That explanation via analogy is actually quite good and may very well be true.
If for some reason memes fail to properly fortify themselves when they claim territory inside your brain, they may be very easy to replace by competing memes, which could explain the “clickiness” of some people.
If true, one thing we may expect from (as of yet) non-rationalist people whose minds have that clicking quality, is that they may be unusually susceptible to New Age crap or generally tend to alter their views quickly. It was certainly the case with me when I was young and still lacked the mental tools of rationality.
Also, a slight rebelliousness or disregard towards what other people think may be part of it. If you ever introduced someone to a position that is very unconventional or even something entirely new that they have never heard of, more often than not they display some deep gut reaction feeling of dismissal and come up with ridiculous on-the-spot rationalizations why that new position can not possibly be the case… and I have the impression, that one of the most determining factors in what their gut-reaction will root for will be heavily connected to what other people in their tribe think.
I know Eliezer’s post is older, but I wonder if he probed the possibility that this clickiness may be predominantly a feature of people who simply have a general tendency or willingness for being a contrarian.
I think the suggestion that clickiness leads to acceptance of all ideas is flawed. On a practical level, people who click on a number of topics tend to hold few or no inaccurate beliefs (bolstering the unconquered-territory theory), but significantly, they also tend to only adopt good beliefs. Some ideas click, while others which seem to be just as subject to first-blush judgement (eg. “People should only live out their natural lifespan.”) are rejected near-instantly.
On the metaphorical level, I think the game example holds up as long as we assume that the territories we are discussing are desirable—that is to say, everything we are looking to conquer is good, and some parts are easier to get than others. Those regions which are bad (eg. full of monsters, corresponding to some irrational belief like homeopathy) are discarded even before the “preclaimed/free” evaluation is made. Given that, it seems to me that only some things click, but we’ve already divided the space of possible ideas to remove those which should be avoided altogether. Here however, the capture-model seems to fall down a bit—while sometimes we see that an idea is probably good but hard to hold, and then painstakingly reason our way there, there are some places which are incorrectly declared downright undesirable.
This suggestion is certainly an interesting one—that clicks happen in places where pre-existing ideas are weak, and “clicky” people have fewer strongly-entrenched concepts.
I think the explanation goes somewhat beyond this however, based on a personal observation that “clicks” seem to preferentially arise for ideas which are, to the best of our understanding, “right”. I know people with very low thresholds of belief, and clicky people, and it seems to me that the correlation between the two is negative if it exists. Credulous people can’t click onto an idea because it doesn’t seem more right to them than any other—every point is neutral, so new ideas are simply accepted.
Clicky people, by contrast, can click in the positive or negative. Just as intelligence explosion can make “intrinsic” sense to someone, counterarguments to it are likely to throw a mental flag even before they find a clear source for the objection. The click seems to go beyond acceptance to rapid understanding and evaluation.
That explanation via analogy is actually quite good and may very well be true.
If for some reason memes fail to properly fortify themselves when they claim territory inside your brain, they may be very easy to replace by competing memes, which could explain the “clickiness” of some people.
If true, one thing we may expect from (as of yet) non-rationalist people whose minds have that clicking quality, is that they may be unusually susceptible to New Age crap or generally tend to alter their views quickly. It was certainly the case with me when I was young and still lacked the mental tools of rationality.
Also, a slight rebelliousness or disregard towards what other people think may be part of it. If you ever introduced someone to a position that is very unconventional or even something entirely new that they have never heard of, more often than not they display some deep gut reaction feeling of dismissal and come up with ridiculous on-the-spot rationalizations why that new position can not possibly be the case… and I have the impression, that one of the most determining factors in what their gut-reaction will root for will be heavily connected to what other people in their tribe think.
I know Eliezer’s post is older, but I wonder if he probed the possibility that this clickiness may be predominantly a feature of people who simply have a general tendency or willingness for being a contrarian.
I think the suggestion that clickiness leads to acceptance of all ideas is flawed. On a practical level, people who click on a number of topics tend to hold few or no inaccurate beliefs (bolstering the unconquered-territory theory), but significantly, they also tend to only adopt good beliefs. Some ideas click, while others which seem to be just as subject to first-blush judgement (eg. “People should only live out their natural lifespan.”) are rejected near-instantly.
On the metaphorical level, I think the game example holds up as long as we assume that the territories we are discussing are desirable—that is to say, everything we are looking to conquer is good, and some parts are easier to get than others. Those regions which are bad (eg. full of monsters, corresponding to some irrational belief like homeopathy) are discarded even before the “preclaimed/free” evaluation is made. Given that, it seems to me that only some things click, but we’ve already divided the space of possible ideas to remove those which should be avoided altogether. Here however, the capture-model seems to fall down a bit—while sometimes we see that an idea is probably good but hard to hold, and then painstakingly reason our way there, there are some places which are incorrectly declared downright undesirable.
This suggestion is certainly an interesting one—that clicks happen in places where pre-existing ideas are weak, and “clicky” people have fewer strongly-entrenched concepts.
I think the explanation goes somewhat beyond this however, based on a personal observation that “clicks” seem to preferentially arise for ideas which are, to the best of our understanding, “right”. I know people with very low thresholds of belief, and clicky people, and it seems to me that the correlation between the two is negative if it exists. Credulous people can’t click onto an idea because it doesn’t seem more right to them than any other—every point is neutral, so new ideas are simply accepted.
Clicky people, by contrast, can click in the positive or negative. Just as intelligence explosion can make “intrinsic” sense to someone, counterarguments to it are likely to throw a mental flag even before they find a clear source for the objection. The click seems to go beyond acceptance to rapid understanding and evaluation.