The epistemic consequences of “skin in the game” are hard to consider fairly and effectively, for sure. AFAICT typically when someone has a personal stake in a discussion outcome, the life situation that gives them that stake imparts *both* insight and bias. And the two are very difficult to disentangle. And our soldier mindset leads us to see only the insight when we agree with the person, and only the bias when we disagree.
Thus we get “standpoint epistemology” that can correctly advise us to listen for the insight of the most-affected people, but can also discount their bias and irrationally make their group membership a trump card. And on the other hand we get arguments of the form “you’re just saying that because you’re an X”. And more complicated soldier rationalizations like “you say my belief Y is biased against members of group X, but that can’t be right, because here’s this member of group X I found on YouTube/Substack/etc espousing Y”— and rationalizing counterarguments like “well that person isn’t *really* a valid member of group X” or “they must be self-hating/internalizing anti-X bias”— and on and on.
I don’t have a good solution, but it’s a problem I wish Galef had spent more time considering.
The epistemic consequences of “skin in the game” are hard to consider fairly and effectively, for sure. AFAICT typically when someone has a personal stake in a discussion outcome, the life situation that gives them that stake imparts *both* insight and bias. And the two are very difficult to disentangle. And our soldier mindset leads us to see only the insight when we agree with the person, and only the bias when we disagree.
Thus we get “standpoint epistemology” that can correctly advise us to listen for the insight of the most-affected people, but can also discount their bias and irrationally make their group membership a trump card. And on the other hand we get arguments of the form “you’re just saying that because you’re an X”. And more complicated soldier rationalizations like “you say my belief Y is biased against members of group X, but that can’t be right, because here’s this member of group X I found on YouTube/Substack/etc espousing Y”— and rationalizing counterarguments like “well that person isn’t *really* a valid member of group X” or “they must be self-hating/internalizing anti-X bias”— and on and on.
I don’t have a good solution, but it’s a problem I wish Galef had spent more time considering.
Absolutely love this -- LOTS to think about (and lots of things to look up!)
Sorry I’ve been so silent recently - life ya know.