In Reply to: Rationalization, Epistemic Handwashing, Selective Processes

Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote about scientists defending pet hypotheses, and prosecutors and defenders as examples of clever rationalization. His primary focus was advice to the well-intentioned individual rationalist, which is excellent as far as it goes. But Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk ask how a social system should be structured for group rationality.

The adversarial system is widely used in criminal justice. In the legal world, roles such as Prosecution, Defense, and Judge are all guaranteed to be filled, with roughly the same amount of human effort applied to each side. Suppose individuals chose their own roles. It is possible that one role turns out more popular. Because different effort is applied to different sides, selecting for the positions with the strongest arguments will no longer much select for positions that are true.