rule_and_line comments on Rationality Quotes April 2014 - LessWrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 April 2014 05:25PM

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Comment author: rule_and_line 16 April 2014 10:04:01PM *  3 points [-]

This is the most forceful version I've seen (assumed it had been posted before, discovered it probably hasn't, won't start a new thread since it's too similar):

But by definition, there can’t be any particular feeling associated with simply being wrong. Indeed, the whole reason it’s possible to be wrong is that, while it is happening, you are oblivious to it. When you are simply going about your business in a state you will later decide was delusional, you have no idea of it whatsoever. You are like the coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, after he has gone off the cliff but before he has looked down. Literally in his case and figuratively in yours, you are already in trouble when you feel like you’re still on solid ground. So I should revise myself: it does feel like something to be wrong. It feels like being right.

Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong

But I'm not comfortable endorsing either of these quotes without a comment.

chipaca's quote (and friends) suggest to me that

  • my "being wrong" and "being right" are complementary hypotheses, and
  • my subjective feelings are not evidence either way.

Schulz's quote (and book) suggest to me that

  • my "being wrong" is broadly and overwhelmingly true (my map is not the territory), and
  • my subjective feeling of being right is in fact evidence that I am very wrong.

I'd prefer to emphasize that "You are already in trouble when you feel like you’re still on solid ground," or said another way:

Becoming less wrong feels different from the experience of going about my business in a state that I will later decide was delusional.

Comment author: gwern 02 May 2014 11:20:22PM 1 point [-]

Schulz hasn't been quoted here before, but you might've seen my use of that quote on http://www.gwern.net/Mistakes to which I will add a quote of Wittgenstein making the same quote but much more compressed and concisely:

One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely", it would not have any [meaningful] first person, present indicative.