But the knowledge that you miss by wasting your time on things with bad evidence instead of spending your time on something else with good evidence could also range from insignificant to essential.
Assuming everything is instrumental, and that your goals/values themselves aren;t going to be changed by any subjective experience.
I think I should be more explicit: Saying that ignoring bad evidence could lead you miss things “ranging from insignificant to essential”
1) is worded in a lopsided way that emphasizes “essential” too much—almost everything you’ll miss is insignificant, with the essential things being vanishingly rare.
2) Is special pleading—many activities could get you to miss things “ranging from insignificant to essential”, including ignoring bad evidence, ignoring claims because they are fraudulent, or ignoring the scientific theories of a 6 year old, and nobody bothers mentioning them.
3) is probably being said because the speaker really wants to treat his bad evidence as good evidence, and is rationalizing it by saying “even bad evidence could have essential knowledge behind it sometimes”.
Assuming everything is instrumental, and that your goals/values themselves aren;t going to be changed by any subjective experience.
I think I should be more explicit: Saying that ignoring bad evidence could lead you miss things “ranging from insignificant to essential”
1) is worded in a lopsided way that emphasizes “essential” too much—almost everything you’ll miss is insignificant, with the essential things being vanishingly rare.
2) Is special pleading—many activities could get you to miss things “ranging from insignificant to essential”, including ignoring bad evidence, ignoring claims because they are fraudulent, or ignoring the scientific theories of a 6 year old, and nobody bothers mentioning them.
3) is probably being said because the speaker really wants to treat his bad evidence as good evidence, and is rationalizing it by saying “even bad evidence could have essential knowledge behind it sometimes”.