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> “A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellect

> “A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.” > > Why do we feel this way? I feel this way because I've spent the last 34 years of my life gathering evidence, forming the views that I hold, and testing them against alternative interpretation. I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to believe that their well-considered views are correct, barring strong evidence to the contrary. I do my best to have "strong views that are weakly held". Yes, I'm confident that I'm correct in most things, but I'm very interested in hearing someone tell me I'm wrong and why, and I am open to changing my views if confronted with strong evidence of their incorrectness. Honestly, it's rare that this happens, but it does happen.

skybrian 8y ago
Weakly held, sure, but why have strong views when you don't need to make a decision? There's value in being comfortable with uncertainty, in collecting interesting questions and not answering them.
Afforess 8y ago
>I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to believe that their well-considered views are correct Millions of teenage voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Suffering under a "reasonable" but wrong adult is an extremely common life experience. So common that the sheer weight of observation suggests that "well-considered views" are usually wrong, if not completely ridiculous. Many of my adult coworkers and friends have stated that they are just "making up adulting as they go" -- and I share this observation. Few, if any of us, really understand how things work, why things are the way they are, or if our actions are fair and correct. We would all be much better off if we admitted this poor state of affairs more openly. >I feel this way because I've spent the last 34 years of my life gathering evidence, forming the views that I hold, and testing them against alternative interpretation. Inductive reasoning, the process of building up small pieces of evidence and observations and forming a larger conclusion, is inherently unsound. The conclusions you build from this process are fallible, and should be held with suspicion.
tacon 8y ago
One of the tricks of those books about being wrong is that we almost always believe we are right. Every once in a while, we get evidence to change out belief, and then we again believe we are right. So the actual fraction of our existence when we were wrong and realized it is very small. Neat hat trick to help us feel right almost all the time.

skybrian 8y ago

Weakly held, sure, but why have strong views when you don't need to make a decision? There's value in being comfortable with uncertainty, in collecting interesting questions and not answering them.

Afforess 8y ago

>I don't think it's unreasonable for an adult to believe that their well-considered views are correct Millions of teenage voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. Suffering under a "reasonable" but wrong adult is an extremely common life experience. So common that the sheer weight of observation suggests that "well-considered views" are usually wrong, if not completely ridiculous. Many of my adult coworkers and friends have stated that they are just "making up adulting as they go" -- and I share this observation. Few, if any of us, really understand how things work, why things are the way they are, or if our actions are fair and correct. We would all be much better off if we admitted this poor state of affairs more openly. >I feel this way because I've spent the last 34 years of my life gathering evidence, forming the views that I hold, and testing them against alternative interpretation. Inductive reasoning, the process of building up small pieces of evidence and observations and forming a larger conclusion, is inherently unsound. The conclusions you build from this process are fallible, and should be held with suspicion.

tacon 8y ago

One of the tricks of those books about being wrong is that we almost always believe we are right. Every once in a while, we get evidence to change out belief, and then we again believe we are right. So the actual fraction of our existence when we were wrong and realized it is very small. Neat hat trick to help us feel right almost all the time.