(I’ll reiterate some standard points, maybe someone will find them useful.)
The explicit connection you make between figuring out what is right and fixing people’s arguments for them is a step in the right direction. Acting in this way is basically the reason it’s useful to examine the physical reasons behind your own decisions or beliefs, even though such reasons don’t have any normative power (that your brain tends to act a certain way is not a very good argument for acting that way). Understanding these reasons can point you to a step where the reasoning algorithm was clearly incorrect and can be improved in a known way, thus giving you an improved reasoning algorithm that produces better decisions or beliefs (while the algorithm, both original and improved, remains normatively irrelevant and far from completely understood).
In other words, given that you have tools for making normative decisions that sometimes work, you should seek out as many opportunities for usefully applying them as you can find. If they don’t tell you what you should do, perhaps they can tell you how you should be thinking about what you should do. In particular, you should seek opportunities for applying them to their own operation, so that they start working better.
Of course, you’ll need tools for making normative decisions about the appropriate methods of improvement for a person’s reasoning, and here we hit a wall (on the way to a more rigorous method), because we typically only have our own intuitions to go on. Also, the way you’d like to improve other person’s reasoning can be different from the way that person would like their reasoning improved, which makes the ideas of “Alex-right” or “human-right” even more difficult to designate than just “right” (and perhaps much less useful).
People tend to prefer “just being told the answer”, where forcing them to work through problem sets teaches them better.
~~~~~
People dislike articulating answers to rhetorical questions regarding what seems obvious, as this would force them to admit to being surprised by an eventual conclusion, which is a state that can be emotionally uncomfortable, yet the discomfort is linked with embedding it in their memory and it also forces them to face the reality that neighboring beliefs need updating in light of the surprising conclusion because the conclusion was a surprise to them.
The above sentence is steeped in my theory behind a phenomenon that you may have better competing theories for, that people dislike rhetorical questions. Note that other theories are obvious but not entirely competitive with mine.
META: I have divided my posts with tildes because what seemed in my own mind a minute ago to be two roughly equivalent answers to Nisan’s question has unraveled into different qualities of response on my part, this is surprising to me and if there is anything to learn from it I only found it out by trying my fingertips at typing an answer to the question. The tildes also represent that I empathize with anyone downvoting this comment because everything below the tildes is too wordy and low quality; my first response (above the tildes) I think is really insightful.
META-META:I’ve been bemused by my inability to predict how others perceive my comments, but I’ve recently noticed a pattern: meta comments like this one are likely to get uniform positive or negative response (I’m still typing it out and sticking out my neck [in the safety of pseudonymity] as they are often well received), and I’d appreciate advice on how I could or should have written this post differently for it to be better if it is flawed as I suspect it is. One thing I am trying out for the first time are the META and META-META tags. Is there a better (or more standardized) way to do this?
The first sentence seems banal, the second interesting. I suspect this is like the take five minutes technique, you thought better because you thought longer. The second paragraph after the tildes seems unnecessary to me.
(I’ll reiterate some standard points, maybe someone will find them useful.)
The explicit connection you make between figuring out what is right and fixing people’s arguments for them is a step in the right direction. Acting in this way is basically the reason it’s useful to examine the physical reasons behind your own decisions or beliefs, even though such reasons don’t have any normative power (that your brain tends to act a certain way is not a very good argument for acting that way). Understanding these reasons can point you to a step where the reasoning algorithm was clearly incorrect and can be improved in a known way, thus giving you an improved reasoning algorithm that produces better decisions or beliefs (while the algorithm, both original and improved, remains normatively irrelevant and far from completely understood).
In other words, given that you have tools for making normative decisions that sometimes work, you should seek out as many opportunities for usefully applying them as you can find. If they don’t tell you what you should do, perhaps they can tell you how you should be thinking about what you should do. In particular, you should seek opportunities for applying them to their own operation, so that they start working better.
Of course, you’ll need tools for making normative decisions about the appropriate methods of improvement for a person’s reasoning, and here we hit a wall (on the way to a more rigorous method), because we typically only have our own intuitions to go on. Also, the way you’d like to improve other person’s reasoning can be different from the way that person would like their reasoning improved, which makes the ideas of “Alex-right” or “human-right” even more difficult to designate than just “right” (and perhaps much less useful).
I appreciate that this is a theoretical problem. Have you seen any evidence that this or is not a problem in our particular world?
People tend to prefer “just being told the answer”, where forcing them to work through problem sets teaches them better.
~~~~~
People dislike articulating answers to rhetorical questions regarding what seems obvious, as this would force them to admit to being surprised by an eventual conclusion, which is a state that can be emotionally uncomfortable, yet the discomfort is linked with embedding it in their memory and it also forces them to face the reality that neighboring beliefs need updating in light of the surprising conclusion because the conclusion was a surprise to them.
The above sentence is steeped in my theory behind a phenomenon that you may have better competing theories for, that people dislike rhetorical questions. Note that other theories are obvious but not entirely competitive with mine.
META: I have divided my posts with tildes because what seemed in my own mind a minute ago to be two roughly equivalent answers to Nisan’s question has unraveled into different qualities of response on my part, this is surprising to me and if there is anything to learn from it I only found it out by trying my fingertips at typing an answer to the question. The tildes also represent that I empathize with anyone downvoting this comment because everything below the tildes is too wordy and low quality; my first response (above the tildes) I think is really insightful.
META-META:I’ve been bemused by my inability to predict how others perceive my comments, but I’ve recently noticed a pattern: meta comments like this one are likely to get uniform positive or negative response (I’m still typing it out and sticking out my neck [in the safety of pseudonymity] as they are often well received), and I’d appreciate advice on how I could or should have written this post differently for it to be better if it is flawed as I suspect it is. One thing I am trying out for the first time are the META and META-META tags. Is there a better (or more standardized) way to do this?
The first sentence seems banal, the second interesting. I suspect this is like the take five minutes technique, you thought better because you thought longer. The second paragraph after the tildes seems unnecessary to me.
Thanks.