= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ABranco comments on Open Thread, August 2010 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (676)
I've had some dozens of viewquakes, most minors, although it's hard to evaluate it in hindsight now that I take them for granted.
Some are somewhat commonplace here: Bayesianism, map–territory relations, evolution etc.
One that I always feel people should be shouting Eureka — and when they are not impressed I assume that this is old news to them (and is often not, as I don't see it reflected in their actions) — is the Curse of Knowledge: it's hard to be a tapper. I feel that being aware of it dramatically improved my perceptions in conversation. I also feel that if more people were aware of it, misunderstandings would be far less common.
Maybe worth a post someday.
The thesis cited.
Sounds like the illusion of transparency. We've got that post around. ;)
On the other hand, the tapper/listener game is a very evocative instance.
I can see how the Curse of Knowledge could be a powerful idea. I will dwell on it for a while -- especially the example given about JFK, as an example of a type of application that would be useful in my own life. (To remember to describe things using broad strokes that are universally clear, rather than technical and accurate,in contexts where persuasion and fueling interest is most important.)
For me, one of the main viewquakes of my life was a line I read from a little book of Kalil Gibran poems:
It seemed to be a hammer that could be applied to everything.. Whenever I was unhappy about something, I thought about the problem a while until I identified a misconception. I fixed the misconception ("I'm not the smartest person in graduate school"; "I'm not as kind as I thought I was"; "That person won't be there for me when I need them") by assimilating the truth the pain pointed me towards, and the pain would dissipate. (Why should I expect graduate school to be easy? I'll just work harder. Kindness is what you actually do, not how you expect you'll feel. That person is fun to hang out with, but I'll need to find some closer friends.) After each disappointment, I felt stronger and the problem just bounced off me, without my being in denial about anything.
The "technique" failed me when a good friend of mine died. There was a lot of pain, and I tried to identify the truth that was cutting though, but I couldn't find one. Where did my friend go? There is a part of my brain, I realized, that simply cannot except on an emotional level that people are material. I believe that they are (I don't believe in a soul or an afterlife) but I simply couldn't connect the essence of my friend with 'gone'. If there was a truth there, it couldn't find a place in my mind.
This seems like a tangent. .. but just to demonstrate it's not all-powerful.
Remarkable quote, thank you.
Reminded me of the Anorexic Hermit Crab Syndrome: