shminux comments on Learning critical thinking: a personal example - Less Wrong
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Comments (28)
This is exactly what she's explicitly told me I need to be doing!
I hadn't really thought of it as an example of "guessing the teacher's password", but I do know that I feel very uncomfortable applying my own judgement to real-life situations. Even though, if I saw that situation in the form of a written exam question, I wouldn't think it was very complicated or difficult. It's like part of me assumes that real life always has 10 million hidden variables that mean the obvious answer is never right...
This seems like a symptom of discrepancy between your belief (I know the right thing to do in this situation) and your alief (I am not qualified/experienced enough to know the right thing to do in this situation). Sort of like walking on a narrow ledge 3 feet off the ground vs walking on a narrow ledge 300 feet off the ground. I wonder if there are exercises to work explicitly on aligning one's alief with one's belief. Maybe jimmy can chime in.
That is so much more helpful than "you need to work on your confidence"!
Er, walking on a narrow ledge 300 feet off the ground is still a bad idea because, y'know even with something simple like walking, sometimes you roll a natural 1 and trip.