One of the more useful rat-techniques I’ve enjoyed has been the reframing of “Making a decision right here right now” to “Making this sort of decision in these sorts of scenarios”. When considering how to judge a belief based on some arguments, the question becomes, “Am I willing to accept this sort of conclusion based on this sort of argument in similar scenarios?”
From that, if you accept claim-argument pair A “Dude, if electric forks where a good idea, someone would have done it by now”, but not claim-argument pair B “Dude, if curing cancer was a good idea, someone would have done it by now”, then it was never the A’s argument that made you believe the claim. You have some other unmentioned reasons, and those should be what’s addressed.
Similarly is the re-framing, “what is the actual decision I am making?” One friend was telling me, “This linear algebra class is a waste of my time, I’d get more by skipping lecture and reading the book.” When I asked him if he actually thought he’d read the book if he didn’t go to lecture, he said probably not. Here, it felt like the choice was, “Go to lecture, or not?” but it would be better framed as, “Given I’m trying to learn linear algebra, but feasible paths do I have for learning it?” If you don’t actually expect to be able to self-study, then you no longer can think of “just not going to lecture” as an option.
One of the more useful rat-techniques I’ve enjoyed has been the reframing of “Making a decision right here right now” to “Making this sort of decision in these sorts of scenarios”. When considering how to judge a belief based on some arguments, the question becomes, “Am I willing to accept this sort of conclusion based on this sort of argument in similar scenarios?”
From that, if you accept claim-argument pair A “Dude, if electric forks where a good idea, someone would have done it by now”, but not claim-argument pair B “Dude, if curing cancer was a good idea, someone would have done it by now”, then it was never the A’s argument that made you believe the claim. You have some other unmentioned reasons, and those should be what’s addressed.
Similarly is the re-framing, “what is the actual decision I am making?” One friend was telling me, “This linear algebra class is a waste of my time, I’d get more by skipping lecture and reading the book.” When I asked him if he actually thought he’d read the book if he didn’t go to lecture, he said probably not. Here, it felt like the choice was, “Go to lecture, or not?” but it would be better framed as, “Given I’m trying to learn linear algebra, but feasible paths do I have for learning it?” If you don’t actually expect to be able to self-study, then you no longer can think of “just not going to lecture” as an option.