hamnox comments on What are your benchmarks of rationality? - Less Wrong

0 Post author: DataPacRat 29 January 2012 03:57AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (14)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: hamnox 29 January 2012 06:04:43AM 8 points [-]

Here's a big one for me: Whether or not someone shows a rudimentary understanding of how their own brains can mislead them.

It's easy enough to see it working in teenagers. They're the ones who realize that their emotions are going to be completely out of whack, their judgment may not in fact be 10x better than every adult around them, and proceed to compensate for it where they can.

It's not the same as knowing when to shout "Anchoring!" or "Sunk Cost Fallacy!". That's just knowing the password. It's a matter of being aware that your brain can think and feel things without consulting you, and not all of the things it thinks for you are good or right.

Comment author: J_Taylor 29 January 2012 07:53:54AM 2 points [-]

A fascinating thing with teenagers: in their youths, they are exposed to many success-stories. These success-stories will often involve bragging about the mistakes they made as teenagers. I wonder, how many teens update on this sort of evidence? I know I certainly did.