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Nat Philosopher's avatar

I believe a lot of contrarian positions, but I would not say I am the least biased toward them. I believe them based on the evidence. But when you find your first contrarian position to be proved by examination of the scientific literature, say, and especially if it is a very surprising contrarian position in the sense that all right thinking people think you are nuts, then that actually gives you strong evidence that your prior bias against contrarian positions was misplaced. And when you see your second contrarian position very surprisingly yet rationally proved, well then if you are rational you look for an explanation of what exactly you had been missing about the world. And this may well lead you to a rational theory that in fact combines very many more contrarian positions into a concise, and thus occam-friendly explanation.

When I realized that the "climate scientists" were delusional about the climate literature and the Pediatricians were delusional about the vaccine literature, I realized that had a larger import.Our normal expectation that these collections of individuals have determined their beliefs and practices by a logical, scientific process, is empirically proven wrong. Instead the observed facts are explained much better by the model espoused by Gustav Le Bon in his 1895 book The Crowd, the first work on group psychology, and arguably the most insightful. Although largely forgotten today, this work has had extraordinary influence. By their own accounts it was on Theodore Roosevelt’s bedside table, and dogeared by Mussolini. Lenin and Stalin took from it, and “Hitler’s indebtedness to Le Bon bordered on plagiarism” in the words of historian and Hitler-biographer Robert G. L. Waite. Sigmund Freud wrote a book discussing Le Bon, which we will quote from below, and Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations, acknowledged his deep debt, as Goebbels did of Bernays’ reflected insights. So this wouldn’t be the first predictive power displayed by Le Bon’s model: every one of the above luminaries was very happy with their practical applications of Le Bon.

http://whyarethingsthisway....

Let me put it simpler. There is a fundamental bias that most people have which is simply wrong. If they encounter a question where the great majority confidently believes something, including typically government bodies and the like, and there is a small minority dissenting with arguments and links to scientific publications or data, their strong bias is the majority is right and the minority is wrong.In the real world, the opposite is far more often the case. The majority is invariably captive of crowd think. Crowds, even when they include the National Academy of Sciences, are incapable of logical thought.Its easy to understand why the majority are confused. They are certain they are right, precisely because of the bias we are discussing, and none of them has actually checked the logic, paying actual and specific attention to the holes the dissenters are pointing out in it. Instead they invariably argue about some strawman.Its not so easy to understand why the dissenters are dissenting, until you realize that they have checked the logic.

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Stephen Diamond's avatar

Another suspect assumption behind your advice to prefer contrarian questions: we should prefer to be correct.

Allow me a prediction-market analogy. Whether I speculate on one or another prediction depends on the comparison between my personal odds and that assigned by the prediction market. In other words, if I rationally believe the probability of having EMs is .1 but the market says it's .01, I should definitely invest in pro-EM predictions, despite my thinking they're unlikely.

The same logic should apply to contrarian views. If I have a well-reasoned opinion that causes me to predict at odds with the consensus, I should promote that opinion, even if I think it's unlikely. I shouldn't be trying to be correct; I should aim for the greatest possible marginal correctness (so to speak).

Where a marginal analysis might founder when applied to intellectual pursuits is in psychology rather than logic: it is hard to promote a view you believe is wrong. (Some will consider it intellectually dishonest; I think intellectual honesty lies in honest argument rather than sincere belief.) (To bridge the gap between value at the margin and truth, I've offered the distinction between opinion and belief. [See "The distinct functions of belief and opinion"--http://tinyurl.com/4r9k5g3 ])

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