Overcoming Bias

Share this post

Disagreement Debate Status?

www.overcomingbias.com

Discover more from Overcoming Bias

This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
Over 13,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Disagreement Debate Status?

Robin Hanson
Nov 5, 2008
Share this post

Disagreement Debate Status?

www.overcomingbias.com
25
Share

This blog has had many posts on disagreement, especially early on.  For example, I’ve posted on the basic idea that we can’t foresee to disagree, that we should have common priors and not accept genetic influences, and that this all should apply to logical truths and values.  I discussed specific math models, majoritarianism and meta-majoritarianism, how to share info without disagreeing, and two examples of when to agree and one of when to disagree.   I also give frequent talks on the subject. 

So what do folks think is the status of the debate on the rationality of disagreement?  That is, how reluctant do you think people should typically be to knowingly disagree with one another, and if the arguments I’ve outlined  seem to have some potential to influence this reluctance, what more is needed to see if they can fulfill this potential?

Share this post

Disagreement Debate Status?

www.overcomingbias.com
25
Share
25 Comments
Share this discussion

Disagreement Debate Status?

www.overcomingbias.com
Tim Tyler
May 15

Ideal rational agents with common priors should never have common knowledge of disagreement.

As I pointed out further up the page, such agents must also have truth-seeking as their top priority for this to hold. If they have other goals, they can easily find themselves with irreconcilable differences.

You can surely be rational and not have truth seeking as your primary goal. Rationality and goals are totally orthogonal things - at least in my book. Does the repeated occurrence of this curious idea mean that people are mixing these concepts together?

The fact that humans persistently have common knowledge of disagreements indicates that something is very wrong.

It indicates that humans do not have truth-seeking as their primary goal. Of course, evolutionary theory suggests that agents with truth-seeking as their primary goal can be expected to be rare - so this hardly seems like news to me.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

I've written a number of posts on disagreement myself, but I think that most reasonable parties who've been keeping track of the debate, at this point, should confess the following:

1) Ideal rational agents with common priors should never have common knowledge of disagreement.

2) In the real world, two sane rationalists with common knowledge of each other's sanity should not have common knowledge of disagreement. ("Sane" here is a variable that ranges over different definitions of sanity, but it excludes e.g. priors too crazy to reflect on their own causal origins.)

3) The fact that humans persistently have common knowledge of disagreements indicates that something is very wrong.

4) (3) shows that humans systematically overestimate their own meta-rationality, that is, ability to judge whether others are more or less rational than themselves.

5) ...and that, in a lot of cases, Disagreements Aren't About Belief.

It's where we start talking about practical remedies for this dreadful, dreadful situation, that I think we begin entering into the area of - ahem - reasonable disagreement. I don't think the debate has settled the question of what to do when you find yourself disagreeing.

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
23 more comments...
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Robin Hanson
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing