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Psy-Kosh comments on Why I'm Staying On Bloggingheads.tv - Less Wrong
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Well, that's probably true of most people... easier to find flaws in the arguments of others that one disagrees with than to seek out the errors that they themselves are making.
This claim seems to be accepted wisdom, but I'm not sure if I believe it. OT1H, it should be easier to detect your own errors, because you have more data about what produced them. OTOH, different people have different sets of error-detectors, and whatever comes out of your own mouth has (one hopes) already passed some sort of sanity check, so by that point, you might not be able to detect whatever errors may remain.
If there were good ways to collect statistics on this, I would bet good money that the fraction of errors which I catch in my own thinking before those thoughts turn into speech is greater than the fraction of errors I notice in the arguments of others who are about as smart as me.
As far as I can remember, I definitely catch far more errors in my own thinking before speaking than I notice in what my peers say.
There's also the whole motivation thing. The whole "often we tend to instead try to 'beat the other guy' rather than actually seek the truth, whatever it may be."
But actually, that would be an interesting thing to test, if we could think of a good way to test it
That's what worries me