Epistemic Learned Helplessness (2013)

Indeed, taking one idea at a time seriously leads to crazy conclusions. You have to take all the ideas you believe seriously.

If you took seriously the one idea that "the purpose of human life is to produce more humans" [SolaceQuantum below], you should be trying to have as many children as possible. For a male with upper-middle class resources, 1000 children should be achievable. (You don't have to raise them, just "produce" them.) A billionaire with strong organizational skills might manage 10^6 children.

This conflicts with the (unstated) idea that children should be raised well, in a nurturing environment with good parenting. Also, that overpopulation is bad. And that other people have an equal right to children. And ...

So I don't think you need epistemic helplessness. You just need a broad perspective.

I would guess that a lot of appearances can be sculpted, by hitting a vulnerable person with priors.

I have no idea how frequently this happens, or how it resolves.

This is essentially the argument I make to friends whenever someone brings up some homeopathic remedy. Most of us are not smart enough or well educated enough to really sift through this stuff and sniff out fact from fiction. Lucky for us there is a whole field of trained professionals who (hopefully) are.

At the same time though, I think it's worth remembering that the placebo effect is real and measurable so if someone claims X, Y or Z cures their headaches maybe they're not lying :-)

I'd take his argument even further. I am pretty good at programming. When I have written a program, I believe it's right.

I always test, before moving to production. Always. Even if it seems trivial to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, by argument, that this code is correct. Always test, before moving to production.

or to put it another way, the entrepreneur believes the conclusion as if it's the premise and then tries to find the appropriate rationalization to support it.

just like, say, a theist or an atheist, in-between which fits the agnostic (the epistemically helpless person in this case).