This comment is a level 1 lie! (I’m replying to it now with a level 5 lie.)
Bruce Lewis
Karma: 76
What’s happening behind the scenes with my HowTruthful project
I don’t think 11 needs to be a community value. If someone comes in believing in the supernatural, in cryptozoology, UFOs, P = NP, or other ideas that haven’t been scientifically verified, who cares as long as they’re interested in changing their way of modeling the world to be more evidence-based?
Sympathize with them, but also with those affected by them.
I strongly upvoted this post because I believe epistemic empathy is important.
The word “irrational” has too many meanings, and I try to avoid it. And I try to direct criticism at arguments rather than people. But I do want to answer your final question as best I can. I’ll just phrase it as problems with arguments rather than people’s irrationality.
In my experience, the problem with arguments against COVID-19 vaccines is that they mainly consist of evidence that there’s risk involved in getting vaccinated. To usefully argue against getting vaccinated, one needs evidence not only that vaccine risks exist, but that they’re worse risks than those of remaining unvaccinated.
Similarly, arguments against masks are usually arguing against the wrong statement. They argue against “Masks always prevent transmission”, when to be useful, they should be arguing against “Masks reduce transmission”.
Good points are made in other comments about the significance of weakest bonds, but mostly I want to say that I like this post because it’s making a clear point with clear reasoning, and was very readable.
Are you really insulating from reality, or from recency bias?
At the beginning of 2023 I thought Google was a good place to work. I changed my mind after receiving new evidence.
Agreed there’s a lot of work ahead in making it engaging.
I define “pro” as anything one might say in defense of a statement, and that includes decomposing it. It can also include disambiguating it. Or citing a source.
Thanks for the well-wishes. Only two paid users so far, but I’m getting very useful feedback and will have a second iteration with key improvements.
I liked the xkcd on empiricism: https://xkcd.com/2855/
My humble opinion is that teachers should make such decisions. From my own education I’ve come to think that the best education comes from enthusiastic teachers.
I had not heard of Community Notes. Interesting anti-bias technique “notes require agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings”. https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introduction
I got a paying customer on https://en.howtruthful.com/ yesterday. Hopefully more to come.
There’s truth in what you’re saying. At the same time, I feel like people have an instinctive desire for clarity over riddlespeak. I think it’s the same instinct that makes people favor 4k televisions over standard definition. I think it’s possible to make a twitter-like medium that discourages hardcoded blind spots.
Do you still think students should learn to analyze conflicts and write about them in a nuanced and researched way? I think answering that question will lead you to the answer to your original question.
OK so the immune system comment simply meant that since vaccines rely on a system that isn’t 100% effective, they can’t themselves be 100% effective. It definitely wasn’t intended to compare a vaccine-trained immune system to a non-vaccine-trained immune system.
To make a statement more specific, just make the more specific wording a “pro” argument. Because it’s something someone might say when arguing for the main statement. I just made a new introductory video today that illustrates this.
I think Bob should be even more direct about what’s happening. “I know most of the people who disagree with you on this are thinking of X, Y, and Z. My reasons are different. My opinions on X, Y and Z are largely similar to yours. But I’m concerned about ☈, ♄, and ⚗.” I think this approach would do even more than the idea in your last paragraph to make the surprise less jarring for Alice.
I’ll be really interested to hear what the 4-year-old says about the stories, especially the 2nd one.
I made this video HowTruthful and the COVID-19 vaccine that illustrates my line of reasoning from a few years ago.
The best path forward might be for @DPiepgrass to make a prototype or mockup, borrowing ideas from HowTruthful and then discussing from there.