JoshuaZ comments on How many people here agree with Holden? [Actually, who agrees with Holden?] - Less Wrong

4 Post author: private_messaging 14 May 2012 11:44AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 14 May 2012 09:44:01PM 3 points [-]

Actively disbelieving people when they state explicitly what will convince them to change their mind seems like a bad policy.

Comment author: Manfred 15 May 2012 12:06:01AM *  1 point [-]

I suppose I should be more specific - I disbelieve people when they ask for additional evidence about something they are treating adversarially, claiming it would reverse their position. Because people ask for additional evidence a lot, and in my experience it's much more likely that it's what they think sounds like a good justification for their point of view, or an interesting thing to mention. The signal is lost in the noise.

Also see the story here.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 15 May 2012 12:11:57AM 6 points [-]

The problem with that is that a basic rationality issue is to ask one's self what would make you change your mind. And in fact that's a pretty useful technique. It is useful to check if something is actually someone's true rejection, but that's a distinct from blanket assumptions of disbelief. Frankly, this also worries me, because I try to be clear what would actually convince me when I'm having a disagreement with someone, and your attitude if it became widespread would make that actively unproductive. It might make more sense to instead look carefully at when people say that sort of thing and see if they have any history of actually changing their positions when confronted with evidence or not.