trey blog

First Post & Intellectual Dishonesty

Mikey’s been nagging me to start blogging, and I finally found something that’s been irking me enoug to write a post on it. So here goes…

I usually very much enjoy Nate Silver, but his recent post accusing Greg Mankiw of “intellectual dishonesty” annoyed me. I feel like I’ve been hearing that accusation a lot lately: “Well, if you believe that, you’re just being intellectually dishonest,” usually said in a dismissive, condescending tone. I would suggest almost never accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty while debating them…

1. It’s almost always beside the point. It muddles the initial argument by adding a second argument: “You’re argument A is wrong. AND on top of that, you are being like so intellectually dishonest right now.”

2. It’s usually false. We can be way wrong for millions of reasons. I don’t think we really even get the opportunity to be intellectually dishonest. If admitting we’re wrong is going to be painful, our subconscious biases will pervert our thinking before intellectual dishonesty has the chance to.

3. To be the most effective truth seekers, we should just assume other people’s arguments are genuine and to treat them with charity. If you develop a mental pattern of dismissing arguments as “intellectually dishonest,” you’re more likely to underestimate someone’s point and to miss an opportunity to update your own beliefs for the better.

So let’s just address people’s arguments and avoid trying to read people’s minds and speculate on their motivations.