[edmundsauto]

The old story where 8 blind people, who have never heard of an elephant, are asked to touch it and describe what they feel. One describes the trunk, and thinks it's like a snake. Another touches the side, and thinks it's a hippo. And so forth.

Our own experiences are so limited, and our brains really like to generalize from very limited data. We are also blind to what we don't see.

Perspective is one way to deal with these limitations.

[cybernautique]

I disagree that this is a representative parable. Putting eight blind men in a room to touch an elephant is a very controlled, very well-defined, problem; the insinuation is that if the blind people could merely collect the correct data, they'd arrive at the correct solution. Very few things in life exhibit these niceties, and the parable absolutely fails to generalize.

What about for the actual day-to-day of our lives? If I do not already value perspective, then why should I?

[edmundsauto]

If you study decision making, it is prettt clear in the researchers that diverse viewpoints are connected with better decisions. There also an issue of fairness or representativeness: if you don’t have perspective in your inputs, you are going to leave a lot of people out.

The fact is that we are all wrong about almost everything. Perspective helps you be less wrong, in a way that is not possible to do on your own because we are blind to our biases.

Beyond that explanation, you’re probably going to have to form your own researched opinion - I’m not all that interested in trying to convince you. In fact, I actually don’t mind people being unconvinced of this issue! It’s to my advantage if other people don’t have as good of a decision making process.

[cybernautique]

I'm not asking you to convince me. I do study decision making. Your contention that it's to your advantage for others to not have as good of a decision making process seems like a pretty strikingly perspectiveless position; if you study game theory, it's pretty clear that being in a coalition with sub-optimal players reduces your ability to perform.

If you don't already value other people making good decisions, I can only say: perhaps you should.