Viliam_Bur comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: jaime2000 03 September 2014 09:36PM

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Comment author: arundelo 04 September 2014 02:44:42PM 8 points [-]

I like this and agree that usually or at least often the people making these "I don't understand how anyone could ..." statements aren't interested in actually understanding the people they disagree with. But I also liked Ozy's comment:

I dunno. I feel like "I don't understand how anyone could believe X" is a much, much better position to take on issues than "I know exactly why my opponents disagree with me! It is because they are stupid and evil!" The former at least opens the possibility that your opponents believe things for good reasons that you don't understand -- which is often true!

In general, I believe it is a good thing to admit ignorance when one is actually ignorant, and I am willing to put up with a certain number of dumbass signalling games if it furthers this goal.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 05 September 2014 01:30:20PM 12 points [-]

We could charitably translate "I don't understand how anyone could X" as "I notice that my model of people who X is so bad, that if I tried to explain it, I would probably generate a strawman".