steven0461 comments on Secure Your Beliefs - Less Wrong

40 Post author: lukeprog 12 February 2011 04:53PM

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Comment author: steven0461 12 February 2011 11:03:57PM 5 points [-]

I see. I certainly don't see anything wrong with condemning epistemic negligence in the abstract. I guess it can't hurt to make the point again.

This part put me on the wrong foot:

well-placed condemnation from people I respected changed my attitude toward gay marriage pretty quickly

Surely they were condemning your specific beliefs here.

Comment author: lukeprog 12 February 2011 11:59:49PM 2 points [-]

As a historical matter, that may be what happened, but that's not what I've explicitly advocated here.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 February 2011 06:06:31AM *  3 points [-]

Choose your anecdotes carefully.

While I don't think anyone here opposes extending the legal category of marriage to homosexual couples (or rather the ones that do probably do so on Libertarian grounds where they want to abolish state sanctioned marriage altogether) you use of it basically conveyed "boo Abrahamic faiths" or "boo nonconformity".

Comment author: David_Gerard 13 February 2011 10:15:23AM -1 points [-]

Choose your anecdotes carefully.

+1

Remember that if someone is very fond of a really stupid belief, they will attack anything coming anywhere near it.

Comment author: khafra 14 February 2011 12:04:55PM 1 point [-]

I have a gut feeling that lukeprog was still fairly fond of his really stupid beliefs when he arrived in college, but his newfound peers (1) didn't criticize anything until some mutual levels of respect and liking had built up, and (2) criticized the most peripheral manifestations of those beliefs, like gender/sexual politics, not the existence of a deity.

Regardless of that gut feeling, I didn't get "boo nonconformity" at all from his anecdote; I got "be aware of peer pressure, which is in some circumstances a pressure so deep as to affect your very belief system."

Comment author: David_Gerard 14 February 2011 12:06:45PM 2 points [-]

"be aware of peer pressure, which is in some circumstances a pressure so deep as to affect your very belief system."

Lots of cases. Possibly the usual method people change their beliefs.