Comment on Rationality Quotes September 2011

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:24:13 GMT

I think that's it, though there are at least two sorts of bad bias. The one you describe (nothing is important enough to notice or remember) is one, but there's also having a bad theory ("that annoying person is aiming it all at me", for example, which would lead to not noticing evidence of things going wrong which have nothing to do with malice).

This is reminding me of one of my favorite bits from Illuminatus!. There's a man with filing cabinets [1] full of information about the first Kennedy assassination. He's convinced that someday, he'll find the one fact which will make it all make sense. He doesn't realize that half of what's he's got is lies people made up to cover their asses.

In the novel, there were five conspiracies to kill JFK-- but that character isn't going to find out about them.

[1] The story was written before the internet.

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