Vladimir_M comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

126 Post author: Alicorn 08 February 2011 03:17AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 09 February 2011 09:08:19AM 9 points [-]

Do you actually think a typical person has a coherent theory of how a heating system with a thermostat works?

It's a very human and intuitive way of thinking. People bundle together various things that seem like they should somehow be related, and assume that if something has a good or bad influence on one of these things, it must also influence other related things in the same direction. When you think about it, it's not a bad heuristic for dealing with a world too complex to understand with full accuracy.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 August 2011 12:24:22AM 3 points [-]

I would imagine it's simply an application of the extremely general (and useful) rule of thumb "if doing something has an effect, doing it a lot will probably have a lot of that effect".