The post focuses entirely on the scary side of this phenomena which is worrying to some but I’m sure it’s also an essential part of many processes (like speech recognition) and trying to eliminate it would leave you unable to carry out a conversation over a telephone.
I don’t think Eliezer was suggesting that contamination be “eliminated.” (That’s probably not even possible without physically modifying the brain—as Luke points out here, we are essentially built out of cognitive biases.) Instead, he’s arguing that we need to be aware of our own thought processes and notice when our brains come to a conclusion because of a priming effect; this allows us to correct for the contamination and make more accurate estimates.
The post focuses entirely on the scary side of this phenomena which is worrying to some but I’m sure it’s also an essential part of many processes (like speech recognition) and trying to eliminate it would leave you unable to carry out a conversation over a telephone.
I don’t think Eliezer was suggesting that contamination be “eliminated.” (That’s probably not even possible without physically modifying the brain—as Luke points out here, we are essentially built out of cognitive biases.) Instead, he’s arguing that we need to be aware of our own thought processes and notice when our brains come to a conclusion because of a priming effect; this allows us to correct for the contamination and make more accurate estimates.
ETA: Biases that cannot be totally eliminated are usually still worth reducing.