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NancyLebovitz comments on Open thread, September 22-28, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 September 2014 05:59AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 25 September 2014 02:27:42AM 2 points [-]

I'd throw in a modifier that people are most likely to believe true things about areas where they have direct experience and get feedback. It's something like near and far, and the near has to be very near. Give extra points if the experience is recent.

The less a theory meets those constraints, the less you should think belief is evidence that it's true.