The willingness to entertain the idea that your intuitions about truth may be wrong is a prerequisite for learning Rationality, and Rationality further cultivates that skill.
This is true (broadly).
it seems to me that he was trying to bind the phrase “overcoming intuition” to the idea of overcoming the tight grip that intuitions hold over most people
This is true.
Since I am confused, I will generate some hypotheses about what’s going on
Solid attempt, but none of your hypotheses explaining the confusion are correct.
The problem is that Jacob picked a term which has very different connotations than his attempted binding.
As a toy example, if I picked the word “murder” to refer to “saving a life”, then people would rightly object to me going around saying “Murder is the most important thing that we should do. Murder is good!” because the connotation everyone else has is very different.
Similarly, Jacob picked ‘the idea that your intuitions about truth may be wrong’ and called it ‘overcoming intuitions’. If I were to take ‘the idea that your teacher’s beliefs about science may be wrong’ and call it ‘overcoming education’, or if I were to take ‘the idea that your friends’ beliefs about the world may be wrong’ and call it ‘overcoming friendship’, this would be a bit confusing—it’s important to build a more nuanced relationship with these things, learn how to trust them, how to get value out of them, and also how to deal with them when they’re mistaken in a way that doesn’t throw them out entirely—like the phrase ‘overcoming friendship’ would imply, which sounds to me like not having friendships because they might lead you to have false beliefs.
Indeed, I think that ‘overcoming intuitions’ does suggest a much more adversarial relationship with intuitions than seems healthy to me, and is indeed a common relationship people have (“Oh no, the teacher told me the right answer, but I don’t understand it and feel like the other answer is right. I wish I could overcome my intuitions.”)
The disagreement here was sort of at two levels—people were objecting to the connotations of ‘overcoming intuitions’, and weren’t sure whether Jacob agreed with them about the underlying matter but had picked unfortunate words, or disagreed with them about the underlying matter and had picked terms that he definitely intended. And so overall people wanted to say “This phrase is bad and I don’t like what it represents”.
Added: I actually have a sense this is a problem many people get from the phrase “Overcoming Bias”. They label their intuitions as “biased” and then start trying to “overcome their intuitions”, which is counterproductive. The correct way to overcome bias is an increased understanding of intuitions, not throwing them out.
Note that this is exacerbated by the fact that the original questionnaire Jacob used to gather this data further implied the adversarial relationship between cognition and intuition.
This is true (broadly).
This is true.
Solid attempt, but none of your hypotheses explaining the confusion are correct.
The problem is that Jacob picked a term which has very different connotations than his attempted binding.
As a toy example, if I picked the word “murder” to refer to “saving a life”, then people would rightly object to me going around saying “Murder is the most important thing that we should do. Murder is good!” because the connotation everyone else has is very different.
Similarly, Jacob picked ‘the idea that your intuitions about truth may be wrong’ and called it ‘overcoming intuitions’. If I were to take ‘the idea that your teacher’s beliefs about science may be wrong’ and call it ‘overcoming education’, or if I were to take ‘the idea that your friends’ beliefs about the world may be wrong’ and call it ‘overcoming friendship’, this would be a bit confusing—it’s important to build a more nuanced relationship with these things, learn how to trust them, how to get value out of them, and also how to deal with them when they’re mistaken in a way that doesn’t throw them out entirely—like the phrase ‘overcoming friendship’ would imply, which sounds to me like not having friendships because they might lead you to have false beliefs.
Indeed, I think that ‘overcoming intuitions’ does suggest a much more adversarial relationship with intuitions than seems healthy to me, and is indeed a common relationship people have (“Oh no, the teacher told me the right answer, but I don’t understand it and feel like the other answer is right. I wish I could overcome my intuitions.”)
The disagreement here was sort of at two levels—people were objecting to the connotations of ‘overcoming intuitions’, and weren’t sure whether Jacob agreed with them about the underlying matter but had picked unfortunate words, or disagreed with them about the underlying matter and had picked terms that he definitely intended. And so overall people wanted to say “This phrase is bad and I don’t like what it represents”.
Added: I actually have a sense this is a problem many people get from the phrase “Overcoming Bias”. They label their intuitions as “biased” and then start trying to “overcome their intuitions”, which is counterproductive. The correct way to overcome bias is an increased understanding of intuitions, not throwing them out.
Ahh, I see. Thanks for this analysis, now I see where the posts above mine were coming from.
Note that this is exacerbated by the fact that the original questionnaire Jacob used to gather this data further implied the adversarial relationship between cognition and intuition.
Happy to hear :)