One workaround would be to assign high confidence only to beliefs for which you have read n academic papers on the subject. For example, only assign 90% confidence if you’ve read ten academic papers.
Easy hack:
Google “papers supporting $controversial_position”
Read n papers linked in results
Assign confidence proportional to n
Enjoy cozy feelings of intellectual superiority
I don’t think many people do this as such, but there are less self-aware versions of the same procedure that do happen in practice. For example, if you hang out on any reasonably intellectual partisan blog, links to related papers will probably come your way pretty often. If you read them as they arrive and update as suggested, in fairly short order you’ll have read enough to assign high confidence to your preexisting opinions—yet those opinions will never be seriously challenged, because all the information involved has been implicitly screened for compatibility before it gets anywhere near your head.
Your second criterion helps but I don’t think it’s sufficient; it’s very easy to convince yourself that you understand the strongest opposing arguments as long as you’ve been exposed to simplified or popularized versions of them, which to a first approximation is true for everyone with opinions on controversial issues.
Easy hack:
Google “papers supporting $controversial_position”
Read n papers linked in results
Assign confidence proportional to n
Enjoy cozy feelings of intellectual superiority
I don’t think many people do this as such, but there are less self-aware versions of the same procedure that do happen in practice. For example, if you hang out on any reasonably intellectual partisan blog, links to related papers will probably come your way pretty often. If you read them as they arrive and update as suggested, in fairly short order you’ll have read enough to assign high confidence to your preexisting opinions—yet those opinions will never be seriously challenged, because all the information involved has been implicitly screened for compatibility before it gets anywhere near your head.
Your second criterion helps but I don’t think it’s sufficient; it’s very easy to convince yourself that you understand the strongest opposing arguments as long as you’ve been exposed to simplified or popularized versions of them, which to a first approximation is true for everyone with opinions on controversial issues.