I liked that article! The main takeaway is separating “knowing how to think” from various trivia, but the exercise is fun too:
I’d talk about how difficult it is to actually figure things out, to get correct beliefs in science, history, politics etc. About the times I’ve changed my minds, about the things I must admit I don’t know enough about to have a much of an opinion (like economics), while still knowing that there probably is a right answer, and that I have to avoid the toxic ambient anti-epistemology (things like “everyone can hold the opinion he wants”, or “changing your mind is a sign of weakness”, or “you have to listen to your heart”), or the cheap way out of taking a middle ground position on everything.
I’d talk about various subjects where I suspect the conventional wisdom is wrong, about what the alternatives are, and about how likely those are to be wrong too.
I’d talk about the unfortunate fact that even scientists don’t tend to update their beliefs enough, and that we have to wait for them to die out before new views can be accepted. I’d talk about various ways of correcting that (betting markets, open-access journals, various schemes of debate tools I’ve come up with back in the days when I was interested in that), and caution about whether those would really improve things.
I’d talk about the failure modes of smart people, and how to try correcting for those.
I liked that article! The main takeaway is separating “knowing how to think” from various trivia, but the exercise is fun too:
I’d talk about how difficult it is to actually figure things out, to get correct beliefs in science, history, politics etc. About the times I’ve changed my minds, about the things I must admit I don’t know enough about to have a much of an opinion (like economics), while still knowing that there probably is a right answer, and that I have to avoid the toxic ambient anti-epistemology (things like “everyone can hold the opinion he wants”, or “changing your mind is a sign of weakness”, or “you have to listen to your heart”), or the cheap way out of taking a middle ground position on everything.
I’d talk about various subjects where I suspect the conventional wisdom is wrong, about what the alternatives are, and about how likely those are to be wrong too.
I’d talk about the unfortunate fact that even scientists don’t tend to update their beliefs enough, and that we have to wait for them to die out before new views can be accepted. I’d talk about various ways of correcting that (betting markets, open-access journals, various schemes of debate tools I’ve come up with back in the days when I was interested in that), and caution about whether those would really improve things.
I’d talk about the failure modes of smart people, and how to try correcting for those.