I notice that the notion of an opinion, and particularly a right to an opinion, is not something thats active in my social circles these days. It was ubiquitous growing up, and perhaps it was over represented in my upbringing due to epistemic clashes with the Catholic environment. It was infuriating. When I see people disagreeing over something now, I can generally assume--because its an epistemic theorem!--that there is common knowledge that theres either a substantive miscommunication or at least one person believes at least one false thing relevant to the issue. The response my be, Alas, we havent the time to figure this out, or sometimes, I have an ugh field around this and dont expect exploration of it to be very productive at the moment, but its very often, Yay, an opportunity to learn stuff! First person justified in changing their mind wins. And it is never, ever, Well, everybodys got a right to their own opinion, or I guess well just have to agree to disagree, or Are you calling me a liar? or Oh, so everybodys wrong but you, huh? Edit: This post was inspired by the following Eliezer quote. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. When you think about it, where was that proverb generated? Is it something that someone would say in the course of protecting a truth, or in the course of protecting *from* the truth? But people dont perk up and say, Aha! I sense the presence of the Dark Side! As far as I can tell, its not widely realized that the Dark Side is out there. lesswrong/lw/uy/dark_side_epistemology/
Posted on: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 21:33:59 +0000
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