Sniffnoy comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: pjeby 20 January 2010 06:34:15PM 138 points [-]

My best guess is that clickiness has something to do with failure to compartmentalize - missing, or failing to use, the mental gear that lets human beings believe two contradictory things at the same time. Clicky people would tend to be people who take all of their beliefs at face value.

One of the things that I've noticed about this is that most people do not expect to understand things. For most people, the universe is a mysterious place filled with random events beyond their ability to comprehend or control. Think "guessing the teacher's password", but not just in school or knowledge, but about everything.

Such people have no problem with the idea of magic, because everything is magic to them, even science.

An anecdote: once, when I still worked as software developer/department manager in a corporation, my boss was congratulating me on a million dollar project (revenue, not cost) that my team had just turned in precisely on time with no crises.

Well, not congratulating me, exactly. He was saying, "wow, that turned out really well", and I felt oddly uncomfortable. After getting off the phone, I realized a day or so later that he was talking about it like it was luck, like, "wow, what nice weather we had."

So I called him back and had a little chat about it. The idea that the project had succeeded because I designed it that way had not occurred to him, and the idea that I had done it by the way I negotiated the requirements in the first place -- as opposed to heroic efforts during the project -- was quite an eye opener for him.

Fortunately, he (and his boss) were "clicky" enough in other areas (i.e., they didn't believe computers were magic, for example) that I was able to make the math of what I was doing click for them at that "teachable moment".

Unfortunately, most people, in most areas of their lives treat everything as magic. They're not used to being able to understand or control anything but the simplest of things, so it doesn't occur to them to even try. Instead, they just go along with whatever everybody else is thinking or doing.

For such (most) people, reality is social, rather than something you understand/ control.

(Side note: I find myself often trying to find a way to express grasp/control as a pair, because really the two are the same. If you really grasp something, you should be able to control it, at least in principle.)

Comment author: Sniffnoy 21 January 2010 08:33:58AM 2 points [-]

(Side note: I find myself often trying to find a way to express grasp/control as a pair, because really the two are the same. If you really grasp something, you should be able to control it, at least in principle.)

Well, anything mathematical would be an exception to that, at the least.

Comment author: pjeby 22 January 2010 02:28:03AM 5 points [-]

Well, anything mathematical would be an exception to that, at the least.

If you really grasp something mathematical, you ought to be able to apply it -- at least in principle.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 22 January 2010 09:01:35AM 2 points [-]

OK but that's not really what "control" normally means, is it? "Manipulate" might be a better word here.

Comment author: RobinZ 22 January 2010 12:43:36PM 2 points [-]

"Manipulate" would also extend the thinking-as-holding metaphor of "grasp".

(I have to admit that I was confused by "control" as well.)