Yeah, I should probably retract the “we need popular support to get things done” line of reasoning.
I think lying to myself is probably, on reflection, something I do to avoid actually lying to others, as described in that link in the footnote. I kind of decide that a belief is “plausible” and then give it some conditional weight, a kind of “humour the idea and give it the benefit of the doubt”. It’s kind of a technicality thing that I do because I’m personally very against outright lying, so I’ve developed a kind of alternative way of fudging to avoid hurt feelings and such.
This is likely related to the “spin” concept that I adopted from political debates. The idea of “spin” to me is to tell the truth from an angle that encourages a perception that is favourable to the argument I am trying to make. It’s something of a habit, and most probably epistemically highly questionable and something I should stop doing.
I think I also use these things to try to take an intentionally more optimistic outlook and be more positive in order to ensure best performance at tasks at hand. If you think you can succeed, you will try harder and often succeed where if you’d been pessimistic you’d have failed due to lack of resolve. This is an adaptive response, but it admittedly sacrifices some accuracy about the actual situation.
For one’s beliefs about what is true to be influenced by anything other than evidence it might be or not be true, is an influence which will tend to diverge from what is true, by definition.
Though, what if I consider the fact that many people have independently reached a certain belief to itself be evidence that that belief might be true?
Though, what if I consider the fact that many people have independently reached a certain belief to itself be evidence that that belief might be true?
that is a form of evidence. if people’s beliefs all had some truly-independent probability of being correct, then in a large society it would become extreme evidence for any belief that >50% of people have, but it’s not actually true that people’s beliefs are independent.
human minds are similar, and human cultural environments are similar. often people’s conclusions aren’t actually independent, and often they’re not actually conclusions but are unquestioned beliefs internalized from their environment (parents, peers, etc). often people make the same logical mistakes, because they are similar entities (humans).
you still have to reason about that premise, “peoples conclusions about <subject> are independent”, as you would any other belief.
and there are known ways large groups of humans can internalize the same beliefs, with detectable signs like ‘becoming angry when the idea is questioned’.
(maybe usually humans will be right, because most beliefs are about low level mundane things like ‘it will be day tomorrow’. but the cases where we’d like to have such a prior are exactly those non-mundane special cases where human consensus can easily be wrong.)
Yeah, I should probably retract the “we need popular support to get things done” line of reasoning.
I think lying to myself is probably, on reflection, something I do to avoid actually lying to others, as described in that link in the footnote. I kind of decide that a belief is “plausible” and then give it some conditional weight, a kind of “humour the idea and give it the benefit of the doubt”. It’s kind of a technicality thing that I do because I’m personally very against outright lying, so I’ve developed a kind of alternative way of fudging to avoid hurt feelings and such.
This is likely related to the “spin” concept that I adopted from political debates. The idea of “spin” to me is to tell the truth from an angle that encourages a perception that is favourable to the argument I am trying to make. It’s something of a habit, and most probably epistemically highly questionable and something I should stop doing.
I think I also use these things to try to take an intentionally more optimistic outlook and be more positive in order to ensure best performance at tasks at hand. If you think you can succeed, you will try harder and often succeed where if you’d been pessimistic you’d have failed due to lack of resolve. This is an adaptive response, but it admittedly sacrifices some accuracy about the actual situation.
Though, what if I consider the fact that many people have independently reached a certain belief to itself be evidence that that belief might be true?
that is a form of evidence. if people’s beliefs all had some truly-independent probability of being correct, then in a large society it would become extreme evidence for any belief that >50% of people have, but it’s not actually true that people’s beliefs are independent.
human minds are similar, and human cultural environments are similar. often people’s conclusions aren’t actually independent, and often they’re not actually conclusions but are unquestioned beliefs internalized from their environment (parents, peers, etc). often people make the same logical mistakes, because they are similar entities (humans).
you still have to reason about that premise, “peoples conclusions about <subject> are independent”, as you would any other belief.
and there are known ways large groups of humans can internalize the same beliefs, with detectable signs like ‘becoming angry when the idea is questioned’.
(maybe usually humans will be right, because most beliefs are about low level mundane things like ‘it will be day tomorrow’. but the cases where we’d like to have such a prior are exactly those non-mundane special cases where human consensus can easily be wrong.)
This answer feels like a very honest reflection on oneself, I like it.