Um, I just wanted to parachute in and say that “cached thought” should not be a completely general objection to any argument. All it means is that you’ve thought about it before and you’re not, as it were, recomputing everything from scratch in real time. There is nothing epistemically suspect about nyan_sandwich not re-deriving their entire worldview on the spot during every conversation.
Cached thoughts can be correct! The germane objection to them comes when you never actually, personally thought the thought that was cached (it was just handed to you by your environment), or you thought it a long time ago and you need to reconsider the issue.
“Cached thought!” doesn’t refute the thought. But OP suggests that persuading his sister of something true was made more difficult by the her cached thoughts on the subject. I’ve definitely seen similar things happen before. If that is the case then I’ve probably done it before. I want to be convinced of true things if they are true. So if I have the time and energy it is advantageous to suppress cached thoughts and recompute my answers. Maybe this is only worth doing with certain interlocutors—people with sufficient education, intelligence and thoughtfulness. Or maybe it is worth doing on a long car ride but not in a rapid-flowing conversation at a party.
you never actually, personally thought the thought that was cached (it was just handed to you by your environment), or you thought it a long time ago and you need to reconsider the issue.
Part of the problem is that thoughts aren’t tagged with this information. Which is why it helps to recompute often and it is often easier to recompute when someone else is providing counter-arguments.
Um, I just wanted to parachute in and say that “cached thought” should not be a completely general objection to any argument. All it means is that you’ve thought about it before and you’re not, as it were, recomputing everything from scratch in real time. There is nothing epistemically suspect about nyan_sandwich not re-deriving their entire worldview on the spot during every conversation.
Cached thoughts can be correct! The germane objection to them comes when you never actually, personally thought the thought that was cached (it was just handed to you by your environment), or you thought it a long time ago and you need to reconsider the issue.
“Cached thought!” doesn’t refute the thought. But OP suggests that persuading his sister of something true was made more difficult by the her cached thoughts on the subject. I’ve definitely seen similar things happen before. If that is the case then I’ve probably done it before. I want to be convinced of true things if they are true. So if I have the time and energy it is advantageous to suppress cached thoughts and recompute my answers. Maybe this is only worth doing with certain interlocutors—people with sufficient education, intelligence and thoughtfulness. Or maybe it is worth doing on a long car ride but not in a rapid-flowing conversation at a party.
Part of the problem is that thoughts aren’t tagged with this information. Which is why it helps to recompute often and it is often easier to recompute when someone else is providing counter-arguments.