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Eugine_Nier comments on How can we get more and better LW contrarians? - Less Wrong Discussion

58 Post author: Wei_Dai 18 April 2012 10:01PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 19 April 2012 12:50:00AM *  3 points [-]

I sometimes argue in favor of positions I don't really believe (i.e., assign p<.5 to) if I think the probability is higher than general consensus and I suspect at least Will Newsome frequently does the same.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 19 April 2012 01:05:46AM 4 points [-]

Yes, but it's often a hassle. You risk being accused of trolling, overconfidence, &c., and it's difficult to claim that such accusations don't have some tinge of truth.

I suspect it's not overall a very good habit and that I bring it to LessWrong mostly because it happens to work well in my personal rationality practice. On LessWrong it's probably better to put in a little extra work to find a way to go meta—don't support a side, but show clear not-introspectively-obvious reasons why someone could hold a belief that was to them introspectively obvious and thus difficult to explain. I generally like the anti-democracy LW commenters because they seem to have practiced this skill.