Let me add a 6th cognitive strategy. Let's call it *wise, limited deference.* Most people don't have time or inclination for it. Here are the steps:
a) Learn rudiments of epistemology; for example, criteria of 'arguments to the best explanation of available evidence,' Bayes Rule, J. S. Mill's several 'methods' of induction, and Kling's FITs criteria.
b) Keep an eye out for persons who apply such rudiments, and keep tabs on their performance (predictions, warranted 'I told you so,' and the like). Read them regularly. Note: A person who has different values than you might nonetheless deserve wise cognitive deference. Focus on reliability about facts and mechanisms.
c) In novel situations, and whenever deference might be efficient, cautiously defer to this set of persons, who have demonstrated sound cognitive habits and good judgment.
d) Make a point of occasionally reading also smart people who disagree.
e) If your luminaries seem to get it wrong on an issue that you care to get right, then try and figure out the issue yourself if you can, and voice your reasoned disagreement.
This cognitive strategy—wise, limited deference, plus occasional effort at reasoned disagreement—will maximize your chances of forming true beliefs, and might even gain you a modicum of status among truth-seekers.
Note: Leave plenty of room for the cognitive humility strategy, mentioned in Arnold's essay, even though it has low status.
Gurwinder's piece makes some good points in the abstract, but is marred by the fact that his negative examples all slant in favor of Left pieties. Also, he wrote "The mainstream media....take care to get the actual reporting right, and when they don’t, they usually issue corrections." That is nonsense.
"[MSM] get the actual reporting right" is a more slippery phrase than it appears. Scott Alexander had a post a few months ago with big follow-up discussion on this exact topic (see https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-061 and links therefrom). He argued that while MSM does select what and how it reports in order to serve the prevailing narrative, it is careful not to tell direct lies, like saying that X did Y when X did not in fact do Y, and so on, and it does issue corrections when errors of this nature occur. Most of the discussion turned on whether the distinction between direct lies and various concealments, obfuscations, misdirections and motivated reasoning MSM engages in is valid and/or useful. I think it is both. MSM expends a lot of resources and reports on a lot of stuff, it is hard to completely avoid depending on it for information, and that being so "no direct lies" is a good invariant to be able to rely on. Compare e.g. Soviet reports about plan fulfillment to see what happens otherwise. More than that, as I also argued in that discussion, many MSM feel constrained enough by this rule that they put narrative-busting facts related to what they are reporting on right in their articles, where Steve Sailer and any reader who has the fortitude to read the thing to the umpteenth paragraph can discover them.
Exactly. And Gurwinder's portrait of the contrarian is a caricature. The implication that contrarianism inevitably causes contrarians to become conspiracy theorists is likewise nonsense. Some individuals who espouse contrarian views may also be conspiracy theorists, but the innate skepticism that causes some individuals to become contrarians may also cause them to be skeptical about conspiracy theories. Gurwinder comes across as condescending.
On Robin Hanson & prediction markets--it seems like we already do have prediction markets. Here's Scott Alexander talking about how they functioned during the LK-99 excitement: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-82823 . Maybe it's more accurate to say that extant prediction markets aren't sufficiently deep or liquid to move the needle for a variety of issues?
Re. Balaji. I first heard of him because someone reposted his Twitter thread about the pandemic, in which he seemed to predict exactly what eventually happened. I followed him, and discovered that he was a crypto enthusiast/evangelist. In large part because of his influence, I decided to play with crypto, but in a limited fashion. I dollar-cost-averaged $1100 over 3 or 4 months into a combination of ETH and BTC. And I stopped and watched. The $1100, two years later, is now $609, and that doesn't adjust for inflation. During this time Balaji made a $1M bet that BTC would go to an astronomical price in a few months while USD and the stock market collapsed. Instead, BTC went down and stocks rose. I had observed that BTC basically follows the US stock market, but with much more volatility. So Balaji was right about a very important prediction, but since then he has fallen flat. An illustration of why in choosing in whom to believe, one should at least consult a basket of mostly reliable individuals and institutions, and still apply a bushel of skepticism.
As I think Gurwinder himself notes, people themselves are a mixture of these strategies, and most are conformists much of the time. That's how we all learned language after all. Which strategies get employed and when is probably and interestingly context dependent. A distinction should really be made between beliefs that matter to survival, livelihood/job, everyday tasks that must be done successfully, etc., and those that don't. The level of wealth and security most in our country enjoy, combined with today's relatively risk-free means of broadcasting beliefs means that the apparent cognitive strategies behind much of that broadcasting is much more uncoupled from people's cognitive strategies for beliefs that matter than at any time in the past.
Gurwinder's post suffers from the same defect that Galef's 'scout mindset' and a few previous ones on the same theme suffer from: they are incredibly easy to mis-apply. As Handle wrote in comments to your post on Galef's book, even if she had written it carefully enough, far too many readers will immediately assign themselves to 'scout mindset', their opponents to 'soldier mindset', and dismiss the latter's arguments and positions on that basis. In the case of Gurwinder's post, people who don't read it carefully to the conclusions will find it far too easy to pattern-match one's own self to 'careful, non-NPC thinker who correctly prioritizes issues into primary, secondary and tertiary', one's opponents to one or another kind of 'NPC' (the easier done as Gurwinder lists five kinds of them), and dismiss the latter's arguments and positions on that basis.
As for substance, it is difficult to square Gurwinder's recommendations with a democratic form of government. How is one supposed to discharge the public trust of suffrage without being informed on the issues which form the planks of one's prospective representatives? Selecting representatives with the best character may be a permissible shortcut, but it obviously opens a whole different can of worms.
I think contrarians and disciples are often trying to curry favor -- maybe not with the majority, but with a subgroup within which status is important to them.
I wanted to like Gurwinder, and his 5 main points seem pretty good - but not quite applicable for me, nor for Arnold.
I'm a big supporter of Trump ... since he mostly agrees with me. Yes on a border wall, and strong border enforcement against illegal immigrants. Yest to tax cuts and better econ. Yes to decoupling from slave holding China - free trade among free people is good. "free trade" with slave owners/ human rights abusers is not so good (Kling & other Libbers wrong).
Trump is a bit right but mostly wrong about Ukraine -- too much corruption & unaudited money, but Ukraine fighting against aggression is good for world peace. Far cheaper than the US being a world policeman.
The election was rigged - unfair - stolen. The Hunter Biden laptop truth was censored. Kling's wrong in his idea that only ballots being counted determine a fair or unfair election.
I joined Twitter a few years ago because I couldn't believe what Trump "reportedly said". And, when I looked at his actual full tweets, rather than what the Dem media said, it was often different. Gurwinder seems to believe most anti-Trump bias ... which makes me more skeptical of his ideas. But a pretty good set of 5 "colors" of NPC that are mixed to varying degrees in each actual person.
Contrarianism is likely to occur with small-time traders. The big players are all moving one way or the other, and someone has to take the other side of the trade. Contrarians have to tell themselves that the big players, whether buying or selling, are always (or usually, or often) wrong. Otherwise they have nothing to do and no one will make a market. Since Goliath usually wins, most contrarian traders go broke, and are never heard from again. The occasional spectacularly successful contrarian, who buys into a collapsing market which then whipsaws, becomes a legend and a folk hero and expounds his genius thereafter to anyone who will listen. So further contrarians are inspired to march into arena and defy the Gods, and most leave their blood spilled into the sand and are carted away unmourned and unremembered.
Having an eye for honest and dishonest arguments lets you figure out who is likely to be speaking truth when you are reading on something where you are not familiar with the speakers so can't use the suggestion of building a catalogue of good (and bad) guys.
Then understanding institutional goals and how that will apply some pressure in a certain direction on what speakers from those institutions will say.
And some basic mental arithmetic and fact checking.
Gets you surprisingly far. Often we are not doing rocket science with hyper-technical answers, we just have many people motivated to be dishonest.
This is a good point. When you keep seeing bad arguments, it's reasonable to think the position they are arguing for might be bad as well. An awful lot of arguments you see basically just amount to name-calling (e.g., "denier!"), which is to say argumentum ad hominem.
Regarding Gurwinder's dismissal of contrarianism, in our society with its univocal media that lies constantly, I have found that it is quite often worth looking into the ideas of those whom they disparage. So there's a useful shortcut.
If you believe the "Deep State" is running the biggest propaganda program in history, then it is consistent to look at the "contrarian side." If the Deep State says,
1) "It is great to be funding the 1960s Vietnam War" . . . Maybe Not.
2) "There is no chance the Covid virus originated in Wuhan" . . .
3) "The Covid vaccines are safe and effective." . . . Maybe Not.
4) "The Russian invasion of Ukraine was entirely unprovoked." . . .
3) It started off saying that corona was not particularly dangerous, and that masking was worthless. Maybe? Maybe not? The sudden U-turn on corona messaging that occurred in March-April '20 jarred a lot of people out of knee-jerk contrarianism.
3') It started off saying that vaccines for corona would not be particularly good and might even be dangerous. Maybe? Maybe not? It was Trump who argued for vaccines in the run-up to the 2021 election, and it was Deep State which caused Pfizer to delay publication of its preregistered vaccine trial results till after voting was over.
4) It started off expressing concern and trundling out 'realists' to explain about Russia's legitimate security interests in the region and how Putin is being provoked. Maybe? Maybe not?
Knee-jerk contrarianism based on the premise you express in your first sentence is not a reliable guide for anything except for landing people in stupid positions, such as American Nazi-loving online right-wingers blithely repeating Russian talking points about how Ukrainians are bad and deserve to be destroyed because they are Nazis.
I am not associating contrarianism with mostly Trump or mostly Vivek. Get off your tribal high horse!
I am associating contrarianism with with being "the correct view" when the consensus view happens to be very wrong . . . happens frequently. Some more examples:
17th Century: Consensus view--All planets and sun revolve around earth: Contrarian View: Planets revolve around sun. (turned out to be right)
18th Century: Consensus View: When a patient has high fever, apply leaches to suck out blood. Contrarian View: No that kills him faster (turned out to be right)
21st Century: Consensus View: Mammograms and Colonoscopies are a good idea. Contrarian View: The positive effects are nonexistent or very slight. The chances of negative effects are greater, so the net result is negative (Turns out to be true. See Vinay Prasad and many other sources)
You started off by talking about Deep State running the biggest propaganda program in history. If that's not 'getting on a tribal high horse' then what is?
I did not say _you_ are repeating Russian talking points, in case you didn't notice. I gave an example of knee-jerk contrarianism putting people in stupid positions which is salient to me. But American right-wingers repeating Russian talking points is a very real phenomenon. If you are not aware of that, I'm happy for you, and I won't even suggest that you need to get out more and read more.
"Society" does not reach consensus, and the concept of a "mainstream" is discredited. The mainstream, when it existed, amounted to a consensus that most Big Media journalists were trustworthy. Today only a minority whom I call "sheep" ever trusts Big Media, government, or anyone in them even to tell the truth, much less to be unbiased; and the only consensus is that very refusal to trust.
Let me add a 6th cognitive strategy. Let's call it *wise, limited deference.* Most people don't have time or inclination for it. Here are the steps:
a) Learn rudiments of epistemology; for example, criteria of 'arguments to the best explanation of available evidence,' Bayes Rule, J. S. Mill's several 'methods' of induction, and Kling's FITs criteria.
b) Keep an eye out for persons who apply such rudiments, and keep tabs on their performance (predictions, warranted 'I told you so,' and the like). Read them regularly. Note: A person who has different values than you might nonetheless deserve wise cognitive deference. Focus on reliability about facts and mechanisms.
c) In novel situations, and whenever deference might be efficient, cautiously defer to this set of persons, who have demonstrated sound cognitive habits and good judgment.
d) Make a point of occasionally reading also smart people who disagree.
e) If your luminaries seem to get it wrong on an issue that you care to get right, then try and figure out the issue yourself if you can, and voice your reasoned disagreement.
This cognitive strategy—wise, limited deference, plus occasional effort at reasoned disagreement—will maximize your chances of forming true beliefs, and might even gain you a modicum of status among truth-seekers.
Note: Leave plenty of room for the cognitive humility strategy, mentioned in Arnold's essay, even though it has low status.
All around, we have learned we have fewer to trust for anything resembling fact.
Gurwinder's piece makes some good points in the abstract, but is marred by the fact that his negative examples all slant in favor of Left pieties. Also, he wrote "The mainstream media....take care to get the actual reporting right, and when they don’t, they usually issue corrections." That is nonsense.
"[MSM] get the actual reporting right" is a more slippery phrase than it appears. Scott Alexander had a post a few months ago with big follow-up discussion on this exact topic (see https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-061 and links therefrom). He argued that while MSM does select what and how it reports in order to serve the prevailing narrative, it is careful not to tell direct lies, like saying that X did Y when X did not in fact do Y, and so on, and it does issue corrections when errors of this nature occur. Most of the discussion turned on whether the distinction between direct lies and various concealments, obfuscations, misdirections and motivated reasoning MSM engages in is valid and/or useful. I think it is both. MSM expends a lot of resources and reports on a lot of stuff, it is hard to completely avoid depending on it for information, and that being so "no direct lies" is a good invariant to be able to rely on. Compare e.g. Soviet reports about plan fulfillment to see what happens otherwise. More than that, as I also argued in that discussion, many MSM feel constrained enough by this rule that they put narrative-busting facts related to what they are reporting on right in their articles, where Steve Sailer and any reader who has the fortitude to read the thing to the umpteenth paragraph can discover them.
Exactly. And Gurwinder's portrait of the contrarian is a caricature. The implication that contrarianism inevitably causes contrarians to become conspiracy theorists is likewise nonsense. Some individuals who espouse contrarian views may also be conspiracy theorists, but the innate skepticism that causes some individuals to become contrarians may also cause them to be skeptical about conspiracy theories. Gurwinder comes across as condescending.
All five portraits are caricatures.
On Robin Hanson & prediction markets--it seems like we already do have prediction markets. Here's Scott Alexander talking about how they functioned during the LK-99 excitement: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-82823 . Maybe it's more accurate to say that extant prediction markets aren't sufficiently deep or liquid to move the needle for a variety of issues?
Re. Balaji. I first heard of him because someone reposted his Twitter thread about the pandemic, in which he seemed to predict exactly what eventually happened. I followed him, and discovered that he was a crypto enthusiast/evangelist. In large part because of his influence, I decided to play with crypto, but in a limited fashion. I dollar-cost-averaged $1100 over 3 or 4 months into a combination of ETH and BTC. And I stopped and watched. The $1100, two years later, is now $609, and that doesn't adjust for inflation. During this time Balaji made a $1M bet that BTC would go to an astronomical price in a few months while USD and the stock market collapsed. Instead, BTC went down and stocks rose. I had observed that BTC basically follows the US stock market, but with much more volatility. So Balaji was right about a very important prediction, but since then he has fallen flat. An illustration of why in choosing in whom to believe, one should at least consult a basket of mostly reliable individuals and institutions, and still apply a bushel of skepticism.
As I think Gurwinder himself notes, people themselves are a mixture of these strategies, and most are conformists much of the time. That's how we all learned language after all. Which strategies get employed and when is probably and interestingly context dependent. A distinction should really be made between beliefs that matter to survival, livelihood/job, everyday tasks that must be done successfully, etc., and those that don't. The level of wealth and security most in our country enjoy, combined with today's relatively risk-free means of broadcasting beliefs means that the apparent cognitive strategies behind much of that broadcasting is much more uncoupled from people's cognitive strategies for beliefs that matter than at any time in the past.
Gurwinder's post suffers from the same defect that Galef's 'scout mindset' and a few previous ones on the same theme suffer from: they are incredibly easy to mis-apply. As Handle wrote in comments to your post on Galef's book, even if she had written it carefully enough, far too many readers will immediately assign themselves to 'scout mindset', their opponents to 'soldier mindset', and dismiss the latter's arguments and positions on that basis. In the case of Gurwinder's post, people who don't read it carefully to the conclusions will find it far too easy to pattern-match one's own self to 'careful, non-NPC thinker who correctly prioritizes issues into primary, secondary and tertiary', one's opponents to one or another kind of 'NPC' (the easier done as Gurwinder lists five kinds of them), and dismiss the latter's arguments and positions on that basis.
As for substance, it is difficult to square Gurwinder's recommendations with a democratic form of government. How is one supposed to discharge the public trust of suffrage without being informed on the issues which form the planks of one's prospective representatives? Selecting representatives with the best character may be a permissible shortcut, but it obviously opens a whole different can of worms.
I think contrarians and disciples are often trying to curry favor -- maybe not with the majority, but with a subgroup within which status is important to them.
thinking is expensive so we are all running the simplest scripts we have available and can get away with
only with things you really care about will you expend the resources to think independently
The problem is that if you don't pretend to be a little NPC, you are either crazy or a genius.
Or both.
They're not exclusive.
I wanted to like Gurwinder, and his 5 main points seem pretty good - but not quite applicable for me, nor for Arnold.
I'm a big supporter of Trump ... since he mostly agrees with me. Yes on a border wall, and strong border enforcement against illegal immigrants. Yest to tax cuts and better econ. Yes to decoupling from slave holding China - free trade among free people is good. "free trade" with slave owners/ human rights abusers is not so good (Kling & other Libbers wrong).
Trump is a bit right but mostly wrong about Ukraine -- too much corruption & unaudited money, but Ukraine fighting against aggression is good for world peace. Far cheaper than the US being a world policeman.
The election was rigged - unfair - stolen. The Hunter Biden laptop truth was censored. Kling's wrong in his idea that only ballots being counted determine a fair or unfair election.
I joined Twitter a few years ago because I couldn't believe what Trump "reportedly said". And, when I looked at his actual full tweets, rather than what the Dem media said, it was often different. Gurwinder seems to believe most anti-Trump bias ... which makes me more skeptical of his ideas. But a pretty good set of 5 "colors" of NPC that are mixed to varying degrees in each actual person.
Contrarianism is likely to occur with small-time traders. The big players are all moving one way or the other, and someone has to take the other side of the trade. Contrarians have to tell themselves that the big players, whether buying or selling, are always (or usually, or often) wrong. Otherwise they have nothing to do and no one will make a market. Since Goliath usually wins, most contrarian traders go broke, and are never heard from again. The occasional spectacularly successful contrarian, who buys into a collapsing market which then whipsaws, becomes a legend and a folk hero and expounds his genius thereafter to anyone who will listen. So further contrarians are inspired to march into arena and defy the Gods, and most leave their blood spilled into the sand and are carted away unmourned and unremembered.
Having an eye for honest and dishonest arguments lets you figure out who is likely to be speaking truth when you are reading on something where you are not familiar with the speakers so can't use the suggestion of building a catalogue of good (and bad) guys.
Then understanding institutional goals and how that will apply some pressure in a certain direction on what speakers from those institutions will say.
And some basic mental arithmetic and fact checking.
Gets you surprisingly far. Often we are not doing rocket science with hyper-technical answers, we just have many people motivated to be dishonest.
This is a good point. When you keep seeing bad arguments, it's reasonable to think the position they are arguing for might be bad as well. An awful lot of arguments you see basically just amount to name-calling (e.g., "denier!"), which is to say argumentum ad hominem.
Regarding Gurwinder's dismissal of contrarianism, in our society with its univocal media that lies constantly, I have found that it is quite often worth looking into the ideas of those whom they disparage. So there's a useful shortcut.
If you believe the "Deep State" is running the biggest propaganda program in history, then it is consistent to look at the "contrarian side." If the Deep State says,
1) "It is great to be funding the 1960s Vietnam War" . . . Maybe Not.
2) "There is no chance the Covid virus originated in Wuhan" . . .
3) "The Covid vaccines are safe and effective." . . . Maybe Not.
4) "The Russian invasion of Ukraine was entirely unprovoked." . . .
Pfui. The Deep State is very often its own "contrarian side".
1) It has been saying for decades now that funding the Vietnam War was a mistake. Maybe? Maybe not?
2) It started off calling it the 'Wuhan Coronavirus' (https://web.archive.org/web/20200131000332/https://www.nytimes.com/)
3) It started off saying that corona was not particularly dangerous, and that masking was worthless. Maybe? Maybe not? The sudden U-turn on corona messaging that occurred in March-April '20 jarred a lot of people out of knee-jerk contrarianism.
3') It started off saying that vaccines for corona would not be particularly good and might even be dangerous. Maybe? Maybe not? It was Trump who argued for vaccines in the run-up to the 2021 election, and it was Deep State which caused Pfizer to delay publication of its preregistered vaccine trial results till after voting was over.
4) It started off expressing concern and trundling out 'realists' to explain about Russia's legitimate security interests in the region and how Putin is being provoked. Maybe? Maybe not?
Knee-jerk contrarianism based on the premise you express in your first sentence is not a reliable guide for anything except for landing people in stupid positions, such as American Nazi-loving online right-wingers blithely repeating Russian talking points about how Ukrainians are bad and deserve to be destroyed because they are Nazis.
I am not associating contrarianism with mostly Trump or mostly Vivek. Get off your tribal high horse!
I am associating contrarianism with with being "the correct view" when the consensus view happens to be very wrong . . . happens frequently. Some more examples:
17th Century: Consensus view--All planets and sun revolve around earth: Contrarian View: Planets revolve around sun. (turned out to be right)
18th Century: Consensus View: When a patient has high fever, apply leaches to suck out blood. Contrarian View: No that kills him faster (turned out to be right)
21st Century: Consensus View: Mammograms and Colonoscopies are a good idea. Contrarian View: The positive effects are nonexistent or very slight. The chances of negative effects are greater, so the net result is negative (Turns out to be true. See Vinay Prasad and many other sources)
You started off by talking about Deep State running the biggest propaganda program in history. If that's not 'getting on a tribal high horse' then what is?
P.S.: When anyone uses the phrase, "repeating Russian talking points," you know they need to get out more, and read more.
I did not say _you_ are repeating Russian talking points, in case you didn't notice. I gave an example of knee-jerk contrarianism putting people in stupid positions which is salient to me. But American right-wingers repeating Russian talking points is a very real phenomenon. If you are not aware of that, I'm happy for you, and I won't even suggest that you need to get out more and read more.
"Society" does not reach consensus, and the concept of a "mainstream" is discredited. The mainstream, when it existed, amounted to a consensus that most Big Media journalists were trustworthy. Today only a minority whom I call "sheep" ever trusts Big Media, government, or anyone in them even to tell the truth, much less to be unbiased; and the only consensus is that very refusal to trust.