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Motivated Skepticism

Edited by Vladimir_Nesov, PeerInfinity, Grognor, et al. last updated 10th Mar 2012
You are viewing revision 1.20.0, last edited by Grognor

Motivated skepticism is the mistake of applying more skepticism to claims that you don't like (or intuitively disbelieve), than to claims that you do like. Because emotional disposition towards a claim isn't generally evidence about its truth, including it in the process of arriving at a belief means holding the belief partly for reasons other than because it's true.

Blog posts

  • Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
  • Motivated Stopping and Motivated Continuation
  • The Skeptic's Trilemma by Yvain
  • Undiscriminating Skepticism

External Links

  • From Skepticism to Technical Rationality by lukeprog

See also

  • Motivated cognition
  • Least convenient possible world
  • Filtered evidence, Conservation of expected evidence
  • Color politics
  • Positive bias
  • Rationalization, Oops
  • Dangerous knowledge

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