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bigjeff5 comments on Your Strength as a Rationalist - Less Wrong
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"I should have paid more attention to that sensation of still feels a little forced."
The force that you would have had to counter was the impetus to be polite. In order to boldly follow your models, you would have had to tell the person on the other end of the chat that you didn't believe his friend. You could have less boldly held your tongue, but that wouldn't have satisfied your drive to understand what was going on. Perhaps a compromise action would have been to point out the unlikelihood, (which you did: "they'd have hauled him off if there was the tiniest chance of serious trouble"), and ask for a report on the eventual outcome.
Given the constraints of politeness, I don't know how you can do better. If you were talking to people who knew you better, and understood your viewpoint on rationality, you might expect to be forgiven for giving your bald assessment of the unlikeliness of the report.
Not necessarily.
You can assume the paramedics did not follow the proper procedure, and that his friend aught to go to the emergency room himself to verify that he is OK. People do make mistakes.
The paramedics are potentially unreliable as well, though given the litigious nature of our society I would fully expect the paramedics to be extremely reliable in taking people to the emergency room, which would still cast doubt on the friend.
Still, if you want to be polite, just say "if you are concerned, you should go to the emergency room anyway" and keep your doubts about the man's veracity to yourself. No doubt the truth would have come out at that point as well.