Why is it assumed that someone who is convinced by arguments is prone to wrong ideas? Wouldn't that type of person become iteratively closer to the truth every time they hear a new argument and compare to the others they've heard?
I think at some level for certain topics and areas there is a minimal level of knowledge and information you need to know in order to evaluate or even understand advanced arguments about the topic. In a sense you won't become closer to the truth until you reach that minimum level of understanding and before that you will just ping pong between positions without a real understanding of whether you are correct or not.
Many arguments especially advanced ones are building on a presumed level of knowledge that many people do not have or are even aware that they should have. Doing the work to adequately evaluate an argument in every domain is probably not worth their time.
If you "admit" you don't know then you by definition aren't convinced by the argument and thus not falling into the trap. But it doesn't help you make decisions any easier for stuff that is relevant to you and therefore requires you to make a decision. In that case you are going to have take a leap of faith so to speak. And choosing the way you leap might be better informed by consensus by experts in the field rather than speculative investigations on the fringe.
You might still be wrong but your chances are probably improved in the correct direction most of the time.
> This is the correct Bayesian action: if I know that a false argument sounds just as convincing as a true argument, argument convincingness provides no evidence either way. I should ignore it and stick with my prior.
If two diametrically opposed arguments are equally convincing, it's not intuitive to me that the "correct" solution is a middle ground. Especially if both argument state that a middle ground is not possible.
I guess if I encountered two diametrically opposing arguments of equal validity I would increase my uncertainty, not just stick to my prior. That's super different to just ignoring new arguments, right? Like going from "I think X is the best candidate" to "I don't know who the best candidate is".
Oh, that's a good point, and I think you're idea is a better behavior model vs. the "stick with prior" idea.
What if the conclusion forces behavior though? For voting, you can abstain from voting if you're unclear, but what if you're in a position where you have to choose two distinctly different options.
In this case, I think you pretty much have to stick with your prior, but I'm curious if you have a more nuanced approach here.
> I think you pretty much have to stick with your prior
Yeah, at least to me that makes sense if you're forced to make a choice. Although in some ways if you really have no clear evidence it doesn't matter what choice you make, since both are equally reasonable.
> I'm curious if you have a more nuanced approach here
Not really :D. I do think things are often more complicated than "you must choose two options", for example you might have to choose between two candidates (in the US at least), but if you are more uncertain maybe you don't put a giant poster in your front yard or get upset at neighbors if they have a different opinion.
In general this is not how biological life has evolved and not how most decisions work within that framework.
Most decisions you'll ever make are "You have ___ seconds/minutes/hours to make a choice". And depending on the pressures you're under you will skip the expensive logical/rational processing as needed and fall back to heuristics.
>Why is it assumed that someone who is convinced by arguments is prone to wrong ideas?
To put this a different way, if humans actually behaved in this manner in any significant numbers then humanity should have discovered the sciences and been uplifted a long time ago.
Instead that's not what we see at all. A more likely reason is Bullshit Asymmetry, that is, humans throw out so much made up crap that using arguments alone will burn the observable universe away in a puff of entropy.
If we could solve the Bullshit Asymmetry problem, imagine the progress we could make as a species.
Someone reads that "ACKCHYUALLY, if you're operating a car for personal reasons, and not for hire, then you're not actually 'driving', you're just traveling, and you're not legally required to have a driver's license or car registration!
The cops and the courts have it wrong!" just one time, and it's now a permanent belief, and absolutely nothing you do or say can convince them otherwise, and now you've got another Sovereign Citizen.
That's just one example. Flat Earthers, various conspiracy theories, some anti-vax beliefs...
Keep in mind that the normal learning process involves students asking questions out of left field, surprising and frustrating even long-time experts who might need some time to consider how to answer even if the expert has the knowledge to notice the fallacy.
If removing bullshit puts an undue burden on that learning process that causes students to refrain from asking the questions that will help them understand the topic, then you didn't ACKCHYUALLY remove it, you only moved it. :)
If the people are convinced by all arguments they hear, at that point it comes down to which argument they heard most recently, so let's hope the media is autonomous, ethical, independent, & responsible
