- Robin Hanson on religion. His view is very close to my own.
- Tyler Cowen on The Gold Standard.
I hereby propose the Tyler Cowen heuristic. If, when asked a question on which reasonable people agree, one can give an unambiguous yes/no answer...you don't have any (perspective). Indeed...if your answer is unambiguous, then you're tribal instead of thinking, and folks trying to think should remember that when parsing your opinion in terms of Bayesian updating.
Let's turn this line of thinking up to 11:
There are two modalities of thought (that are relevant now):
- Trying to understand...reasoning from evidence
- Trying to persuade...reasoning from a desired conclusion or desired groupism.
UPDATED FOR CLARITY
Corrollary (we can call this corollary The Socrates Principle):
If your goal is to persuade, or build groups, then your goal isn't to understand...and you should actively oppose perspective. Make 'em drink hemlock...perspective is destructive of groupism, becaues groupism is substantially maintained by opinion cohesion.
Posts
5 comments:
Does the Socrates Principle apply to itself; ie is there a nuanced two-sided debate about its truth or applicability? Certainly many intelligent people act very differently.
(Of course I would retort that intelligent doesn't mean "reasonable," but then it slides back into a debate about what a reasonable person is.)
I phrased it badly, and because of my bad phrasing, I can't understand your question. I'm adjusting the phrasing in the post...
Unknown,
I don't know. I've not found anyone who is (a) over 35, (b) doesn't identify as part of a group, and (c) doesn't largely agree.
Of course (b) is the kicker here. If you're over 35 and not groupist, then you're so far weird, it's hard to quantify.
Actually, I'll go one further than that. If you're mid-smart (+1 sigma), over 35, and not in group X, then it's immediately obvious to the most casual observer that group X, and all real adherents thereof, is portraying only one side of the issue, and has no perspective to speak of. Clearly, they're not reasonable on the topic.
My rule is to discount for high IQ in any situation where RPD. Reasoning:
1)Confirmation bias may be worse among the high IQ.
2)And, where RPD, smart people choose their sides based on impressing the impressive (smarter) people.
3)People use intelligence to make cases.
4)Smarter people are better at making cases.
5)Therefore, when RPD, the side of an argument that is favored by most smart people should be heavily discounted.
Meh,
I like the heuristic.
RPD took me a 45 seconds to figure out.
Post a Comment