“Burden of proof” is a bad framing for epistemics. It is not incumbent on others to provide exactly the sequence of arguments to make you believe their claim; your job is to figure out whether the claim is true or not. Whether the other person has given good arguments for the claim does not usually have much bearing on whether the claim is true or not.
Similarly, don’t say “I haven’t seen this justified, so I don’t believe it”; say “I don’t believe it, and I haven’t seen it justified” (unless you are specifically relying on absence of evidence being evidence of absence, which you usually should not be, in the contexts that I see people doing this).
I’m not 100% sure this needs to be much longer. It might actually be good to just make this a top-level post so you can link to it when you want, and maybe specifically note that if people have specific confusions/complaints/arguments that they don’t think the post addresses, you’ll update the post to address those as they come up?
(Maybe caveating the whole post under “this is not currently well argued, but I wanted to get the ball rolling on having some kind of link”)
That said, my main counterargument is: “Sometimes people are trying to change the status quo of norms/laws/etc. It’s not necessarily possible to review every single claim anyone makes, and it is reasonable to filter your attention to ‘claims that have been reasonably well argued.’”
I think ‘burden of proof’ isn’t quite the right frame but there is something there that still seems important. I think the bad thing comes from distinguishing epistemics vs Overton-norm-fighting, which are in fact separate.
maybe specifically note that if people have specific confusions/complaints/arguments that they don’t think the post addresses, you’ll update the post to address those as they come up?
I don’t really want this responsibility, which is part of why I’m doing all of these on the shortform. I’m happy for you to copy it into a top-level post of your own if you want.
Sometimes people are trying to change the status quo of norms/laws/etc. It’s not necessarily possible to review every single claim anyone makes, and it is reasonable to filter your attention to ’claims that have been reasonably well argued.
I agree this makes sense, but then say “I’m not looking into this because it hasn’t been well argued (and my time/attention is limited)”, rather than “I don’t believe this because it hasn’t been well argued”.
“Burden of proof” is a bad framing for epistemics. It is not incumbent on others to provide exactly the sequence of arguments to make you believe their claim; your job is to figure out whether the claim is true or not. Whether the other person has given good arguments for the claim does not usually have much bearing on whether the claim is true or not.
Similarly, don’t say “I haven’t seen this justified, so I don’t believe it”; say “I don’t believe it, and I haven’t seen it justified” (unless you are specifically relying on absence of evidence being evidence of absence, which you usually should not be, in the contexts that I see people doing this).
I’m not 100% sure this needs to be much longer. It might actually be good to just make this a top-level post so you can link to it when you want, and maybe specifically note that if people have specific confusions/complaints/arguments that they don’t think the post addresses, you’ll update the post to address those as they come up?
(Maybe caveating the whole post under “this is not currently well argued, but I wanted to get the ball rolling on having some kind of link”)
That said, my main counterargument is: “Sometimes people are trying to change the status quo of norms/laws/etc. It’s not necessarily possible to review every single claim anyone makes, and it is reasonable to filter your attention to ‘claims that have been reasonably well argued.’”
I think ‘burden of proof’ isn’t quite the right frame but there is something there that still seems important. I think the bad thing comes from distinguishing epistemics vs Overton-norm-fighting, which are in fact separate.
I don’t really want this responsibility, which is part of why I’m doing all of these on the shortform. I’m happy for you to copy it into a top-level post of your own if you want.
I agree this makes sense, but then say “I’m not looking into this because it hasn’t been well argued (and my time/attention is limited)”, rather than “I don’t believe this because it hasn’t been well argued”.