It’s usually much harder to find a specific flaw in an argument than it is to see that there is probably something wrong with the conclusion. For example, I probably won’t be able to spot the specific flaw in most proposed designs for a perpetual motion machine, but I can still conclude that it won’t work as advertised!
I read “ought to be able to” not as “you’re not allowed to reject the conclusion without rejecting a premise” so much as “you ought to be able to, so when you find you’re not able to, it should bother you; you have learned that there’s a key failing in your understanding of that area.”
I agree and while reading Eliezer’s comment I mentally added in something like “or if you cant then you explicitly model your confusion as being a limitation in your current understanding and so lower your confidence in the related suspect reasoning appropriately—ideally until your confusion can be resolved and your curiosity satisfied” as a footnote.
It’s usually much harder to find a specific flaw in an argument than it is to see that there is probably something wrong with the conclusion. For example, I probably won’t be able to spot the specific flaw in most proposed designs for a perpetual motion machine, but I can still conclude that it won’t work as advertised!
I read “ought to be able to” not as “you’re not allowed to reject the conclusion without rejecting a premise” so much as “you ought to be able to, so when you find you’re not able to, it should bother you; you have learned that there’s a key failing in your understanding of that area.”
I agree and while reading Eliezer’s comment I mentally added in something like “or if you cant then you explicitly model your confusion as being a limitation in your current understanding and so lower your confidence in the related suspect reasoning appropriately—ideally until your confusion can be resolved and your curiosity satisfied” as a footnote.