Annoyance comments on Belief in Self-Deception - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 March 2009 03:20PM

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Comment author: Annoyance 05 March 2009 07:35:46PM 1 point [-]

"she just did this once, etc. How did she do it? "

By appealing to a non-rational or irrational argument that would lead the person to adopt rationality.

Arguing rationally with a person who isn't rational that they should take up the process is a waste of time. If it would work, it wouldn't be necessary. It's easy to say what course should be taken with a rational person, because rational thought is all alike. Irrational thought patterns can be nearly anything, so there's no way to specify an argument that will convince everyone. You'd need to construct an argument that each person is specifically vulnerable to.

Comment author: David_Gerard 22 February 2011 11:24:45AM -1 points [-]

Irrational thought patterns can be nearly anything, so there's no way to specify an argument that will convince everyone. You'd need to construct an argument that each person is specifically vulnerable to.

Irrational thought patterns can be nearly anything, but of course they strongly tend to form around standard human cognitive biases. This saves a great deal of time.

Comment author: billswift 06 March 2009 12:49:40AM 2 points [-]

The problem is that you often don't know until you actually start arguing with them that they are irrational or just confused and misled.

George H Smith has a pretty good essay about arguing with people to convert them to rationality, " Atheism and the Virtue of Reasonableness". For example, he advocates the "Presumption of Rationality" - you should always presume your adversary is rational until he demostrates otherwise. I don't know if the essay is on-line or not, I read it as the second chapter of "Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies."