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Kingreaper comments on Making your explicit reasoning trustworthy - Less Wrong
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Thanks for a ton of great tips Anna, just wanted to nit pick on one:
I suspect that reading enough X-ist books will affect my beliefs for any X (well, nearly any). The key word is enough -- I suspect that fully immersing myself in just about any subject, and surround myself entirely by people who advocate it, would significantly alter my beliefs, regardless of the validity of X.
It wouldn't necessarily make you a believer. Worked example: I joined in the battle of Scientology vs. the Net in 1995 and proceeded to learn a huge amount about Scientology and everything to do with it. I slung the jargon so well that some ex-Scientologists refused to believe I'd never been a member (though I never was). I checked my understanding with ex-Scientologists to see if my understanding was correct, and it largely was.
None of this put me an inch toward joining up. Not even slightly.
To understand something is not to believe it.
That said, it'll provide a large and detailed pattern in your head for you to form analogies with, good or bad.
Alexflint said:
It seems that your experience was learning about anti-Scientology facts while surrounded by people who advocated anti-Scientology.
So it's completely unsurprising that you remained anti-Scientology.
Had you been learning about Scientology from friends of yours who were Scientologists, you might have had a much harder time maintaining your viewpoint.
Similarly, learning about christianity through the skeptics annotated bible is very different from learning about christianity through a christian youth group.
I actually first started reading alt.religion.scientology because I was interested in the substance of Scientology (SPOILER: there isn't any) from being a big William S. Burroughs fan. The lunacy is pretty shallow below the surface, which is why the Church was so desperately keen to keep the more esoteric portions from the public eye as long as possible.
But, um, yeah. Point.
OTOH, all the Scientologists I knew personally before that emitted weirdness signals. Thinking back, they behaved like they were trying to live life by a manual rather than by understanding. Memetic cold ahoy!