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This isn't me saying how people should pick their beliefs. This is me saying how people do pick their beliefs. It's an exhortation to know thyself, and to let g

This isn't me saying how people should pick their beliefs. This is me saying how people do pick their beliefs. It's an exhortation to know thyself, and to let go of the delusion that you're different. If you're stuck in the illusion that your beliefs all follow logically from some carefully-chosen first principles, you have a muddier view of the world (and yourself) than someone who hasn't put the least thought whatsoever into choosing their beliefs.

imgabe 6y ago
You can observe the world. I'm assuming you're not locked in a room somewhere and handed a set of first principles that you have to use to reason out what the world is all about. You adopt beliefs that explain observations and successfully predict future observations. When beliefs fail to do that you abandon or refine them. It's in this process of refining beliefs that you watch out for fallacious reasoning to try to ensure that you are correctly understanding what you observed. I don't know anyone who just picks some first principles and goes from there. I agree that seems silly.