I think an issue is that you are imagining a general factor of truth-seeking which applies regardless of domain, whereas in practice most of the variation you see in truth-seeking is instrumental or ideological and so limited to the specific areas where people draw utility or political interest from truth-seeking.
I think it is possible to create a community that more generally values truth-seeking and that doing so could be very valuable, bootstrapping a great deal more caring and ability by more clearly seeing what’s going on.
However I think by-default it’s not what happens when criticizing others for lack of truth-seeking, and also by-default not what happens among people who pride themselves on truth-seeking and rationality. Instead, my experience is that when I’ve written corrections to one side in a conflict, I’ve gotten support from the opposing side, but when I’ve then turned around and criticized the opposing side, they’ve rapidly turned on me.
Truth-seeking with respect to instrumentally valuable things can gain support from others who desire instrumentally valuable things, and truth-seeking with respect to politically valuable things can gain support from others who have shared political goals. However creating a generally truth-seeking community that extends beyond this requires a bunch of work and research to extend the truth-seeking to other questions. In particular, one has to proactively recognize the associated conflicts and the overlooked questions and make sure one seeks truth in those areas too. (Which sucks! It’s not your specialty, can’t other people do it?? Ideally yes, but they’re not going to do it automatically, so in order for other people to do it, you have to create a community that actually recognizes that it has to be done, and delegates the work of doing it to specific people who will go on and do it.)
I think an issue is that you are imagining a general factor of truth-seeking which applies regardless of domain, whereas in practice most of the variation you see in truth-seeking is instrumental or ideological and so limited to the specific areas where people draw utility or political interest from truth-seeking.
I think it is possible to create a community that more generally values truth-seeking and that doing so could be very valuable, bootstrapping a great deal more caring and ability by more clearly seeing what’s going on.
However I think by-default it’s not what happens when criticizing others for lack of truth-seeking, and also by-default not what happens among people who pride themselves on truth-seeking and rationality. Instead, my experience is that when I’ve written corrections to one side in a conflict, I’ve gotten support from the opposing side, but when I’ve then turned around and criticized the opposing side, they’ve rapidly turned on me.
Truth-seeking with respect to instrumentally valuable things can gain support from others who desire instrumentally valuable things, and truth-seeking with respect to politically valuable things can gain support from others who have shared political goals. However creating a generally truth-seeking community that extends beyond this requires a bunch of work and research to extend the truth-seeking to other questions. In particular, one has to proactively recognize the associated conflicts and the overlooked questions and make sure one seeks truth in those areas too. (Which sucks! It’s not your specialty, can’t other people do it?? Ideally yes, but they’re not going to do it automatically, so in order for other people to do it, you have to create a community that actually recognizes that it has to be done, and delegates the work of doing it to specific people who will go on and do it.)