Reading his essay here: http://edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory it appears that he does indeed come off as pessimistic with regard to raising the sanity line for individuals (ie teaching individuals to reason better and become more rational on their own). However, he does also offer a way forward by emphasizing group reasoning such as what the entire enterprise of science (peer review, etc.) encourages and is structured for. I suspect he thinks that even though most people might be able to understand that their reasoning is flawed and that they are susceptible to biases on an academic level, they will still not be able to overcome those strongly innate tendencies in practice, hence his pragmatic insistence on group deliberation to put the individual in check.
IMO, what he fails to take into consideration is the adaptability of human learning through experience and social forces, such that with the proliferation of and prolonged participation in communities like Less Wrong or other augmented reasoning systems, one would internalize the rational arts as habits and override the faulty reasoning to some extent much of the time. I still agree with him that we will always need a system like peer review or group deliberation to reach the most rational conclusions, but in the process of using those systems we individually become better thinkers.
Reading his essay here: http://edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory it appears that he does indeed come off as pessimistic with regard to raising the sanity line for individuals (ie teaching individuals to reason better and become more rational on their own). However, he does also offer a way forward by emphasizing group reasoning such as what the entire enterprise of science (peer review, etc.) encourages and is structured for. I suspect he thinks that even though most people might be able to understand that their reasoning is flawed and that they are susceptible to biases on an academic level, they will still not be able to overcome those strongly innate tendencies in practice, hence his pragmatic insistence on group deliberation to put the individual in check.
IMO, what he fails to take into consideration is the adaptability of human learning through experience and social forces, such that with the proliferation of and prolonged participation in communities like Less Wrong or other augmented reasoning systems, one would internalize the rational arts as habits and override the faulty reasoning to some extent much of the time. I still agree with him that we will always need a system like peer review or group deliberation to reach the most rational conclusions, but in the process of using those systems we individually become better thinkers.