Often I have witnessed people encountering new information, apparently accepting it, and then carefully explaining why they are going to do exactly the same thing they planned to do previously, but with a different justification. The point of thinking is to shape our plans; if you’re going to keep the same plans anyway, why bother going to all that work to justify it? When you encounter new information, the hard part is to update, to react, rather than just letting the information disappear down a black hole.
In some contexts, this is exactly right. It is right and proper to see major, real-time belief updates in the climax of a rational fic. And one hopes that executives in a high-stakes meeting will be properly incentivized to do the same. But in many ordinary cases, the most extreme concession one should hope to hear is, “okay, you’ve given me something to think about,” followed by a change of subject. (If this seems unambitious, consider how rarely people make even such small concessions.)
I think it’s important to mind the costs—both psychological and social—of abruptly changing one’s plans or attitudes. “Why bother going to all that work to justify [staying the course]?” Indeed, I wish it were more normal for people to say, “well, that’s a good point but it’s probably not worth the switching costs” or even just, “I don’t feel like thinking that hard about it.”
In some contexts, this is exactly right. It is right and proper to see major, real-time belief updates in the climax of a rational fic. And one hopes that executives in a high-stakes meeting will be properly incentivized to do the same. But in many ordinary cases, the most extreme concession one should hope to hear is, “okay, you’ve given me something to think about,” followed by a change of subject. (If this seems unambitious, consider how rarely people make even such small concessions.)
I think it’s important to mind the costs—both psychological and social—of abruptly changing one’s plans or attitudes. “Why bother going to all that work to justify [staying the course]?” Indeed, I wish it were more normal for people to say, “well, that’s a good point but it’s probably not worth the switching costs” or even just, “I don’t feel like thinking that hard about it.”