However, if we aren’t only talking about doing science but also trying to become more rational, then it seems that the same process that made us less likely to come up with paradigm-busting innovations would also strenghten the effect of any biases we had. That includes biases not directly related to science, but also things distorting our evaluation of e.g. moral/ethical questions. While in science we can just let people specialize, in moral questions we’d like as many people as possible to be capable of thinking straight. Every single person who has a distorted view of ethical questions can do harm in their daily lives, while the amount of harm done by a single misguided scientist is smaller.
Also, the population structure in most countries is currently growing older, which implies that we may need to counteract the effect by making even older scientists paradigm-innovate more if we want to progress as fast as we’ve been doing so far.
Can’t we think of the youthful lack of organizing mental structures as a bias that distorts their thoughts? Until we know the optimal point along this spectrum, we can’t tell which side is biased on net.
Thinking new thoughts (as opposed to cached thoughts) is risky behavior, if e.g. it makes you a crank, but I don’t think it can properly be called a bias.
Most thoughts are cached thoughts, or put together from other cached thoughts like Tinkertoys; most new ideas are heard from others rather than invented. Genuinely new thoughts are rare, even if they’re less rare in the young than the old. To my mind their rarity increases their value: the ability to invent new thoughts is precious.
In writing fiction I’ve practiced techniques that reliably induce creativity: brainstorming, freewriting, random association, and so on. These are non-methodical in character; they’re not processes you can use to produce a result, but processes that put you in a state that allows you to produce the result. They are basically irrational. Does that mean creativity is a failure mode of rationality, or are there techniques a rationalist can use to produce new thoughts?
blinks, stops I had never thought of it that way.
However, if we aren’t only talking about doing science but also trying to become more rational, then it seems that the same process that made us less likely to come up with paradigm-busting innovations would also strenghten the effect of any biases we had. That includes biases not directly related to science, but also things distorting our evaluation of e.g. moral/ethical questions. While in science we can just let people specialize, in moral questions we’d like as many people as possible to be capable of thinking straight. Every single person who has a distorted view of ethical questions can do harm in their daily lives, while the amount of harm done by a single misguided scientist is smaller.
Also, the population structure in most countries is currently growing older, which implies that we may need to counteract the effect by making even older scientists paradigm-innovate more if we want to progress as fast as we’ve been doing so far.
Can’t we think of the youthful lack of organizing mental structures as a bias that distorts their thoughts? Until we know the optimal point along this spectrum, we can’t tell which side is biased on net.
Thinking new thoughts (as opposed to cached thoughts) is risky behavior, if e.g. it makes you a crank, but I don’t think it can properly be called a bias.
Most thoughts are cached thoughts, or put together from other cached thoughts like Tinkertoys; most new ideas are heard from others rather than invented. Genuinely new thoughts are rare, even if they’re less rare in the young than the old. To my mind their rarity increases their value: the ability to invent new thoughts is precious.
In writing fiction I’ve practiced techniques that reliably induce creativity: brainstorming, freewriting, random association, and so on. These are non-methodical in character; they’re not processes you can use to produce a result, but processes that put you in a state that allows you to produce the result. They are basically irrational. Does that mean creativity is a failure mode of rationality, or are there techniques a rationalist can use to produce new thoughts?