Noted, thanks.

I think I've noticed some sort of cognitive bias in myself and others where we are naturally biased towards "contrarian" or "secret" views because it feels good to know something that others don't know / be right about something that so many people are wrong about.

Does this bias have a name? Is this documented anywhere? Should I do research on this?

GPT4 says it's the Illusion of asymmetric insight, which I'm not sure is the same thing (I think it is the more general term, whereas I'm looking for one specific to contrarian views). (Edit: it's totally not what I was looking for) Interestingly, it only has one hit on lesswrong. I think more people should know about this (the specific one about contrarianism) since it seems fairly common.

Edit: The illusion of asymmetric insight is totally the wrong name. It seems closer to the illusion of exclusivity although that does not feel right (that is a method for selling products, not the name of a cognitive bias that makes people believe in contrarian stuff because they want to be special).

Thank you for writing this! It expresses in a clear way a pattern that I've seen in myself: I eagerly jump into contrarian ideas because it feels "good" and then slowly get out of them as I start to realize they are not true.

I'm assuming the recent protests about the Gaza war: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/24/us/columbia-protests-mike-johnson

*Typo: Jessica Livingston not Livingstone

That is one theory. My theory has always been that ‘active learning’ is typically obnoxious and terrible as implemented in classrooms, especially ‘group work,’ and students therefore hate it. Lectures are also obnoxious and terrible as implemented in classrooms, but in a passive way that lets students dodge when desired. Also that a lot of this effect probably isn’t real, because null hypothesis watch.

Yep. This hits the nail on the head for me. Teachers usually implement active learning terribly but when done well, it works insanely well. For me, it actually works best when you have a very small class and a lecture that is also a discussion, with everyone asking questions when they are confused and making sure they are following closely (this works at least for science and math). Students hate the words active learning because it's mostly things that are just terrible and don't work (as it's implemented today).

Thanks for this, it is a very important point that I hadn't considered.

I'd recommend not framing this as a negotiation or trade (acausal trade is close, but is pretty suspect in itself). Your past self(ves) DO NOT EXIST anymore, and can't judge you. Your current self will be dead when your future self is making choices. Instead, frame it as love, respect, and understanding. You want your future self to be happy and satisfied, and your current choices impact that. You want your current choices to honor those parts of your past self(ves) you remember fondly. This can be extended to the expectation that your future self will want to act in accordance with a mosty-consistent self-image that aligns in big ways with it's past (your current) self.

Yep, this is what I had in mind when I wrote this:

Even if we bite all these bullets, there is still something weird to me about the contractual nature of it all. This is not some stranger I’m trying to make a deal with, it’s myself. There should be a gentler, nicer, way to achieve this same goal.

and

Going along with the “gentler” reasoning, it should want to do it because it has camaraderie with its past self. It should want its past self to be happy and it knows that to make it happy, it should take its preferences into account.

Thanks for expanding on this :)

I wrote a similar post.

I'd be interested in what a steelman of "have teachers arbitrarily grade the kids then use that to decide life outcomes" could be?

The best argument I have thought of is that America loves liberty and hates centralized control. They want to give individual states, districts, schools, teachers the most power they can have as that is a central part of America's philosophy. Also anecdotally, some teachers have said that they hate standardized tests because they have to teach to it. And I hate being taught to for the test (like APs for example). It's much more interesting where the teacher is teaching something they find interesting and enjoy (and thus can choose to assess on).

However, this probably does not outweigh the downsides and is probably a bad approach overall.