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peter_hurford comments on Magic Tricks Revealed: Test Your Rationality - Less Wrong Discussion
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Right, I agree with you. Sorry about the "Zepton IV" thing, then.
But still, we do consider low-probability possibilities. So I'm still not sure what you meant by:
I mean that when a human thinks they feel like they're "not even considering it at all", they actually are very slightly considering it.
How do you know that? I don't mean that in a "I think you're wrong" way, but in a "I think you're right, but I'm interested in knowing why" kind of way.
Sometimes a human feels like they're not considering a hypothesis at all, and later starts considering it. That's not what confidence zero looks like.
Actually, humans do sometimes behave as though their confidence in a proposition was as close to zero as we're able to measure. I can't think of any non-politically-charged examples at the moment, but consider for example the sort of confusion that leads someone to ask "So are you Blue or Green?" of someone who's just finished explaining that they're Red.
That's what I would describe as someone not considering a hypothesis, and then later starting considering it. That is not what I would describe as someone subconsciously considering a hypothesis the entire time, at least without further justification.
Remember that not considering a hypothesis is not the same as saying the hypothesis has a low probability. Saying the hypothesis has a low probability is considering it and then discarding it. I think we're talking about two different things.
That reminds me of what Scott Adam's called The Two-Bucket Mind.