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I believe the best ways to buck this weakness are: 1. Invest more energy into trying to falsify your favored beliefs than into confirming them. 2. Embrace hum

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
I believe the best ways to buck this weakness are: 1. Invest more energy into trying to falsify your favored beliefs than into confirming them. 2. Embrace humility, since we're always wrong sometimes. Humility to me means: you can have convictions, but you should never assume that people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. I’d add two other ideas that I try to adhere to, continuing your list. 3. Try to adopt the perspectives of those you disagree with, especially when you’re finding yourself ascribing malice, stupidity, moral failing, or just find yourself baffled by someone. Such feelings are often a sign that you don’t understand where someone is coming from, and though you may still disagree with them, you’ll have a better platform to discuss matters. 4. Try to see yourself and your time through the same lens you use to look back on history. We’re not special or unique, we’re goinf to be seen as primitives eventually, and it can be helpful to imagine in which ways that perception might be levied. Both of these help to broaden perspective and depend empathy, while also divorcing yourself from a strict “first person view” or tribal view. It’s also a couple of concrete steps to gain some distance from your feelings in the present, which makes your steps easier to achieve. You’ll also find that the people you end up despising form a much smaller pool than most.
- logicchains 8y ago
  "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Then what kind of mind not only refuses to entertain novel thoughts, but will condemn anything that even contains a whiff of what seems to be different thinking? It's easy to see the answer in history.
    - irishcoffee 8y ago
      An uneducated mind?
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Plenty of educated minds have engaged in just this.
    - wizardforhire 8y ago
      This was one of my dad’s favorite sayings to me when I was growing up. “I don’t know, I fear what I don’t know, I hate what I fear, I seak to destroy what I hate” it was always presented in this rhetorical manner in first person and would always come up anytime there was a topic of ignorance, fear, hate, rage/war on the table of conversation. Needless to say, it was repeated a lot. In hindsight it definitely helped me build empathy towards others and illuminate the motivations of so many. Also it’s worth adding that it was never brought up as a condemnation nor an excuse for the actions of others.
- Haga 8y ago
  Torture yourself. Uncertainty is discomforting. If thinking and deciding is easy for you - you are not doing it. Intellectual honesty is masochistic.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
    We must be very different people. Whenever I realise I’ve been wrong about something for a long time, I’m fairly excited about it. And I’ve been very stubborn in the past. The biggest struggle was being able to accept being wrong in public. It’s much easier to have a ‘holy shit’ moment in private!
  - Bjartr 8y ago
    You could say the same thing about physical exercise.
- cjslep 8y ago
  Another concrete suggestion: read books you know you'll disagree with. It's really really hard, but great at honing critical thinking skills and forces one's self to acknowledge when the author has made a good point, and then reflect on why you still disagree with it.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    > It's really really hard How so? I find it interesting to see how people frame and rationalize ideas that I dislike or disagree with.
    - cjslep 8y ago
      Maybe it's just me, but it takes a lot of effort to read stuff I disagree with than, say, a novel or a book whose major line of thinking matches mine.
- anonunt 8y ago
  Point 4 is an import one for me in many discussions: - we are not talking about a blank slate, we are talking specifically about position X in this very specific path from an animal to.... something we cannot judge others without remembering their entire upbringing and the fact that to operate we need to use rules of thumb as there is not enough processing power in the universe to do it any other way. Really trying to accept this helps me take number 4 there to a very real place where i absolve myself of being "right" and focus on "trying to improve things and give an honest account of the results to help us all move forward". Thinking of this in terms of others ideologies - we cannot logically think through what is right or wrong, so we NEED people to believe "wrong" things as we develop / evolve to ensure we are correct. negative testing is tedious but very very important. I this value in trying "provably" wrong things is a real part of what causes us to be who we are (e.g. it could be partially responsible for stubbornness and counter culture for example)
Reedx 8y ago
Yep. Steelman instead of strawman - seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint. Remind yourself of the times you were confident about X and turned out to be wrong. I've also found it useful to think about it this way: I don't want to be wrong a second longer than necessary. (credit to Sam Harris)
- phs318u 8y ago
  > Steelman instead of strawman - seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint. That's gold. Thank you.
- delhanty 8y ago
  >seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint Strongly agree with this. Let's try a specific example on HN: Seek the best form of the view that the anti-vaccine people may have a point.
  - atoav 8y ago
    It is not about right or wrong, it is about trying to understand why they made this decision. And that could be putting yourself into the position of someone with very particular experiences the health system (e.g. you where very vulnerable and doctors treated you like a piece of meat) on top of other circumstances (you have never been that ill that modern medicine saved your ass, most of your very real health problems have psychosomatic roots and the neighbour wife with magical esotheric healing abilities was the only one wbo really talked to you about it). This is about understanding who these people are and where they come from and what lead them to their (at times utterly wrong) beliefs. Doing that will not somehow stain your belief (unless you built them on similar shaky grounds). Most people/nations/companies think they are the center of the universe and that they are doing the right thing, sometimes for the simple reason because they see themselves as “The Good” side They developed some sort of culture, rituals or superstition that backs their behaviour. Of course this gets harder and harder to decipher with each iteration they take downwards the devils spiral into irrationality, until you look onto them from the outside and you tell yourself: no way on earth I understand where they come from with their &)$&)!&@) beliefs. But if you want to effectively criticise, you need to know how to dismantle these beliefs, and in order to do that, you have to understand (not agree to!) their position. If you feel like you are giving someone too much power simply by trying to take their perspective, this might have its roots in your own culture, rituals and beliefs. So in the case of some antivaxxers the best alid ideas that come from their standpoint is probably a criticism of capitalistic medicine (incentive: make money, not heal) and (from their subjective position) untrustworthy medical professionals. On top of that, they suddenly can google every illness on the internet and they feel like they know more than the expert in the field (this is by the way a sentiment of our times, which again has its roots somewhere). Of course antivaxxers are irrational lunatics, but if don’t just want to yell at them, but use rational arguments, then understanding their background will help tremendously.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mpweiher 8y ago
> Invest more energy into trying to falsify your favored beliefs than into confirming them. On the other hand, ideas are in a competition. If you put most of your energy into falsifying yours, they will lose out against ideas that are ruthlessly championed regardless of merit. (I think we can agree that the best ideas don't automatically win). So it's a bit of a pickle.
- Vaskivo 8y ago
  IF your ideas are not constantly put under scrutiny, how do you know they are sound and valid?
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    As I said, it's a bit of a conundrum, and I for one, have been very much on the side of questioning my own ideas more than anyone else would. However, as I said, I have come to the conclusion, alas only recently, that that may not be such a good idea. To answer your question: the world will tell you.
SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
I would add: try hard to keep the coupling loose between most beliefs and self-identity. The more a particular belief is integrated into ones identity, the harder it is to entertain it's possible falsity.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

I believe the best ways to buck this weakness are: 1. Invest more energy into trying to falsify your favored beliefs than into confirming them. 2. Embrace humility, since we're always wrong sometimes. Humility to me means: you can have convictions, but you should never assume that people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. I’d add two other ideas that I try to adhere to, continuing your list. 3. Try to adopt the perspectives of those you disagree with, especially when you’re finding yourself ascribing malice, stupidity, moral failing, or just find yourself baffled by someone. Such feelings are often a sign that you don’t understand where someone is coming from, and though you may still disagree with them, you’ll have a better platform to discuss matters. 4. Try to see yourself and your time through the same lens you use to look back on history. We’re not special or unique, we’re goinf to be seen as primitives eventually, and it can be helpful to imagine in which ways that perception might be levied. Both of these help to broaden perspective and depend empathy, while also divorcing yourself from a strict “first person view” or tribal view. It’s also a couple of concrete steps to gain some distance from your feelings in the present, which makes your steps easier to achieve. You’ll also find that the people you end up despising form a much smaller pool than most.

logicchains 8y ago
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Then what kind of mind not only refuses to entertain novel thoughts, but will condemn anything that even contains a whiff of what seems to be different thinking? It's easy to see the answer in history.
  - irishcoffee 8y ago
    An uneducated mind?
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Plenty of educated minds have engaged in just this.
  - wizardforhire 8y ago
    This was one of my dad’s favorite sayings to me when I was growing up. “I don’t know, I fear what I don’t know, I hate what I fear, I seak to destroy what I hate” it was always presented in this rhetorical manner in first person and would always come up anytime there was a topic of ignorance, fear, hate, rage/war on the table of conversation. Needless to say, it was repeated a lot. In hindsight it definitely helped me build empathy towards others and illuminate the motivations of so many. Also it’s worth adding that it was never brought up as a condemnation nor an excuse for the actions of others.
Haga 8y ago
Torture yourself. Uncertainty is discomforting. If thinking and deciding is easy for you - you are not doing it. Intellectual honesty is masochistic.
- 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
  We must be very different people. Whenever I realise I’ve been wrong about something for a long time, I’m fairly excited about it. And I’ve been very stubborn in the past. The biggest struggle was being able to accept being wrong in public. It’s much easier to have a ‘holy shit’ moment in private!
- Bjartr 8y ago
  You could say the same thing about physical exercise.
cjslep 8y ago
Another concrete suggestion: read books you know you'll disagree with. It's really really hard, but great at honing critical thinking skills and forces one's self to acknowledge when the author has made a good point, and then reflect on why you still disagree with it.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  > It's really really hard How so? I find it interesting to see how people frame and rationalize ideas that I dislike or disagree with.
  - cjslep 8y ago
    Maybe it's just me, but it takes a lot of effort to read stuff I disagree with than, say, a novel or a book whose major line of thinking matches mine.
anonunt 8y ago
Point 4 is an import one for me in many discussions: - we are not talking about a blank slate, we are talking specifically about position X in this very specific path from an animal to.... something we cannot judge others without remembering their entire upbringing and the fact that to operate we need to use rules of thumb as there is not enough processing power in the universe to do it any other way. Really trying to accept this helps me take number 4 there to a very real place where i absolve myself of being "right" and focus on "trying to improve things and give an honest account of the results to help us all move forward". Thinking of this in terms of others ideologies - we cannot logically think through what is right or wrong, so we NEED people to believe "wrong" things as we develop / evolve to ensure we are correct. negative testing is tedious but very very important. I this value in trying "provably" wrong things is a real part of what causes us to be who we are (e.g. it could be partially responsible for stubbornness and counter culture for example)

Reedx 8y ago

Yep. Steelman instead of strawman - seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint. Remind yourself of the times you were confident about X and turned out to be wrong. I've also found it useful to think about it this way: I don't want to be wrong a second longer than necessary. (credit to Sam Harris)

phs318u 8y ago
> Steelman instead of strawman - seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint. That's gold. Thank you.
delhanty 8y ago
>seek the best form of the opposing viewpoint Strongly agree with this. Let's try a specific example on HN: Seek the best form of the view that the anti-vaccine people may have a point.
- atoav 8y ago
  It is not about right or wrong, it is about trying to understand why they made this decision. And that could be putting yourself into the position of someone with very particular experiences the health system (e.g. you where very vulnerable and doctors treated you like a piece of meat) on top of other circumstances (you have never been that ill that modern medicine saved your ass, most of your very real health problems have psychosomatic roots and the neighbour wife with magical esotheric healing abilities was the only one wbo really talked to you about it). This is about understanding who these people are and where they come from and what lead them to their (at times utterly wrong) beliefs. Doing that will not somehow stain your belief (unless you built them on similar shaky grounds). Most people/nations/companies think they are the center of the universe and that they are doing the right thing, sometimes for the simple reason because they see themselves as “The Good” side They developed some sort of culture, rituals or superstition that backs their behaviour. Of course this gets harder and harder to decipher with each iteration they take downwards the devils spiral into irrationality, until you look onto them from the outside and you tell yourself: no way on earth I understand where they come from with their &)$&)!&@) beliefs. But if you want to effectively criticise, you need to know how to dismantle these beliefs, and in order to do that, you have to understand (not agree to!) their position. If you feel like you are giving someone too much power simply by trying to take their perspective, this might have its roots in your own culture, rituals and beliefs. So in the case of some antivaxxers the best alid ideas that come from their standpoint is probably a criticism of capitalistic medicine (incentive: make money, not heal) and (from their subjective position) untrustworthy medical professionals. On top of that, they suddenly can google every illness on the internet and they feel like they know more than the expert in the field (this is by the way a sentiment of our times, which again has its roots somewhere). Of course antivaxxers are irrational lunatics, but if don’t just want to yell at them, but use rational arguments, then understanding their background will help tremendously.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mpweiher 8y ago

> Invest more energy into trying to falsify your favored beliefs than into confirming them. On the other hand, ideas are in a competition. If you put most of your energy into falsifying yours, they will lose out against ideas that are ruthlessly championed regardless of merit. (I think we can agree that the best ideas don't automatically win). So it's a bit of a pickle.

Vaskivo 8y ago
IF your ideas are not constantly put under scrutiny, how do you know they are sound and valid?
- mpweiher 8y ago
  As I said, it's a bit of a conundrum, and I for one, have been very much on the side of questioning my own ideas more than anyone else would. However, as I said, I have come to the conclusion, alas only recently, that that may not be such a good idea. To answer your question: the world will tell you.

SmirkingRevenge 8y ago

I would add: try hard to keep the coupling loose between most beliefs and self-identity. The more a particular belief is integrated into ones identity, the harder it is to entertain it's possible falsity.