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Mass_Driver comments on The Sin of Persuasion - Less Wrong
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But remember that anyone with a sufficiently high vested interest in convincing others of an idea would feel free to do so. The example you gave doesn't sound much like something people would be hesitant to convince you of today; it's easy to envision a friend telling you that it's safer to take a trip by plane. The scenario looks much different if you simply envision it as an increase in the exchange of advice rather than an increase in confrontations of what we currently consider identity politics.
I guess the reason why I chose an example that sounded like an exchange of advice is to point out that even if you had a huge chunk of your identity wrapped up in your belief that the shuttle was safer, you would still be glad, in hindsight, that I confronted you, no matter how uncomfortable the confrontation was, because knowing the truth has set you free.
Where individual beliefs most likely do not have consequences (theology, national politics, parenting styles, sports-team-affiliation, etc.), there should still be a norm against unwanted confrontation.
All of those seem to be things that do have significant consequences though, with the possible exception of sports team affiliation.
Admittedly some questions of theology seem almost completely inconsequential (what does it matter if Jesus is consubstantial with God?) but others would be matters of extreme importance if true. Anything with a bearing on how to achieve a desired afterlife, for example. They only seem inconsequential if you haven't internalized the idea that they apply to anything real.
My subjective impression is that most moderately religious people in industrialized countries haven't. Otherwise, when relatives drop out of the faith, you would expect to see them get daily evangelical phone calls, rather than frosty silence.
Likewise parenting and politics -- there are 10 partisan hacks who have trouble making friends with people of the opposite party for every 1 activist who actually leaves her county to do some electioneering. You hear a lot about parents who don't want their kid associating with what they see as the children of unduly (lax / anal-retentive) parents, and these people might urgently defend their views at, e.g., a dinner party, but you rarely hear of campaigns where a parent goes around trying to convince all her closest friends (let alone the whole community) that X parenting style ruins kids' lives. Hell, people usually don't even do that when they think mercury in vaccines causes autism.
People believe that they believe that parenting, politics, and religion have consequences, but they don't actually believe it. That's my opinion, anyway.
That's more a case of people saving their own kids before saving their neighbors'. If it's sufficiently hard to save oneself, people won't always get to the save one's neighbor part.
That makes plenty of sense, Eugine_Nier, but the premise of this whole little exchange (admittedly, several layers up in the comment thread) was that at least some people do care enough to try to save their neighbors, and only refrain because of social norms against being annoyingly evangelical.
In particular violating that social norm would make it harder for them to save themselves.
By the way, this comment has inspired me to make a top level post on the distinction between belief in belief and internalization
That sounds like a factual belief rather than an opinion.
And I think you're right that most people haven't internalized a sense of the consequences of their beliefs, although they may consciously recognize that they have consequences. This isn't surprising, people have a pretty general weakness at internalizing beliefs when they pertain to things they can't observe up close on a regular basis.
I think there's probably a salient difference between things you only believe you believe though, and things that you believe but haven't truly internalized. I really do believe, for instance, that more than a billion people in this world suffer from starvation. I can confidently make predictions contingent on it being true. But if I had really internalized that belief, it would have a significantly greater bearing on my actions than it does.
Difference?
Opinions are subjective, and thus can't be confirmed or denied as matters of fact. Perhaps people will sometimes try to employ "in my opinion" as a fully general defense against having their statements disputed, but some beliefs are opinions and some are not.
Let's unpack this. When some statement is expressed "as an opinion", does the statement have any meaning? If it doesn't have any meaning, that's a serious problem. If it does, can we inquire about its correctness? If we can't, that's rather surprising, give an example of when that happens.
The statement does have meaning, but it's subjective to the person expressing it. For instance, I might say that "In my opinion, Cowboy Bebop is the greatest animated series ever made." It has factual implications; I may predict that I will enjoy watching Cowboy Bebop more than any other animated series, or notice more artistic choices that I consider to be well done. But I will not be able to predict that other people will enjoy Cowboy Bebop more than other series, or have similarly positive assessments of its artistic merit. I could make those predictions for anyone I knew to have the same preferences and values as I do, and I can provide arguments in favor of those preferences and values, but I can't provide evidence for them.
A factual claim can well be limited by one's inability to communicate its truth to others, that doesn't make that claim any less about the world, it just indicates a certain technical difficulty in managing it. Furthermore, if the claim is about your emotions, as you suggest with your example, and you set out to figure out a way of communicating or re-examining it (like with any other factual claim), then you can find creative ways of doing so, such as taking measurements of brain activity in the relevant contexts.