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ChristianKl comments on Emotional tools for the beginner rationalist - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm aware of the possibility, and I have also mentioned it in the facebook debate. Or, more likely, I have problems finding the right words to express what I want to say:
I had situations where I didn't know something, when I forgot things, when I believed an information that was wrong, etc. Lots of them. Still doing it. Most likely will always do.
In the past (before finding LW) I have repeatedly experimented with belief in belief (because I wanted the placebo effects or social approval), but those experiments were always half-assed and very short-termed; they felt incompatible with my personality. I couldn't stop being aware that I am merely acting.
I also fail a lot at instrumental rationality. I am aware of what I should do... and I somehow just don't do it.
But I don't remember having a situation where I enjoyed being wrong or didn't care about being wrong, like described here and here. That just feels completely strange to me. I have problem empathising with people who, upon learning that they were wrong, just don't give a fuck.
Therefore -- that's why I mentioned it in the debate -- I have no clue about what to tell them to help them change their ways. I have never been there (as far as I know), and I have no idea what it feels like to be there. So I have no model that would help me test which ideas might be attractive enough to draw a person out of there.
EDIT: I feel like I should add so many disclaimers here. I am happy that at least Gleb understands what I was trying to say.
Of course there are reasons when you want to keep a map despite knowing it is not correct. When it is a useful simplification, like Newtonian physics. I am talking about people whose maps are not even approximately correct, but they still keep them because... I am only guessing here... they still provide emotional comfort.
I don't feel comfortable with having an obviously wrong map, even if it would be socially approved. I have problem belonging to most groups, because sooner or later there is a shared group map you have to accept. For example, having a political opinion (in the sense of: completely buying a standardized map) feels like insanity; on the same level as belonging to a cult. (I am strongly sympathetic to the libertarian ethics of not initiating force. That doesn't convince me that the best way to organize a society is to dismantle all states and let the warlords fight it out in the "free market".)
There may also be unlucky situations where I am wrong, other people are right, but they lack the right words to convince me (sometimes because they themselves believe the right thing for the wrong reasons, e.g. because it is a standard belief in their social group). But I don't have an epistemic strategy for avoiding such situations without making things worse on average; or course believing everything wouldn't be an improvement.
Etc.
Did you have 1-on-1 interaction with people where you believe that didn't care at all about whether their beliefs are true?
A few times I got a reaction like: "I don't want to hear your facts!" which I translated as: "If there is a part of reality that doesn't match my map, I don't want to know about that part."
The part "your facts" is already weird. As if saying that different people live in different realities, and I don't want my reality to become contaminated by your reality (which could happen if I start to observe your reality too close or under your guidance). But of course we are talking about maps here. So basicly "your facts" means: "There is only my map and your map, and I am not interested in your map." So it's not like I don't want my map to correspond to the territory, but rather like there is no territory that could judge my map and find it wanting. There are only maps, and of course your map is going to differ from my map, but if you insist on me looking at your map, that is merely an aggression, a status move.
(I can even see how our educational system contributes to this feeling that it's maps all the way down. Most of what happens in schools is students copying the teachers' maps. But I digress.)
EDIT: Another example, maybe better. There are people who love to tell "their opinions" on theory of relativity, quantum physics, evolution, whatever. But if you suggest thay they read a textbook, or a popular science book on the topic, to fix at least their most obvious misconceptions, they proudly refuse. They prefer their original bullshit interpretation, even if there is an option to fix the obvious mistakes and improve their bullshit to make it more credible (which IMHO should be preferable even for people who like their own bullshit theories).
There are various new agey people who would disagree with you on that.
Most people don't read textbooks. A sizeable portion of people doesn't even read any books once they left school.
If you disagree with a religious person and they tell you that you just have to read the bible or another religious book and then you would understand, that likely wouldn't be enough either to get you to read the book.
Yes, and in fact telling someone, "I disagree with you but I don't have time to explain why, read this book to discover the truth," will often come across as being arrogant, since the person doesn't want to spend a lot of time explaining things, but he wants the other person to spend a lot of time reading a book.
I think that's more a case of people becoming jaded from constantly being presented with "facts" that are false or at least highly misleading backed by arguments too clever for them to refute.
I'm sure that you will never be guilty of such a presentation.
I very much did have those interactions, especially with religious people about religion. They specifically denied truth/reason as having any value, and specifically oriented to faith as the thing one must have.
Truth and reason are not the same thing. If you believe that the truth is that god works in mysterious ways that aren't decipherable by humans reason loses it's value.
Sure, I agree that truth and reason are not the same thing. I meant to indicate that I heard both types of comments, and often together, from religious people - that the truth as determined by science, reason, and logic do not have value in comparison to personal felt experience.
I think most of those people consider personal felt experience to show the truth.
Yup, I hear you. I think this is a matter of semantics - I am using the word truth as it is generally understood on Less Wrong, meaning the truth of reality as indicated by concrete sensory experience, the closer to the senses, the better.
I think the question of whether someone wants to have correct beliefs is quite distinct from whether they believe that reason is a method that's useful for finding the truth.
Yes, I agree that these are distinct things.
I think it's probably impossible not to care at all whether your beliefs are true, but some people care a lot more than others. And I have had a number of people who told me to "forget about arguments" because I came to a conclusion that they didn't want me to believe.
That is not caring about truth in an effective sense, even if strictly speaking they still want their beliefs to be true, and in that sense they care about the truth of their beliefs.