Psilence
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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... (read more)
This is good. It seems (to me) to mean that the LessWrong community is starting to "get the hang" of the importance of explanation...
By that I mean that a person who found themselves in the state of being "very" "intelligent" might, at the exact same time that they realized their state of intelligence had been the result of what we call "insights"--a working out of the problem on a level-independent way from the presuppositions inherent in the overwhelming bias of the problem as stated...
that that agent would also concurrently understand that the simple act of "explaining" how it might look to another person trapped further down the scale would cause them to agree, and hence look upwards, seeking the thing we had described for their benefit.
tl;dr in this case is: explanation IS intelligence, as much as insight if not more. "Misunderstood geniuses" is an oxymoron, no matter what genius-level you find yourself in,
Hi all, my name's Drew. I stumbled upon the site from who-knows-where last week and must've put in 30-40 hours of reading already, so suffice to say I've found the writing/discussions quite enjoyable so far. I'm heavily interested in theories of human behavior on both a psychological and moral level, so most of the subject matter has been enjoyable. I was a big Hofstader fan a few years back as well, so the AI and consciousness discussions are interesting as well.
Anyway, thought I'd pop in and say hi, maybe I'll take part in some conversations soon. Looks like a great thing you've got going here.
You don't believe in free will, correct?