“Leveraged on being right” by Ben Pace

A friend once shared an essay with me for feedback. It struck me as mistaken and terribly naive, and I said so, which they did not take well.

(They didn't say it, but a standard LessWrongian response here would have been "instead of insulting me, why don't you provide an actual counterargument?"—and that's often a very good move for helping conversations keep on-track.)

Why was that hard for them to be on the receiving end of? To understand, consider the difference between the following two conversations.

If I say "Many of the rooms of your house are painted red" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any rooms in my house that are painted red" then probably I'm the one who is mistaken. I probably have only visited once or twice and you actually live there.

If I say "You're naive in your thinking" and you respond "Hm, I can't think of any times that I was naive in my thinking", well, I'm accusing you of not noticing important things, so your claim to not have noticed such cases is something I'd expect to see in world where I was right as well as worlds where I was [...]

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First published:
June 18th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/doSFEqijbNovpNiPH/leveraged-on-being-right-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.