The things we believe cost us when they are wrong.  Sometimes those costs are less than the cost of changing our mind, sometimes not.

When you believe something that has potential high costs if your belief is wrong, make sure you've exposed yourself to the absolute best arguments against it.  

Defeating weak arguments against your own beliefs cause us to feel disproportionately stronger about the basis for what you believe.

Costs of changing your beliefs can be emotional, psychological, social or financial.  Costs make it less likely that we'll be vigilant in our search for truth, so make sure your exposure to the opposing argument is extensive exposure to the best arguments.

Be especially wary of beliefs that make you feel good.  Be especially wary of beliefs that make you feel good!  Be especially wary of beliefs that make you feel good!!

Be wary of things you believe because of your identity.  When you believe something because you're American, or because you're a Democrat, or because you're a Catholic, or because you're a man, you're more likely to make mistakes.

Ask yourself where you'll find the best arguments for opposing beliefs.  

Are you likely to find them from others with the same beliefs as you?

Are you likely to find them from some guy on the street who happens to hold the opposing belief?  

Are you likely to find them on cable news?

If you believe in a god, have you looked for the absolute best arguments against the existence of a god, or have you merely heard the arguments of fellow believers?  Maybe you should do some research and find the best possible arguments from those who don't believe.

The same holds for if you don't believe in god.  Read some theology, Do some research.  Don't stop at the first website you find on Google.

What if you're a libertarian or conservative or liberal?  Have you read what the opposition has to say other than the headlines on TV?  Have you read the science on why people have the political leanings they do?

Of course, we all believe things that are wrong.  How much effort we should expend trying to prove our belief wrong is proportional to how much having the wrong belief costs us.

Are some sources likely to deliver better arguments because of a track record of continual progress towards true models of reality?  If so, that lessens the effort we have to expend to correct wrong beliefs which means we can correct more of our wrong beliefs.

Be careful in deciding if some sources are more likely to deliver better arguments.  The same biases that cause us to have wrong beliefs will also cause us to give more weight to sources that confirm what we already believe.

* To steelman an argument is the opposite of to strawman an argument.

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I'm going to use the same pull quote Tyler Cowen did at Marginal Revolution as it's my favorite part of the article.

Novak is tall, solemn, polite and stiff in conversation, until the conversation turns to passenger pigeons, which it always does. One of the few times I saw him laugh was when I asked whether de-extinction might turn out to be impossible. He reminded me that it has already happened. More than 10 years ago, a team that included Alberto Fernández-Arias (now a Revive & Restore adviser) resurrected a bucardo, a subspecies of mountain goat also known as the Pyrenean ibex, that went extinct in 2000. The last surviving bucardo was a 13-year-old female named Celia. Before she died — her skull was crushed by a falling tree — Fernández-Arias extracted skin scrapings from one of her ears and froze them in liquid nitrogen. Using the same cloning technology that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, the team used Celia’s DNA to create embryos that were implanted in the wombs of 57 goats. One of the does successfully brought her egg to term on July 30, 2003. “To our knowledge,” wrote the scientists, “this is the first animal born from an extinct subspecies.” But it didn’t live long. After struggling to breathe for several minutes, the kid choked to death.

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The Mammoth Cometh
Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad.

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The space suits in use on the ISS are 35 years old.

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As Astronaut’s Helmet Filled With Water, He Told NASA 3 Times It Wasn’t From Drinking Bag
While NASA’s Mission Control “performed admirably” during a spacewalk water leak crisis in July, a report on the incident showed that controllers did not send astronaut Luca Parmitano back to the airlock until after he made three calls saying the water didn’t appear to be from a drinking bag. There are several reasons this happened,…

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Have some Hammerheads.

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Watch a snowflake grow.

Watch a snowflake grow.

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Watch the Kingfisher catch fish in slow motion.

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I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

 — Stephen Henry Roberts

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Right? 

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Good English teaching helps students in math
Great English teachers boost their students achievements in math, a very different subject, according to Stanford researchers. The researchers found that students of good language arts teachers had higher than expected math scores in subsequent years – a crossover effect.

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I weep for the world.

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Political Hatred in Argentina | Boston Review
At the top of the Brenner Pass on the borderline between Austria and Italy. The pass over the Alps was used by Nazi criminals such as Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele to escape to freedom. Filming the History Channel documentary “Fourth Reich.” Image courtesy of Uki Goñi.

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