Rational beliefs should be able to withstand scrutiny and opposing arguments. The inability to do so indicates that the belief is more about personal bias and emotional investment rather than objective analysis.
I believe the sun will rise tomorrow and if I said to you I had a sincere counterargument I’d be lying.
Pardon me for being utterly emotional about things I guess lol.
This is a good example showing OP was being too broad. I like the sentiment but think they should limit it to topics for which there is a sizable amount of genuine dissent (meaning we don’t have to invent an argument for an hypothetical unreasonable contrarian) and that aren’t easily demonstrably falsifiable (meaning we are covering opinions and theories, not matters of objective fact).
OP likely was meaning to apply this to controversial social policies or philosophical questions exploring what values people prioritize. Too often loud voices demonize “the other side” and dismiss them out of hand with strawmen.
I think OP is correct about whatever they are trying to express but unfortunately fell flat when putting it into words.
They could have just said “when in debate, steelmanning shows that you have put more than emotion into arriving at your position,” and we all would have agreed (and downvoted because it’s a popular opinion that makes sense lol)
I believe the sun will rise tomorrow
It is belief. It comes from experience and is therefore well-founded. Not depending on emotion. Not very open to arguments.
thank you 🙏 so true
Meta.
Nice.
I mean there is technically no sound way to prove causality (at least to my knowledge). It all goes back to “It’s been that way before” which is fair enough, but not rigorous.
you don’t need to prove causality to prove the sun will come up that’s a made up thing you said
I would challenge you to. Saying literally anything about the future requires an assumption that it is affected by the past (ie. that previous events cause future ones).
Nope I believe every sunrise may be an independent event, not necessarily causally related to previous sunrises.
I don’t need to invoke causality at all to believe the sun will rise.
And, to confront your earlier assertion, consistency of past observations can be rigorous. I have got this on lock. ☀️
Oh sure, you can believe things without a sound proof (especially since even those must rely on assumptions). I was mostly trying to demonstrate that there are sincere counter-arguments to even such an uncontroversial belief. Would love to see your rigorous proof if you think you have one though.
I already gave a rigorous and sound proof. Incredibly consistent past observation is rigorous, as I stated.
Stating something doesn’t make it true. Your proof presumably relies on the past causing the future.
Sunrise is a matter of perspective though and I don’t think it is a very well refined scientific explanation of a broad set evidence. Ask a polar bear or an emporer penguin at this time of year. Or consider the majority of places in our solar system.
that’s a hypothetical, not a counterargument.
yes if i lived in one of the polar circles the sun may not rise. but i don’t live there.
this whole thread just needs a dictionary and some tea. buncha ppl stressing out and arguing semantics about pretty well-defined terms.
Good point! At this time of the year one doesn’t need to go much further north from where I live for the sun to not set all all during the night. It’s called the midnight-sun.
An asteroid or a rogue planet that we somehow failed to detect could collide with the earth, stopping its rotation. Unlikely but not impossible.
that’s a hypothetical, not a counterargument
If an astronomer fails to come up with a single hypotethical scenario under which the sun, in fact does not rise tomorrow that would cast doubt about their actual level of understanding of astronomy, don’t you think?
i’m not an astronomer
This is nonsense. Arguments can exist even if you don’t know them or if you are unable to formulate them.
You are mixing up the pure existence of arguments with the personal ability to formulate such arguments.
How ‘emotion’ suddenly appears in your logic is beyond understanding. (Did you mean ‘intuition’ maybe? Please look up ‘intuition’ right now)
What OP says is not a hot take at all. In reality this is the default way the brain works and is biologically ingrained. I’m interested in cognitive science and do read and listen to podcasts about how we think. Here’s a good podcast episode exploring this idea:
You Are Not So Smart: 231 - On Being Certain - Robert Burton
In this episode, we sit down with neurologist Robert Burton, author of On Being Certain, a book that fundamentally changed the way I think about what a belief actually is. That’s because the book posits that conclusions are not conscious choices and certainty is not even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of “knowing,” as he puts it, are “sensations that feel like thoughts, but arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that function independently of reason.”
What’s the sincere counter-argument to this belief?
I posted it below already
Counter-argument for this would be that some deeply held ethical convictions might be difficult to argue against because they are based on fundamental values that many consider non-negotiable. These beliefs can be rational, yet difficult to counter without feeling a profound moral dissonance. “Don’t litter” would be a good example that’s really difficult to honestly argue against.
I believe gravity is real.
I just can’t come up with a sincere counter-argument.
I must be extremely biased and emotional.
This is not unpopular nor is this an opinion
This is literally the process of falsification in the scientific method.
Doesn’t seem to be very popular
Well this is the internet.
I guess I’m emotional about whether I should breathe oxygen or not.
That’s not exactly what I mean by belief and you know it.
Speaking of sincere counter-arguments…
I dunno, sounds like your belief doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, you’re getting pretty emotional about it
pack it up gang, this concludes the thread, we have arrived at truth
“Sincere” doesnt seem right or relevant. and “counter argument” is a bit too adversarial for me. You’ll get sucked into bad-faith tennis matches with flat earthers; which is just a waste of time.
So +1 unpopular - but it’s not far off.
If you’d said . . . “you should consider a range of different hypotheses, grant them equal respect and try to gather (and assess) evidence in a way that is not biased for or against any of the hypotheses. You should then see which of the hypotheses seems most likely given the evidence.”
Then i’d agree. And I’m not sure how unpopular it’d be. Science vs not-Science.
But if your hypotheses are: H0: A is true. H1: A is false. Then I don’t see how you can be “sincere” about both if you literally believe A in the first place.
You probably do have to be open to the possibility of being wrong - so maybe the tough part is actually being a little insincere about H0. It’s the evidence that should decide afterall.
The point I’m trying to get at is that if you can’t lay out the counter-argument your opponent would make against your view in a way that they would agree with (steelmanning) then you’re not debating in good-faith. It doesn’t automatically mean you’re wrong - it’s possible to be right by accident or intuition too, but it does cast doubt on the quality of one’s reasoning.
This thread is a good example of that. “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow” and “I need to breathe oxygen” are not good-faith counters to my argument. They’re the opposite of that; strawmans. I’m perfectly willing to admit there are edge cases where this way of reasoning falls short (rocks are hard, fire is hot, water is wet …) but I don’t feel like that in any way refutes what is the essence of what I’m saying.
Personally I don’t like the idea of debate as in words vs words, i prefer empiricism - set out theories and test against observable evidence. It’s hard to do that in this case though.
But I must admit I do find the “sun will rise” argument hilarious as I think it is a very limited description of the relative movements of the sun and earth - and a clear example of personal bias vs considering alternatives impacting peoples ability to make a better description of what is going on. So yeah maybe it really does make your point.
I think I’d settle for having actual, preferably objective reasons for one’s argument to indicate a reasoned position. If someone says I believe the moon landing didn’t happen because of the direction of the shadows, then that’s a reasoned position in this sense I’m talking about. After all, we can reason ourselves into incorrect beliefs.
The function of drumming up counter-arguments against your own argument is to identify weaknesses. Merely asking the question of, “How are shadows expected to work on the moon anyway?” suggests that one’s disbelief in the moon landing may be taking something for granted.
The difference between a reasonable person and someone driven by emotion is how they handle the discrepancy between their incorrectly reasoned argument and reasoned counter-arguments. Basically, the reasonable person must consider the counter argument, or at least not reject it out of hand.
On the other hand, as Hume said, reason is driven by emotions. So, the difference between the two may be an illusion to begin with.
I perhaps worded the title a little poorly. I’m effectively arguing for steelmanning: if you have a view on a certain topic and thus disagree with the view of someone else, then for the very least you should be capable of repeating back to them their own argument in a way that they agree with. This way you’re demonstrating that you actually understood what they said rather than disagreeing with the strawman version of their argument. If one is uncapable of presenting in an honest way any such opposing views to that of their own then there’s a good likelihood that they actually haven’t considered alternative views but instead landed on it for mostly emotional and intuitive reasons.
This mostly applies to topics of which there is a significant amount of disagreement about as well as fringe views going against the mainstream. Such consideration is less important when talking about facts that there’s a broad consensus on.
An example would be a person opposing a political movement but when asked to list some of the stated goals of said movement they then fail to do so. How can one oppose something they don’t even understand?
this is a much better wording of your position. i appreciate the clarification because the first time round just lead a lot of folks astray.
Emotion wins more arguments than logic.
Depends how one defines “winning”
It might win the audience to your side but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re right. Trump is a great example of this.
Wonderful observation.
It’s really our duty to be familiar with both sides and be ready to debate.
Of course, exception guy will be in the thread pointing out extreme edge cases in which we all agree that there is no alternative to the accepted opinion (“R*pe is bad, mmkay?”)… But this is besides the point.
In that case a counter argument is to appeal to the predator not knowing what he/she was doing which can happen. However it does not make the act of ruining a person’s life justifiable and the predator should be held accountable.
Everybody makes mistakes, but mistakes on this level are still bad.
Absolute horseshit.
What’s the counterargument to the belief that nothing exists outside of nature, that religion is a bunch of fairy tales?
If something did exist outside of nature, there’s no reason you should be able to know about it. Rules of logic wouldn’t necessarily apply and it is not something you could reliably apply statistics to.
This is handwaving bullshit. You’re basically saying “it’s magic shit inconsistent with everything we understand from empirical observation or theoretical frameworks”.
Yes, you’ve got it. And it is hand waving bullshit that I absolutely do not agree with, but if you can’t incorporate the fact that it’s a real thing that a reasonable person can believe then you are under-thinking it.
You are underthinking the definition of reasonable. How can it be reasonable and handwaving bullshit?
Because it’s not reasonable, the person is. A person can be reasonable without holding all reasonable beliefs. I’m willing to bet you have misconceptions about the concept of simultaneity that would not hold up if you learned the math behind special relativity, but it doesn’t make you unreasonable because you haven’t learned the niche weird stuff that happens near the speed of light. just assume that things happen in a certain order because that’s what it seems like and don’t worry that they can happen in a different order for someone in a different inertial frame of reference.
LOL, bro, is your actual counter to this putting on the fedora and flexing the neckbeard as hard as you can?
Religion is clearly rubbish! How can you argue against that!
If you were actually an atheist of any caliber, you would be familiar with apologetics enough to not be so dismissive in an inadvertently hilarious manner.
Christ. This really is Reddit.
I like this take.
Counter-argument for this would be that some deeply held ethical convictions might be difficult to argue against because they are based on fundamental values that many consider non-negotiable. These beliefs can be rational, yet difficult to counter without feeling a profound moral dissonance. “Don’t litter” would be a good example that’s really difficult to honestly argue against.
I’m not going to say you are wrong if you don’t litter, but I don’t think abstaining from littering is a moral duty. if it can break down in the next month, or is a natural mineral or metal, I don’t think “littering” is a big deal.
Well sure, no disagreement there. However when talking about plastics and other stuff that remains there in the nature for decades I’d find it really difficult to justify.
