TheOtherDave comments on The Least Convenient Possible World - Less Wrong

165 Post author: Yvain 14 March 2009 02:11AM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 10 February 2015 08:38:16PM 1 point [-]

I agree that insisting on assuming the LCPW is a lousy strategic approach to most real-world situations, which (as you say) don't normally occur in the LCPW. And I agree that assuming it as an analytical stance towards hypothetical situations increases the chance that I'll adopt it as a strategic approach to a real-world situation, and therefore has some non-zero cost.

That said, I would also say that a one-sided motivated "exploration" of a situation which happens to align with our pre-existing biases about that situation has some non-zero cost, for basically the same reasons.

The OP starts out by objecting to that sort of motivated cognition, and proposes the LCPW strategy as a way of countering it. You object to the LCPW strategy, but seem to disregard the initial problem of motivated cognition completely.

I suspect that in most cases, the impulse to challenge the assumptions of hypothetical situations does more harm than good, since motivated cognition is pretty pervasive among humans.

But, sure, in the rare case of a thinker who really does "explore assumptions about a difficult problem" rather than simply evade them, I agree that it's an exercise that does more harm than good.

If you are such a thinker and primarily engage with such thinkers, that's awesome; whatever you're doing, keep it up!