Trick to get free respect from rationalist types: passionately argue for some wrong position, then when someone corrects you, say “oh, I’ve changed my mind, you were right and I was wrong, mea culpa’.
You might well lose more respect from them for being taken in by the wrong position in the first place. Or even, if they’re particularly good rationalists and you aren’t careful, by being too easily persuaded to change your mind.
If you mean to say that we should be less persuaded of that signal than we might otherwise be, I can see a counterargument: lots of people couldn’t bear to publically admit to being wrong even on a topic they chose for that purpose.
I’ll bet that this is a case where you become what you pretend to be. Anyone who gets in the habit of publicly admitting they’re wrong, even if they have to fake the whole thing, has acquired a valuable capacity, valuable practice, and a most valuable reputation to live up to. We tend to become what others think we are.
I don’t do this myself—my mistakes are real mistakes, thank you—but it’s an argument on Michael Vassar’s side in an ongoing argument between Vassar and I.
Trick to get free respect from rationalist types: passionately argue for some wrong position, then when someone corrects you, say “oh, I’ve changed my mind, you were right and I was wrong, mea culpa’.
You might well lose more respect from them for being taken in by the wrong position in the first place. Or even, if they’re particularly good rationalists and you aren’t careful, by being too easily persuaded to change your mind.
If you mean to say that we should be less persuaded of that signal than we might otherwise be, I can see a counterargument: lots of people couldn’t bear to publically admit to being wrong even on a topic they chose for that purpose.
I’ll bet that this is a case where you become what you pretend to be. Anyone who gets in the habit of publicly admitting they’re wrong, even if they have to fake the whole thing, has acquired a valuable capacity, valuable practice, and a most valuable reputation to live up to. We tend to become what others think we are.
I don’t do this myself—my mistakes are real mistakes, thank you—but it’s an argument on Michael Vassar’s side in an ongoing argument between Vassar and I.