It sometimes takes me a long time to go from “A is true”, “B is true”, “A and B implies C is true” to “C is true”.
I think this is a common issue with humans, for example I can see a word such as “aqueduct”, and also know that “aqua” means water in Latin, yet fail to notice that “aqueduct” comes from “aqua”. This is because when I see a word it does not trigger a dynamic that searches for a root.
Another case is when the rule looks a bit different, say “a and b implies c” rather than “A and B implies C” and some effort is needed to notice that it still applies.
I think an even more common reason is that the facts are never brought in working memory at the same time, and so inference never happens.
All this hints to a practical epistemological-fu: we can increase our knowledge simply by actively reviewing our facts, say every morning, and trying to infer new facts from them! This might even create a virtuous circle, as the more facts one infers, the more facts one can combine to generate more inferences.
On the other hand there is a limit to the number of facts one can review in a given amount of time, so perhaps a healthy epistemological habit to have is to trigger one’s inference engine every time one learns a new (significant?) fact.
It sometimes takes me a long time to go from “A is true”, “B is true”, “A and B implies C is true” to “C is true”.
I think this is a common issue with humans, for example I can see a word such as “aqueduct”, and also know that “aqua” means water in Latin, yet fail to notice that “aqueduct” comes from “aqua”. This is because when I see a word it does not trigger a dynamic that searches for a root.
Another case is when the rule looks a bit different, say “a and b implies c” rather than “A and B implies C” and some effort is needed to notice that it still applies.
I think an even more common reason is that the facts are never brought in working memory at the same time, and so inference never happens.
All this hints to a practical epistemological-fu: we can increase our knowledge simply by actively reviewing our facts, say every morning, and trying to infer new facts from them! This might even create a virtuous circle, as the more facts one infers, the more facts one can combine to generate more inferences.
On the other hand there is a limit to the number of facts one can review in a given amount of time, so perhaps a healthy epistemological habit to have is to trigger one’s inference engine every time one learns a new (significant?) fact.