I actually had difficulty following that part of the book. I think the question was something like, what use is self-awareness? And I think the answer the narrator came to, after being forced to understand, was gung vg’f abg rfcrpvnyyl hfrshy naq va snpg bar bs gur bgure punenpgref jnf abg frys njner.
The most obvious rationalist message I see is that some questions have answers which are simple, obvious, and wrong. For us humans, some kind of shock, confusion, or other well-timed interruption, can help us get past that first answer.
Peter Watts, Blindsight
I’m curious as to the context.
I actually had difficulty following that part of the book. I think the question was something like, what use is self-awareness? And I think the answer the narrator came to, after being forced to understand, was gung vg’f abg rfcrpvnyyl hfrshy naq va snpg bar bs gur bgure punenpgref jnf abg frys njner.
I’ve read Blindsight, and looked it up again for the context, but I still don’t see why this is a rationality quote.
The most obvious rationalist message I see is that some questions have answers which are simple, obvious, and wrong. For us humans, some kind of shock, confusion, or other well-timed interruption, can help us get past that first answer.
What khafra said, and also pattern-matching. You ask me a question, I answer the question I thought you asked, which is not necessarily the same.