Rlive comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

58 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 January 2010 04:35PM

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Comment author: Rlive 20 January 2010 10:43:29PM *  9 points [-]

Most people who try to make all their beliefs fit with all their other beliefs, end up forcing some of the puzzle pieces into wrong-shaped holes. Their favorite part of their mental map of the world is locally consistent, but the farther-out parts are now WAY off, thus the crank-ism.

This is not true of all non-compartmentalizers - just the ones you have noticed and remember. Rational non-compartmentalizers simply hold on to that puzzle piece that doesn't fit until they either

  • determine where it goes;

  • determine that it is not from the right puzzle; or

  • reshape it to correctly fit the puzzle.