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shminux comments on Rationality Quotes February 2013 - Less Wrong
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@slicknet
With apologies for double-commenting: "Don't assume others are ignorant" is likely to be read by a lot of people (including myself at first) as "Aim high and don't be easily be convinced of an inferential gap". Posts on underconfidence may also be relevant.
If we are in the business of making assumptions, there is no dichotomy, you can as well consider both hypotheticals. (Actually believing that either of these holds in general, or in any given case where you don't have sufficient information, would probably be dumb, ignorant, a mistake.)
This misses the point a bit due to an equivocation on "assume". In ordinary discourse, it usually means "assume for the purpose of action until you encounter contrary evidence". That's very different from the scientist's hypothetical assumptions that are made in order to figure out what follows from a hypothesis.
It's epistemically incorrect to adopt a belief "for the purpose of action", and permitting "contrary evidence" to correct the error doesn't make it a non-error.
I think what Creutzer is trying to mean is in ordinary discourse meaning everyday problems in which you are not always able to give the thought time it deserves, when you don't even have 5 minutes by the clock hand to think about the problem rationally, it is better to rely on the heuristic assume people are smart and some unknown context is causing problems then to rely on the heuristic people who make mistakes are dumb. this said heuristics are only good most of the time and may lead you to errors such as
in this case it is still technically an error but you are merely attempting to be "less wrong" about a case where you don't have time to be correct then assuming the heuristic until you encounter contrary evidence (or you have the time to think of better answers) follows closely the point of this website
Using a heuristic doesn't require believing that it's flawless. You are in fact performing some action, but that is also possible in the absence of careful understanding of the its effect. There is no point in doing the additional damage of accepting a belief for reasons other than evidence of its correctness.
Exactly, thanks for the clarification.
I believe that this statement, while correct, misses the point of preemptive debiasing. Yvain said it better.
The original quote draws attention to the mistake of not giving enough attention to the hypothetical where something appears to be wrong/stupid, but upon further investigation turns out to be correct/interesting. However, it confuses the importance of the hypothetical with its probability, and endorses increasing its level of certainty. I pointed out this error in the formulation, but didn't restate the lesson of the quote (i.e. my point didn't include the lesson, only the flaw in its presentation, so naturally it "misses" the point of the lesson by not containing it).
Also, consider the possibility that it is you who is dumb, ignorant, and making mistakes.
I don't consider it, I assume it.
But "dumb" and "ignorant" are not points on a line, they are relative positions.
To quote this bloke at a climbing gym I used to frequent "We all suck at our own level".
Or better yet, assume nothing, and reserve judgement until you have more information.
You always assume things, whether you are aware of it or not. At least by making your assumptions explicit and conscious, you have a better chance of noticing when they are wrong. And assuming "that people are dumb, ignorant, and making mistakes" is a common default subconscious failure mode.
In most situations there are multiple people other than yourself who each think the others are dumb, ignorant and making mistakes. Don't assume that the one you happen to be interacting with at the moment is right by default.
I would somewhat agree with this if the phrase "making mistakes" was removed. People generally have poor reasoning skills and make non-optimal choices >99% of the time. (Yes, I am including myself and you, the reader, in this generalization.)
You may or may not have noticed, but most people are biased. Whether bias counts as "dumb", "ignorant" or "making mistakes" is left as an exercise for the reader.