I suspect that many people with rationalist tendencies tend to operate primarily on the fact level and assume others to be doing so as well, which might lead to plenty of frustration.

Also, it took me a while to realize that there have been occasions on which I was consciously trying to act on the level of facts, but my subconscious was operating on the level of status and got very defensive whenever my facts were challenged.

Usually what rationalists would want to do is to move the conversation to the level of facts.

Oh boy am I guilty of this. I've been trying to mend my ways after some frustration-inducing incidents, and this taxonomy brings some welcome clarity to my thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

Beyond a certain point, the "regenerate if deleted?" metric becomes useless. For example, if your entire source code is "0", well, everything's been deleted, but there's no way it's growing back. There has to be somewhere to start. (Related: Where recursive justification hits bottom)

Still, you can characterize epistemic states by how much they could recover, from how deep a deletion, which was one point of the Truly Part of You article. I can imagine simpler epistemic states, lacking knowledge of the scientific method, that could recover Bayesian rationality: you would need to recognize that primitive-future has dynamics very close to primitive-past (where primitive-X denotes the inborn, intuitive understanding of X), which gives you induction, and, combined with basic numeracy, could point you in the right direction.

That's probably closer to the truth than one might think. Once a belief system moves beyond rote memorization of its basic principles and becomes associated with other domains, non-rational beliefs can get very heavily embedded with outside belief networks. The feedback loop that can be created by having just a few anecdotal connections to an already established system would be severe.

The key factor is that, for people who are not strict rationalists already, the "correlation=causation" attitude is quite strong, so any neuronal links I make from new information to outside branches of knowledge can freely flow right back the way they came. Where the rationalist would have to find additional evidence to ingrain a belief, the fundamentalist is free to draw from his outside branches of knowledge to find reverse reinforcement to support the belief he's trying to learn.

Of course, we all do this to a certain extent, bootstrapping our new, tenuous beliefs by looking for associations we can make to older, more familiar territory. But fundamentalists can get through the neuronal rut-treading faster than rationalists, allowing a belief system to become ingrained that much faster.

Also, part of rationalists' training involves maintaining belief system elasticity, so we are ready to shift our conceptions as new information comes along. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, strive in exactly the reverse direction, wanting each neuronal pathway to be as unchanging as possible. There are two main reasons I can think of that this would be important: The one is that God's morality is eternal and unchanging, so the closer we bring our thought patterns out of that messy doubting game, the closer we come to "perfection". The other is that certain idea like adultery or homosexuality are expressly forbidden not to just do, but to even think about. What's a person to do? Well, once you hit the Stage 3 described above, your neural pathways will just naturally flow in the proscribed direction, avoiding extraneous pitfalls that you've edited out.

I remember reading something about this stage with professional chess players a long time ago--a chess master simulates less possible moves in their head than a player with only moderate experience, because past a certain stage, their brain pathways have seen enough games that the obviously "bad" moves simply drop out of their neural net.

Charlie Parker echoed a similar thing about jazz:

“You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

Unfortunately, the same neural embedding that makes great chess players and musicians possible, also makes cults and other forms of indoctrination possible.

It seems to me that stage 3 just means that you use correct scientific methods to learn & expand your knowledge (or am I missing something ?). If that is correct, wouldn't that mean you could essentially recreate the entire body of human knowledge given enough time & persistence ?

The only knowledge that seems absolutely essential to me then is the scientific method itself. Given my human psychology I'm reasonable certain that without that knowledge I would dream up an entire pantheon of gods to explain away everything and just stop there.

So, I'm taking the low karma score of this post as a signal that people are losing interest in the luminosity sequence and I should shut up instead of posting the remainder. Would anyone care to confirm or deny?

valid points, but isn't it quite easy to see when thinking has gone on for 'too long' without benefit?

nitpick:"I still would error on the side of", err not error :_)

"How does thinking, in general, feel to you?" Do you mean this metaphorically? Can you give some examples of how thinking feels to you?

Is this a disguised plea to karma-enforce a more rigorous separation between "things that should be Open Thread comments" and "things that should be top-level posts"?

No, that wasn't my intention. I'll try to restate my main point more clearly:

To get your ideas to be taken seriously by others, get into the habit of thinking things through before you speak, and signal (or, when appropriate, just state) that you have done so. If you sometimes also like to throw around poorly thought out ideas for fun, then make it clear when you're doing that to avoid hurting your overall credibility.

I don't agree that circumstances are easily known at all. Most of my variation in pleasure is tied up in the uncertain territory of social interaction (because I'm materially well off); the remainder is in the unpredictable progress of my research or hobbies. While there are moments of unequivocal (in)validation, most of the time the outcome is in doubt.

It's fun playing around at such a high level of abstraction as you do in this post. Everything you discuss is obviously true, but it's pleasant how you've packaged it.

In general, I find heuristics for focusing my attention other than where it falls naturally to be interesting only as novelties - soon I'm back to paying attention to whatever strikes me.

There's a fun exercise I read about in a how-to-act book (aside: aspiring actors seem like a surprisingly large market): either aloud with a partner, or to yourself, say how every little thing you experience makes you feel. Clearly you weren't doing that when you drafted this article; you were absorbed in the object you were manipulating. Self-awareness seems most important when what you're manipulating is your own affect.

I can entertain time-consuming meditative or introspective exercises to the extent I hope that I'll gain some permanent, low-maintenance benefit, like learning new information that will be useful without constant recitation, or forming more effective habits (in behavior or what I attend to).

Additionally, take note of any interesting absences. If something generally considered sad has happened to you, and you can detect no sadness in your affect or telltale physical side effects, that's highly relevant data.

This one (and the opposite, i.e. have an emotion where it's considered inappropriate) happens to me a lot.

For example, my room is usually total and utter chaos which doesn't disturb me in the slightest. For some reason anything that isn't moved in the last 3 or 4 days just becomes background, like trees in a forest. On the other hand, as a programmer, I tend to be very precise in my code & database (Codd help you if I find that you forgot a foreign key).

Another one is weather and sunlight. I prefer an overcast sky and 10 - 20 degrees Celsius and truly hate summer. Travel is another one. I never got why people have to move over 500 miles to relax. Is it really that difficult to relax at home ?

About emotions in general, I never understood how people can consider them (in)appropriate. For the large part, I don't control how I feel so why is (not) feeling something my fault ? Off course, I mostly control how I react to those feelings so I'm still responsible for my behavior but if I simply say that I do/don't have an 'appropriate' feeling, why are some people always shocked ?