Dare I say it? Few people look like they really want true beliefs.
I think otherwise—most people want to have true beliefs. However, they have rather limited trust in the powers of their own logic, as the experience of school has taught them that they are often wrong. They don’t have the numerical skills to embark on anything more numerically ambitious than what money requires. They expect to be wrong often, and rarely use formal reason as such. But they still want to have true beliefs, and rely mostly on intuition and experience to decide on that.
For most people, most beliefs are socially acquired—people acquire their beliefs from the people around them, and they tend to acquire large blocks of belief together. One shouldn’t underestimate the sheer amount of work needed to do anything different.
Most people never create a new idea (in the sense you’re talking about) in their entire lives—they have experiences, yes, and they change beliefs based on experience. But they do not regard themselves as having the basic equipment to generate ideas, or to be sophisticated in judging between them.
In the end I’ve come to the view that none of us can change this (well, not anytime soon at any rate). Human beings think in groups—and the best most of us can do to help others think better is to do it for them, and talk about it sometimes. Obviously there is a group of people who can do more than that, but they are a minority.
The other comment I have on your post is that all of the above is actually just one idea. Which is that the basis of all knowledge about the world is inductive reasoning, and, in principle, all such reasoning should be based on the sound use of statistics. There are many mathematical ways of messing up such use, and our intuitive reasoning also messes up these stats too. If you really need the right answer, you will need to learn enough to get your statistics right, and compensate for the shortcomings of your wetware. And that’s the whole idea in a nutshell.
An example. Did you know that brakes are the most dangerous piece of equipment on your car? In a staggeringly large number of accidents, the driver was using the brake at the time of the collision. Surely we could make driving safer by removing the brakes, then? Of course the thesis is ludicrous, but how many of us are confident that we wouldn’t make a similar statistical mistake in a different context? But once you embark on the journey of trying to fix such problems in your own thinking, the road leads all the way to the place your post describes.
Most people think the journey is beyond them, and leave it to people like you and Eliezer to make the journey for them, and report back your findings. And unfortunately I don’t think they’re wrong about that.
However, they have rather limited trust in the powers of their own logic, as the experience of school has taught them that they are often wrong. They don’t have the numerical skills to embark on anything more numerically ambitious than what money requires.
I believe the situation is a good bit worse than that. One of the underlying lessons of conventional schooling is “You can’t be trusted to think about what you need to know.”
One of the underlying lessons of conventional schooling is “You can’t be trusted to think about what you need to know.”
Do mean this in the sense of “you can’t think be trusted to think about important things” or in the sense of “you can’t be trusted to decide which things are important”? I agree with the second, and think it’s what you mean, but not the first.
I think otherwise—most people want to have true beliefs. However, they have rather limited trust in the powers of their own logic, as the experience of school has taught them that they are often wrong. They don’t have the numerical skills to embark on anything more numerically ambitious than what money requires. They expect to be wrong often, and rarely use formal reason as such. But they still want to have true beliefs, and rely mostly on intuition and experience to decide on that.
For most people, most beliefs are socially acquired—people acquire their beliefs from the people around them, and they tend to acquire large blocks of belief together. One shouldn’t underestimate the sheer amount of work needed to do anything different.
Most people never create a new idea (in the sense you’re talking about) in their entire lives—they have experiences, yes, and they change beliefs based on experience. But they do not regard themselves as having the basic equipment to generate ideas, or to be sophisticated in judging between them.
In the end I’ve come to the view that none of us can change this (well, not anytime soon at any rate). Human beings think in groups—and the best most of us can do to help others think better is to do it for them, and talk about it sometimes. Obviously there is a group of people who can do more than that, but they are a minority.
The other comment I have on your post is that all of the above is actually just one idea. Which is that the basis of all knowledge about the world is inductive reasoning, and, in principle, all such reasoning should be based on the sound use of statistics. There are many mathematical ways of messing up such use, and our intuitive reasoning also messes up these stats too. If you really need the right answer, you will need to learn enough to get your statistics right, and compensate for the shortcomings of your wetware. And that’s the whole idea in a nutshell.
An example. Did you know that brakes are the most dangerous piece of equipment on your car? In a staggeringly large number of accidents, the driver was using the brake at the time of the collision. Surely we could make driving safer by removing the brakes, then? Of course the thesis is ludicrous, but how many of us are confident that we wouldn’t make a similar statistical mistake in a different context? But once you embark on the journey of trying to fix such problems in your own thinking, the road leads all the way to the place your post describes.
Most people think the journey is beyond them, and leave it to people like you and Eliezer to make the journey for them, and report back your findings. And unfortunately I don’t think they’re wrong about that.
I believe the situation is a good bit worse than that. One of the underlying lessons of conventional schooling is “You can’t be trusted to think about what you need to know.”
Do mean this in the sense of “you can’t think be trusted to think about important things” or in the sense of “you can’t be trusted to decide which things are important”? I agree with the second, and think it’s what you mean, but not the first.