JQuinton comments on Rationality Quotes November 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: malcolmocean 02 November 2013 08:35PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (388)
Tags: quotes

Comments (388)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: JQuinton 06 November 2013 06:35:10PM *  48 points [-]

A newspaper is better than a magazine. A seashore is a better place than the street. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are minimal. Birds seldom get too close. Rain, however, soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause problems. One needs lots of room. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will not get a second chance.

Is this paragraph comprehensible or meaningless? Feel your mind sort through potential explanations. Now watch what happens with the presentation of a single word: kite. As you reread the paragraph, feel the prior discomfort of something amiss shifting to a pleasing sense of rightness. Everything fits; every sentence works and has meaning. Reread the paragraph again; it is impossible to regain the sense of not understanding. In an instant, without due conscious deliberation, the paragraph has been irreversibly infuesed with a feeling of knowing.

Try to imagine other interpretations for the paragraph. Suppose I tell you that this is a collaborative poem written by a third-grade class, or a collage of strung-together fortune cookie quotes. Your mind balks. The presense of this feeling of knowing makes contemplating alternatives physically difficult.

Robert Burton, from On Being Certain: Believing You’re Right Even When You’re Not reminding me of Epiphany Addictions

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 November 2013 11:23:32PM 2 points [-]

It looked like nonsense to me. I stopped reading after a few sentences.

I'm not saying I'm immune to epiphany addiction, but I want the good stuff.

Comment author: pjeby 08 November 2013 12:00:12AM 11 points [-]

It looked like nonsense to me. I stopped reading after a few sentences.

I thought it was a puzzle or riddle, so I went back and looked at it again. My first guess was that it was something to do with running, then paper airplanes (which can be made from newspaper, but not a magazine). The rock as anchor made me realize there needed to be something attached, which made me realize it was a kite.

On the other hand, I don't have any trouble seeing alternative interpretations; perhaps it's because I already tried several and came to the conclusion myself. (Or maybe it's just that I'm more used to looking at things with multiple interpretations; it's a pretty core skill to changing one's self.)

Then again, I also don't see the paragraph as infused with irreversible knowing. I read the words literally every time, and have to add words like, "for flying a kite" to the sentences in order to make the link. I could just as easily add "in bed", though, at which point the paragraph actually becomes pretty hilarious -- much like a strung-together collage of fortune cookie quotes... in bed. ;-)

Comment author: [deleted] 12 November 2013 07:09:31PM 2 points [-]

I could just as easily add "in bed", though, at which point the paragraph actually becomes pretty hilarious

:-D

Comment author: JQuinton 08 November 2013 02:53:38PM 8 points [-]

The reason I posted the link to epiphany addiction was that this quote is an example of how confusion doesn't feel good (it prompted you to stop reading...), and that "sense of knowing" feels pleasant. The danger being that we have very little control over when we feel either, so the feeling of knowing is no substitute for rationality.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 08 November 2013 03:39:43PM 5 points [-]

Thanks. I had no idea that was what you had in mind.

"The feeling of knowing" is probably worth examining in detail.

Sorry no cite, but I heard about a prisoner whose jailers talked nonsense to him for a week. When they finally asked him a straight question it was such a relief he blurted out the answer.

Comment author: Romashka 30 December 2014 07:46:59PM *  -1 points [-]

I tried to come up with a different 'magic word' and thought about bombs. The DIY kind (like sulfuric acid + KMnO4 + ...), with newspaper being better because it is easier to tear... Anybody has other ideas?

ETA: another possibility is a herbarium press, though the running part becomes confusing. Still, it might be better to run if you follow an expert on a survey, and to walk afterwards, trying to recall what you learned on the trip.

What makes it hard to think of alternatives is an automatic arrangement expectation of parsimony and classical unities of time and space. Bias?

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit