patrissimo comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 09 February 2011 05:26:30AM 4 points [-]

Turning the thermostat up extra-high does not make it get warm faster.

Ok. I confess that this one more than any of the others makes me seriously worry about how good my theory of mind is. How do they think their heating systems work?

Comment author: patrissimo 21 February 2011 07:31:29AM 14 points [-]

Couldn't it just be an erroneous application of (an intuited version of) Newton's law of cooling, which says that heat transfer is linearly proportional to heat difference? They assume that the thermostat temperature is setting the temperature of the heating element, and then apply their intuited Newton's Law.

Seems pretty rational to me.

Comment author: blashimov 21 May 2013 05:08:45PM 1 point [-]

For example, this absolutely works with say, an electric stove.