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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29574 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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It's not that people are aware of their ignorance and consciously choosing to be ignorant, it's that they were told incorrect things by some source they trust and have rarely been presented with counter evidence or reasoning. Or worse, have ended up in some epistemic closure that prevents them from considering alternative reasons and evidence. They are ignorant of their ignorance!

I'd agree with this, but, again, I think just moves things a step back - why are they ignorant of their own ignorance? Most of it is, I think, that it's really hard to pay attention to your own ignorance; given that it's so hard, it's natural that they would make that choice not to do it and just remain ignorant of it. The cost-benefit calculation, compared to the far less costly and usually more beneficial strategy of just following the "does it give me social praise/punishment" measurement just doesn't work out. So they choose - a good choice in most cases, almost certainly - not to put in the hard work necessary to confront their own ignorance, and so they remain ignorant of their own ignorance, causing them to land at wrong conclusions. But they do land at conclusions somehow - it might be a bit too pithy to call it "gut instinct" or "what feels good," but if it is, I don't think it is by much.

I think certain kinds of arguments having certain social status attached might make sense as a cause for why people come to form particular beliefs but I think it is rarely a reason, in the sense of something subjectively experienced.

I haven't thought of this sort of distinction between "cause" versus "reason," but if you break it up that way, I think what you wrote here makes sense. It's just, I think the "reason" in the sense of something subjectively experienced is one of the least interesting and least impactful factors when it comes to exploring the way people think about things, because the flexibility that people have for using anything they want as a reason to support anything they want is effectively infinite.

I haven't thought of this sort of distinction between "cause" versus "reason," but if you break it up that way, I think what you wrote here makes sense. It's just, I think the "reason" in the sense of something subjectively experienced is one of the least interesting and least impactful factors when it comes to exploring the way people think about things, because the flexibility that people have for using anything they want as a reason to support anything they want is effectively infinite.

I wonder if this is at the heart of our disagreement. When I read a sentence like "how X thinks about Y" I interpret it less like "what all kinds of causal forces act on X's beliefs about Y" and more like "what kind of subjective state does X have when considering Y." So when I read the claim that people come to conclusions based on what "feels good" in a social status sense I interpret is a claim about their subjective reasons to believe Y.

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