Vladimir_Nesov comments on The 9/11 Meta-Truther Conspiracy Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2009 06:59PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 December 2009 09:20:08PM *  3 points [-]

This is bad. You know you lack the expertise, and you have an intuitively reached conclusion. In which cases should you believe your own intuition, and to what degree? Only so far as you expect the intuition to compute answers corresponding to reality. Not being trained at understanding such structures makes your intuition even more unreliable than intuition of a trained person, and trained people could also do at least a back-of-the-envelope calculation to calibrate their intuition.

One should learn to doubt oneself more: our minds are nothing but faulty calculators, but are the only means for general intelligence we have, so we should study the user manual carefully, and implement workarounds for known bugs.

Comment author: roland 23 December 2009 09:32:16PM -2 points [-]