Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Re: Overconfidence and meta-rationality

From: Keith Henson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 01:59:45 -0500

At 10:58 AM 21/03/05 -0500, you wrote:
>At 02:48 AM 3/21/2005, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>There's an art of sticking as close to the question as possible - arguing 
>>about
>>If I am rational, then I should have decent reasons - Bayesian causes - 
>>for believing as I do.  Once I have disgorged my reasons for believing 
>>something, my rationality becomes much less inferentially relevant to 
>>whether my belief is probably correct.  ...
>
>Yes.  But as the limited humans we are, we can usually only explicitly 
>communicate a small fraction of the considerations we actually used in 
>choosing our beliefs.

True.  And some of the reasons we maintain beliefs will be used in an 
attempt to embarrass you if you are so foolish as to admit you are an 
evolved social primate with a wired in interest in maintaining your status 
in the local "tribe."

Keith Henson

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From: Robin Hanson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:05:22 -0500

At 01:59 AM 3/22/2005, Keith Henson wrote:
>>as the limited humans we are, we can usually only explicitly communicate 
>>a small fraction of the considerations we actually used in choosing our 
>>beliefs.
>

Yes, we face both internal communication limitations, where our limited 
minds are not capable of keeping track of all our reasons, and 
self-deception incentives, making it not in our interest to know of many of 
our reasons.

Robin Hanson  [email-masked]  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323