Fyrius comments on Dark Side Epistemology - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 October 2008 11:55PM

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Comment author: Fyrius 05 March 2010 11:55:30AM *  12 points [-]

Arguably, another one is the adage that when people disagree on anything very strongly, "the truth is usually in the middle."

It's not entirely nonsensical to anticipate and correct for people's tendency to exaggerate away from their perceived enemy, but it's not a reliable rule of thumb at all. It's not all that hard to find situations where one side is just wrong.

Here's a better way to take polarisation into account: instead of concluding that "both sides are probably a bit right", it would be more realistic to say "both sides are probably wrong". Or better yet: "what both sides think is irrelevant, I'm just going to ignore the whole business and figure it out for myself."