The "I Already Get It" Slide

jsalvatier

A quick summary for my own understanding (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong somewhere).

Basically, when parsing other people's arguments, we can lull ourselves into a false sense of understanding by constructing plausible reasons that could have led them to the conclusions they hold.

However, this misses out on the fact that if people strongly hold a position (which we can only semi-see as plausible with our self-constructed arguments), this disparity in strength of beliefs is in itself good evidence that there is information we are missing. Our generated reasons are probably far from the strongest arguments in favor of the position.

As a result, by self-generating potential ways that someone could believe in something (and leaving it at that) can cause us to miss out on good information that was actually responsible for generating their beliefs.

Is that about accurate?

Not answering your question but replying to the summary: Apply this reasoning to creationism, or homeopathy, or the belief that Jews kill Christian babies to bake their blood into matzohs.

I can only come up with weak arguments for those positions. Yet people believe them very strongly. Is that good evidence that I am missing something?

2jsalvatier9y

Yup! [...] That's a nice way of summarizing. I would emphasize the difference between parsing the arguments they're explicitly making and understanding the reasons they actually hold the beliefs they do. They may not be giving you the arguments that are the most relevant to you. After all, they probably don't know why you don't already believe what they do. They may be focusing on parts that are irrelevant for convincing you. By the way, nice job trying to summarize my view. As you'll see in the coming weeks, that's close to the move I recommend for extracting people's intuitions. Just repeatedly try to make their argument for them.

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The "I Already Get It" Slide

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The "I Already Get It" Slide

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