…and she didn’t. She wasn’t a vegetarian. Duhhh… I knew that. We’d made some ground beef together the day before.
So what was I thinking? Why did I say “I’ll go vegetarian” as an attempt to appeal to her values?
(I’ll invite you to take a moment to come up with your own model of why that happened. You don’t have to, but it can be helpful for evading hindsight bias of obviousness.)
Plausibly, something like pattern botching is “where straw man tactics come from” or at least is causally related?
System 1 is pretty good at leaping to conclusions based on sparse data (often to a conclusion that implies a known solution). That is sort of what system 1 is for. But if it does so improperly (and the error is detected) it is likely to be named as an error. I think Malcom is calling out the subset of such errors where not only is system 1 making a detectable error, but system 2 can trivially patch the problem.
A “straw man argument” is mostly referring to error in the course of debate where a weak argument is presumed by one’s interlocutor. Why do they happen?
Maybe sometimes you’re genuinely ignorant about your interlocutor’s position and are assuming it is a dumb position wrongly. People normally argument “X, Y, Z” (where Z is a faulty conclusion) but you know Q which suggests (P & ~Z). So someone might say “X”, and you say “but ~Z because Q!” and they say “of course Q, and also Y and P, where did Z come from, I haven’t even said Z”. And then you either admit to your mistaken assumption or get defensive and start accusing them of secretly believing Z.
The initial jump there might have have had bayesian justification because “X, Y, Z” could be a very common verbal trope. The general “guessing what people are about to say” process probably also tends to make most conversations more efficient. However it wouldn’t be pattern botching until you get defensive and insist on sticking to your system 1 prediction even after you have better knowledge.
“Sticking with system 1 when system 2 knows better” (ie pattern botching) might itself have a variety of situation dependent causes.
Maybe one of the causes is involve in the specific process of sticking with theories about one’s interlocutor that are false and easy to defeat? Like maybe it is a social instinct, or maybe works often enough in real discourse environments to gain benefits that it gets intermittent positive reinforcement?
If pattern botching happens at random (including sometimes in arguments about what the other person is trying to say) then it would be reasonably to treat pattern botching as a possible root cause.
If situation dependent factors cause pattern botching on people’s arguments a lot more than in some other subject area, it would be reasonable to say that pattern botching is not the root cause. In that case, the key thing to focus on is probably the situation dependent causal factors. However, pattern botching might still be an intermediate cause, and the root causes might be very hard to fix while pattern botching can maybe be treated easily, and so attributing the cause to pattern botching might be functional from a pragmatic diagnostic perspective, depending on what your repair tools are like.
Personally, my suspicion is that dealing with people and ideas makes pattern botching much more likely.
Maybe you tried to strawman her argument?
Plausibly, something like pattern botching is “where straw man tactics come from” or at least is causally related?
System 1 is pretty good at leaping to conclusions based on sparse data (often to a conclusion that implies a known solution). That is sort of what system 1 is for. But if it does so improperly (and the error is detected) it is likely to be named as an error. I think Malcom is calling out the subset of such errors where not only is system 1 making a detectable error, but system 2 can trivially patch the problem.
A “straw man argument” is mostly referring to error in the course of debate where a weak argument is presumed by one’s interlocutor. Why do they happen?
Maybe sometimes you’re genuinely ignorant about your interlocutor’s position and are assuming it is a dumb position wrongly. People normally argument “X, Y, Z” (where Z is a faulty conclusion) but you know Q which suggests (P & ~Z). So someone might say “X”, and you say “but ~Z because Q!” and they say “of course Q, and also Y and P, where did Z come from, I haven’t even said Z”. And then you either admit to your mistaken assumption or get defensive and start accusing them of secretly believing Z.
The initial jump there might have have had bayesian justification because “X, Y, Z” could be a very common verbal trope. The general “guessing what people are about to say” process probably also tends to make most conversations more efficient. However it wouldn’t be pattern botching until you get defensive and insist on sticking to your system 1 prediction even after you have better knowledge.
“Sticking with system 1 when system 2 knows better” (ie pattern botching) might itself have a variety of situation dependent causes.
Maybe one of the causes is involve in the specific process of sticking with theories about one’s interlocutor that are false and easy to defeat? Like maybe it is a social instinct, or maybe works often enough in real discourse environments to gain benefits that it gets intermittent positive reinforcement?
If pattern botching happens at random (including sometimes in arguments about what the other person is trying to say) then it would be reasonably to treat pattern botching as a possible root cause.
If situation dependent factors cause pattern botching on people’s arguments a lot more than in some other subject area, it would be reasonable to say that pattern botching is not the root cause. In that case, the key thing to focus on is probably the situation dependent causal factors. However, pattern botching might still be an intermediate cause, and the root causes might be very hard to fix while pattern botching can maybe be treated easily, and so attributing the cause to pattern botching might be functional from a pragmatic diagnostic perspective, depending on what your repair tools are like.
Personally, my suspicion is that dealing with people and ideas makes pattern botching much more likely.
I don’t agree, but I’m gonna give you +1 for actually doing the thing :)