The listener should retain incentives where it’s cheap to evaluate evidence, to notice relevant possibilities. When you already know something, it’s a fact about you, not about the listener, it shouldn’t reshape norms that bind their thinking.
In this case, the problem would be instructing someone to write a conclusion at the bottom of their page. Already having that conclusion at the bottom of your own page is not a problem if you merely ended up with that conclusion yourself, long ago, didn’t start from it. But that doesn’t make presenting the arguments that convinced you in a reversed order sensible behavior that’s worth putting up with, because it makes it harder to evaluate your arguments in a well-calibrated way.
A norm to act like this favors persuasion over epistemic hygiene. Harder problems train skills, so as a decision about the effect on a student of rationality it’s a wash. But norms about general behavior are indiscriminate and affect those who won’t be training to overcome their influence, other externalities. Like not having a civilization trains wilderness survival.
There is a difference between figuring out things we know nothing about, and communicating the knowledge we already have.
The listener should retain incentives where it’s cheap to evaluate evidence, to notice relevant possibilities. When you already know something, it’s a fact about you, not about the listener, it shouldn’t reshape norms that bind their thinking.
In this case, the problem would be instructing someone to write a conclusion at the bottom of their page. Already having that conclusion at the bottom of your own page is not a problem if you merely ended up with that conclusion yourself, long ago, didn’t start from it. But that doesn’t make presenting the arguments that convinced you in a reversed order sensible behavior that’s worth putting up with, because it makes it harder to evaluate your arguments in a well-calibrated way.
A norm to act like this favors persuasion over epistemic hygiene. Harder problems train skills, so as a decision about the effect on a student of rationality it’s a wash. But norms about general behavior are indiscriminate and affect those who won’t be training to overcome their influence, other externalities. Like not having a civilization trains wilderness survival.