lessdazed comments on Metacontrarian Metaethics - Less Wrong

2 Post author: Will_Newsome 20 May 2011 05:36AM

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Comment author: lessdazed 20 May 2011 12:34:13PM 1 point [-]

OK, sometimes you will end up making the same decision after reflection and having wasted time, other times you may even change from a good decision (by all relevant criteria) to a bad one simply because your self-reflection was poorly executed. That doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you for having a fear or with your fear (though it seems too strong in my opinion).

This should be obvious - it wasn't to me until after reading your comment the second time - but "increases the extent to which I'm reflective" really ought to sound extraordinarily uncompelling to us. Think about it: a bias increases the extent to which you do something. It should be obvious that that thing is not always good to increase, and the only reason it seems otherwise to us is that we automatically assume there are biases in the opposite direction that won't be exceeded however much we try to bias ourselves. Even so, to combat bias with bias - it's not ideal.