“The lateral geniculate nucleus preprocesses visual information on the way from the retina to the visual cortex” would be a cheap example. The representativeness heuristic and conjunction fallacy would be a less cheap one.
The cheap example works, but, as you said, it’s cheap. The logical fallacies tell me very little in terms of actually modeling the mind, because they generalize too far. A useful model of the human mind that actually addresses akrasia would have to fall in between those two extremes.
I’ve followed pjeby’s work for almost 3 years now, and I’ve been a client of his for 2. From what I’ve seen, it’s a collection of techniques, some new and some modified from pre-existing work, founded on a system of theories about how beliefs are stored and cached in the brain, how emotional responses are coded, and how this data can be manipulated. The use of these techniques is systematized—i.e. in situation X, do Y—but the process of determining the current situation is, as in modern medicine, a mixture of strict procedure and intuition. I mention all this because a) while specific advice does not generalize, the system and process do, and b) this systematization is not clear from his blog, which is targeted towards the self-help audience, rather than aspiring rationalists.
″...from other sciences I have learned what true general models of the human mind look like...”
I would love to see some examples of this.
“The lateral geniculate nucleus preprocesses visual information on the way from the retina to the visual cortex” would be a cheap example. The representativeness heuristic and conjunction fallacy would be a less cheap one.
The cheap example works, but, as you said, it’s cheap. The logical fallacies tell me very little in terms of actually modeling the mind, because they generalize too far. A useful model of the human mind that actually addresses akrasia would have to fall in between those two extremes.
I’ve followed pjeby’s work for almost 3 years now, and I’ve been a client of his for 2. From what I’ve seen, it’s a collection of techniques, some new and some modified from pre-existing work, founded on a system of theories about how beliefs are stored and cached in the brain, how emotional responses are coded, and how this data can be manipulated. The use of these techniques is systematized—i.e. in situation X, do Y—but the process of determining the current situation is, as in modern medicine, a mixture of strict procedure and intuition. I mention all this because a) while specific advice does not generalize, the system and process do, and b) this systematization is not clear from his blog, which is targeted towards the self-help audience, rather than aspiring rationalists.