In my understanding, Epistemic Virtues are the virtues that lead someone to knowledge or truth. 

Some epistemic virtues are curiosity, open-mindedness, a sensitivity to reason and evidence, doubt, but also experience and good judgment.  

 

Most importantly, in my opinion, is the humble openness, or even an almost masochistic eagerness, to change your mind in the face of good reasons and evidence. This can be very hostile to certain other needs in life such as community or emotional well-being, but anyone who wants the truth must think this way. 

Most people are bigots. It's very, very hard to avoid bigotry, perhaps even impossible. 

Arguing based on the presumed motives of your interlocutor seems like an epistemic vice. If you want you and your interlocutor to reach the truth, you have to go down the complicated rabbit hole of ideas. Unfortunately, it's often only practical between people of similar background, and similar background often maintains the biases between interlocutors. There is a sweet spot of different opinions and similar knowledge for the most fruitful conversations to take place. Judging the truth-value of a person's ideas based on their motives is a fallacy. Ideas are completely separate from their motives. 

In a previous email, I listed what I believe to be the conditions the truth must meet for us to be at peace with it. I'm mostly agnostic about whether or not the truth meets these conditions, but I tentatively believe it does. The evidence in cultural evolution, as well as the truth contained in good fiction give me confidence that the absolute truth might be totally satisfactory despite the vicissitudes of life. My claims about the conditions that must be met to reconcile one with the truth are gotten through introspection with a moderate degree of observations of human behavior. I'm completely open to the idea that complete reconciliation with the truth is impossible, but I think a degree of wisdom can be achieved that reveals a satisfactory understanding of reality. 

 

There are all sorts of complications in the above. I assume that there is such thing as an absolute truth and I assume it must meet certain conditions for humans to be at peace with it. I also claim there is such a thing as a problem of reconciliation with the truth. It's also very hard to justify the idea that good fiction and religion contain wisdom about human nature and patterns of human experience in cultural evolution. I've reached a state where my ideas are composed of ideas that require very long arguments or books to justify.

It's often the case that intellectuals are regarded as arrogant. This is tragic considering that intellectual integrity requires a great deal of humility. A consequence is this:

Charles Bukowski — 'The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.' 

Critical thinking follows the Dunning-Kruger effect, so intelligent people are only confident after a long period of learning: