I’ve implicitly noticed the meta-contrarian trend on Less Wrong and to a lesser extent in SIAI before, and I think it’s led me to taking my meta-meta-contrarianism a little far sometimes. I get a little too much enjoyment out of trolling cryonicists and libertarians: indeed, I get a feeling of self-righteousness because it seems that I’m doing a public service by pointing out what appears to be a systematic bias and flaw of group epistemology in the Less Wrong belief cluster. This feeling is completely disproportionate to the extent that I’m actually helping: in general, the best way to emphasize the weaker points of an appealing argument isn’t to directly troll the person who holds it. Steve Rayhawk is significantly better than me in this regard. So thanks, Yvain, for pointing out these different levels of meta and how the sense of superiority they give can lead to bad epistemic practice. I’ll definitely check for signs of this next time I’m feeling epistemically self-righteous.
I’ll definitely check for signs of this next time I’m feeling epistemically self-righteous.
A friend of mine likes to say that, if you find that your personal opinion happens to align perfectly with what popular culture tells you to think, you should examine that opinion really closely to make sure it’s really yours. It’s a similar heuristic to the self-righteousness one, applied specifically to the first-level or “uninformed” position (since “uninformed” is really a lot closer to “only informed subconsciously, by local culture and media”).
Yet another thought-provoking post from Yvain.
I’ve implicitly noticed the meta-contrarian trend on Less Wrong and to a lesser extent in SIAI before, and I think it’s led me to taking my meta-meta-contrarianism a little far sometimes. I get a little too much enjoyment out of trolling cryonicists and libertarians: indeed, I get a feeling of self-righteousness because it seems that I’m doing a public service by pointing out what appears to be a systematic bias and flaw of group epistemology in the Less Wrong belief cluster. This feeling is completely disproportionate to the extent that I’m actually helping: in general, the best way to emphasize the weaker points of an appealing argument isn’t to directly troll the person who holds it. Steve Rayhawk is significantly better than me in this regard. So thanks, Yvain, for pointing out these different levels of meta and how the sense of superiority they give can lead to bad epistemic practice. I’ll definitely check for signs of this next time I’m feeling epistemically self-righteous.
A friend of mine likes to say that, if you find that your personal opinion happens to align perfectly with what popular culture tells you to think, you should examine that opinion really closely to make sure it’s really yours. It’s a similar heuristic to the self-righteousness one, applied specifically to the first-level or “uninformed” position (since “uninformed” is really a lot closer to “only informed subconsciously, by local culture and media”).