A problem, in three parts:
I am aware that the reason I believe a good number of the things I believe is that I’m surrounded by very smart people who are full of good arguments for those things, rather than because I have done a lot of my own independent research. If I had different very smart friends who had a different set of good arguments, my beliefs would almost certainly look very different—not because I consciously adopt the strategy “believe what my friends believe,” but because my friends are smart and good at expressing themselves, and if they all believe something I have heard a lot of very good and persuasive arguments for it.
This is really not very truth-seeking! I would like to believe things for better reasons than “all of my friends believe it and they’re very smart”!
However, all of the ways that I have to counteract this effect boil down to “discount arguments for being convincing and coming from people you trust,” which is even less truth-seeking.
I have no idea what to do about this.
This might be cool but I don’t see how it’s beautiful.