“In America, we believe in driving on the right hand side of the road.”

Tl;dr: Beliefs are like bets (on outcomes the belief doesn’t affect). “Believing in”s are more like kickstarters (for outcomes the believing-in does affect).

Epistemic status: New model; could use critique.

In one early CFAR test session, we asked volunteers to each write down something they believed. My plan was that we would then think together about what we would see in a world where each belief was true, compared to a world where it was false.

I was a bit flummoxed when, instead of the beliefs-aka-predictions I had been expecting, they wrote down such “beliefs” as “the environment,” “kindness,” or “respecting people.” At the time, I thought this meant that the state of ambient rationality was so low that people didn’t know “beliefs” were supposed to be predictions, as opposed to group affiliations.

I’ve since changed my mind. My new view is that there is not one but two useful kinds of vaguely belief-like thingies – one to do with predictions and Bayes-math, and a different one I’ll call “believing in.” I believe both are lawlike, and neither is a flawed attempt to imitate/parasitize the other. I further believe both can be practiced at once – that they are distinct but compatible.

I’ll be aiming, in this post, to give a clear concept of “believing in,” and to get readers’ models of “how to ‘believe in’ well” disentangled from their models of “how to predict well.”

Examples of “believing in”

Let’s collect some examples, before we get to theory. Places where people talk of “believing in” include:

An individual stating their personal ethical code. E.g., “I believe in being honest,” “I believe in hard work,” “I believe in treating people with respect,” etc.
A group stating the local social norms that group tries to practice as a group. E.g., “Around here, we believe in being on time.”
“I believe in you,” said by one friend or family member to another, sometimes in a specific context (“I believe in your ability to win this race,”) sometimes in a more general context (“I believe in you [your abilities, character, and future undertakings in general]”).
A difficult one-person undertaking, of the sort that’ll require cooperation across many different time-slices of a self. (“I believe in this novel I’m writing.”)
A difficult many-perso

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strigiformes

strigiformes

strigiformes

strigiformes