Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
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Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#2That is an excellent essay and it scares the crap out of me, because I see it play out every day in both directions and it often does feel exactly like epistemic learned helplessness.
There are so many biases that affect individuals (hindsight, hyperbolic discounting, confirmation, etc) that to get correct answers, you have to look at and trust other accounts. You have to do studies, you have to trust those studies, and you have to track actual hard evidence.
But large enough systems become increasingly opaque, and it can be hard to test your web of trust empirically. This reduces huge organizations to cargo cult behavior, or worse, fundamentally unsound behavior because "it worked for me."
I don't know what to do about this besides what CFAR is trying, which is to get people better at weighing evidence and changing their damned minds. You have to constantly be asking yourself: "what would the world look like if this were true? What would the world like like if it wasn't?" It is hard work, but I think it is critical to our continued improvements as a civilization and a species.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#3Some of the longest papers I've ever written were in support of conclusions that I don't even believe in. In my opinion they ended up being some of my best papers as well. The point wasn't to write in support of what I believe in or what I want to write about but what I think I can present the strongest argument for.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#4If I find myself being convinced by the argument, does that mean I should adopt Epistemic learned helplessness in response or not adopt Epistemic learned helplessness in response?
I'm partly being facetious, but it would be interesting to try to use a non-argumentative approach to persuade to use one, I'm just not exactly sure what that would look like.
As a kid I remember being told "brush your teeth in circles, it's better" and thinking "I'm sure something else will be recommended in ten years so I'm just going to go back and forth horizontally like I want to" and sure enough circles clean more plaque but push your gums up so downward flicks were recommended. Maybe a dentist can weigh in on current tooth brushing practice... That said, was I better off with my inferior method? That's kind of the crux of it. If we're blown about by every plausible theory, is that better than being blown about by nothing? It seems like this is a nested Bayesian decision problem that needs to incorporate switching costs, which I'd guess for some things are trivial and for other things are quite large.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#5That is an excellent essay and it scares the crap out of me, because I see it play out every day in both directions and it often does feel exactly like epistemic learned helplessness. There are so many biases that affect individuals (hindsight, hyperbolic discounting, confirmation, etc) that to get correct answers, you have to look at and trust other accounts. You have to do studies, you have to trust those studies,…
I don't know if the right answer is to be generally more open to changing your mind.
There are far too many things to be worried about: the danger of AI, religion, the environment, other political views, the results of scientific papers in dozens of fields... epistemic learned helplessness is a defence against wasting literally all of your time taking every argument seriously.
At the end, the author notes that we should be glad for the specialists who are well-versed in certain subjects enough to actually be able to evaluate and experiment on outlandish theories and unusual study results.
Maybe we need to emphasize more specialization? Or is it working alright already?
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#6This guy sounds absolutely insufferable.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#7"Rationality" is the new "atheism".
All I got from this article:
"Sometimes, it's best not to commit to a position when you don't have all the facts (or if 'the facts' are essentially unknowable). But it depends!"
OP has a lot of ten-dollar words, tho.
So, what'd I miss?
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#8The problem is that you shouldn't intrinsically believe arguments, at all.
You should believe facts. You should believe logical inference from facts.
You should believe arguments insofar as they corroborate or refute facts.
And, if an argument can't be tested, it's not a very good argument.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#9Let's say you're Daron Stevens from Bewitched. You know the truth. You tell others, they don't believe you. You do proof, they think it's illusion.
Reality distortion -- enchamntment as Don Quixote would call it.
Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)
#10The problem is that you shouldn't intrinsically believe arguments, at all. You should believe facts . You should believe logical inference from facts. You should believe arguments insofar as they corroborate or refute facts. And, if an argument can't be tested, it's not a very good argument.
Indeed, a good argument, and a logical inference from facts, should be one and the same thing.