I know this is an old post, but I wanted to ask a couple questions.
Can you clarify if this meta-contrarian hypothesis of human psychology makes predictions that distinguish it from other explanations for holding an idea to be true or communicating it to be true? I ask since from reading some of the comments, the classification of these triads seems like a fluid thing, and I can’t think of anything offhand that might be used to constrain them. If you want to use your hypothesis merely to talk about the reasons for why confidence is assigned, do you think the ideas you’ve presented here can make more accurate predictions on that than those in an example journal article on psychology, such as this one by Kahneman and Tversky?
Also, I think it would be more helpful to depend on examining only the logic behind, and the evidence for one’s beliefs (and ignoring how confident one feels about them) to determine if they are right. You state:
You can’t evaluate the truth of a statement by its position in a signaling game; otherwise you could use human psychology to figure out if global warming is real!
I strongly agree with this statement. Which is why I also want to know how the triads you propose help people to examine the flaws in their beliefs better than other psychological theories or hypotheses. For example, I might say that one should examine any belief closely, even if one feels a high degree of confidence in it, because level of confidence felt does not predict level of truth. This is a hypothesis about how confidence felt for a belief correlates to its truth (and if you want to be meta about it, it’s a belief that I currently believe to be true).
In summary, I would like to know 1.) how you use the hypothesis you’ve given to make predictions and 2.) how this can help people identify false high confidence beliefs better than other possible hypotheses (such as the one I gave). And if anyone besides Yvain can answer these questions, I would welcome your input as well.
I know this is an old post, but I wanted to ask a couple questions.
Can you clarify if this meta-contrarian hypothesis of human psychology makes predictions that distinguish it from other explanations for holding an idea to be true or communicating it to be true? I ask since from reading some of the comments, the classification of these triads seems like a fluid thing, and I can’t think of anything offhand that might be used to constrain them. If you want to use your hypothesis merely to talk about the reasons for why confidence is assigned, do you think the ideas you’ve presented here can make more accurate predictions on that than those in an example journal article on psychology, such as this one by Kahneman and Tversky?
Also, I think it would be more helpful to depend on examining only the logic behind, and the evidence for one’s beliefs (and ignoring how confident one feels about them) to determine if they are right. You state:
I strongly agree with this statement. Which is why I also want to know how the triads you propose help people to examine the flaws in their beliefs better than other psychological theories or hypotheses. For example, I might say that one should examine any belief closely, even if one feels a high degree of confidence in it, because level of confidence felt does not predict level of truth. This is a hypothesis about how confidence felt for a belief correlates to its truth (and if you want to be meta about it, it’s a belief that I currently believe to be true).
In summary, I would like to know 1.) how you use the hypothesis you’ve given to make predictions and 2.) how this can help people identify false high confidence beliefs better than other possible hypotheses (such as the one I gave). And if anyone besides Yvain can answer these questions, I would welcome your input as well.