Therefore rational beliefs are contagious, among honest folk who believe each other to be honest. And it’s why a claim that your beliefs are not contagious—that you believe for private reasons which are not transmissible—is so suspicious. If your beliefs are entangled with reality, they should be contagious among honest folk.
I think one way this heuristic can fail is that people often build intuition based on examples and then forget the examples. e.g. the classic example of why “big red balloon” sounds correct while “red big balloon” sounds off. A lot of people won’t be able to tell you why the second sounds off, just that it does.
I think one way this heuristic can fail is that people often build intuition based on examples and then forget the examples. e.g. the classic example of why “big red balloon” sounds correct while “red big balloon” sounds off. A lot of people won’t be able to tell you why the second sounds off, just that it does.