This is super rough and unrefined, but there’s something that I want to think and write about. It’s an epistemic failure mode that I think is quite important. It’s pretty related to Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence. It goes something like this.
You think 1. Alice thinks 2. In your head, you think to yourself:
Gosh, Alice is so dumb. I understand why she thinks 2. It’s because A, B, C, D and E. But she just doesn’t see F. If she did, she’d think 1 instead of 2.
Then you run into other people being like:
Gosh, Bob is so dumb. I understand why he thinks 1. It’s because A, B, C, D, E and F. But he just doesn’t see G. If he did, he’d think 2 instead of 1.
I wish I could easily think of good, concrete, real-world examples of this, but I’m failing to right now.
Anyway, I think this failure mode is both very common (amongst the general public, yes, but also amongst rationalists), very tempting, and very harmful.
A big reason why I think it’s harmful is because it functions as a sort of conversation halter. Just an intrapersonal one rather than interpersonal. Like, for traditional conversation halters, you’re talking to another person (interpersonal) and they say something that just kinda halts the discussion. But here, I’m trying to point to something that you do in your own inner monologue.
Instead, what I think you should do would be something like steelmanning:
Ok, suppose I’m right that Alice isn’t seeing F, and that if she did, she should think 1 instead of 2. Let’s push further. What other factors are at play here? Is there a G? An H? An I? What about a J?
I’d appreciate any conversation and help on this. In whatever form. Examples would be awesome.
This is super rough and unrefined, but there’s something that I want to think and write about. It’s an epistemic failure mode that I think is quite important. It’s pretty related to Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence. It goes something like this.
You think 1. Alice thinks 2. In your head, you think to yourself:
Then you run into other people being like:
I wish I could easily think of good, concrete, real-world examples of this, but I’m failing to right now.
Anyway, I think this failure mode is both very common (amongst the general public, yes, but also amongst rationalists), very tempting, and very harmful.
A big reason why I think it’s harmful is because it functions as a sort of conversation halter. Just an intrapersonal one rather than interpersonal. Like, for traditional conversation halters, you’re talking to another person (interpersonal) and they say something that just kinda halts the discussion. But here, I’m trying to point to something that you do in your own inner monologue.
Instead, what I think you should do would be something like steelmanning:
I’d appreciate any conversation and help on this. In whatever form. Examples would be awesome.