But if you’d actually meant this you’d have just said “The median people are nicer than the average people”. Saying “I believe the median people to be nicer than the average people” would indicate that you didn’t believe it but did believe you believed it.
I don’t quite agree there. Saying “I believe the median people to be nicer than the average people” indicates that you believe that you believe it but it doesn’t indicate that you don’t actually believe it. You could say it is neutral with respect to whether or not you actually believe it but not that it indicates outright that you don’t.
I disagree. In general, saying “I believe x” is evidence that you believe x, and therefore cannot be evidence that you do not believe x. I would be interested to see evidence that people usually use “I believe x” in such a way that it can be taken as evidence that one does not believe x.
I believe that people usually use “I believe x” instead of “x” in cases where they want to stress the possibility, however small, that they are wrong. Usual caveats for religious and “I believe in” statements, as well as unrelated senses of ‘believe’, apply.
Yes, that distinction definitely applies to me. Usually when I say “X” it means “I believe X with almost certainty” and when I say “I believe X” indicates that there is some doubt still, maybe a 90% confidence, but not a 99% confidence.
But in that specific case, as Misha said, I didn’t need to actually believe it—it was a belief in belief in my chain of thoughts, an attempt to rationalize the initial mistake, that appeared, with further analysis, to not be the real cause of it. Having this as a real belief or not wouldn’t change the reasoning.
I don’t quite agree there. Saying “I believe the median people to be nicer than the average people” indicates that you believe that you believe it but it doesn’t indicate that you don’t actually believe it. You could say it is neutral with respect to whether or not you actually believe it but not that it indicates outright that you don’t.
Indeed, but it does hint that you don’t actually believe it, otherwise you would have said the simpler thing.
I disagree. In general, saying “I believe x” is evidence that you believe x, and therefore cannot be evidence that you do not believe x. I would be interested to see evidence that people usually use “I believe x” in such a way that it can be taken as evidence that one does not believe x.
I believe that people usually use “I believe x” instead of “x” in cases where they want to stress the possibility, however small, that they are wrong. Usual caveats for religious and “I believe in” statements, as well as unrelated senses of ‘believe’, apply.
Yes, that distinction definitely applies to me. Usually when I say “X” it means “I believe X with almost certainty” and when I say “I believe X” indicates that there is some doubt still, maybe a 90% confidence, but not a 99% confidence.
But in that specific case, as Misha said, I didn’t need to actually believe it—it was a belief in belief in my chain of thoughts, an attempt to rationalize the initial mistake, that appeared, with further analysis, to not be the real cause of it. Having this as a real belief or not wouldn’t change the reasoning.