Open Thread for February 11 - 17

Scott Garrabrant

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Has anyone else had one of those odd moments when you've accidentally confirmed reductionism (of a sort) by unknowingly responding to a situation almost identically to the last time or times you encountered it? For my part, I once gave the same condolences to an acquaintance who was living with someone we both knew to be very unpleasant, and also just attempted to add the word for "tomato" in Lojban to my list of words after seeing the Pomodoro technique mentioned.

This doesn't seem related to reductionism to me, except in that most reductionists don't believe in Knightian free will.

3mwengler12y

A freaky thing I once saw... when my daughter was about 3 there were certain things she responded to verbally, I can't remember what the thing was in this example, but something like me asking here "who is your rabbit?" and her replying "Kisses" (which was the name of her rabbit). I had videoed some of this exchange and was playing it on a TV with her in the room. I was appalled to hear her responding "Kisses" upon hearing me on the TV saying "who is your favorite rabbit." Her response was extremely similar to her response on the video, tremendous overlap in timing tone and inflection. Maybe 20 to 50 ms off in timing (almost sounded like unison). I really had the sense that she was a machine and it did not feel good.

2NancyLebovitz12y

In my case, it seems more likely that the other person will remember that I'd said the same thing before.