jooyous comments on Rationality Quotes February 2013 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: arundelo 05 February 2013 10:20PM

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Comment author: Grif 02 February 2013 01:12:40AM *  24 points [-]

If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?

--Sam Harris

Comment author: jooyous 02 February 2013 09:51:31PM *  11 points [-]

This reminds me of

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

which I believe is a paraphrasing of something Jonathan Swift said, but I'm not sure. Anyone have the original?

Comment author: simplicio 04 February 2013 11:35:34PM 18 points [-]

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

I don't think this is empirically true, though. Suppose I believe strongly that violent crime rates are soaring in my country (Canada), largely because I hear people talking about "crime being on the rise" all the time, and because I hear about murders on the news. I did not reason myself into this position, in other words.

Then you show me some statistics, and I change my mind.

In general, I think a supermajority of our starting opinions (priors, essentially) are held for reasons that would not pass muster as 'rational,' even if we were being generous with that word. This is partly because we have to internalize a lot of things in our youth and we can't afford to vet everything our parents/friends/culture say to us. But the epistemic justification for the starting opinions may be terrible, and yet that doesn't mean we're incapable of having our minds changed.

Comment author: Nornagest 04 February 2013 11:59:20PM *  5 points [-]

Suppose I believe strongly that violent crime rates are soaring in my country (Canada), largely because I hear people talking about "crime being on the rise" all the time, and because I hear about murders on the news. I did not reason myself into this position, in other words. Then you show me some statistics, and I change my mind.

The chance of this working depends greatly on how significant the contested fact is to your identity. You may be willing to believe abstractly that crime rates are down and public safety is up after being shown statistics to that effect -- but I predict that (for example) a parent who'd previously been worried about child abductions after hearing several highly publicized news stories, and who'd already adopted and vigorously defended childrearing policies consistent with this fear, would be much less likely to update their policies after seeing an analogous set of statistics.

Comment author: jooyous 05 February 2013 12:23:38AM *  2 points [-]

This is partly because we have to internalize a lot of things in our youth and we can't afford to vet everything our parents/friends/culture say to us. But the epistemic justification for the starting opinions may be terrible, and yet that doesn't mean we're incapable of having our minds changed.

I agree, but I think part of the process of having your mind changed is the understanding that you came to believe those internalized things in a haphazard way. And you might be resisting that understanding because of the reasons @Nornagest mentions -- you've invested into them or incorporated them into your identity, for example. I think I'm more inclined to change the quote to

You can't expect to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

to make it slightly more useful in practice, because often changing the person's mind will require not only knowing the more accurate facts or proper reasoning, but also knowing why the person is attached to his old position -- and people generally don't reveal that until they're ready to change their mind on their own.

Oops, I guess I wasn't sure where to put this comment.

Comment author: Martin-2 14 February 2013 12:58:04AM 0 points [-]

Suppose I believe strongly that violent crime rates are soaring in my country (Canada), largely because I hear people talking about "crime being on the rise" all the time, and because I hear about murders on the news. I did not reason myself into this position, in other words.

It looks to me like you arrived at this position via weighing the available evidence. In other words, you reasoned yourself into it. Upon second reading I see you don't have a base rate for the amount of violent crime on the news in peaceful countries, and you derived a high absolute level from a high[er than you'd like] rate of change. But you've shown a willingness to reason, even if you reasoned poorly (as poorly as me when I'm not careful. Scary!) So I think jooyus' quote survives.

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