Cross-posted from my blog.
Status: I think the described concept would be more useful if I applied it more often — or at least noticed when I do apply it. Right now it's thinking out loud + "I wonder what will happen if I post on LW".
I think that "critical thinking" is way too often taken to mean roughly "checking the facts and logical inferences you are presented with".
In addition to focusing on facts — "what people claim to be true" — it seems useful to focus on a certain cluster of claims that are very often left implicit. These claims are related to the process of how humans make decisions in the... (read 1611 more words →)
The state of confusion you're describing sounds a lot like Kegan's 4.5 nihilism (pretty much everything at meaningness.com is relevant). A person's values have been demolished by a persuasive argument, but they haven't yet internalized that people are "allowed" to create their own systems and values. Alright.
1. I assume that LW-adjacent people should actually be better at guiding people out of this stage, because a lot of people in the community have gone through the same process and there is an extensive body of work on the topic (Eliezer's sequences on human values, David Chapman's work, Scott Alexander's posts on effective altruism / axiology-vs-morality / etc).
2. I also assume that in general... (read more)