Odd. I avoid doing exactly that, because I subconsciously expect people to call me on it; along the lines of “what, you believe X just because so-and-so says so?” It’s fairly rare for me to express weird beliefs unless I’m either prepared to defend them in detail, or on such good terms with whoever I’m speaking with that I know they’ll cut me some slack.
LW itself is exhibit A, I suppose. I’ve adopted a fair number of ideas from the Sequences based mostly on Eliezer being extremely convincing—but I hesitate to put myself in a position where I’d have to admit that, because I can’t replicate the argument spontaneously.
“what, you believe X just because so-and-so says so?”
“No, I don’t believe X because so-and-so says so, I put a strong weight on X being true based on so-and-so’s track record. If you’d like to discuss the evidence for or against this position in more rigor we should do so online so we can link to citations.”
This acts as a great litmus for people who will actually provide me with high quality evidence as well.
The irony here, of course, is that Eliezer has written at length about the importance of being able to reconstruct the argument that convinces one that X is true, not just recite “X is true.”
Reconstructing such, given time, is something I can do. But I can’t do it in real time for non-trivial arguments. Does that make me a minority here? I have never been able to do that for any abstract argument that I can think of, except maybe in my area of professional expertise where all the relevant information is perpetually in cache.
Odd. I avoid doing exactly that, because I subconsciously expect people to call me on it; along the lines of “what, you believe X just because so-and-so says so?” It’s fairly rare for me to express weird beliefs unless I’m either prepared to defend them in detail, or on such good terms with whoever I’m speaking with that I know they’ll cut me some slack.
LW itself is exhibit A, I suppose. I’ve adopted a fair number of ideas from the Sequences based mostly on Eliezer being extremely convincing—but I hesitate to put myself in a position where I’d have to admit that, because I can’t replicate the argument spontaneously.
“No, I don’t believe X because so-and-so says so, I put a strong weight on X being true based on so-and-so’s track record. If you’d like to discuss the evidence for or against this position in more rigor we should do so online so we can link to citations.”
This acts as a great litmus for people who will actually provide me with high quality evidence as well.
Huh. I really like this approach.
The irony here, of course, is that Eliezer has written at length about the importance of being able to reconstruct the argument that convinces one that X is true, not just recite “X is true.”
Reconstructing such, given time, is something I can do. But I can’t do it in real time for non-trivial arguments. Does that make me a minority here? I have never been able to do that for any abstract argument that I can think of, except maybe in my area of professional expertise where all the relevant information is perpetually in cache.
I doubt it makes you a minority anywhere.