I didn’t downvote, but I don’t understand the post. It’s vague—probably to avoid overly political details, but it’s still just… very very vague! What are the hypotheses you were considering? Why do you think one is simpler than the other? Without these details, I don’t get anything from the post. If you can’t provide the details because they’d be overly political, I appreciate the restraint, but that might mean the post just can’t be written.
When you write this part—“I became much more confident that I really followed the methods of rationality in this matter, and not just tried to refer to them when trying to convince everyone of my political views. And I no longer worry that I am unfair to alternative versions of what is happening. Here it is, rationality in action, in everyday situations.” -
It sounds like the everyday, rationality-in-action usage you’re talking about is using rationality to convince yourself that you’re right about a political question. That gives me a sort of yucky feeling.
It also is a “wall of text”—text of this length should be broken into paragraphs.
Thanks. Before that, my only idea was that I was talking about it as political, but talking about bits of evidence.
About the nasty feeling… It’s hard for me to articulate, but the fact is that I had it just before, when my intuition rejected one of the points of view, because it comes from an “anti-rational (and anti-scientific)” source, but could not come up with concrete refutations of what was wrong with this very complex alternative hypothesis. Is this still a bad use of rationality? I’m just not sure that you can’t call “self-righteousness” any use of rationality in relation to politics that does not refute your previous views.
Although I probably should have at least clarified this in the post itself. I am probably a victim of the illusion of transparency, since it does not look clear to an outside observer. I’ll send it to drafts to fix it, and also split it into paragraphs.
I didn’t downvote, but I don’t understand the post. It’s vague—probably to avoid overly political details, but it’s still just… very very vague! What are the hypotheses you were considering? Why do you think one is simpler than the other? Without these details, I don’t get anything from the post. If you can’t provide the details because they’d be overly political, I appreciate the restraint, but that might mean the post just can’t be written.
When you write this part—“I became much more confident that I really followed the methods of rationality in this matter, and not just tried to refer to them when trying to convince everyone of my political views. And I no longer worry that I am unfair to alternative versions of what is happening. Here it is, rationality in action, in everyday situations.” - It sounds like the everyday, rationality-in-action usage you’re talking about is using rationality to convince yourself that you’re right about a political question. That gives me a sort of yucky feeling.
It also is a “wall of text”—text of this length should be broken into paragraphs.
Thanks. Before that, my only idea was that I was talking about it as political, but talking about bits of evidence. About the nasty feeling… It’s hard for me to articulate, but the fact is that I had it just before, when my intuition rejected one of the points of view, because it comes from an “anti-rational (and anti-scientific)” source, but could not come up with concrete refutations of what was wrong with this very complex alternative hypothesis. Is this still a bad use of rationality? I’m just not sure that you can’t call “self-righteousness” any use of rationality in relation to politics that does not refute your previous views. Although I probably should have at least clarified this in the post itself. I am probably a victim of the illusion of transparency, since it does not look clear to an outside observer. I’ll send it to drafts to fix it, and also split it into paragraphs.