I’ve argued that counterfactually we should go a bit easy on unpopular views, even if the reasoning seems incorrect on further examination, since it’s hard to predict in advance whether someone will find flaws in your reasoning, but they’ll go especially hard on you if you present flawed reasoning for an unpopular position (relative to a popular one), discouraging arguing for unpopular positions.
To be fair, I think a more correct response would be that TheMajor’s statement is correct, but implies a criterion which would likely lead to confirmation bias. Applied correctly, a better understanding of one’s wants would support TheMajor’s conclusion because one would not want to just have one’s views confirmed.
That’s a bad criterion, since it’s an open gateway to confirmation bias. Having your biases challenged feels bad.
I’ve argued that counterfactually we should go a bit easy on unpopular views, even if the reasoning seems incorrect on further examination, since it’s hard to predict in advance whether someone will find flaws in your reasoning, but they’ll go especially hard on you if you present flawed reasoning for an unpopular position (relative to a popular one), discouraging arguing for unpopular positions.
To be fair, I think a more correct response would be that TheMajor’s statement is correct, but implies a criterion which would likely lead to confirmation bias. Applied correctly, a better understanding of one’s wants would support TheMajor’s conclusion because one would not want to just have one’s views confirmed.
In other words, it works just fine, so long as you are in an ideal world,
Case in point