Great case study, in that studying my own reaction to your article has thought me a lot about my own decision making. And my conclusion is that reading a rationalist blog isn’t sufficient to become rational!
I am thin, despite having very bad eating habits (according to conventional dietary wisdom). I had not heard of Taubes before. Specifically, I have never considered that conventional dietary wisdom could be incorrect; people say that I eat unhealthily, and I have simply taken their word for it. The fact that I continue to eat unhealthily has more to do with laziness than rationality.
How much have I shifted my beliefs now that I have read this article? I don’t think in probabilities yet, but… by a lot. Probably more than I should. Neither Taubes’ belief nor bentarm’s belief nor Eliezer’s belief nor Taubes’ lack of biological credentials has affected my own degree of belief, not by much anyway. Just the fact that there exists an alternative theory of food has succeeded in demolishing the confidence I had in the conventional theory.
How could such a weak amount of evidence cause such a large shift? By relying on a bias which happened to be pushing in the same direction. Just ask me: “since you have decreased your belief in the conventional theory after reading an article on Taubes, you must have correspondingly increased your belief in Taubes’ theory, right?”
Well, let me google whether the fatty food I currently eat is high-carb or low-carb, and I’ll get back to you on that.
It is rational to update by a lot in response to a small amount of evidence if that evidence brings along a possibility you hadn’t considered before, that possibility has a high prior probability, and you didn’t have much evidence to begin with.
Great case study, in that studying my own reaction to your article has thought me a lot about my own decision making. And my conclusion is that reading a rationalist blog isn’t sufficient to become rational!
I am thin, despite having very bad eating habits (according to conventional dietary wisdom). I had not heard of Taubes before. Specifically, I have never considered that conventional dietary wisdom could be incorrect; people say that I eat unhealthily, and I have simply taken their word for it. The fact that I continue to eat unhealthily has more to do with laziness than rationality.
How much have I shifted my beliefs now that I have read this article? I don’t think in probabilities yet, but… by a lot. Probably more than I should. Neither Taubes’ belief nor bentarm’s belief nor Eliezer’s belief nor Taubes’ lack of biological credentials has affected my own degree of belief, not by much anyway. Just the fact that there exists an alternative theory of food has succeeded in demolishing the confidence I had in the conventional theory.
How could such a weak amount of evidence cause such a large shift? By relying on a bias which happened to be pushing in the same direction. Just ask me: “since you have decreased your belief in the conventional theory after reading an article on Taubes, you must have correspondingly increased your belief in Taubes’ theory, right?”
Well, let me google whether the fatty food I currently eat is high-carb or low-carb, and I’ll get back to you on that.
It is rational to update by a lot in response to a small amount of evidence if that evidence brings along a possibility you hadn’t considered before, that possibility has a high prior probability, and you didn’t have much evidence to begin with.