The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Galef: Overcoming Cognitive Biases Requires Practice on Real-Life Problems, Not Labs
“I would expect that to change ingrained habits of thought and behavior, you need more longer term practice on real life issues, not on toy problems, you know, in a lab.”
Galef: Purely rational arguments are likely insufficient to combat manufactured doubt
“Yeah, no, I really, I think it's really hard. And I think I'm not confident that there is a good way to do it while, while adhering, you know, perfectly to the standards of, you know, just using the best arguments and evidence. I think you probably have to als…”
Galef: Practical decision-making requires ruling out bad choices rather than seeking perfection
“In practice, it's not helpful to think about there being one very best choice that you can know for certain, but you can, you know, With some careful reasoning and using some good heuristics or rules of thumb, you can sort of rule out some obviously bad choice…”
Galef: Rationality Involves Integrating Intuition Rather Than Suppressing It
“Rationality is, it's less about ignoring or suppressing system one intuition, and more about understanding the sort of respective strengths and weaknesses of the two systems, and learning how to sort of get them to communicate with each other so to speak get y…”
Galef: Appreciating art satisfies human goals often overlooked in rationality
“But in terms of appreciating art I'd say for many people, maybe for most people, for some form of art, that's very important for their goals. And the kinds of goals I'm thinking of Are indeed the kinds of goals that people usually don't think of when I say the…”
Galef: Changing your mind requires gut-level acceptance of your own blind spots
“To change your own mind, I mean, the first step I would say is just believing that that's a desirable thing to do, which many or most people don't really either would explicitly say is a bad thing to do, because changing your mind makes you kind of wishy-washy…”
Galef: Emotional reactions serve as clues to identifying cognitive blind spots
“If you become more attuned to the, to your emotional reactions they can just be important clues as to where you're, what are the blind spots you're creating for yourself, and where are they?”
Galef: Changing minds with facts is harder than using psychological cues
“Changing people's minds with facts is harder than changing their minds with a smile or a gift or a nice haircut.”
Galef: Expecting other people to behave rationally is itself fundamentally irrational
“He is supposed to be the logical, rational one, but he keeps making miscalculations because he expects other people to behave rationally, and they don't. And he should know this, because he's lived among humans for ages, and the fact that he still expects peop…”
Galef: Anyone can cherry-pick scientific studies to make a compelling case
“I think it's quite easy to present what looks like a very compelling case for whatever you want to convince people of. Using, using studies using quotes from experts, using even, even randomized controlled studies, which are sort of the gold standard allegedly…”
Galef: Beliefs must yield concrete predictions to be disproven by evidence
“I think I'm more likely now to do things like, if I believe something, like let's say I believe so and so is unfair or biased, or let's say I believe rationality works, or whatever belief I have, I'm more likely to ask myself, to make myself cash out that beli…”
Galef: Art creation is orthogonal to rationality because it is expressive
“I kind of think of art as being orthogonal independent of rationality. The kinds of things that the artist is trying to do are mostly not trying to get the right answer to a question or achieve a goal. It's more of an expressive process.”
Galef: Abstract advice fails to change moment-to-moment behavior
“Having this abstract commandment, eat healthy, in the back of their mind usually doesn't translate into changing their actions on a moment to moment basis.”
Galef: Test your bias by imagining a friend making the opposing argument
“When someone I dislike says something, I now sort of automatically, well, actually not all the time, but it, I sort of have an intuitive sense for when this would be a useful thing to do. I will automatically imagine that someone I like said the exact same thi…”