I just realized Im not sure Ive ever written this down, so: In a Traditional Rationalist upbringing (you grew up in a science-literate, Sagan-and-Feynman family) you learn that to learn well and be a good person, you shouldnt take things on authority. Even if someone you respect says a thing, but you cant see why its true or it doesnt seem well-justified, you need to go on questioning them skeptically until the belief seems well-justified. I cant believe in General Relativity just because you tell me to. What sort of experimental evidence is there? The version of this that I would espouse as probability-theory-OK (not leading to updates in a predictable direction), the grownup version of the technique, is that if you respect the other person, youre aware that they probably know something you dont---that in their own minds, their words mean a true thing. But youre also simultaneously aware that it does no good to profess a statement that you dont understand, or repeat back words whose meanings you may not know; and if you cant see why the assertion is true or justified, its quite probable that you havent correctly understood what the other person is trying to say. So you say, Im not sure I understood what you mean. Did you mean X, because Y? E.g., Im not sure what sort of state of affairs would correspond to gravity being caused by spacetime bending. Do you mean that... um, actually Ill just ask what bending is? Or if youre sure that you understand the assertion, and you think the other person probably is correct, but you dont know why that thing would be true, you can say that too: Im willing to believe X is true, but I cant see how we know its true. This is what my conversations with, say, Anna Salamon sound like. Both of these attitudes mean that you go on questioning. But in one case youre sort of pretending that the other person isnt more expert, acting like somebody who doesnt realize the other person is an expert, and demanding that they perform their duty of providing justification so that you can perform your own duty of only believing given sufficient justification. In the second case you can be aware that the other person is an expert and that youll probably come to agree with them; what youre trying to do is figure out what it is youll agree with and why. And youre trying to help them do that by, e.g., telling them what you think they mean, so they can correct errors. (Though this itself can be easily mistaken for trying to assert X when the other person means not-X, e.g., Do you mean that gravity is caused when space bends? No! Stop arguing with me, thats not how General Relativity works! I think that happens to me a lot when I try to do this, even when I try disclaimers like Do you mean that..., so use with caution and... invent better disclaimers and dont use the same tone of voice I do, or something.) There is in fact a pretty large difference between the paths of the conversational tree for I cant believe X just because you tell me so! and Im not sure I understand what you mean; do you mean X and is Y the way we know it?, so this is a big important in-practice difference for conversations.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 23:19:00 +0000
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