From: H C (lphege@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jan 28 2006 - 10:14:56 MST
>From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
>Perhaps they are confused by the difference between evidential "if",
>counterfactual "if", and logical "if".
I'm afraid their confusion is much less technical than that. It's like they
pick up and understand details without being curious. They just weed out the
desired patterns and algorithms and follow them, instead of attempting to
establish general case principles that generalize over these fields of
patterns.
The problem with people doing this is that they are not pulling the full
utility potential out of their ideas. Instead of having inference-making
potential on each of the basic principles of the logic, they only have
inference-making potential on the most abstract and superficial qualities of
the general ideas. For example, they could solve the given logic problem in
the exercises, but that's about the extent of the utility of their
understanding. This is the only situation in which the concepts they have
actually effectively mean something- the only situation in which their ideas
are effectively consistent with some given problem.
They don't have the curiosity. They feel no desire to ask questions at all,
except where they absolutely have to. And even then the questions and
answers will lose their interest unless it is specifically under question.
Feel like you know something vs. Feel like you don't know something
It's dramatically more appropriate for the average person to feel as though
they do know, rather than to get caught up in the seeming endless turmoil of
not knowing.
-hegem0n
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