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Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

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Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#21

Post by illivah »

jdjdirn wrote: post #11
bsder wrote: post #8

The 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.

Lol. And what precisely is a fact, but an argument about the state of the world being a specific way?

Here is the difference:

If you try to replicate a fact, you'll succeed If you try to disprove a fact, you'll fail If you find rebuttles to a fact, they'll be hollow

The only thing in the obvious list that doesn't separate a fact from a non-fact is the arguments in support. Hence why scientists are taught not to care for arguments in support, only research, and then specifically arguments that disprove more than those that prove.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#22

Post by illivah »

Poor guy. He reminds me of Leshrac from Dota 2. Lots of deep philosophy, leads to nihilism.

Here's one of the multiple big problems. Learning that arguments are often not valid is an amazing insight! However, it says nothing about what what you SHOULD believe, relative to the information you have.

The wise choice is NOT to believe based on your ore-conceptions (ie ignoring the stronger arguments). Better arguments are better than worse arguments. mediocre evidence is better than better arguments. And better evidence is better than worse evidence. And since better evidence is not a guarantee, we measure it by the efforts to disprove them.

So, lets take an example: the conspiracies for the world trade center attack. First we have the official story which we more or less know. Well, some people know at least. Then we have the video Short Change, which goes through a couple hours describing all the points where the official story doesn't make sense. It talks about physics, and background deals, and molten this and that. A lot of interesting stuff. It raised a lot of questions. It didn't provide detailed or reliable evidence, so more research was needed. So i watched the rebuttle video, which was twice as long. They provided evidence, with citations, from experts in their respective fields.

The part that was convincing wasn't "oh, this argument is right, this one is wrong". The part that is convincing is that I can now say "well, according to so and so, this is explained, and so is this, and so is this, and so is this, and so is this" down the line. Now, in this case there was basically nothing left at the end of the argument, but even if there was then I consider the sources. One source says xyz is still unexplained, but that source is now known for making things up and/or not knowing what they're talking about. The other source cites dozens of experts with detailed explanations, photo evidence, clear walkthroughs.

It's not "oh, this argument is better" anymore. Now it's "well, this one literally has no reason to believe it, but this one has a great deal of support."

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#23

Post by ThrustVectoring »

paulsutter wrote: post #16

> given that at least some of those arguments are wrong and all seemed practically proven, I am obviously just gullible Not gullible, he just needs to read Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow". The intuitive mind is unable to distinguish between consistency and truth. That is, a consistent story will always seem "proven" to the intuitive mind. "Seeming practically proven" means little. You need to use the more logical…

I'd be very surprised if he hasn't read Kahneman. And even if he has, knowing about cognitive biases is a completely different skill than avoiding them. It's basically why the Center for Applied Rationality exists.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#24

Post by afarrell »

paulsutter wrote: post #16

> given that at least some of those arguments are wrong and all seemed practically proven, I am obviously just gullible Not gullible, he just needs to read Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow". The intuitive mind is unable to distinguish between consistency and truth. That is, a consistent story will always seem "proven" to the intuitive mind. "Seeming practically proven" means little. You need to use the more logical…

He is now a practicing outpatient psychiatrist, so I suspect he is somewhat familiar with Kahneman.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#25

Post by afarrell »

bsder wrote: post #17
jdjdirn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. And what precisely is a fact, but an argument about the state of the world being a specific way?

> And what precisely is a fact, but an argument about the state of the world being a specific way? Thankfully not. A "fact" is something that can be measured in such a way that even if you are totally antagonistic to my arguments, we will get the same result. Now your "argument" may attempt to prove the irrelevancy or inadequacy of my facts, but the facts themselves should be unfudgeable.

The problem is that it is far far too expensive to rigorously verify all the facts one hears. So in practice humans need to rely on the trustworthiness of the person or institution saying them.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#26

Post by greendestiny »

danteembermage wrote: post #4

If 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'…

I've thought down these paths a lot, and I came to similar but different conclusion. It's not simply that I don't trust argument - I weight arguments with evidence.

If you take the simulation argument for instance - if you're contemplating the probability that we are living in a lifelike simulation you must factor in the number of lifelike simulations you have seen.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#27

Post by john_butts »

bsder wrote: post #8

The 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.

Not buying it.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#29

Post by paulsutter »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #23
paulsutter wrote: post #16

> given that at least some of those arguments are wrong and all seemed practically proven, I am obviously just gullible Not gullible, he just needs to read Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow". The intuitive mind is unable to distinguish between consistency and truth. That is, a consistent story will always seem "proven" to the intuitive mind. "Seeming practically proven" means little. You need to use the more logical…

I'd be very surprised if he hasn't read Kahneman. And even if he has, knowing about cognitive biases is a completely different skill than avoiding them. It's basically why the Center for Applied Rationality exists.

Well if he read it, he certainly didn't understand it.

> When I was young I used to read pseudohistory books; Immanuel Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos is a good example of the best this genre has to offer. I read it and it seemed so obviously correct, so perfect,

This guy believes in PROVING PSEUDOHISTORY. It's hard to understand what that even means, but let's look at specifics:

"Noah's Flood couldn't as a cultural memory...

- of the fall of Atlantis

- of a change in the Earth's orbit

- of a lost Ice Age civilization or

- of megatsunamis from a meteor strike."

A generous person could give these a 1% chance of being right. Maybe a 5% chance if you had a very convincing argument.

A gullible person might give one a 30% chance of being true.

But it is utter nonsense to assign 100% probability to any of these (that's what proof means, it means 100% likely). These just aren't provable matters.

Circling back to Kahneman, it really seems that he's getting persuaded by intuitive arguments, and the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" really dives into how this happens.

Re: Epistemic learned helplessness (2013)

#30

Post by mtdewcmu »

greendestiny wrote: post #26
danteembermage wrote: post #4

If 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'…

I've thought down these paths a lot, and I came to similar but different conclusion. It's not simply that I don't trust argument - I weight arguments with evidence. If you take the simulation argument for instance - if you're contemplating the probability that we are living in a lifelike simulation you must factor in the number of lifelike simulations you have seen.

>> you must factor in the number of lifelike simulations you have seen

Right. I take the position that there are problems that are unsolvable by technology; simulating the universe seems likely to be in that category. That position is fundamentally unprovable, but call it a hunch. Also, Occam's Razor argues against it, FWIW.

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