
The Selective Laziness of Reasoning - texan
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.12303/full
======
gwern
After reading the abstract, I was thinking to myself, 'to get a disagreement
rate like _that_ , how can you possibly present a subject's own argument to
them and have them think it was someone else's? Wouldn't they remember?' and
was expecting some very clever experimental manipulation or condition.

Nope:

> However, for one of the syllogisms (the manipulated syllogism), instead of
> being truthfully reminded of their previous answer, participants were told
> that they had given an answer different from the one they had given: either
> the valid answer (if they had answered invalidly) or the most common invalid
> answer (if they had answered validly). Their own previous answer, and the
> argument that justified it, were presented as if they were those given by
> another participant. The external features of the presentation were strictly
> identical to those of the other four syllogisms (see Fig. 1 for an example
> of both conditions).

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webmasterraj
This explains half the comments I see these days on HN. More concerned with
defending their point and criticizing people who disagree, than a genuine
attempt at finding something actually true.

~~~
EliRivers
Every so often, in places where I can be seen as the sum of my history
(especially places with reputation scores), I create a new account with zero
history. It stops me self-censoring on the basis of not wanting to damage my
own reputation.

It's ridiculous; it's a line of text on a screen, and everyone here is a
stranger, but I still feel myself caring. Can't stop caring, but I can start
from fresh every so often.

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eli_gottlieb
<snark>

Wait, there are people who still treat single arguments as reliable guides to
truth?!

</snark>

~~~
jamespshields
How else would you try to persuade someone if not with an argument?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
With experiential and statistical evidence, of course.

~~~
baobabaobab
Experiential and statistical evidence presented in a summary meant to convince
a person of something would be known as an argument.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Hold on. Turn this around. You just read an entire paper about how arguments
are completely unreliable, to the point of causing you to contradict yourself,
and your response is to argue semantics and declare, "Hey, arguments are
great! Let's put more things in the 'argument' category, and spend _less_
effort trying to figure out more reliable and accurate ways of reasoning! Yay
arguments, and by entailment, yay self-contradiction!"

What the hell?

~~~
hugh4
Meanwhile you, who argues that arguments are useless, are arguing.

On the internet, no less!

