Stefan_Schubert comments on Strategic choice of identity - Less Wrong

76 Post author: Vika 08 March 2014 04:27PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 01 March 2014 08:08:13AM *  6 points [-]

Some time back, I argued that if we want to really promote rationality, we need to get people to adopt rationality into a part of their identity.

Stanovich believes that spreading awareness of biases might be enough to help a lot of people, and to some degree it might. But we also know about the tendency to only use your awareness of bias to attack arguments you don't like. In the same way that telling people facts about politics sometimes only polarizes opinions, telling people about biases might similarly only polarize the debate as everyone thinks their opposition is hopelesly deluded and biased.

So we need to create a new thinking disposition, not just for actively attacking the perceived threats, but for critically evaluating your opinions. That's hard. And I've found for a number of years now that the main reason I try to actively re-evaluate my opinions and update them as necessary is because doing so is part of my identity. I pride myself on not holding onto ideology and for changing my beliefs when it feels like they should be changed. Admitting that somebody else is right and I am wrong does admittedly hurt, but it also feels good that I was able to do so despite the pain.

Comment author: Stefan_Schubert 01 March 2014 10:58:50AM *  1 point [-]

Very good. I think, in fact, that people - especially highly educated people - have adopted rationality into a part of their identity, even though they haven't done so to a nearly sufficiently high degree. Ever since the scientific revolution, people have become more and more willing to give rational arguments for their views.

This is just one way of many in which I think Less Wrong, CFAR etc do not constitute a break with what is here termed traditional rationality, but continuous with it. Sure, there are plenty of new and very interesting ideas developed here, but by and large, Less Wrong is a branch of the great rationalist tree. That's something to be proud of, in my view, because that tree is humanitiy's greatest achievement.

That said, I'm all for making people adopt rationality into a part of their identity to a higher degree. In fact, my present work in philosophy is partly concerned with strategies for making this happen. I'm sure there are many such strategies and they should be extensively studied.