MrMind comments on The 5-Second Level - Less Wrong

111 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 May 2011 04:51AM

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Comment author: MrMind 13 May 2011 01:44:50PM *  4 points [-]

I wanted to do the 5-second decomposition on what I think is one of the most important quality of a rationalist: s/he is able to say "oops!", but I found that it's probably a rationalist primitive. Anyway, here's my attempt:

  • notice the feeling of being wrong, or of having something screwed up, etc
  • don't deny it, stay with the feeling, let it be present in your mind
  • notice that you're still alive, that just because you admit it, nothing changed in the world: you already screwed up, you already experienced the consequences of your failure
  • say oops!
  • get on with your life (correct the mistake / revise your belief / etc)
Comment author: MrMind 13 May 2011 01:53:34PM 7 points [-]

It also seems to me that a general structure for the application of rationality follows a path like this:

  • notice a trigger: usually automatically activated bias has an unpleasant feeling attached to it
  • insert a space of rest so that the bias doesn't get automatically triggered
  • execute instead the rational behaviour
Comment author: loqi 14 May 2011 03:58:23PM *  2 points [-]

I really like this breakdown. I do think the first item can be generalized:

usually automatically activated bias has a feeling attached to it

since positive-affect feelings like righteousness are also useful hooks.

Comment author: MrMind 14 May 2011 11:13:37PM 2 points [-]

You're right, they don't even need to be strong emotions: like in the case of positive-affect induced biases building incrementally over time, as in the affective death spirals.

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