Vladimir_Nesov comments on What I've learned from Less Wrong - Less Wrong

79 Post author: Louie 20 November 2010 12:47PM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 20 November 2010 10:08:06PM *  12 points [-]

Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers. It's a form of hindsight bias: you think this thing is obvious, but your thoughts were actually quite inchoate before that. A meme - particularly a parasitic meme - can get itself a privileged position in your head by feeding your biases to make itself look good, e.g. your hindsight bias.

When you see a new idea and you feel your eyes light up, that’s the time to put it in a sandbox - yes, thinking a meme is brilliant is a bias to be cautious of. You need to know how to take the thing that gave you that "click!" feeling and evaluate it thoroughly and mercilessly.

(I'm working on a post or two on the subject area of dangerous memes and what to do about them.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 23 November 2010 10:07:37PM 2 points [-]

Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers. It's a form of hindsight bias: you think this thing is obvious, but your thoughts were actually quite inchoate before that.

Given a clear explanation, it's more probably correct than secretly wrong. We don't live in a world dominated by true-sounding lies. Incorrect things should be generally more surprising than correct things, even if there are exceptions.

(It's confirmation bias, not hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is overestimation of prior probability upon observing a positive instance of an event.)