Vladimir_Nesov comments on Why do people commit mathematical mistakes? What are the mechanisms behind them? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Raw_Power 07 September 2011 09:57PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 September 2011 12:20:00PM 2 points [-]

Making stupid arithmetic mistakes (which seems to come from going too quickly or being tired or distracted).

More like not bothering to actively think about how to optimize reliability of problem-solving, as opposed to thinking about how to solve the problem. "Try harder" or "be more careful" is advice of very limited power, while there are many creative ways of ensuring reliability of results (for any given problem) that are much more powerful.

Comment author: billswift 09 September 2011 12:21:44AM 0 points [-]

"Be more careful" is meta-advice, most people don't actually start trying to be careful until they recognize the need. Worse, and I don't understand why, but they often need to be reminded of it again in different situations, that is the need to be careful or to pay close attention seems to be context dependent.