Petrov Day [Spoiler Warning]
23Razied
6Adam Kaufman
4Morpheus
3Viliam
1Algon
New Comment
The most basic rationalist precept is to not forcibly impose your values onto another mind.
What? How does that make any sense at all? The most basic precept of rationality is to take actions which achieve future world states that rank highly under your preference ordering. Being less wrong, more right, being bayesian, saving the world, not imposing your values on others, etc. are all deductions that follow from that most basic principle: Act and Think Such That You Win.
4I find it useful to distinguish between epistemic and instrumental rationality. You're talking about instrumental rationality – and it could be instrumentally useful to convince someone of your beliefs, to teach them to think clearly, or to actively mislead them.
Epistemic rationality, on the other hand, means trying to have true beliefs, and in this case it's better to teach someone to fish than to force them to accept your fish.
If I said [to him] "You're wrong; is true", then—even if he listened to me—he wouldn't have thought through it. He'd just be copying my ideas. Which isn't what I want. I don't want people to copy my beliefs. I want people to think sensibly.
For a long time, when I'm walking people through this, they won't even know what my beliefs are. Usually they'll think I agree with them. But if they think about it hard, they'll realize that they have no idea what I believe, because I have to clean up their idea to reason before that is even relevant.
I watched the rest of that video (the person was telling their story of asking pointed questions to a "socialist" about their policy of funding college education). I think the problem with this is that while this might marginally move a person closer to actually thinking, it is unclear to me to which degree this is a symmetric weapon.
Asking the "right" open ended questions seems pretty powerful in leading someone astray.
Asking the "right" open ended questions seems pretty powerful in leading someone astray.
It is somewhat more difficult than leading them the right way. Also, you may start the habit of thinking, which may continue after you stop asking the questions, so it no longer goes in a direction you control.
But yes, it is a question of degree. You can mislead people by:
- bringing their attention to some things (privileging a hypothesis), and simultaneously taking it away from other things (because attention is a limited resource);
- leveraging their existing incorrect beliefs to make them conclude wrong things even from correct data (rather than examine those beliefs);
- and of course, it is never just asking questions, but also subtly making assumptions, etc.
