pjeby comments on Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great - Less Wrong

140 Post author: Yvain 09 April 2009 02:44AM

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

Comments (269)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: pjeby 09 April 2009 08:16:26PM 1 point [-]

By and large the 'subconscious' is outside of our ability to control.

Speak for yourself. ;-)

The task isn't to bring the subconscious to heel, but to establish filters through which to screen the output of our minds, discarding that which is incompatible with rational thinking.

That's wasteful and inefficient.

Bear in mind that there are two kinds of bias in the brain: hardware and software. The hardware biases cause software biases to get added, but those biases can also be removed, thereby eliminating the need to work around them.

Conversely, for "hard" biases that can't be removed, much of the implementation of workarounds can be created by installing compensating biases.

And it isn't even that complicated -- given appropriate (i.e. fast and unequivocal) feedback, the brain can make the software revisions on its own, without any complex conscious processes involved.