Yvain 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: [deleted] 03 October 2012 11:17:49PM 23 points [-]

I liked your comment and have a half-formed metaphor for you to either pick apart or develop:

LW/ rationalist types tend towards hard sciences. This requires more System 2 reasoning. Their fields are like computer programs. Every step makes sense, and is understood.

Humanities tends toward more System 1 pattern recognition. This is more akin to a neural network. Even if you are getting the "right" answer, it is coming out of a black box.

Because the rationalist types can't see the algorithm, they assume it can't be "right".

Thoughts?

Comment author: Yvain 04 October 2012 12:02:00AM 7 points [-]

I like your idea and upvoted the comment, but I don't know enough about neural networks to have a meaningful opinion on it.