Contra Piper on When Conversation Is Possible

Kelsey Piper replies to Richard Ngo on Twitter: since you have adopted the frame that liberals are self-deceived (and therefore not trustworthy about our beliefs) and you should make up beliefs you think we have, you have become markedly less likely to say things about politics that seem interesting or thought-provoking. I think the move of declaring someone else so deceived that their own understanding of their beliefs and motives should be rejected inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. now, maybe you didn't value your ability to communicate with liberals, and don't see this as a loss, or see it as more than offset by whatever you gain from this frame! but from my perspective, it's a really serious loss. I categorically reject the idea that rejecting someone's understanding of their beliefs and motives inherently makes conversation with them nearly impossible. It certainly doesn't make conversation with me impossible. When someone tells me that my understanding of my beliefs and motives should be rejected, I don't take my ball and go home in a huff, muttering that they've made further conversation nearly impossible. Rather, I respond the same way I do to any other disagreement: by supporting my view with reasoning and evidence. Why would the rules be different just because the topic of discussion happens to be my own beliefs and motives? Why It's Possible to Communicate with People Who Think You're Self-Deceived One reason why someone might think it's different is for fear that accusations of self-deception are unfalsifiable. I have privileged introspective access to my beliefs and motivations. On what possible basis could someone else tell me I'm wrong? And what evidence could I possibly offer to defend the accuracy of my self-perception? If the accusation or its denial can be made just as well independently of any third-party-accessible evidence, then that inherently does make conversation nearly impossible. What would there be to talk about? However, I reject the premise that the accusation or its denial can be made just as well independently of any third-party-accessible evidence. I may have privileged introspective access to my beliefs and motivations, but beliefs and motivations aren't epiphenomenal, either. We form beliefs about other entities' beliefs and motivations because such beliefs let us predict their behavior. An animal that goes to the stream to drink is presumed to be motivated by thirst; the same animal going to the stream despite it having dried up in the summer heat is presumed to have (falsely) believed that the water would still be there. We don't need to know what it feels like to be the animal in order to speak sensibly of such mental states. In the same way, people don't need to know what it feels like to be me in order to speak sensibly about rejecting my own understanding of my beliefs and motives. They could claim that my stated beliefs and motives are inconsistent with my behavior (which they can see) while remaining agnostic about how it feels to be me (which they don't have access to). Such a claim probably wouldn't be based on nothing at all; indeed, the very existence of persistent disagreements (when you'd expect honest rational agents to simply update on each other's evidence and converge on the correct probability) suggests that hidden motives are common. If I buy cookies for the salon from a bakery owned by my girlfriend in Australia (at a substantial markup for international shipping), it kind of makes sense for other salon members to wonder if my choice might have been biased by favoritism towards my beloved rather than reflecting true optimization towards the goal of the salon having the best desserts. At the same time, my belief that I wasn't swayed by favoritism is something I can provide reasoning and evidence for: for example, I could try showing the other salon members the notes and spreadsheets I compiled while comparison shopping, which justify my belief that my girlfriend just happens to be the optimal dessert vendor for the salon according to the obvious objective criteria—price, quality, Anzac biscuit availability, and owner's prior familiarity with the salon's reading list. I might not convince them, but at least we have something to talk about: it's not a deadlock between an unfalsifiable accusation of self-deception and an unfalsifiable denial, because my catering decision (and therefore the beliefs and motives that led to it) was tangled up with empirical realities of the world. For example, if my comparison shopping was thorough and credibly documents the many ways in which my girlfriend's bakery is just the best, that makes my story about only wanting the best cookies for the salon more credible; if I didn't really shop around much, that makes my story less credible. The correctness of my understanding of my beliefs and motives is something I can defend to skeptics in front of third parties (successfully or otherwise); it's not s