Wednesday, October 19, 2016

I'm fond of how Robin Hanson starts this blog post:
We talk as if we pick our beliefs mainly for accuracy, but in fact we have many social motives for picking beliefs. In particular, we use many kinds of beliefs as group affiliation/conformity signals. Some of us also use a few contrarian beliefs to signal cleverness and independence, but our groups have a limited tolerance for such things.
I've heard this view a number of times, I just like the way he phrased it. The whole post is good.