How do you weight the opinion of people whose arguments you do not accept? Say you have 10 friends who all believe with 99% confidence in proposition A. You ask them why they believe A, and the arguments they produce seem completely bogus or incoherent to you. But perhaps they have strong intuitive or aesthetic reasons to believe A, which they simply cannot articulate. Should you update in favor of A or not?
Trying to steelman arguments by talking to people you know in real life isnt a good method. You will find the best arguments in books and papers written by people who have acquired the rare skill of articulating intuitions.
Yes, that may be true, but that’s doesn’t address the question. A stronger version would be:
Say you have 10 sources who all claim high confidence in proposition A. The arguments produced seem completely bogus or incoherent to you. But perhaps they have strong intuitive or aesthetic reasons to claim A, which you cannot understand. Should you update in favor of A or not?
If I don’t understand a topic well I’m likely to simply copy the beliefs of friends who seem to have delved deep into an issue even if they can’t tell me exactly why they believe what they believe.
If I on the hand already have a firm opinion and especially if the reasons for my opinions aren’t possible to be communicated easily I don’t update much.
How do you weight the opinion of people whose arguments you do not accept? Say you have 10 friends who all believe with 99% confidence in proposition A. You ask them why they believe A, and the arguments they produce seem completely bogus or incoherent to you. But perhaps they have strong intuitive or aesthetic reasons to believe A, which they simply cannot articulate. Should you update in favor of A or not?
Trying to steelman arguments by talking to people you know in real life isnt a good method. You will find the best arguments in books and papers written by people who have acquired the rare skill of articulating intuitions.
Yes, that may be true, but that’s doesn’t address the question. A stronger version would be:
If I don’t understand a topic well I’m likely to simply copy the beliefs of friends who seem to have delved deep into an issue even if they can’t tell me exactly why they believe what they believe.
If I on the hand already have a firm opinion and especially if the reasons for my opinions aren’t possible to be communicated easily I don’t update much.
What’s your prior for A, and what was your prior for their confidence in A? very roughly speaking, updates feel like surprise.