Write Your Hypothetical Apostasy

The problem it targets

• Once you’ve promoted a view on a complex or fraught topic (politics, religion, any “cause” or “-ism”) for a while, defending it against criticism becomes easy and reinforces your confidence.
• The original view may have been your honest best understanding, but it’s never seriously reconsidered even as you gain evidence and experience. You tell yourself you’re open-minded while your brain has quietly “stopped looking and listening for alternatives.”

The technique

• Write a hypothetical apostasy: a piece arguing against your own cherished view. Reassure yourself up front that you never have to show it to anyone unless you choose to.
• The thought experiment: imagine the world’s destruction is at stake and the only way to save it is to write a one-pager convincing a jury that your old view is mistaken or at least seriously incomplete. The more inadequate the jury finds the view, the better the chances of saving the world.
• The catch: the jury is composed of earlier stages of yourself (e.g. you as you were a year ago), and they believe you’ve been bribed to write the apostasy — so appeals like “trust me, I’m older and know better” carry no weight.
• Your only hope is an apostasy strong enough to make that jury recognize how “flawed/partial/shallow/juvenile/crude/irresponsible/incomplete and generally inadequate” the old view is.

Note

• Bostrom invites readers who try it to comment on whether the exercise was fruitful — without needing to state which view they examined or how it changed. (A commenter reports using it to critique their choice of major and finding it effective at surfacing neglected gaps.)