about substances, is unintelligible either way; scored unsure. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Probably false | Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), §VIII, "Of Liberty and Necessity" — the great compatibilist: necessity is universal, liberty means acting from one's own will. |
| Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes | Certainly false | A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), III.i.1 — "Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular": morality is sentiment, not fact — with the is/ought paragraph as the receipt. |
| We owe a stranger overseas as much as we owe a neighbor | Probably false | An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) — generosity is naturally limited and partial; equal obligation to the distant stranger is not how moral sentiment works. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Probably true | Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), §V — "Custom, then, is the great guide of human life." |
| Experts are usually right about questions in their own field | Probably true | "Of the Standard of Taste" (1757) — true judges exist and their joint verdict sets the standard; expertise in a field is real. |