Thread by @RokoMijicUK

How to deal with demands for evidence:

In practice, any sane person has to believe more things than they have time to provide exhaustive evidence for.

Your brain is a (kind of) neural network and it trains its weights based on evidence it sees. It also stores some of the examples that trained it as memories. But nowhere near all of them.

So if someone says

"what do you believe about X?"

and you say

"B"

and they say

"What's your evidence for B?!"

Then you might be in a kind of bad position, because you might have forgotten most of the evidence that made you believe B.

You can now go through the labourious task of researching all the evidence for B and presenting them with a thorough dossier that they (rationally) ought to find persuasive.

Given realistic time constraints, you can do this max once per month unless it's your job.

You can give them a small tidbit:

"Well, E1 supports B"

but the obvious response is:

"E1 is fabricated! And E2, E4 and E6 contradict B! I have more evidence than you! Give more evidence or you're not rational!"

At this point, we need a new tradition: tell the evidence seeker that you don't have time to present a thorough case for B, not because no such case exists, but because your personal time is limited and B isn't worth it. Most B's aren't worth it for most people at most times.

I think we need a name for this; I love Eliezer's concept of saying

"I defy the data"

for when you think data is wrong, perhaps this could be

"I'm going delinquent on that evidence"

Most people must either go delinquent on evidence for most propositions, or they must just start agreeing with anyone who challenges them (not wise!)

So, proudly #GoDelinquentOnTheEvidence (most of the time) fellow #Rationalists !