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What a deeply confused criticism of rationalists, who are possibly the only meaningful social group in existence to celebrate changing their minds in response to new evidence.

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It's truly fascinating how this thread is full of demonstrations of the exact phenomenon being discussed!

Accused of being unable to reexamine your base principles, you respond:

> rationalists, who are possibly the only meaningful social group in existence to celebrate changing their minds in response to new evidence

Which is exactly the kind of base principle that could use some reexamination.

That's an empirical claim, not a "base principle" (whatever that is). And, uh, yeah, I agree that I am not re-examining my beliefs in response to a bunch of random unsupported accusations by people who are demonstrably not familiar with the thing they're attacking. You should update your beliefs in response to evidence, not in response to social attacks.

Again, this is exactly what we're talking about. You expressed a belief about "rationalists" and the history of people changing their minds about things, I suggested maybe you should reexamine that belief, and you said nope absolutely not. (In a condescending way.) This is the kind of engagement that is being critiqued in this thread.

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