orthonormal comments on The Substitution Principle - LessWrong

68 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 28 January 2012 04:20AM

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Comment author: Ezekiel 26 January 2012 03:32:35PM 14 points [-]

This seems to be something of a fake explanation. The statement is: Sometimes the brain provides false information, that actually answers a different question to the one asked.

That would be true no matter what answer was being given (unless it was completely random), because so long as the answer thrown up correlates with something, you can say: "Aha! The brain has substituted something for the question you thought was being asked!"

And since this explanation could be given for any answer the brain throws up, it doesn't actually give us any new information about the cognitive algorithm being used.

Comment author: orthonormal 26 January 2012 08:41:15PM 4 points [-]

A better summary might be: if you intuit a quick answer to a complex question, it's often instead an answer to a related question about your current mental/emotional state, and as such is subject to noticeable biases.