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The Proper Use of Humility — LessWrong

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It is widely recognized that good science requires some kind of humility. What sort of humility is more controversial. Consider the creationist who says: “But who can really know whether evolution is correct? It is just a theory. You should be more humble and open-minded.” Is this humility? The creationist practices a very selective underconfidence, refusing to integrate massive weights of evidence in favor of a conclusion they find uncomfortable. I would say that whether you call this “humility” or not, it is the wrong step in the dance. What about the engineer who humbly designs fail-safe mechanisms into machinery, even though they’re damn sure the machinery won’t fail? This seems like a good kind of humility to me. Historically, it’s not unheard-of for an engineer to be damn sure a new machine won’t fail, and then it fails anyway. What about the student who humbly double-checks the answers on their math test? Again I’d categorize that as good humility. The student who double-checks

x The Proper Use of Humility — LessWrong Overly Convenient Excuses Humility Distinctions Rationality Frontpage 221 The Proper Use of Humility by Eliezer Yudkowsky 1st Dec 2006 6 min read 54 221 It is widely recognized that good science requires some kind of humility. What sort of humility is more controversial. Consider the creationist who says: “But who can really know whether evolution is correct? It is just a theory. You should be more humble and open-minded.” Is this humility? The creationist practices a very selective underconfidence, refusing to integrate massive weights of evidence in f

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