I wonder how “playing devil’s advocate” fits into the epistemic hygiene / good cognitive citizenship world view.
On the one hand, it can reduce group think and broaden the range of areas considered. On the other hand, its called devil’s advocate because you are advocating what are presumably bad ideas. If they are advocated too well, or you are not ‘flagged’ as operating in the devil’s advocate role you might actually be spreading bad ideas.
I was thinking about this subject because I tend to slip into the devil’s advocate role in IRL conversations and was pondering if the fact that I spend a lot of time advocating ideas I don’t support might be epistemiclly harmful (or at least a low value use of time).
Edit: I distinguish this role in casual conversation from a more formal red team approach (which would be known to all team members and so not at risk of mistaking the motivation behind advocacy)
On the other hand, its called devil’s advocate because you are advocating what are presumably bad ideas.
The term originated with the canonization of saints. The Devil’s Advocate was the lawyer tasked with making the argument that the person up for sainthood didn’t actually deserve to be recognized as a saint- either the miracles associated with them were faked / not actually miraculous, they did something during their life that the Catholic Church wouldn’t want associated with a Saint, or so on. Another lawyer, God’s Advocate, was tasked with making the case for sainthood.
The practice was abolished in 1983, which opened the floodgates for granting sainthood as it made the process faster and less difficult. Every now and then, someone will be asked to testify against the potential saint- as Christopher Hitchens famously was with Mother Teresa- and his investigation of the claimed ‘miracle’ seemed like a pretty clear debunking to me.
In its original form, the Devil’s Advocate basically represents not extending the benefit of the doubt to proposed ideas, but examining them critically, and seems like a perfect example of good epistemic hygiene and formal red teaming.
A somewhat more productive interpretation of the conversational approach is probably steelmanning, the inversion of straw manning.
Thanks for the information. Though seeing how formal the original “devil’s advocate” was again makes me worry about the wisdom of doing the same informally. Searching for patterns, it seems like the lauded examples of this are all formal and well flagged.
I wonder how “playing devil’s advocate” fits into the epistemic hygiene / good cognitive citizenship world view.
On the one hand, it can reduce group think and broaden the range of areas considered. On the other hand, its called devil’s advocate because you are advocating what are presumably bad ideas. If they are advocated too well, or you are not ‘flagged’ as operating in the devil’s advocate role you might actually be spreading bad ideas.
I was thinking about this subject because I tend to slip into the devil’s advocate role in IRL conversations and was pondering if the fact that I spend a lot of time advocating ideas I don’t support might be epistemiclly harmful (or at least a low value use of time).
Edit: I distinguish this role in casual conversation from a more formal red team approach (which would be known to all team members and so not at risk of mistaking the motivation behind advocacy)
The term originated with the canonization of saints. The Devil’s Advocate was the lawyer tasked with making the argument that the person up for sainthood didn’t actually deserve to be recognized as a saint- either the miracles associated with them were faked / not actually miraculous, they did something during their life that the Catholic Church wouldn’t want associated with a Saint, or so on. Another lawyer, God’s Advocate, was tasked with making the case for sainthood.
The practice was abolished in 1983, which opened the floodgates for granting sainthood as it made the process faster and less difficult. Every now and then, someone will be asked to testify against the potential saint- as Christopher Hitchens famously was with Mother Teresa- and his investigation of the claimed ‘miracle’ seemed like a pretty clear debunking to me.
In its original form, the Devil’s Advocate basically represents not extending the benefit of the doubt to proposed ideas, but examining them critically, and seems like a perfect example of good epistemic hygiene and formal red teaming.
A somewhat more productive interpretation of the conversational approach is probably steel manning, the inversion of straw manning.
Thanks for the information. Though seeing how formal the original “devil’s advocate” was again makes me worry about the wisdom of doing the same informally. Searching for patterns, it seems like the lauded examples of this are all formal and well flagged.