I believe the distinction I was drawing, and that you blur in this comment, is explained in “Back Up and Ask Whether, Not Why”. See also cousin_it’s comment. There is a difference between the way you came to believe something, which determines the probability of reaching a correct belief, and being able to present a plausible explanation. One may correlate with another, but these are not the same things.
After thinking about it, I’m going to go out on a limb and CLAIM:
A belief which is not justified by evidence is inaccurate.
People dislike posts that assert a claim without justification so here are my arguments:
(1) the absence of evidence is evidence of absence
(2) it would be misleading and overly positivist to say that an opinion based on no evidence is “possibly accurate”
Ironically, these are things I’ve learned on LW. Now, are you guys self-consistent or not?
I believe the distinction I was drawing, and that you blur in this comment, is explained in “Back Up and Ask Whether, Not Why”. See also cousin_it’s comment. There is a difference between the way you came to believe something, which determines the probability of reaching a correct belief, and being able to present a plausible explanation. One may correlate with another, but these are not the same things.