I believe it's doublethink

I have this belief but have reasons to think you wont share it. e.g. "I believe she is attractive".

In that case, you would mean that you find her attractive. That is not a belief. I would then conclude that you believe that you find her attractive, and, unless there is something very wrong with you, I would conclude that you find her attractive.

If you believe that her attractiveness is a property of her, rather than a property of you, then you have a different problem.

I'm not convinced that this is either workable or desirable. Not workable because it would soon become unwieldy trying to remember the network of sources from which our beliefs originate. Not desirable because it would lead to us judging the reliability of a belief by looking at the reliability of the sources, rather than by looking for some independent confirmation or refutation. Hence we would be more likely to accept something that 'everybody knows' because more sources seem to lead to higher probability.

Also, what do we do when we find that there isn't a bridge at 234567. Do we go back to each of our sources and try to persuade them that they are wrong (and that they should similarly notify their sources and anyone else that they have passed the information on to). Isn't it better to make a general announcement: Contrary to what is believed there is no bridge at 234567 (and to add the evidence to support this assertion)

The curious case is when someone says "I believe X". This can be meant a few ways:

The Dutch language has different verbs for "I think X, and X is an objective belief" (case "I believe that my friend Bob's eyes are hazel") and for "I think X, and X is a subjective belief" (case "I believe she is attractive").

This is good, but I have one qualification for the belief in belief case (number 3).

Something that doesn't come up much in map/territory discussions is the fact that the territory has no concept of a map. "Maps" only exist on other maps; the territory just contains gooey neuron stuff.

So if John says "I believe X", we may be tempted to ask whether John really believes X, or whether he just believes that he believes X. But this is just asking whether an object is a blegg or a rube.

What we're actually observing is:

• John expresses belief X
• John says and does some things that appear consistent with a belief in X, and others that aren't
• John is therefore exhibiting compartmentalization
• To a greater or lesser extent, this may fit the "belief in belief" pattern.

I have at least a casual tag for a lot of what I know, even if it's no better than "I read it somewhere on line"-- at that point, at least I know I haven't checked it farther.

There's another advantage to tagging with "X believes", though more exactly, it should be "I remember X said they believe"-- it can slow down the jump from "X believes thing not in my map" to "X is a fool". This is implied in your point 3 at the end, but I thought it should be made explicit.

I can't imagine having such database in a human mind. For every fact you would have to remember who told you about it (sometimes multiple people) and maybe also when they told it etc., so for each fact you would need something like a Wikipedia "talk page".

This post reminds me of evidential markers in linguistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidentiality). Evidential markers are morphemes (e.g. prefixes or suffixes) which, when attached to the verb, describe how the speaker came to belief the fact that he is asserting. These can include things like direct knowledge ("I saw it with my own eyes"), hearsay ("Somebody told me so but I didn't see for myself"), and inference ("I concluded it from my other beliefs"). While evidential markers are less specific than what's described in this post ("Somebody told me" rather than "John told me last Thursday at lunch"), I suspect that speakers of languages with evidential markers would be a lot more inclined to remember the more specific details.*

Does anyone here speak a language with evidential markers? If so, what do you think of the claim (asserted in at least four separate comments here) that these things would be far too difficult to remember and keep track of?

*I suspect this because I've read some articles about languages which use absolute direction (north, south, east, west) instead of subjective direction (left, right, in front of, behind); speakers of these languages develop very good internal compasses and always know which direction they're facing. (Here I'm assuming this is due to nurture rather than nature.) If language can cause people to acquire such a skill, it doesn't seem unreasonable that language could also cause people to acquire a talent for remembering sources of information.

I'm recently new to the field of computer programming, but there's a metaphor that I find to be rather apt. Instead of passing by value, saying "X is true"... you can pass by reference, saying "Location Y says that X is true". Of course, passing by const reference would be better, but our machinery is corrupted.

Don't forget that a lot of "I believe..." statements are really about associating with something rather than actual belief. Before you can sort an "I believe" statement into one of your three categories, you have to make sure that it actually means something and isn't just signalling.

A difficulty is that it can often be hard to identify why we believe something - either we've forgotten how we came to believe it, or we believe it because or the accumulation of lots of small pieces of information that are hard to summarize.

This should be on main.

First occurrence:

When John says "My map has a bridge at grid reference 234567", I should add a note to my map saying "John's map has a bridge at grid reference 234567"

Second occurrence:

I should add a note to my map saying "John has the following note on his map: 'I believe there is a bridge at grid reference 234567'".

Was this slight difference intentional (one has you add a note that there is a bridge on his map; the second has you add a note that he has a note that he believes there is a bridge)?

What happens too often is that we directly add "The sky is green" to our beliefs.

Maybe. I wonder if too often we get out our eraser and immediately start trying to erase on their map.

I'd be curious about practical steps concerning (specific clause emphasized):

By querying why they have that belief you should be able to work out if you should believe it, or even if they should.

I've encountered dragon in the garage scenarios with others, typically concerning religious belief. It seems clear to me that there's no actual rent being paid. They profess belief, but there's really nothing predictive about the beliefs, and any apparent failures already have cached explanations or even experts to defer to for explanation.

How do you (or any others who read this) proceed with things like this? Do you try to keep illustrating that the belief is not really a belief? Just make a note on your map concerning person X having a belief in belief, or just ignore it if there are no practical implications that concern you?

How far do you go to try to "save" others from belief in belief? I've been asked what the harm is in believing falsely if there's no practical harm to be experienced... I'm not sure I have the answer. It feels very wrong to me to think of holding a false belief, but if there's no negative result, should I care?

I always did that, as far as I can remember, to the extent to which I can do it. The issue is of course that the more tags you store together with the knowledge, the more information you need to remember. I don't think people confuse things so much by choice, as by necessity - the memory is not very perfect - and a trick that tells you - you must remember more details - doesn't help if you can't.

It's an easiest advice to give to improve rationality: think harder and remember more. And it just doesn't work except for people who don't try hard enough already.

For the most part, my response to recommendation 1 is: this won't be much use. It is hard enough remembering "the bottom line" without also remembering the source or evidence. Most fact-learning occasions call instead for a snap judgment on the quality of the source or evidence, followed by accepting or rejecting or setting some quasi-probabilistic attitude toward the information, and then spending no more mental energy on the evidence. In those cases, the evidence is usually soon forgotten. So, most fact-recalling occasions are not going to reveal my reason for the alleged fact.

Obviously there are exceptions. If the information is controversial and I intend to share it, then I'll try remembering the source. Or better, bookmarking a link or taking notes.