If someone wants to convince you of an incorrect, object-level thing, and they’re talking to you about what’s optimal, then they can argue for it directly. If they’re talking about what’s rational, they’ll they have to fool you twice—first in getting you to accept a decision procedure that produces it, and again in getting you to accept the thing itself.
Hmm..Could you give an example? I think I disagree because it might be easy to get people to swallow an abstract argument about decisions, and the object-level thing might just be a hop, skip and a jump from that. Getting people to swallow the object-level thing first could be harder because the objects can’t be disguised under abstract labels and hidden inferences. But again, an example of what you have in mind would illuminate things.
The jump is easy only if you happen to take ideas seriously. People compartmentalize by default, so they shouldn’t have much trouble “trusting” a decision procedure while at the same time finding excuses for why it wouldn’t work for them in a particular case.
If you do take ideas seriously, it will be harder to make you accept a shaky decision procedure at all: you would find too many examples in your own life where following it wouldn’t have worked.
This all sounds plausible, but I’d like an example.
It’s funny, though: Here we are disputing (abtractly) whether abstract or object-level discourse is more pliable to the pens of deceivers, and I’m insisting on a more object-level discussion. Ha.
If someone wants to convince you of an incorrect, object-level thing, and they’re talking to you about what’s optimal, then they can argue for it directly. If they’re talking about what’s rational, they’ll they have to fool you twice—first in getting you to accept a decision procedure that produces it, and again in getting you to accept the thing itself.
Hmm..Could you give an example? I think I disagree because it might be easy to get people to swallow an abstract argument about decisions, and the object-level thing might just be a hop, skip and a jump from that. Getting people to swallow the object-level thing first could be harder because the objects can’t be disguised under abstract labels and hidden inferences. But again, an example of what you have in mind would illuminate things.
The jump is easy only if you happen to take ideas seriously. People compartmentalize by default, so they shouldn’t have much trouble “trusting” a decision procedure while at the same time finding excuses for why it wouldn’t work for them in a particular case.
If you do take ideas seriously, it will be harder to make you accept a shaky decision procedure at all: you would find too many examples in your own life where following it wouldn’t have worked.
This all sounds plausible, but I’d like an example.
It’s funny, though: Here we are disputing (abtractly) whether abstract or object-level discourse is more pliable to the pens of deceivers, and I’m insisting on a more object-level discussion. Ha.