When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?
I personally believe that there are two kinds of beliefs:<p>1. Factual: These are beliefs based on models, e.g., &quot;the Earth goes around the sun&quot;. You can test these models with predictions and if the predictions are wrong, you need to update your model.<p>2. Value preferences: E.g., &quot;chocolate ice cream is the best dessert&quot;. These are non-testable beliefs because they do not have an objectively correct value. You can&#x27;t say that a preference is &quot;wrong&quot; or &quot;right&quot;.<p>The problem is that all important arguments are arguments about value preferences, but we treat them as factual arguments.<p>Take something like what to do about global warming. This seems like a factual argument because lots of people don&#x27;t even agree that the world is getting warmer.<p>But the real problem is a value preference: People who don&#x27;t believe in climate change simply don&#x27;t think the effort required to solve the problem is worth the benefit, and they&#x27;re using motivated reasoning to deny the warming.<p>This is obvious when you see them move the goalposts:<p>1. The climate is not changing.<p>2. The climate is changing, but not because of humans.<p>3. Humans are changing the climate, but it&#x27;s too late to do anything about it.<p>The real issue is that we disagree on how much sacrifice we should make to help people of the future--people who, on current trends, will be richer than we are, just as we are richer than the world of the 1950s.<p>But there is no correct answer to &quot;how much should we sacrifice to solve global warming.&quot; It&#x27;s a value preference.<p>And this is true for every issue. Any issue can be reduced to a disagreement on value preferences.<p>[Thank you for putting up with my ranting--I just had to get it out.]