You can follow the Sagan Standard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
If we could just get people who aren't informed to recognize that they're not informed and not have an opinion, that would be a huge win for civil discourse.
If your brain is so fragile that it can't listen to some guy on a podcast without being "infected", then you're gonna have a hard time.
Again, I'm not suggesting blind faith in dumb ideas. I'm not suggesting that you have to be an expert on anything. I'm suggesting that you have the will to say "I am not fully informed" when you don't know the answer.
On top of that the only thing most of us can say about almost everything under your rules would answered with 'I am not fully informed', shit, humanity isn't fully informed on anything.
Yes. Exactly.
I'm calling for more modesty, and less political vitriol driven by a fictional, exaggerated sense of certainty.
(Also, reinforcing that ideas cannot hurt you, which is an odd mental pathology that has become distressingly common as of late.)
I agree, but I think this falls into the category of "we've tried literally nothing and we're all out of ideas".
If someone is sitting on a pile of $, I think something quite effective (but oh, would it be controversial) could be built.
> I'm suggesting that you have the will to say "I am not fully informed" when you don't know the answer.
"The spirit (will) is willing (well, sometimes) but the flesh is weak". Free will, heuristics, and consciousness/reality are extremely complex topics. I believe very strongly that modern day people have this ability in similar quantities to the ability of people from 50 years ago to not be racist. It is innate, second nature, System 1, outside their control.
From below:
>> Eventually you have to trust someone with something.
You have to. While this is not logically, physically, necessarily true, I think this is literally true for most people, as a consequence of the evolved nature of consciousness, combined with culturally-ingrained norms, one of which is whether philosophy was a part of the educational curriculum one was exposed to... And even then, how good one is at it, in fact (which is typically inaccessible, thus imagined/simulated).
Another:
>> To you, the danger is not knowing that there are, in fact, lizard people controlling the government. To me, the danger is in ending up spending my free time poring over fringe lizard-people Twitter.
Also simulated. Sure, it's "just snark", "speaking colloquially", {excuse du jour}, but I wonder if the mind atrophies with lack of use like muscles do.
A problem: this is a razor that is useful for approximating what one believes to be true, it is not proper, strict epistemology.
Also: it only yields belief, not truth, because it doesn't even try for truth - rather, it advises against doing that.
Would be interesting to see what Carl would say in this context, as I presume he meant it in the context of science/physics, not metaphysics.
I have arguments now and then with people on Carl Sagan videos on tiktok, and it is eye opening how many science fans are utterly incompetent when it comes to epistemology and logic. With just a tiny bit of abstraction (removing the object level specifics of the claim), they are indistinguishable from religious fundamentalists in their confident incorrectness / epistemic-unsoundness.
In a perfect world, it would be fine, since science is highly trustworthy. Unfortunately, the world we live in is far from perfect, making it far less easy to determine how optimal the approach is.
And ironically, you would think that science minded people would understand and appreciate these complexities and their legitimate importance, however in my experience they tend to be the ones most averse to them.
Listening to everything everyone says can have its upsides, but filtering out noise is not one of them.