RichardKennaway 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: RichardKennaway 06 March 2014 09:28:23AM *  1 point [-]

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.

That might just give you people who boom their favourite beliefs under the banner of Rationality without actually practicing the art or even having a clue about it. Elsewhere on the net, I notice that people who make a point of their intelligence, rationality, and clear thinking are usually trying to smuggle in some empirical claims about the world on the back of that, saying, not only is there this evidence, but I'm really smart so you should believe me and anyone who doesn't is Irrational and therefore Evil and Wrong.

See, for example, the history of Objectivism.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 06 March 2014 11:45:24AM 0 points [-]

This was brought up in the comments. My reply was that yes, a rational identity obviously isn't sufficient by itself, you also need to know what actually is rational. But that doesn't mean that a rational identity wouldn't also be necessary.