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A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for th
by scott_s 14y ago
A mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious.
In other words, only consider something obvious if you could not explain the opposite.
- tokenadult 14y agoA mental test, perhaps, to determine if something truly is "obvious": if the fact is reversed, and you can come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the reverse, then the original fact is not obvious. This experiment has been tried, by a scientist who presented the exact opposite of various findings to undergraduates, who were readily able to invent rationales for the counterfactual statements, as reported in "A Sociologist’s Apology" (as posted on the website for the book Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer). http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/EIO_preface.pdf http://everythingisobvious.com/wp-content/themes/eio/assets/...
- scott_s 14y agoEliezer Yudkowsky cites the same experiment in the essay I linked, which was my motivation for bringing it up. I'm not proposing an experiment, however, but a mental tool for people who are trying to be honestly rational. And my motivation for why this tool will work is that experiment. Of course, using this mental tool requires that you are honest with yourself when you try to explain the counterfactual statement.
- SilasX 14y agoNot sure if you were trying to imply something different, but that result would suggest that the students don't have adequate basis for claiming that things in those fields are "obvious" (or of their own confidence levels), not that the community of scientists in those fields lack adequate epistemic basis.
- mokus 14y agoAnother good rule of thumb is that if you're ever in a position where you feel the need to assert that something is "obvious", it probably isn't. All too often people try to end a debate by asserting that some point (from which their position inevitably follows) is "obvious". If it were obvious, they likely wouldn't be having the debate in the first place. It's much more likely that someone disagrees with the foundation of an argument than that they agree with the premises but are too stupid to see their consequences.