Dunning-Kruger asymmetry. The less confident, more doubtful must always work to understand the ones more sure of themselves. Just like people living in cities often pay extra taxes.https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/1325578732220932097 …
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Why bother? Why not just skip to your arsenal of doubt-smashing techniques like a stable genius? Why not immediately jump to Bayesian modeling, long bets, p-value-hacking snuffing, effect size ninja-ing? Why endure existential doubt like a masochist?
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Because sometimes there will no nowhere to jump to. Nothing to do. Nothing in your arsenal of doubt-busting tools that you can systematically deploy. No relief from *doing* something. Systematic doubt is doubt seen through the legibilixing lens of a doubt-busting cognitive mode.
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This is why I’m wary of doubt-busting instinct. The sophisticated modern tools are in spirit not that different from the red string and apophenia of conspiracists. Both legibilize an uncomfortable and illegible feeling by giving you something to do. Something you can be good at.
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Succumb too much, too often, and soon the only kind of doubt you’ll be capable of experiencing is the kind you can bust with one of the clever tools you’re skilled at deploying. You’ll become gut-blind to the existential kind. Which is where the bigger ahas
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There’s a very natural and easy set of instinctive behaviors you’re already good at that help you stay with doubt rather than immediately jump to busting it: irony, absurdity, the usual stuff. My modest contribution to that anti-arsenal is embrace of mediocrity.
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Irony is “seeing double” without succumbing to urge to yell “duck over rabbit, with 95% confidence” absurdity is noticing map-territory glitches without feeling like resolving it. Just enjoying it. Mediocrity is not tying identity and confidence to bring good at doubt-busting.
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If you like sci-fi metaphors, these are all tricks for multiverse travel. Inhabiting multiple universes and timelines at once.
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End of conversation
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Doubt as a way of being is where all the good ideas turn up
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Reminds me of a common problem in interpersonal relationships where people often cannot tolerate ambiguity when told “I need time/space to process this” and end up blowing up the relationship by continuing to push for immediate resolution anyway.
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I am extremely intolerant of uncertainty but certain doubts are ongoing thought experiments which are enjoyable e.g. Heaven, Hell, moral universe vs. indifferent universe.
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