the most effective people in the world have a very specific way of thinking. They use their brain’s pattern-matching abilities to process the world, rather than using explicit reasoning
I don’t remember that Gladwell gave any tips for actually developing one’s skills for this type of thinking, but he does have a number of interesting stories and analysis about this type of thinking. It also makes the observation that this type of non-explicit reasoning can lead us astray.
I suspect that pattern-matching is vastly more efficient than explicit reasoning as you suggest, but that it is subject to bias and can in some cases lead one astray. Therefore, I think that rationality is a combination of both types of thinking—to use your example, a mathematician uses his/her pattern matching thought processes to figure out how to approach proving a theorem, but then reasons explicitly when formalizing the proof (and explicit reasoning would be used in verifying the proof as well).
At least some of the biases discussed in the sequences and elsewhere can be attributed to non-explicit reasoning and the antidote to these biases is to reason explicitly.
Your observation that is the subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.
There’s certainly overlap, but I’m making a more precise claim: that one can develop powerful intuition not only in particular domains but that one can also develop powerful general predictive models to get very high epistemic rationality across the board.
I suspect that pattern-matching is vastly more efficient than explicit reasoning as you suggest, but that it is subject to bias and can in some cases lead one astray.
Yes, my realization is about relative effect sizes: I used to think that the right balance is 50% intuition and 50% explicit reasoning or something, whereas now I think that it’s more like 95% intuition and 5% explicit reasoning. (I’m speaking very vaguely here.)
At least some of the biases discussed in the sequences and elsewhere can be attributed to non-explicit reasoning and the antidote to these biases is to reason explicitly.
Ah, but explicit reasoning isn’t the only antidote: you can also use intuition to correct for emotional and cognitive biases :-). I know that it’s highly nonobvious how one would go about doing this.
Somewhat tangentially, you might be interested by my post Reason is not the only means of overcoming bias. (The post is 4.5 years old..I’ve been thinking about these things for a long time :P.)
but I’m making a more precise claim: that one can develop powerful intuition not only in particular domains but that one can also develop powerful general predictive models to get very high epistemic rationality across the board.
Why do you think so? Basically, what evidence do you have that you can build strong “intuitions” which will work across diverse domains? My off-the-top-of-my-head reaction is that in dissimilar domains your intuition will mislead you.
It’s really hard, that’s why almost nobody knows how to do it :P.
Roughly speaking, the solution for me was to develop deep intuition in a lot of different domains, observe the features common to the intuitions in different domains, and abstract the common features out.
Finding the common features was very difficult, as there are a huge number of confounding factors that mask over the underlying commonalities. But it makes sense in hindsight—we wouldn’t be able to develop deep intuitions in so many different domains if not for there being subtle underlying commonalities—there weren’t evolutionary selective pressures specifically for the ability to develop general relativity and quantum field theory—the fact that it’s possible for us means that the relevant pattern recognition abilities are closely related to the ones used in social contexts, etc.
It’s really hard, that’s why almost nobody knows how to do it :P.
The question is why do you think it is even possible?
the solution for me was to develop deep intuition in a lot of different domains, observe the features common to the intuitions in different domains, and abstract the common features out.
So, do you feel that your intuition will work successfully in the fields of, say, post-modernist literary critique, agriculture, and human biochemistry?
The question is why do you think it is even possible?
Because I’ve seen other people do it, I’ve observed a strong correlation between the ability to do it and overall functionality, and I’ve recently discovered how to do it myself and have seen huge gains to both my epistemic and instrumental rationality.
I know that I’m not providing enough information for you to find what I’m saying very compelling. Again, it took me 10,000+ hours before I myself started to get it. I might well have been skeptical before doing so.
So, do you feel that your intuition will work successfully in the fields of, say, post-modernist literary critique, agriculture, and human biochemistry?
I don’t know – it depends on the relative roles of skill and luck in these fields. If you’re talking about those major discoveries from the past that required integrating a diverse collection of sources of information, I believe that the people who made the discoveries were using this style of thinking. For example, I believe that this was probably true of Norman Borlaug.
Ah, but explicit reasoning isn’t the only antidote
Yes, I was just about to edit my post to say “an antidote” rather than “the antidote”. As a practical matter, no one is going to explicitly reason through every situation. A more practical antidote is to recognize biases and learn rules of thumb for avoiding them. A classic example is the conjunction fallacy. Explicitly calculating conditional probabilities will obviously correct this fallacy, but most of us are not going to do that most of the time. However, if one is aware of the fallacy, one can develop a rule of thumb that states that less specific hypotheticals are usually more probable than more specific hypotheticals; this rule is sufficient for avoiding the conjunction fallacy most of the time. However, even here, explicit reasoning played a role in avoiding the bias; explicit reasoning was used to learn about and understand the bias, and to develop the rule of thumb.
Is using this sort of rule of thumb what you mean by using intuition to correct for emotional and cognitive biases?
Your observation that
is the subject of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.
I don’t remember that Gladwell gave any tips for actually developing one’s skills for this type of thinking, but he does have a number of interesting stories and analysis about this type of thinking. It also makes the observation that this type of non-explicit reasoning can lead us astray.
I suspect that pattern-matching is vastly more efficient than explicit reasoning as you suggest, but that it is subject to bias and can in some cases lead one astray. Therefore, I think that rationality is a combination of both types of thinking—to use your example, a mathematician uses his/her pattern matching thought processes to figure out how to approach proving a theorem, but then reasons explicitly when formalizing the proof (and explicit reasoning would be used in verifying the proof as well).
At least some of the biases discussed in the sequences and elsewhere can be attributed to non-explicit reasoning and the antidote to these biases is to reason explicitly.
Thanks for your interest :-)
There’s certainly overlap, but I’m making a more precise claim: that one can develop powerful intuition not only in particular domains but that one can also develop powerful general predictive models to get very high epistemic rationality across the board.
Yes, my realization is about relative effect sizes: I used to think that the right balance is 50% intuition and 50% explicit reasoning or something, whereas now I think that it’s more like 95% intuition and 5% explicit reasoning. (I’m speaking very vaguely here.)
Ah, but explicit reasoning isn’t the only antidote: you can also use intuition to correct for emotional and cognitive biases :-). I know that it’s highly nonobvious how one would go about doing this.
Somewhat tangentially, you might be interested by my post Reason is not the only means of overcoming bias. (The post is 4.5 years old..I’ve been thinking about these things for a long time :P.)
Why do you think so? Basically, what evidence do you have that you can build strong “intuitions” which will work across diverse domains? My off-the-top-of-my-head reaction is that in dissimilar domains your intuition will mislead you.
It’s really hard, that’s why almost nobody knows how to do it :P.
Roughly speaking, the solution for me was to develop deep intuition in a lot of different domains, observe the features common to the intuitions in different domains, and abstract the common features out.
Finding the common features was very difficult, as there are a huge number of confounding factors that mask over the underlying commonalities. But it makes sense in hindsight—we wouldn’t be able to develop deep intuitions in so many different domains if not for there being subtle underlying commonalities—there weren’t evolutionary selective pressures specifically for the ability to develop general relativity and quantum field theory—the fact that it’s possible for us means that the relevant pattern recognition abilities are closely related to the ones used in social contexts, etc.
Have you explicitly factored these out? If so, what are some examples?
The question is why do you think it is even possible?
So, do you feel that your intuition will work successfully in the fields of, say, post-modernist literary critique, agriculture, and human biochemistry?
Because I’ve seen other people do it, I’ve observed a strong correlation between the ability to do it and overall functionality, and I’ve recently discovered how to do it myself and have seen huge gains to both my epistemic and instrumental rationality.
I know that I’m not providing enough information for you to find what I’m saying very compelling. Again, it took me 10,000+ hours before I myself started to get it. I might well have been skeptical before doing so.
I don’t know – it depends on the relative roles of skill and luck in these fields. If you’re talking about those major discoveries from the past that required integrating a diverse collection of sources of information, I believe that the people who made the discoveries were using this style of thinking. For example, I believe that this was probably true of Norman Borlaug.
Yes, I was just about to edit my post to say “an antidote” rather than “the antidote”. As a practical matter, no one is going to explicitly reason through every situation. A more practical antidote is to recognize biases and learn rules of thumb for avoiding them. A classic example is the conjunction fallacy. Explicitly calculating conditional probabilities will obviously correct this fallacy, but most of us are not going to do that most of the time. However, if one is aware of the fallacy, one can develop a rule of thumb that states that less specific hypotheticals are usually more probable than more specific hypotheticals; this rule is sufficient for avoiding the conjunction fallacy most of the time. However, even here, explicit reasoning played a role in avoiding the bias; explicit reasoning was used to learn about and understand the bias, and to develop the rule of thumb.
Is using this sort of rule of thumb what you mean by using intuition to correct for emotional and cognitive biases?