There Are Naive Views

And people

For all of one’s most cherished beliefs, there are some smarter people who believe the opposite. Philosophers talk about the problem of peer disagreement – how should we think about the fact that apparent epistemic equals disagree? But most of us face a problem of superior disagreement too: smarter and more impressive people often believe we are wrong.

The Pyrrhonian skeptics argued that considerations like these should lead one to complete skepticism. Every view can be put into a kind of equipollence with its opposite. By considering the strongest case for A and not A, you’ll find the state of uncertainty. From skepticism, tranquility emerges. 

This isn’t a piece on skepticism – I only mention Pyrrhonism as an example of capable people believing silly things (Although there’s much to learn from the philosophy, as a system it doesn’t work).

Another takeaway from superior disagreement is that there are no naive views:

This belief that anyone sufficiently informed about the topic will agree with them is pure delusion.

Yes, people who disagree with you are not necessarily ignorant. Some of them are reasonable.

However, that doesn’t mean they are not naive.

One can signal naïveté by lacking information or showing poor judgment.

The naive are not always obviously ignorant. They may even sound impressive. But if they display poor judgment, that’s powerful evidence that they are missing crucial aspects of reality.

Even if someone sounds good and one can’t easily explain why they’re wrong – a terrible track record suggests epistemic deficiency.

Arguing with conspiracy theorists is a nice example of this. Many conspiracy theorists exhibit an obsessive command of detail and can wipe the floor with reasonable people in debate – but they’re often wrong. They aren’t necessarily naive (or even mistaken), but they often are. For example, they often possess unsophisticated views about how human organizations work that can be difficult to convey if one has not witnessed the failure modes of skilled teams working together.

Another example – in ordinary relationships, one person is often better at arguing than another. But sometimes it can be better to rely on the person who is worse at debate because they have a better track record. 

To some extent, this shows that arguments are overrated. What one wants to do is cultivate good judgment – and not all that process is explicitly argumentative. Track epistemically successful people. Amazon insists on correctness and is right to do so:  

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts.

Trust your intuition when it’s reliable – with the confidence that you can update when you are wrong.

Much of thinking involves training yourself to make correct snap judgments. Time is limited. But one should have the good judgment to know that some views are not worth serious intellectual consideration. 

Perhaps it's more common to call the non-naive naive, rather than the reverse. The temptation to dismiss other people as unsophisticated is strong. If only our political opponents weren’t so stupid and clueless! This is the more common sin. But sometimes we should judge someone – or some view – as naive and move on.