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Emil_Karlsson comments on Knowledge doesn't just happen - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: NancyLebovitz 23 January 2011 01:07PM

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Comment author: Emil_Karlsson 23 January 2011 02:10:17PM 8 points [-]

I am new here, so I do not know how much I can contribute to the growing discussion.

Perhaps it may be useful to understand where something comes from in order to better handle it. A well known evolutionary argument, popularized by biologists such as Dawkins, suggests that there is an asymmetry in the evolutionary pay off between making false positives and false negatives. A Pleistocene hominid, as the argument goes, might at most waste some energy running away from a noise in the bushes that turns out to be nothing, but may waste its life if it does not run away when there is a predator in the bushes.

I do not know of any case where someone has said that they "should have known better" after making a false positive, say, "I knew I shouldn't have used the seat belt on the buss, we did not crash after all". I'm sure that more exclamations of this sort comes after a bush crashes and a person did not wear a seat belt, provided of course that the person survived.

I do not know how helpful or relevant this comment will be to the discussion, though.

Comment author: sfb 24 January 2011 08:25:02PM *  2 points [-]

I do not know of any case where someone has said that they "should have known better" after making a false positive, say, "I knew I shouldn't have used the seat belt on the buss, we did not crash after all".

Possibly the phrase "I needn't have bothered [..] after all"? e.g.:

Your place is delightfully homely and very tastefully decorated with a kitchen that was so well equipped with quality cooking implements that I needn’t have bothered bringing my own! - http://www.narooma-mystery-bay.com.au/Comments.htm

It's not directly saying they should have known, but it is saying they judged so inaccurately that reality took them by surprise so much it was worth commenting on.

Also the phrase "I don't know what we were worried about" fits a similar template - not a scolding for not knowing, like "should have known" is, but yes an admission of feeling overprepared for something which didn't happen and now questioning the reasons they had earlier.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 23 January 2011 02:23:55PM *  2 points [-]

I think you're right-- "you should have known better" seems to come into play after something goes wrong, rather than for taking possibly excessive precautions if such precautions are merely a waste of effort.

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