I think you’ve identified a special case of a more general problem, which is that true beliefs do not have equal value, and that their values can vary wildly with your circumstances. To borrow blacktrance’s example: if you’re living in 6th-century Rome then it’s useful to know that Jews aren’t inherently evil...but it’s more useful to know what happens to people who say so. And if you don’t know how to profess that Jews are inherently evil without being corrupted by that lie, then it’s more important to learn that than it is to believe true things about Jews.
This discipline, of predicting the value of information before you’ve learned it, is very difficult. For me, it’s the most difficult thing. But it’s also the center of the art; if it weren’t, we could all level up endlessly by browsing Wikipedia.
I think you’ve identified a special case of a more general problem, which is that true beliefs do not have equal value, and that their values can vary wildly with your circumstances. To borrow blacktrance’s example: if you’re living in 6th-century Rome then it’s useful to know that Jews aren’t inherently evil...but it’s more useful to know what happens to people who say so. And if you don’t know how to profess that Jews are inherently evil without being corrupted by that lie, then it’s more important to learn that than it is to believe true things about Jews.
This discipline, of predicting the value of information before you’ve learned it, is very difficult. For me, it’s the most difficult thing. But it’s also the center of the art; if it weren’t, we could all level up endlessly by browsing Wikipedia.