I sometimes see proponents of cause X (for almost all X) say things like “consider all the cognitive biases that would cause you not to think that cause X is the most important! Therefore you need to pay more attention to cause X.” I think this is an extremely cheesy tactic—possibly even logically rude depending on how it’s employed.
For many reasonable propositions you can concoct an almost infinite list of biases pushing in both directions on it. Ironically, people who use this form of argument seem to be themselves suffering from confirmation bias about the proposition “cognitive bias causes people not to believe that cause X is important”! And also a bias blind spot (“I’m less prone to cognitive bias than all those people who believe in cause Y”).
Vaguely related point:
I sometimes see proponents of cause X (for almost all X) say things like “consider all the cognitive biases that would cause you not to think that cause X is the most important! Therefore you need to pay more attention to cause X.” I think this is an extremely cheesy tactic—possibly even logically rude depending on how it’s employed.
For many reasonable propositions you can concoct an almost infinite list of biases pushing in both directions on it. Ironically, people who use this form of argument seem to be themselves suffering from confirmation bias about the proposition “cognitive bias causes people not to believe that cause X is important”! And also a bias blind spot (“I’m less prone to cognitive bias than all those people who believe in cause Y”).