Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
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Interesting point. The sort of new ways of thinking I had imagined were more along the lines of "consider more possible scenarios" - for example, if you had never before considered the idea of a false flag operation (whether in war or in "civil" social interaction), reading a story involving a false flag operation might prompt you to reinterpret certain evidence in light of the fact that it is possible (a fact not derived directly from the story, but from your own thought process inspired by the story). While it is certainly possible to update in the wrong direction, the thought process I had in mind was thus:
I have possible explanations A, B, and C for this observed phenomenon Alpha.
I read a story in which event D occurs, possibly entangled with Alpha, a similar phenomenon to Alpha.
I consider the plausibility of an event of the type D occurring, taking in not only fictional evidence but also real-world experience and knowledge, and come to the conclusion that while D takes certain liberties with the laws of (psychology/physics/logic), the event D is entirely plausible, and may be entangled with a phenomenon such as Alpha*.
I now have possible explanations A, B, C, and D for the observed phenomenon Alpha.
It is important to note that fiction has no such use for a hypothetical perfect reasoner, who begins with priors assigned to each and every physically possible event. Further, it would be of no use to anyone incapable of making that second-to-last step correctly; if they simply import D* as a possible explanation for Alpha, or arrive at some hypothetical event D which is not, in fact, reasonable to assume possible or plausible, then they have in fact been hindered by fictional "evidence".