AshwinV comments on Semantic Stopsigns - Less Wrong

53 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 August 2007 07:29PM

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Comment author: AshwinV 18 February 2014 02:25:50PM 0 points [-]

Another thing that can act as a semantic stopsign is not just a word, but sometimes an image. What I mean is actually something quite similar to the emergence phenomenon.

For example, I am just learning the basics of Economics. I just came across the rules of Supply and Demand. Instead of analysing and observing how these play out in the real world, I am just content to form an image in my head of prices moving up and down (based on moving graphs and numbers), and deciding that I know all there is to know and not bother finding out more for myself.

I agree that this seems like a somewhat weird thought experiment, but it highlights a kind of failure to think and one that was very real to me in the past. I don't know how many other people go through the same thing, but if I had stopped to think what I could predict based on this, and how it wasn't really all that useful, I would've been (or at least feel that I would've been) a lot better off.