Not sure where I read, maybe Nonviolent Communication or somewhere else, paraphrased - "Being right feels the same as being wrong". Think about hundreds of years ago where people debate about whether the earth is flat, either side truly believed they were right, even though one clearly wasn't
Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
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Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#12Not sure where I read, maybe Nonviolent Communication or somewhere else, paraphrased - "Being right feels the same as being wrong". Think about hundreds of years ago where people debate about whether the earth is flat, either side truly believed they were right, even though one clearly wasn't
> "Being right feels the same as being wrong".
From the book "Being Wrong" by Kathryn Schulz. I highly recommend it!
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#13I have tried to employ the strategy of "I'm probably wrong all the time". It's not perfect, and occasionally I'll get defensive about something that I find out is wrong later (I was staunchly against unit tests for example), but having a mentality that your mind is fairly fallible is a good way to avoid yelling at people, at least for me.
I do wish it were more politically acceptable for politicians to adopt this mindset. Without espousing a side of "Democrat" vs "Republican", it feels like the world views admitting that you are incorrect as a sign of weakness, or "flip-flopping",
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#14Not sure where I read, maybe Nonviolent Communication or somewhere else, paraphrased - "Being right feels the same as being wrong". Think about hundreds of years ago where people debate about whether the earth is flat, either side truly believed they were right, even though one clearly wasn't
No. They didn't.
People who actually thought about this tended to pretty quickly figure out that the only shape that works is the globe, a big ball. They estimated how big it was. The ancient Greek estimates are pretty good. The result was disheartening if your employer was an emperor because the globe was much bigger than their empire. Still, you could point out that maybe most of it is just ocean.
Most people didn't think about it at all. Seriously insisting that you believe the Earth is flat, generally as part of some larger grand conspiracy theory, is a modern phenomenon.
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#15Not sure where I read, maybe Nonviolent Communication or somewhere else, paraphrased - "Being right feels the same as being wrong". Think about hundreds of years ago where people debate about whether the earth is flat, either side truly believed they were right, even though one clearly wasn't
>hundreds of years ago
This debate is (somehow) still raging, in case you didn't know.
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#16But how do we know that the scout's belief is right? Seems like the author has already come to the conclusion that its always going to be right. Doesn't that just bring us back to the mindset of the soldier? Maybe we just have to accept that part of the experiment of living in a democratic and free society is allowing people to create their own values, and accepting that people are going to get it wrong. Their values…
>Maybe we just have to accept that part of the experiment of living in a democratic and free society is allowing people to create their own values, and accepting that people are going to get it wrong.
There is a difference between choosing your values and choosing your facts. We have a big problem in not being able to distinguish the difference between our opinions and facts - and values are more akin to opinions than facts.
There isn't a problem with people coming up with different values. The problems start to arise when you're not willing to be wrong about those values, especially when you start ignoring facts that contradict those values.
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#17But how do we know that the scout's belief is right? Seems like the author has already come to the conclusion that its always going to be right. Doesn't that just bring us back to the mindset of the soldier? Maybe we just have to accept that part of the experiment of living in a democratic and free society is allowing people to create their own values, and accepting that people are going to get it wrong. Their values…
> But how do we know that the scout's belief is right?
I feel like the assumption in the article is that neither is right, but that the scout is searching for right, and the solider is defending right.
> Seems like the author has already come to the conclusion that its always going to be right. Doesn't that just bring us back to the mindset of the soldier?
I don't think so. The mindset distinction isn't between right and wrong, both types prefer to be right. The distinction is whether you're a motivated defender of an idea in spite of the evidence, or whether you're searching for truth and willing to change your position.
If you think about this in just pure statistical probabilities, who's more likely to be right at any given time, the person who is certain they're right, or the person who has changed their mind to favor the evidence?
It feels like this might even be related to the Monty Hall problem to me; once you have some evidence that something's wrong, there's a distinct statistical advantage to changing your mind, even when you don't know and you're choosing randomly.
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#18"Julia Galef is a writer and co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality" So the author has definitely heard the term "confirmation bias". Why make up a new term for it?
I can easily see a distinction between a known bias, or "motivation", and an unknown bias. What's wrong with allowing language to make that distinction?
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#19Julia Galef did a talk last year for the Long Now Foundation on the soldier/scout mindsets [1]. It's about 90 minutes including questions, and I found it interesting end engaging.
[1] http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/sep/12/soldiers-and-scouts...
Re: Why you think you’re right, even when you’re wrong (2017)
#20But how do we know that the scout's belief is right? Seems like the author has already come to the conclusion that its always going to be right. Doesn't that just bring us back to the mindset of the soldier? Maybe we just have to accept that part of the experiment of living in a democratic and free society is allowing people to create their own values, and accepting that people are going to get it wrong. Their values…
> But how do we know that the scout's belief is right? I feel like the assumption in the article is that neither is right, but that the scout is searching for right, and the solider is defending right. > Seems like the author has already come to the conclusion that its always going to be right. Doesn't that just bring us back to the mindset of the soldier? I don't think so. The mindset distinction isn't between right…
I like this. I think you have a better interpretation than my initial one.
If it is sort of probability based than it can't be right or wrong, just sort of incomplete until we observe the consequences of the action. More often than not the scout will probably be right, and I can concede that. But that doesn't imply that the soldier will always be wrong either.