Imagine, if you will, that the world’s destruction is at stake and the only way to save it is for you to write a one-pager that convinces a jury that your old cherished view is mistaken or at least seriously incomplete. The more inadequate the jury thinks your old cherished view is, the greater the chances that the world is saved. The catch is that the jury consists of earlier stages of yourself (such as yourself such as you were one year ago). Moreover, the jury believes that you have been bribed to write your apostasy; so any assurances of the form “trust me, I am older and know better” will be ineffective. Your only hope of saving the world is by writing an apostasy that will make the jury recognize how flawed/partial/shallow/juvenile/crude/irresponsible/incomplete and generally inadequate your old cherished view is.
I’m not sure exactly how this fits in to group rationality practice. I personally am always more motivated to write when it’s something that I will publish, so having a place where we publish hypothetical apostacys could be useful for motivational reasons. It would also be useful because you’d get feedback on your thought process, although that point could be made for many other exercises.
Answer: Writing Your Hypothetical Apostasy
See Write Your Hypothetical Apostasy on Overcoming Bias.
I’m not sure exactly how this fits in to group rationality practice. I personally am always more motivated to write when it’s something that I will publish, so having a place where we publish hypothetical apostacys could be useful for motivational reasons. It would also be useful because you’d get feedback on your thought process, although that point could be made for many other exercises.
Oh yeah, this one’s great. Thanks for reminding me.