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Nancy Lebovitz's avatar

How do you and your wife make key decisions?

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Stephen Diamond's avatar

Why did we gradually arrive at more accurate beliefs, if that is not the goal of abstract reasoning?

This is actually quite clear in the book. Arguments for our positions aren't geared to truth, but the counter-argumenters of listeners are. And good counter-argumenters improve the quality of subsequent arguments. Listeners being better than talkers, the asymmetry that Robin contests, isn't really the product of overlooking anything; it is at the center of their argument.

[Less Wrong, too, underestimates its divergence from Mercier and Sperber. First, they demolish Kahneman's two-factor theory, which is a basis for Rationalist thinking. According to the Rationalists, we can improve our thinking by learning to reason better. But Mercier and Sperber show that great thinkers were not great reasoners and were not independently rational.]

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