And then there are the legions of people who do not admit to even the tiniest mistake. To these people, incongruent information is to be ignored at all costs. And I do mean all costs: when my unvaccinated uncle died of Covid, my unvaccinated dad did not consider this to be evidence that Covid was dangerous, because my uncle also showed signs of having had a stroke around the same time, and we can be 100% certain this was the sole reason he was put on a ventilator and died. (Of course, this is not how he phrased it; he seems to have an extreme self-blinding technique, such that if a stroke could have killed his brother, there is nothing more to say or think about the matter and We Will Not Discuss It Further.) It did not sway him, either, when his favorite anti-vax pastor Marcus Lamb died of Covid, though he had no other cause of death to propose.
I think this type of person is among the most popular and extreme in politics. And their followers, such as my dad, do the same thing.
But they never admit it. They may even use the language of changing their mind: “I was wrong… it turns out the conspiracy is even bigger than I thought!” And I think a lot of people who can change their mind get roped in by those who can’t. Myself, for instance: my religion taught me it was important to tell the truth, but eventually I found out that key information was hidden from me, filtered out by leaders who taught “tell the truth” and “choose the right”. The hypocrisy was not obvious, and it took me far too long to detect it.
I’m so glad there’s a corner of the internet for people who can change their minds quicker than scientists, even if the information comes from the “wrong” side. Like when a climate science denier told me CO2′s effect decreases logarithmically, and within a day or two I figured out he was right. Some more recent flip-flops of mine: Covid origin (natural origin ⇒ likely lab leak ⇒ natural origin); Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Kyiv will fall ⇒ Russia’s losing ⇒ stalemate).
But it’s not enough; we need to scale rationality up. Eliezer mainly preached individual rationality, with “rationality dojos” and such, but figuring out the truth is very hard in a media environment where nearly two thirds of everybody gives up each centimetre of ground grudgingly, and the other third won’t give up even a single millimetre of ground (at least not until the rest of the tribe has given up a few metres first). And maybe it’s worse, maybe it’s half-and-half. In this environment it’s often a lot of work even for aspiring rationalists to figure out a poor approximation of the truth. I think we can do better and I’ve been wanting to propose a technological solution, but after seven months no one has upvoted or even tried to criticize my idea.
Not knocking your idea, but usually when you want to complain that “no one has upvoted me” it’s good to think again whether you really want to blame other people.
I can guess at a reason why people may not have read that post you linked. I found it long-winded, like a page out of your diary where you’re still developing the idea, thinking aloud by writing—which is excellent to do, but it doesn’t seem like something you wrote from the start for other people to read, so it’s hard to follow. At least, I’m still puzzled about what you wanted to put forward in it.
And then there are the legions of people who do not admit to even the tiniest mistake. To these people, incongruent information is to be ignored at all costs. And I do mean all costs: when my unvaccinated uncle died of Covid, my unvaccinated dad did not consider this to be evidence that Covid was dangerous, because my uncle also showed signs of having had a stroke around the same time, and we can be 100% certain this was the sole reason he was put on a ventilator and died. (Of course, this is not how he phrased it; he seems to have an extreme self-blinding technique, such that if a stroke could have killed his brother, there is nothing more to say or think about the matter and We Will Not Discuss It Further.) It did not sway him, either, when his favorite anti-vax pastor Marcus Lamb died of Covid, though he had no other cause of death to propose.
I think this type of person is among the most popular and extreme in politics. And their followers, such as my dad, do the same thing.
But they never admit it. They may even use the language of changing their mind: “I was wrong… it turns out the conspiracy is even bigger than I thought!” And I think a lot of people who can change their mind get roped in by those who can’t. Myself, for instance: my religion taught me it was important to tell the truth, but eventually I found out that key information was hidden from me, filtered out by leaders who taught “tell the truth” and “choose the right”. The hypocrisy was not obvious, and it took me far too long to detect it.
I’m so glad there’s a corner of the internet for people who can change their minds quicker than scientists, even if the information comes from the “wrong” side. Like when a climate science denier told me CO2′s effect decreases logarithmically, and within a day or two I figured out he was right. Some more recent flip-flops of mine: Covid origin (natural origin ⇒ likely lab leak ⇒ natural origin); Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Kyiv will fall ⇒ Russia’s losing ⇒ stalemate).
But it’s not enough; we need to scale rationality up. Eliezer mainly preached individual rationality, with “rationality dojos” and such, but figuring out the truth is very hard in a media environment where nearly two thirds of everybody gives up each centimetre of ground grudgingly, and the other third won’t give up even a single millimetre of ground (at least not until the rest of the tribe has given up a few metres first). And maybe it’s worse, maybe it’s half-and-half. In this environment it’s often a lot of work even for aspiring rationalists to figure out a poor approximation of the truth. I think we can do better and I’ve been wanting to propose a technological solution, but after seven months no one has upvoted or even tried to criticize my idea.
Not knocking your idea, but usually when you want to complain that “no one has upvoted me” it’s good to think again whether you really want to blame other people.
I can guess at a reason why people may not have read that post you linked. I found it long-winded, like a page out of your diary where you’re still developing the idea, thinking aloud by writing—which is excellent to do, but it doesn’t seem like something you wrote from the start for other people to read, so it’s hard to follow. At least, I’m still puzzled about what you wanted to put forward in it.