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.
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.