Just as you can unjustly privilege a low-likelihood hypothesis just by thinking about it, you can in the exact same way unjustly unprivilege a high-likelihood hypothesis just by thinking about it. Example: I believe that when I press a key on a keyboard, the letter on the key is going to appear on the screen. But I do not consciously believe that; most of the time I don’t even think about it. And so, just by thinking about it, I am questioning it, separating it from all hypotheses which I believe and do not question.
Some breakthroughs were in the form of “Hey, maybe something which nobody ever thought of is true,” but some very important breakthroughs were in the form “Hey, maybe this thing which everybody just assumes to be true is false.”
I’m curious about the distinction you’re making between “believe” and “consciously believe”. Do you agree with the way I’m using these terms below? —
I can only be conscious of a small finite number of things at once (maybe only one, depending on how tight a loop we mean by “consciousness”). The set of things that I would say I believe, if asked about them, is rather larger than the number of things I can be conscious of at once. Therefore, at any moment, almost none of my beliefs are conscious beliefs. For instance, an hour ago, “the moon typically appears blue-white in the daytime sky” was an unconscious belief of mine, but right now it is a conscious belief because I’m thinking about it. It will soon become an unconscious belief again.
Your definition seems sensible to me. Humans are not bayesians, they are not built as probabilistic machines with all of their probability being put explicitly in the memory. So I usually think of Bayesian approximation, which is basically what you’ve said. It’s unconscious when you don’t try to model those beliefs as Bayesian and unconscious otherwise.
Just as you can unjustly privilege a low-likelihood hypothesis just by thinking about it, you can in the exact same way unjustly unprivilege a high-likelihood hypothesis just by thinking about it. Example: I believe that when I press a key on a keyboard, the letter on the key is going to appear on the screen. But I do not consciously believe that; most of the time I don’t even think about it. And so, just by thinking about it, I am questioning it, separating it from all hypotheses which I believe and do not question.
Some breakthroughs were in the form of “Hey, maybe something which nobody ever thought of is true,” but some very important breakthroughs were in the form “Hey, maybe this thing which everybody just assumes to be true is false.”
I’m curious about the distinction you’re making between “believe” and “consciously believe”. Do you agree with the way I’m using these terms below? —
I can only be conscious of a small finite number of things at once (maybe only one, depending on how tight a loop we mean by “consciousness”). The set of things that I would say I believe, if asked about them, is rather larger than the number of things I can be conscious of at once. Therefore, at any moment, almost none of my beliefs are conscious beliefs. For instance, an hour ago, “the moon typically appears blue-white in the daytime sky” was an unconscious belief of mine, but right now it is a conscious belief because I’m thinking about it. It will soon become an unconscious belief again.
Your definition seems sensible to me. Humans are not bayesians, they are not built as probabilistic machines with all of their probability being put explicitly in the memory. So I usually think of Bayesian approximation, which is basically what you’ve said. It’s unconscious when you don’t try to model those beliefs as Bayesian and unconscious otherwise.