“I don’t have the same inside-view models as you, and you haven’t given me an explicit argument to convince me, so I don’t believe you” is a good and normal response here.
In most of the world this reads as kind of offensive, or as an affront, or as inciting conflict, which makes having this thought in the first place hard, which is one of the contributors to modest epistemology.
I wish that we had better social norms for distinguishing between
Claims that I am making and justifying based on legible info and reasoning. ie “Not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X,” and if you disagree with me about that we should debate it.
Claims that I am making based on my own private or illegible info and reasoning. ie “Given my own read of the evidence, I happen to think X. But I don’t think that the arguments that I’ve offered are necessarily sufficient to convince a third party.” I’m not claiming that you should believe this, I’m merely providing you the true information that I believe it.
I think clearly making this distinction would be helpful for giving space for people to think. I think lots of folks implicitly feel like they can’t have an opinion about something unless it is of the first type, which means they have to be prepared to defend their view from attack.
Accordingly, they have a very high bar for letting themselves believe something, or at least to say it out loud. Which, at least, impoverishes the discourse, but might also hobble their own internal ability to reason about the world.
On the flip side, I think sometimes people in our community come off as arrogant, because they’re making claims of the second type, and others assume that they’re making claims of the second type, without providing much supporting argument at all.
(And sometimes, folks around here DO make claims of the first type, without providing supporting arguments. eg “I was convinced by the empty string, I don’t know strange inputs others need to be convinced” implying “I think all right thinking people would reach this conclusion, but none of you are right thinking.”)
In most of the world this reads as kind of offensive, or as an affront, or as inciting conflict, which makes having this thought in the first place hard, which is one of the contributors to modest epistemology.
I wish that we had better social norms for distinguishing between
Claims that I am making and justifying based on legible info and reasoning. ie “Not only do I think that X is true, I think that any right thinking person who examines the evidence should come to conclude X,” and if you disagree with me about that we should debate it.
Claims that I am making based on my own private or illegible info and reasoning. ie “Given my own read of the evidence, I happen to think X. But I don’t think that the arguments that I’ve offered are necessarily sufficient to convince a third party.” I’m not claiming that you should believe this, I’m merely providing you the true information that I believe it.
I think clearly making this distinction would be helpful for giving space for people to think. I think lots of folks implicitly feel like they can’t have an opinion about something unless it is of the first type, which means they have to be prepared to defend their view from attack.
Accordingly, they have a very high bar for letting themselves believe something, or at least to say it out loud. Which, at least, impoverishes the discourse, but might also hobble their own internal ability to reason about the world.
On the flip side, I think sometimes people in our community come off as arrogant, because they’re making claims of the second type, and others assume that they’re making claims of the second type, without providing much supporting argument at all.
(And sometimes, folks around here DO make claims of the first type, without providing supporting arguments. eg “I was convinced by the empty string, I don’t know strange inputs others need to be convinced” implying “I think all right thinking people would reach this conclusion, but none of you are right thinking.”)