gregconen comments on That Magical Click - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: brian_jaress 21 January 2010 11:06:48AM 36 points [-]

There's this magical click that some people get and some people don't, and I don't understand what's in the click. There's the consequentialist/utilitarian click, and the intelligence explosion click, and the life-is-good/death-is-bad click, and the cryonics click.

I think it's a mistake to put all the opinions you agree with in a special category. Why do some people come quickly to beliefs you agree with? There is no reason, except that sometimes people come quickly to beliefs, and some beliefs happen to match yours.

People who share one belief with you are more likely to share others, so you're anecdotally finding people who agree with you about non-cryonics things at a cryonics conference. Young people might be more likely to change their mind quickly because they're more likely to hear something for the first time.

Comment author: gregconen 22 January 2010 01:11:14AM 25 points [-]

More strongly, is there any reason to believe that people are more likely to "click" to rational beliefs than irrational ones?

As an example, papal infallibility once clicked for me (during childhood religious education), which I think most people here would agree is wrong, even conditioned on the existence of God.