Understanding the world well involves synthesizing evidence from disparate sources:
1. Direct experience: if you only believe what you directly witness, you’ll greatly underestimate the diversity of cultures, and literally think the earth is flat.
2. Knowledgeable authority: if you believe whatever your community’s trusted authorities say, then if you were born in a cult you’ll still be in it, and if your authorities become corrupt, they’ll exploit you.
3. Valid reason: if you believe ...
More
evidence evaluation
Ten Skills Our Civilization Needs
Here are ten skills I believe our civilization needs, if we hope to create an amazing world instead of a dumpster fire.
1. Evidence evaluation
Converging on a valid consensus about what’s true based on evidence/argument (e.g., being able to converge as a society on questions like "climate change real, how bad will it get if we don't act, and how quickly?").
2. Coordination
Developing and applying mechanisms to avoid collective action problems (e.g., working to make it in nobody’s in...
More
When Fallacies Aren’t Fallacies
Something rarely discussed that's important to recognize about "logical fallacies": in real-world situations, most of them are only SOMETIMES fallacies.
Here are a bunch of examples:
(1) Appeal to authority: some authorities ARE reliable. For example, ask a physicist about a well-established idea in physics, and you'll likely get the right answer.
(2) Bandwagon effect: lots of people believing something often is evidence for it being true. For example, lots of people saying they heard ...
More