Dorikka comments on Rationality Quotes May 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 03 May 2013 08:02PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 May 2013 11:25:14PM 14 points [-]

This debate brings to mind one of the more interesting differences between the hard sciences and other fields. This occurs when you firmly believe A, someone makes a compelling argument, and within a few seconds you firmly believe not-A, to the point of arguing for not-A with even more vigor that you used for A just a few seconds ago.

-- Lou Scheffer

(Most recent example from my own life that springs to mind: "It seems incredibly improbable that any Turing machine of size 100 could encode a complete solution to the halting problem for all Turing machines of size up to almost 100... oh. Nevermind.")

Comment author: Dorikka 10 May 2013 12:46:24AM 2 points [-]

I've also found this to be medium evidence that I'm not as informed about the subject as I thought that I was, so I back down by confidence somewhat. If I recently made an error that would have resulted in something very bad happening, I should be very careful about thinking that my next design is safe.