rwallace comments on Teaching Introspection - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Swimmer963 01 August 2011 01:10AM

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Comment author: mtraven 01 August 2011 02:54:20AM 0 points [-]

I think you miss the point of the linked article, which is not that we are "not very good" at introspection, but that introspection is literally impossible. We don't have any better access to our own brain processes than we do to a random persons. We don't have little instruments hooked up to our internal mental mechanisms telling us what's going on. I fear that people who think they do are somewhat fooling themselves.

That doesn't mean we can't have models of ourselves, or think about how the brain works, or notice patterns of mental behavior and make up better explanations for them, and get better at that. But I think calling it introspection is misleading and begs the question, as it conjures up images of a magic eye that can be turned inward. We don't have those.

Comment author: rwallace 01 August 2011 09:28:35AM 3 points [-]

That's not entirely true. The various kinds of rationalization, for example, each have their own distinct feeling once I learned to recognize when I was doing them. I suspect the analogy to biofeedback training is a good one; I would guess the experience of e.g. learning how to control your blood pressure, is a similar sort of thing.