I still think this is generally true and it is a good way to evaluate whether something is true or false (or at least relayed honestly), but in childhood I found at least one exception: the St Nick myth. Here, the lie was told by adults for my benefit (and yes, I see it as such, even today), so it is one of those exceptional cases where almost everyone will lie to you.
I may be the exception to the rule, but my bullshit detector is pretty outstanding compared to the average person. (Or maybe I'm just the eternal skeptic.) I never believed in Santa even from an early age. My mother told me one year when I was extremely young, "you better do (x) or Santa won't get you any presents." I replied, "Mom, Santa isn't real. Even if he was, my mamaw will buy me presents."
But even when I’m been relatively sure on a topic and therefore not likely to change my opinion, I’ve still often found this method useful in another respect: when I debate a topic with someone, it often allows me to refine my own internal ideas and identify weaknesses in the arguments I use to support them.
I'd disagree here. (Of course it's also possible that I could be contributing to your point.) This could also be a methodology of solidifying an uncompromising bias. There are many instances of this on the internet with people that give "debates." (Many of which against people who aren't great advocates for their own beliefs.) They sharpen the argument, but this doesn't necessarily make clear what is objectively unbiased. I've come to terms with the fact that it is impossible in this world to operate without any bias. I have mine, and you have yours.
The objectivity of unbiased reality is always going to be distorted by our empirically driven biases. Unless you've hopped down the rabbit hole of solipsism, this distortion is only tamed slightly when we use intersubjective averaging of a collective perception. But then you have another problem if you believe a majority aren't trustworthy. I personally find that it's useful to iterate through the permutations of possibilities in a very coarse sense and ask first: "does it really matter if my belief is biased? How does it affect the trajectory of my life and the life of others?"
I also like to draw upon the game of poker where my constant mantra is, "does the story make sense?" Mix that with a dash of Occam's razor and two dashes of Hanlon's razor, boom, you have my personal bias cocktail. (Obviously life experience is always important when considering what it is you "believe" in this world.)
Should you ever "go against the tide"?
Emphatically yes, but delivery is important. Hostage negotiators say that the most important thing to do in disagreeing situations is to let the other person know they are being heard. You don't have to agree or lead the person on (it's actually discouraged), only genuinely show that you have given consideration to their perspective without being blatantly disrespectful.
If your goal is truly to limit bias it should be important that we get more people on the same page, as this is what we base what we consider "objective reality" upon. You never can persuade opposition with, "you're wrong, dumb fucker."
That's my two cents at least. I like philosophy. Post some more my friend.
The "given" was a pretty near unchangeable opinion. So, the chance for further solidification isn't something to be concerned about. My only point here was that even in such cases, there's still some utility to debating with people on the other side just to hone your arguments (not to further determine the objective truth). But if we do want to still assume a chance for a change of opinion, debating will increase the likelihood compared to just not discussing the issue at all, especially if you try to find the best presenters of the opposing side's ideas.
I rejected that rabbit hole very early in life :-)
If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that bias that leads to wrong conclusions may not be something to worry much about if it doesn't have a negative impact on our life. If so, I guess that could be considered something of a truism on a utilitarian basis, but if our passion is just for truth independent of utility, it obviously still matters. And I'm not sure if we can always correctly measure the impact of mistaken beliefs based on biases either.
I think that's not a bad formula for evaluating human behavior and it share some similarity to my own. I wasn't familiar with the term Hanlon's razor, but as a concept I'm a strong believer in it and frequently use it when trying to understand human behavior.
Yes, completely agree with this. It can be hard at times, but if you really want to change someone's mind, I think its critical.
I'm very utilitarian about it because I'm not sure that I'll ever be capable of achieving an accurate depiction of objective reality through my limited human capability. Also, after a few months of thinking about it, I'm not sure that my picture of reality has to be accurate. I'm resting my laurels on utilitarianism.
(I'm not even sure I believe in free-will any more but this is an on-going internal struggle. That's another debate altogether. I'm working on a theoretical model for cognition based on the parallels between biology and computation. Hopefully I'll draft something solid and get it academically published. If so, I'll share it here. I'm a non-traditional student studying computer science and neuroscience.)
There's another good one to go along with Hanlon's razor! I forget what it is called but (paraphrasing) I think it goes like this: "Malice must be the intention of those who couldn't possibly be THAT incompetent." Human behavior is tough, its the emergence of a complex system of hardware and experience. One thing I have noticed though is that reasoning is always justified for someone, even if it's after the fact. Many bad people in history have justified horrendous actions through the means of necessity and imaginary evil.