Vladimir_Nesov comments on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think - Less Wrong

15 Post author: WrongBot 13 July 2010 04:44AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 November 2010 10:42:55PM 0 points [-]

You still have all your cognitive biases - they're in the buggy, corrupt hardware. Knowing about them doesn't grant you immunity to them.

What are you arguing for using these arguments? Being protected from cults doesn't require lack of bias, and indeed lack of bias is an unattainable idealization.

If you argue that presence of biases knowably confers overconfidence in the belief "I can't be captured by a cult", then correcting for that knowable bias leaves you no longer knowably biased. Since this can be said about any belief, it's not clear why it should be said about this particular one, unless you believe that this belief is more systematically incorrect than others. But then you need to argue about what distinguishes this belief from others, not about presence of bias in general. That people are not perfectly rational is not a general argument against any belief.

what could a human or evolved meme do when the subject isn't aware the game is on?

Contrived scenarios can surprise any belief, however correct about expected scenarios.