Thanks for your replies,
and since most writings in psychology are worthless, it is easy to give up on the whole field
Fair point. But if it annoys us, think how the rational minds in the field must feel!
...it is a delightful feeling… …did not learn anything that could be put into neat sentences… …much more “predictable-in-retrospect”...
Are you sure the model that your mind was using to report its own thought process corresponded to what was really going on under the bonnet? I’ve barely scratched the surface yet in studying bias and rationality (the 2 books you recommended are queuing on my shelf) but a recurring theme seems to be that introspection about one’s own thought processes is often demonstrably unreliable, even among highly intelligent subjects working within their fields of expertise and reporting very high confidence in their introspections.
Eliezer,
Maybe I’m just biased towards cross-fertilization between disciplines. I was just wondering about other vital but relatively obscure knowledge being missed for similar reasons, and if there might be a way to attack the problem. Anyhow, please thank Emil for us, a lot of people are getting stronger thanks to her little gift! :-)
Richard,
By examining many such transitions, I discovered some generalizations about the unconscious function that takes thought N to thought N+1.
I’m very interested, please elaborate!
Eliezer,
You started noticing the value of beating specific biases at age 15, but apparently didn’t get the importance of heuristics and biases in general till 2003. Why did that reflective generalisation take so long, when in hindsight it’s so vital for your chosen path? That’s not meant as criticism—I’ve done this too. I want to know how to fix it.
Incentive to think about this: doing so might lead you to notice something vital for safe seed AI.