Yes...as per usual with him a good post. One thing, though, is that it is not entirely clear why knowledge of other people’s biases would lead to more motivated reasoning than ordinary knowledge, that is used in what I call “direct” argumentation. For instance, say that Peter believes that the stocks he just bought is a great buy, and that he wants to believe that. Then he might use his knowledge of the biases to explain away any argument to the effect that these stocks will lose value—that’s true. But likewise, he might use his knowledge of the stock market and the economy to explain any evidence he gets that seem to indicate that the stocks will go down. The situations seem to be quite analogous.
Perhaps there are reasons to believe that knowledge of the cognitive biases might hurt you more than other kinds of knowledge, but the fact that we often engage in motivated reasoning does not in itself show that—you need additional arguments to establish that. Perhaps such arguments can be provided—I don’t know—but I’m quite certain that in the long run knowledge about biases will nevertheless make sensible people better reasoners. Indeed, that seems to be an implicit assumption of most LW’ers (why else would you spend so much time discussing these biases?)
http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/
Yes...as per usual with him a good post. One thing, though, is that it is not entirely clear why knowledge of other people’s biases would lead to more motivated reasoning than ordinary knowledge, that is used in what I call “direct” argumentation. For instance, say that Peter believes that the stocks he just bought is a great buy, and that he wants to believe that. Then he might use his knowledge of the biases to explain away any argument to the effect that these stocks will lose value—that’s true. But likewise, he might use his knowledge of the stock market and the economy to explain any evidence he gets that seem to indicate that the stocks will go down. The situations seem to be quite analogous.
Perhaps there are reasons to believe that knowledge of the cognitive biases might hurt you more than other kinds of knowledge, but the fact that we often engage in motivated reasoning does not in itself show that—you need additional arguments to establish that. Perhaps such arguments can be provided—I don’t know—but I’m quite certain that in the long run knowledge about biases will nevertheless make sensible people better reasoners. Indeed, that seems to be an implicit assumption of most LW’ers (why else would you spend so much time discussing these biases?)