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Grognor comments on SotW: Avoid Motivated Cognition - Less Wrong
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One of the motivations of motivated cognition is consistency. People want to be predictable and they want to be seen as stable. So I suggest demotivating it. Have people read chapter 3 of Cialdini's Influence. I particularly like the Emerson quote:
Yes! Teach that preferring consistency over accuracy is low-status!
I predict this will have no effect unless coupled with the following technique:
Detachment. You are not your beliefs; you are not your actions: When the opportunity to think arises, within five seconds, think those words.
Personally I just think Emerson often contradicted himself and didn't want to bother correcting his mistakes, so he came up with a way of making self-contradiction seem deep.
muses I wonder how this might combine or clash with non-conformity training. Sticking to your guns against public ridicule is a form of consistency, and it does have the danger of running at cross purposes with the virtue of lightness...
Can you really teach being ready to turn that dedication on a dime if the evidence blows that direction? Being faithful to THE truth instead of A truth? This suddenly sounds like a much harder task.
I always make sure to point out, to those who hear that quote but have not studied Emerson, that "foolish consistency" does not mean "consistency that is foolish" but rather "consistency, which is foolish".