The reason Nicholas gets the impression that Eliezer thinks that people are biased if they disagree with his unusual ideas is that Eliezer does in fact think this.
Likewise, as Eliezer points out, as a general rule, those who disagree with him immediately jump to the conclusion that he is biased.
These things seem to illustrate two things: first, we assume that every disagreement is a persistent disagreement until shown otherwise; i.e. if someone disagrees with us from the start, we assume that he will continue to disagree with us even after we have presented all of our reasons. This seems to be a fairly reasonable assumption based on our experience; people rarely change their minds due to argument.
Second, that we consciously or subconsciously believe that Robin’s position on disagreement is correct, i.e. that a persistent disagreement is irrational. Since we are unwilling to admit that we are ourselves irrational, we must attribute the irrationality to the other.
More briefly: Any disagreement is assumed to be persistent; any persistent disagreement is assumed to be irrational; and any irrationality is assumed to belong to the other guy. Thus any disagreement is assumed to involve irrationality on the part of the other.
The reason Nicholas gets the impression that Eliezer thinks that people are biased if they disagree with his unusual ideas is that Eliezer does in fact think this.
Likewise, as Eliezer points out, as a general rule, those who disagree with him immediately jump to the conclusion that he is biased.
These things seem to illustrate two things: first, we assume that every disagreement is a persistent disagreement until shown otherwise; i.e. if someone disagrees with us from the start, we assume that he will continue to disagree with us even after we have presented all of our reasons. This seems to be a fairly reasonable assumption based on our experience; people rarely change their minds due to argument.
Second, that we consciously or subconsciously believe that Robin’s position on disagreement is correct, i.e. that a persistent disagreement is irrational. Since we are unwilling to admit that we are ourselves irrational, we must attribute the irrationality to the other.
More briefly: Any disagreement is assumed to be persistent; any persistent disagreement is assumed to be irrational; and any irrationality is assumed to belong to the other guy. Thus any disagreement is assumed to involve irrationality on the part of the other.