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James_Miller comments on Article on confirmation bias for the Smith Alumnae Quarterly - Less Wrong Discussion
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If you have the time, I would be grateful if you provided more of a justification of this, but I will understand if you don't however as written your criticism doesn't provide any guidance as to how I can better write the article. My main political identity is being a free market economist, and like many of my type I do not support the IMF.
If you are actually interested in writing an article about confirmation bias, use examples that are not political flamebait to the community you're speaking to. Doing so primes your audience to dismiss you as an axe-grinder or troll, and thus to mistakenly associate the idea "confirmation bias" with hostility ... or just with your particular political position. Cognitive biases are bigger than your political position; don't diminish the science by implying that rejecting your politics implies rejecting the science.
If you are interested in making political points about Smith College not being welcoming toward Christine Lagarde, do not present it as an article about confirmation bias. Doing so is intellectually dishonest. Instead, investigate and respond to the arguments made by those who objected to Lagarde's invitation. To their arguments — not to the psychological processes you conjecture are behind them.
It is pretty much always poor form to psychoanalyze your political opponents and present their beliefs or behaviors as a consequence of the pathology you ascribe to them. Doing so is a failure to leave a line of retreat, and is is also a form of the genetic fallacy — even if you're right about the pathology, just because I'm crazy doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Thanks, you make some good points. Reading your comments caused me to realize that I'm not interested in taking the time to find out why the professors didn't want Lagarde to speak at Smith because I assign a low probability to my finding their arguments reasonable. (The time I would need to spend doing this could be much better used, for example, reading your past LW contributions.) I don't think this is because of confirmation bias, but of course if it were I wouldn't think it was.
The first sentence was supposed to be a line of retreat in which I admitted that it is appropriate to exclude some people.
Poor form perhaps, but not necessarily inaccurate.
I expect your opponents think the same of you; albeit with different phrasing. And thus by symmetry you each defect against the other, and thus is elucidated the old theorem regarding the bitterness of academic disputes.
Agreed!