DuncanS comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 October 2012 06:16PM

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Comment author: DuncanS 02 October 2012 09:28:32PM *  2 points [-]

People usually are not mistaken about what they themselves believe - though there are certain exceptions to this rule - yet nonetheless, the map of the map is usually accurate, i.e., people are usually right about the question of what they believe:

I'm not at all sure about this part - although I don't think it matters much to your overall case. I think one of our senses is a very much simplified representation of our own internal thought state. It's only just about good enough for us to make a chain of thought - taking the substance of a finished thought and using it as input to the next thought. In animals, I suspect this sense isn't good enough to allow thought chains to be made - and so they can't make arguments. In humans it is good enough, but probably not by very much - it seems rather likely that the ability to make thought chains evolved quite recently.

I think we probably make mistakes about what we think we think all the time - but there is usually nobody who can correct us.