by cauch | 2025-04-06 23:07:52+00:00
Hm, not sure it's a convincing argument, though.

For example, how do you correct for the sample bias? You are saying in your article that "moderate" (aka, people aligned with your current evaluation of what is sensible) are the ones that are more prone to get outside of their bubble. You don't evaluate that on a unbiased sample, you evaluate that amongst your friends, with whom you have, according to you, had longer discussion on the subject (and if you did not, then, this question is not very reliable).

So, first, if someone is not aligned with you, the conversation relationship will not be the same as someone aligned with you. You even say that you play the devil's advocate, but playing the devil's advocate with a moderate person or a person with a more particular word view does not lead to the same conversation relationship. For illustration, let's put people on a 1-to-10 scale. The moderate is "5", the "far-left" is "0" and the "far-right" is "10". If you play the devil's advocate with a far-left that says "0 is great", you will say "10 is great", which is 10 distance away in dissidence. If you play the devil's advocate with a moderate that says "5 is great", then you can say "0 is great" or "10 is great", which is just 5.

In other words, it is easier to "alienate" or "put on a defensive" a non-moderate than a moderate. It does not mean that the moderate is more open, just that they are, circumstantially, in a situation where your game is easy for them to play (if the world was -5 to 5, then "5" would answer "no" after you played the devil's advocate by defending the option "-5").

On top of that, you are probably a worst devil's advocate when it comes to play the devil's advocate with someone that you agree a lot with (if you had good argument against being a moderate, then you will probably be yourself convinced by these arguments and not be a moderate).

Also, it's interesting that they say "no", it shows that they care a lot about what is true or not. Basically, what they say is that they care so much about what is true that in the unrealistic case that they are abominably wrong, knowing it was the case would be very sad for them. They also did not form their belief spontaneously: they grow up into it, step by step, each step based on their evaluation of what is true or not. Your question is basically the same as asking "would you be happy to hear it that you personally failed repeatedly during your whole life", which is strongly emotional. Again, the situation is not the same for a moderate, which may just not care much about the truth or be happy to adopt whatever position (or not, but it's a counter-example where answering "yes" may not prove that someone cares about the truth).

After that, you may say "they will not get out of their bubble because of the emotional cost", but you will still have nowhere to conclude if they value the truth less or more than you. Maybe they value the truth more than you, and it is why you failed to reach the same belief alignment than them: they choose these beliefs because they were looking for the truth and they are convinced that these beliefs are better aligned with the truth, while, on your side, you did not care enough about the truth to find the same path. (it is not what I think, but it is a counter-example where someone will say "no" to this question and yet be more interested of the truth than someone who will say "yes")

The hypothetical question should rather be "if you lived in a parallel universe where the opposite of your current beliefs were true, would you grow up to end up believing in the opposite of your current beliefs".