RichardKennaway comments on Skill: The Map is Not the Territory - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 October 2012 09:59AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 04 October 2012 10:21:06AM 2 points [-]

Under what circumstances, if any, is it harmful to consciously think of the distinction between the map and the territory

If you can ever gain by being ignorant, you can gain more by better knowledge still.

Cf. E.T. Jaynes: "It appears to be a quite general principle that, whenever there is a randomized way of doing something, then there is a nonrandomized way that delivers better performance but requires more thought", quoted here.