Not Blocking Error Correction
also Don't Block Error Correction
Refusing to use filters like status, popularity, topic, or apparent craziness to dismiss ideas without argument, since such filters can hide your biggest mistakes.
Not blocking error correction is the rational policy of never treating an idea badly — ignoring it, dismissing it, refusing to engage — merely because of where it came from or how it superficially seems. The temptation is to filter: this person has low status, that idea sounds crazy, this is off-topic, lots of smart people already reject it. CF argues such filters are exactly where catastrophe hides, because your biggest mistakes are the ones your existing impressions cannot detect — and unconventional or low-status sources are disproportionately where corrections to entrenched errors arrive.
The discipline follows directly from fallibilism. If you might be wrong, then dismissing an idea on a bad initial impression risks treating a good idea badly. So an idea that implies you are importantly mistaken should be refuted in writing, not waved away — and if no refutation exists, the idea stays live. This is the mechanism behind Paths Forward: a public written position plus written answers to known rivals means anyone who spots your error has a route to reach you.
The principle pairs with judging content over source and licenses unbounded criticism. Temple’s sharpest move is the inversion in irrationality as blocking error correction: irrationality just is whatever obstructs correction. It opposes justificationist habits that rank ideas by authority or accumulated support rather than by surviving criticism — the opposite of error correction staying open.