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Be careful about stopping there. You can often find devastating criticism of the criticism too! I don't remember who -- maybe Scott Alexander -- brought this u
by kqr 5y ago
Be careful about stopping there. You can often find devastating criticism of the criticism too!
I don't remember who -- maybe Scott Alexander -- brought this up in the context of saying that maybe intelligent people don't suffer enough from confirmation bias.
Intelligent people are so ready to drop their pre-existing beliefs in the face of good arguments that what determines their opinion in the end is not necessarily truth, but at which point they stopped reading criticisms of criticisms of criticisms of criticisms of the original thesis.
With a tiny bit more confirmation bias, intelligent people might be slightly more inclined to stick with popular opinion, and their accuracy might improve as a result.
- zwegner 5y agoThis maybe isn't what you're referring to, but here's an old Scott Alexander post on this topic, "Epistemic Learned Helplessness": https://web.archive.org/web/20170329000721/http://squid314.livejournal.com/350090.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170329000721/http://squid314.l... (using a web archive link since the current page tries to force a login)
- teekert 5y agoHmm, and what effect does being aware of this have?