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> Committed people have a psychological need to prove themselves right and to discount contrary evidence This feels like an unfairly broad brush to paint commi
by tomxor 6y ago
> Committed people have a psychological need to prove themselves right and to discount contrary evidence
This feels like an unfairly broad brush to paint committed people with. True commitment and expertise invariably results in truths indistinguishable from opinion to the outsider, they can offer considerable insight to those who will listen.
> When weighing people's opinions, expertise should be rewarded but commitment should be penalized.
"Penalized" is too dismissive, and borderline bulverism. I would say it is important to listen to the committed while being critical and wary of any bias they may have.
- sokoloff 6y agoPenalized is just the converse of rewarded. Use negatively-weighted instead if the language is the point that trips you up, but the person who writes “Frankly, I was shaken to the core by what was exposed, yet I understood why the stakes were sky high for those seeking to hide the truth. Why it was a fight to the death to keep a lid on their secrets?” does get those words negatively-weighted in my accounting. That negative score is added to the positive score from the expertise part of the author when I determine how much credence to give their argument.
- tomxor 6y agoYes, I understood the meaning, and stand by my refinement. However the passage you quote is devoid of argument and full of emotion (and to be fair so is much of the article), it is not the type of information for which I am suggesting a penalty is inappropriate. When presented with a true argument, information that can be reasoned about or verified, this is where penalization is not appropriate - healthy skepticism ensures you are critical of it, but an attitude of penalization adds a handicap to every argument produced by a committed person regardless of any truth it could hold. When the argument is almost entirely emotional however I'm inclined to agree - a negative weighting is reasonable.
- sokoloff 6y agoWas there any particular section in that piece that struck you as deserving of strong positive weighting? I found the entire thing fairly breathless emotional screaming about a topic that quite possibly is one deserving of serious attention, but I'll never realize that through the tears.
- tomxor 6y agoNo. I agree the article is not well written, and I think this is a case where the author is not the best placed to communicate the issue in a convincing way, he has literally been personally defending thousands of individuals directly affected by the manufacture of PFOS, so it's understandable how the subject is an extremely emotional one for him. The parent's principle is in fact quite applicable in this case due to the lack of arguments presented along side facts and explanation, but that does not justify over generalizing it to argument from all committed people.
- sokoloff 6y agoPerhaps "passion" is a more precise word for the thing which should be negatively-scored then, rather than "commitment"?
- _cs2017_ 6y agoBy "penalized", I meant the opinions they offer should be weighted lower (i.e., a penalty should be applied to the weight). Committed people do offer insights. However, for every valuable insight, there are a lot of confidently proclaimed but unfounded claims.