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JQuinton comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Is there a name for this following bias?
So I've debated a lot of religious people in my youth, and a common sort of "inferential drift", if you can call if that, is that they believe that if you don't think something is true or doesn't exist, then this must mean that you don't want said thing to be true or to exist. It's like a sort of meta-motivated reasoning; they are falsely attributing your conclusions due to motivated reasoning. The most obvious examples are reading any sort of Creationist writing that critiques evolution, where they pretty explicitly attribute accepting the theory of evolution to a desire for god to not exist.
I've started to notice it in many other highly charged, mind-killing topics as well. Is this all in my head? Has anyone else experienced this?
This seems pretty close to a Bulverism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulverism
That does seem close to Bulverism. But what I described seem to be happening at a subconscious bias level, where people are somewhat talking past each other due to a sort of hidden assumption of Bulverism.
Then perhaps...
I've heard it called "psychologizing".
I used to get a lot of people telling me I was an atheist because I either didn't want there to be a god or because I wanted the universe to be logical (granted, I do want that, but they meant it in the pejorative Vulcan-y sense). I eventually shut them up with "who doesn't want to believe they're going to heaven?" but it took me a while to come up with that one.
I don't understand it either, but this is a thing people say a lot.
If someone else accuses you of engaging in motivated reasoning that's ad hominem.
No, that is a mere assertion (which may or may not be true). If they claimed that he is wrong because he is engaging in motivated reasoning, then that would be ad hominem.
Wait, what? This might be a little off topic, but if you assert that they lack evidence and are drawing conclusions based on motivated reasoning, that seems highly relevant and not ad hominem. I guess it could be unnecessary, as you might try to focus exactly on their evidence, but it would seem reasonable to look at the evidence they present, and say "this is consistent with motivated reasoning, for example you describe many things that would happen by chance but nothing similar contradictory, so there seems to be some confirmation bias" etc.