Copying over some thoughts from a text conversation I had about this post, since that’s easier than writing them up properly. Adding section headers for readability; utterances not marked “[friend]: “ are mine. -------------------
0. beginning
[friend]: I like this! In particular I like the concept that it’s reasonable to have beliefs that you can’t prove on request, because the internet often assumes it’s not
[friend]: (but also yeah, it’s very important to note that if you have those then you shouldn’t expect other people to take them on faith)
yeahhh
I sort of think the second thing is more important in discourses I’m in
or like
1. arguments which don’t acknowledge they’re about private beliefs
…I think in some disagreements there’s a lack of acknowledgement that the kinds of arguments being made are fundamentally not a kind of thing that can convince people in the absence of direct personal experience replicating those arguments?
that these are private-belief kinds of justifications masquerading as public-belief ones
and that it doesn’t make sense to have an argument about it where you think people disagreeing with you are doing something wrong
[friend]: yeah, absolutely
[friend]: I think which issue you run into more depends on specific bubbles
and it makes more sense to mutually acknowledge this
2. terminology request
...this makes me want terms for “private-belief kinds of justifications” vs. “public-belief kinds of justifications”
3. how common are truly public beliefs
also it kind of makes me wonder how common truly public beliefs really are
I kind of think it’s very common for beliefs to rest in part on personal experience that’s not super replicable or transferable by argument
even if the “personal experience” is like, reading papers in which X kind of thing repeatedly turns out to be true, or like, a doctor or nurse seeing a lot of patients who present a certain way and learning to have doomy feelings about some combinations of symptoms
(thinking in part here about some things [nurse friend] has said about her experience, re: the second thing)
4. when to rely on others’ private beliefs; converting private beliefs to ~public ones by demonstrating calibration
which is also now making me think of emergency situations and when you should act on someone else’s private belief they can’t fully justify to you
I guess if you have reason to think they’re in general well calibrated then that’s justified
though it’s still much iffier than coming to agree with a legible argument
also possibly people can convert some kinds of private beliefs into ~public ones by demonstrating being well calibrated?
5. how common are truly public beliefs, part 2
[friend]: I think there’s a fair amount of truly public beliefs, where I know something mostly because I looked it up
[friend]: or I guess even more cases where I kind-of-knew something because of illegible cultural osmosis but when I wanted to tell someone about it I looked it up and it turned out to be an easy wikipedia-findable fact
[friend]: also one can hope that if doctors/nurses see a lot of patients who present a certain way and this turns out to be a consistent sign of a specific problem, at some point someone will write this up and make it legible-ish
6. how useful are public vs. private beliefs
[friend]: … although there’s also the problem where you can make something a kind of public-belief by e.g. pointing to a paper about it, but then it turns out that people who know more about it than you have private-beliefs that actually most of the papers in that field are wrong, and this can get really complicated
[friend]: because we have a vague feeling that public-beliefs are more correct, but they aren’t always
Copying over some thoughts from a text conversation I had about this post, since that’s easier than writing them up properly. Adding section headers for readability; utterances not marked “[friend]: “ are mine.
-------------------
0. beginning
[friend]: I like this! In particular I like the concept that it’s reasonable to have beliefs that you can’t prove on request, because the internet often assumes it’s not
[friend]: (but also yeah, it’s very important to note that if you have those then you shouldn’t expect other people to take them on faith)
yeahhh
I sort of think the second thing is more important in discourses I’m in
or like
1. arguments which don’t acknowledge they’re about private beliefs
…I think in some disagreements there’s a lack of acknowledgement that the kinds of arguments being made are fundamentally not a kind of thing that can convince people in the absence of direct personal experience replicating those arguments?
that these are private-belief kinds of justifications masquerading as public-belief ones
and that it doesn’t make sense to have an argument about it where you think people disagreeing with you are doing something wrong
[friend]: yeah, absolutely
[friend]: I think which issue you run into more depends on specific bubbles
and it makes more sense to mutually acknowledge this
2. terminology request
...this makes me want terms for “private-belief kinds of justifications” vs. “public-belief kinds of justifications”
3. how common are truly public beliefs
also it kind of makes me wonder how common truly public beliefs really are
I kind of think it’s very common for beliefs to rest in part on personal experience that’s not super replicable or transferable by argument
even if the “personal experience” is like, reading papers in which X kind of thing repeatedly turns out to be true, or like, a doctor or nurse seeing a lot of patients who present a certain way and learning to have doomy feelings about some combinations of symptoms
(thinking in part here about some things [nurse friend] has said about her experience, re: the second thing)
4. when to rely on others’ private beliefs; converting private beliefs to ~public ones by demonstrating calibration
which is also now making me think of emergency situations and when you should act on someone else’s private belief they can’t fully justify to you
I guess if you have reason to think they’re in general well calibrated then that’s justified
though it’s still much iffier than coming to agree with a legible argument
also possibly people can convert some kinds of private beliefs into ~public ones by demonstrating being well calibrated?
5. how common are truly public beliefs, part 2
[friend]: I think there’s a fair amount of truly public beliefs, where I know something mostly because I looked it up
[friend]: or I guess even more cases where I kind-of-knew something because of illegible cultural osmosis but when I wanted to tell someone about it I looked it up and it turned out to be an easy wikipedia-findable fact
[friend]: also one can hope that if doctors/nurses see a lot of patients who present a certain way and this turns out to be a consistent sign of a specific problem, at some point someone will write this up and make it legible-ish
6. how useful are public vs. private beliefs
[friend]: … although there’s also the problem where you can make something a kind of public-belief by e.g. pointing to a paper about it, but then it turns out that people who know more about it than you have private-beliefs that actually most of the papers in that field are wrong, and this can get really complicated
[friend]: because we have a vague feeling that public-beliefs are more correct, but they aren’t always