Dmytry comments on The Substitution Principle - LessWrong

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

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Comment author: Dmytry 27 January 2012 09:18:58AM *  0 points [-]

I disagree with the notion that this 'quick and dirty answer' is even handled by a substantially different part of the brain in a substantially different fashion than a better answer. The better answer is perhaps made by several refinement steps each conducted in this exact same fashion as the quick and dirty answer.

Consider the job question with complications - the question of who we are talking about. Absent a perfect brain scan and repeated re-simulation of that person, the personal qualities are themselves heuristic answer to some kind of substitute question.

Likewise for the properties of the society and the like. Each single step in the chain of reasoning about that kind of items, even a very long and detailed chain, is some sort of quick conclusion based on some substitutions of this kind.

It is just the case of reasoning with the unknowns. If the personal qualities of "who" are an unknown, then what is the point of reasoning as if they were known? If the preference for a lot of money and low probability versus less money and higher probability is unknown as well? Absent statistics of the most common preference, it IS best answered by picking the most common profession that made someone rich, in the way that you (your only data point) prefer. It's hardly a case of substituting anything for anything else. It's a case of giving best possible answer when the information is incomplete.