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Grognor comments on Verbal Overshadowing and The Art of Rationality - Less Wrong
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Comments (24)
Both of the studies linked to at the top of this post, on which the entire post is based, have been discredited. Even if they were true, I think it was a stretch to go from those to postulating a generalized verbal overshadowing bias.
With the benefit of hindsight I can say that this post was probably a mistake, which leaves me a bit dumbfounded at its karma score of 61 and endorsement by Newsome. When I scrolled down to the bottom I saw that I had already downvoted it, which made me even more confused.
Where? Was this after the time that the post was written?
A smart psychologist notices something about how his mind works. He suspects that it is a fairly universal thing. Unfortunately in modern times that is not nearly enough to get attention. So he does some preliminary research, bla bla, statistical analysis, bla. Then he's like, ha, I was right, and everyone else is like, ha, that's a cool idea.
I don't care about the studies. Empiricism in psychology doesn't actually work. Cf. parapsychology. Studies are social excuses to popularize ideas. Verbal overshadowing is obviously a thing. It's a concept/hypothesis people should know about. Therefore I tacitly endorse posts popularizing it, even though this institution of using shoddy social science studies as excuses is an evil one.
Introspection doesn't work too well either. Where does that leave us?
(One thing we can do is start with observations like "introspection doesn't work too well" and reason backwards from that to the sorts of mental structures that would give rise to such a failure. That's what e.g. Robin Hanson does.)