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Mind Pro­jec­tion Fallacy

TagLast edit: 10 Apr 2023 13:34 UTC by qvalq

The Mind Projection Fallacy is the error of projecting the properties of your own mind onto the external world. For example, one might erroneously think that because they enjoy the taste of chocolate, the chocolate has the inherent property of tastiness, and therefore everyone else must like its taste too.

Overcoming the mind projection fallacy requires realizing that our minds are not transparent windows unto veridical reality; when you look at a rock, you experience not the rock itself, but your mind’s representation of the rock, reconstructed from photons bouncing off its surface. Sugar in and of itself is not inherently sweet; the sugar itself only has the chemical properties that it does, which your brain interprets as sweet.

History

Physicist and Bayesian philosopher E.T. Jaynes coined the term mind projection fallacy to refer to this kind of failure to distinguish between epistemological claims (statements about belief, about your map, about what we can say about reality) and ontological claims (statements about reality, about the territory, about how things are). In particular, the concept was applied in the critique of frequentist interpretation of the notion of probability as a property of physical systems rather than an epistemic device concerned with levels of certainty, Bayesian probability.

Notable Posts

See Also

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157 comments4 min readLW link

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2-Place and 1-Place Words

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Three Fal­la­cies of Teleology

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Chaotic Inversion

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Ar­tifi­cial Mys­te­ri­ous Intelligence

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32 comments6 min readLW link

Ex­am­ples of the Mind Pro­jec­tion Fal­lacy?

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19 points
35 comments1 min readLW link

Hope Function

gwern1 Jul 2012 15:40 UTC
38 points
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The Use­ful Idea of Truth

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180 points
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129 points
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A List of Nuances

abramdemski10 Nov 2014 5:02 UTC
64 points
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pjeby1 Nov 2019 18:34 UTC
124 points
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[Question] Jay­ne­sian in­ter­pre­ta­tion—How does “es­ti­mat­ing prob­a­bil­ities” make sense?

Haziq Muhammad21 Jul 2021 21:36 UTC
4 points
40 comments1 min readLW link

[Question] Halpern’s pa­per—A re­fu­ta­tion of Cox’s the­o­rem?

Haziq Muhammad11 Aug 2021 9:25 UTC
13 points
7 comments1 min readLW link

[Question] Jaynes-Cox Prob­a­bil­ity: Are plau­si­bil­ities ob­jec­tive?

Haziq Muhammad12 Aug 2021 14:23 UTC
9 points
17 comments1 min readLW link

[Question] Is LessWrong dead with­out Cox’s the­o­rem?

Haziq Muhammad4 Sep 2021 5:45 UTC
−2 points
89 comments1 min readLW link

Notes on Empathy

David Gross3 May 2022 4:06 UTC
25 points
2 comments55 min readLW link
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