If brazil84 weren’t a lawyer, I would have written this debate off as pointless a long time ago. It’s raising a negative affect around all the time I spend on this site, but simply walking away knowing that he’s going to continue practicing law without realizing that he’s been making some big mistakes of judgment that demand commensurately big corrections has up till this point been even more frustrating.
As a lawyer, I feel obligated to defend the profession a little. Lawyers exist to maximize the utility of the client. But a lawyer who has no grip on what is true cannot tell the client when it makes sense to throw in the towel. And that lack of judgment is not rewarded.
That said, lawyers are relatively well trained in behavior that is orthogonal to truth but correlated with winning. But for the most part, the legal system (i.e. the judge) is trying to determine truth within the limits of its empirical system.
Well said. But note that the behavior is not entirely orthogonal to truth-seeking. Being trained to discuss a dispute through the techniques of debating will surely decrease one’s ability to say “oops”. (not in the sense of it being a necessary decrease, but in the sense of it being a tendency to decrease such that my prior reduced confidence is justified)
This is actually something I struggle with, being trained as a polemic philosopher.
Indeed, for some time I’ve been tempted to caution you against feeding the trolls.
If brazil84 weren’t a lawyer, I would have written this debate off as pointless a long time ago. It’s raising a negative affect around all the time I spend on this site, but simply walking away knowing that he’s going to continue practicing law without realizing that he’s been making some big mistakes of judgment that demand commensurately big corrections has up till this point been even more frustrating.
Then I commend you for your efforts.
brazil84 being a lawyer, though, reduces my confidence that this will pay off. That is a person optimized for debating rather than truth-seeking.
As a lawyer, I feel obligated to defend the profession a little. Lawyers exist to maximize the utility of the client. But a lawyer who has no grip on what is true cannot tell the client when it makes sense to throw in the towel. And that lack of judgment is not rewarded.
That said, lawyers are relatively well trained in behavior that is orthogonal to truth but correlated with winning. But for the most part, the legal system (i.e. the judge) is trying to determine truth within the limits of its empirical system.
Well said. But note that the behavior is not entirely orthogonal to truth-seeking. Being trained to discuss a dispute through the techniques of debating will surely decrease one’s ability to say “oops”. (not in the sense of it being a necessary decrease, but in the sense of it being a tendency to decrease such that my prior reduced confidence is justified)
This is actually something I struggle with, being trained as a polemic philosopher.