Today's post, Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points was originally published on 05 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
When people doubt, they instinctively ask only the questions that have easy answers. When you're doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most.
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I do believe that I've gotten pretty good at this, although it's not something that's easy to measure. I can remember multiple times during the past week when I almost skipped over an important objection to my then-current beliefs, and I returned and focused on it (and this apparently wasn't in vain, since on three of these occasions I actually did change my opinion in some way). On the other hand, I can't easily remember times that I didn't do this, and how often I deliberately looked at an objection I tried to flinch away from is not a statistic I even tracked until I decided to change it.
That being said, I think an important part of what goes through my mind at that point is a question of self-image. I do think of myself as someone who is not an intellectual coward, and someone who will work to ensure that false beliefs don't get to live comfortably in my own mind. The idea of there being some serious flaw to one of my beliefs that I am avoiding thinking about is a possibility that worries me.
If you genuinely do want to improve your own abilities at this skill, It's likely that the ideal of someone who bravely confronts their own false beliefs is something that already exists in you. In that case, if you can at some point catch yourself in the act of mentally "looking away" from a painful idea, and you can associate that feeling with a sense that this-is-not-acceptable, you may be able to make it an instinctive response.