There are some people that I’ve found to be very consistently thoughtful—when we disagree, the crux is often something interesting and often causes me to realize that I overlooked an important consideration. I respect people like this a lot, even if we disagree a lot. I think talking to people like this is a good antidote to digging yourself into a position.
On the other hand, there are some people I’ve talked to where I feel like the conversation always runs in circles so it’s impossible to pin down a crux, or they always retreat to increasingly deranged positions to avoid admitting being wrong, or they seem to constantly pattern match my argument to something vaguely similar instead of understanding my argument. I think arguing against people like this too much is actively harmful for your epistemics, because you’ll start digging yourself into your positions, and you’ll get used to thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. There are a bunch of people (most notably Eliezer) who seem to me to have gone too far down this path.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t know exactly how to consistently become more thoughtful, but I think one good starting point is getting good at deeply understanding people’s viewpoints.
There are some people that I’ve found to be very consistently thoughtful—when we disagree, the crux is often something interesting and often causes me to realize that I overlooked an important consideration. I respect people like this a lot, even if we disagree a lot. I think talking to people like this is a good antidote to digging yourself into a position.
On the other hand, there are some people I’ve talked to where I feel like the conversation always runs in circles so it’s impossible to pin down a crux, or they always retreat to increasingly deranged positions to avoid admitting being wrong, or they seem to constantly pattern match my argument to something vaguely similar instead of understanding my argument. I think arguing against people like this too much is actively harmful for your epistemics, because you’ll start digging yourself into your positions, and you’ll get used to thinking that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong. There are a bunch of people (most notably Eliezer) who seem to me to have gone too far down this path.
On the other side of the aisle, I don’t know exactly how to consistently become more thoughtful, but I think one good starting point is getting good at deeply understanding people’s viewpoints.