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Jeff Cliff's avatar

Wouldn't it be OK if there were empiricists around in the population, as long as they were distracted by *other issues*? Granted: the more of them there are, the more likely that the particular issue in question could get their attention, but it seems like either

a) "empiricist" needs to be " in relation to this topic"

or

b) empiricists need the motive/attention span, in general, to attack the basis of reality in question.

?

I'm picturing different fields of concern surrounded by Hope trying to pawn off empiricists on eachother like a game of hot potato.

In the case of revolutions: that a particular Hope-field wins this game.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I think I agree, or at least mostly agree, with Paul Gowder. For another true but kind-of-silly example, I tend to be fantastically optimistic: I have this sort of deep-seated belief that ultimately, everything will work out and nothing really will go wrong. Which is completely arational; there's no reason my life should work out nicely. But it means I'm usually way less stressed and nervous than most of my friends, because they're worried about all the things that could go wrong and I'm not. So this belief actually improves my ability to get stuff done.

Incidentally, it may be worth noting that the only part of my life that I don't think will just work out for the best is my love life; this is also the only part of my life that doesn't seem to generally work out pretty well. Of course, I'm sure a decent chunk of that is confirmation bias.

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