Comments on: Too Skeptical = ?

By: seth

seth — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 04:37:00 +0000

That sounds about right. I would add “over-skeptical”.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:06:31 +0000

Let’s coin a word: “creditive”, meaning ‘tending to give credit’, ‘tending to believe’. While we’re at it, let’s start using “under-credulous”, “over-credulous”, and “appropriately credulous”, to help spread the idea that skepticism is not an unconditional virtue.

By: seth

seth — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:08:39 +0000

Thanks, beta, that’s a good quote. I suppose it supports my point that it comes from a mathematician rather than a scientist.

yes, “charitable” may be the closest word. It isn’t quite right though — charitable is not the opposite of skeptical or credulous.

By: Nansen

Nansen — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:57:04 +0000

George Polya discusses the “heuristic syllogism” and the nature of plausible reasoning in How to Solve It (1957), sections 6 and 7 of the article “Signs of Progress”, p. 186-190. These sections are online here:

http://reposeinthee.blogspot.com/2007/02/heuristic-syllogism-and-nature-of.html

In section 2 of the same article (“Signs of Progress”, page 181) he notes:

“If you take a heuristic conclusion as certain, you may be fooled and disappointed; but if you neglect heuristic conclusions altogether you will make no progress at all.”

By: katya

katya — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:43:56 +0000

I think the word you’re looking for (in terms of “just credulous enough”) is “charitable”: e.g. I’m willing to give the results of self-experimentation a charitable interpretation. Meehl’s statement (out of context) isn’t precisely skeptical = good, credulous = bad; self-experimentation isn’t “fooling other people” as long as you make it clear that your N = 1 and includes the experimenter. Self-experimentation is just a more rigorous way of talking about your intuitions, and since most experiments proceed from intuitions, it shouldn’t be abandoned.

Also, skeptics are roundly believed not to be very much fun at parties.