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TrE comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong
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What could one do about rationalization? It probably won't be enough to ask oneself what arguments there are for the opposite position. Also, one could think about why one would want to confirm their position and if this is worth less or more than coming to know the truth (it will almost always be worth less). Do you have more ideas on how to beat this one?
Ask, "What exactly do I believe? Why do I believe it?", separately from "Why is what I believe true? Is it true?". This will call attention to the process that could or could not privilege your hypotheses, before they are granted special rights. Also, a lot of confusion originates from vague ideas that don't even correspond to a clear meaning, so that the question of their correctness is mostly ambiguity.
Better yet: Ask Whether, Not Why.
Both questions are important, and have potential for bringing good info. They shouldn't be mixed up, one of them shouldn't be considered while forgetting the other, and where one of them can't be readily answered, you should just work with the other. Pursuing "Why" is how you improve on a faulty heuristic, for example, fixing a bug in a program without rewriting it from scratch.
All three. You already had two, neither of which matches Eliezer's.
I don't see it, list the three. When applied to the context of these comments, the post says, "If you don't remember why you decided to believe X, ask yourself, is X true? (That is, should you believe X?)". Which is one of the options I listed. What I didn't explicitly consider here is the condition of not remembering the reasons, in which case, Eliezer suggests, you are safer off not going there lest you come up with new rationalizations, and stick to the question you have a better chance of answering based on the facts.
I notice wedrifid still did not explicitly answer you, so for completeness:
(Given the abundance of question marks, I'm not sure how that obviously parses into "three" questions)
And what Vladimir_Nesov meant by "both" was presumably:
Thank you, Vladimir, wedrifid, Cayenne.
Now, how would an exercise to train this 5-second-skill look like?
Read out to a group questions of the form 'why X?' where X itself is a controversial statement for which arguments for and against can be found. This shall encourage them to think of whether X is true itself. X could be very probable, something like 'rationality is the best way of life', or something improbable. This way, the group shall learn to avoid the urge to rationalize while at the same time trying to avoid the opposite, namely feel the urge to crush every statement.
Could this work? How could one modify it?
Always play devil's advocate, and really try to destroy your position?
Whenever you argue, make a point to look up information regarding your argument and if you find that you were mistaken about it immediately let the other person know that you were wrong about it. The more certain you are about the information, the easier it should be to look up.
Think about who you know that would argue against your position, and how they would do it, and make sure that their (hypothetical) argument doesn't apply.
Make sure the null hypothesis 1) makes sense, and 2) isn't right.
Don't view an argument as a chance to be right. View it as an attempt to find facts or a useful model, or as John Maxwell IV says in another comment:
I'm not sure how many of these things you can do reflexively, but I do look up facts as I argue, and I find that I am frequently wrong. I try not to care about being right as much as finding out something useful.
Edit - please disregard this post