This is not correct. I’m not telling you to ignore it; I’m telling you that it’s worth no more than a few bits of evidence—few enough to be swamped into unnoticeability by the other data in this context.
Well, would you agree that the phrase “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” could plausibly be interpreted as meaning “ignore that intuition entirely”? That was how I first interpreted it. Perhaps your post should be rephrased, so it’s more clear that “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” actually means “recognize that that intuition is contradicted and outweighed by the other evidence”.
If that is what you meant, then I agree with this part of your assessment.
“This type of thing has no place on Less Wrong” is far too harsh, even if you disagree.
Well, I do believe that we should not advise people to ignore their intuitions outright, unless we have a very strong argument for doing so. Naturally, this is irrelevant if you are not advising people to ignore their intuitions outright.
Part of it appears to be Komponisto’s style: the post is peppered with things like “completely”, “utterly” “nothing”, “ruthlessly”, “gigantic”.
However, I think “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” may be pretty good advice at least at some point in the thinking/decision process. Because even after you’ve taken everything (including that voice) into account, and concluded that the true answer is different than it “feels”, and the intuition you feel is the result of an identified bias, your right answer might still “feel” wrong. The bias will keep injecting doubt, and it takes effort to shake it off. It’s hard to get a heuristic to admit it when it’s leading you astray. ;)
Well, would you agree that the phrase “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” could plausibly be interpreted as meaning “ignore that intuition entirely”?
Tabooing “ignore”, I do not think “that intuition constitutes literally zero Bayesian evidence of guilt” is a reasonable interpretation of my phrase. “Your analysis of this case should be for all practical purposes the same as it would be if you didn’t have that intuition” is more accurate (where “practical purposes” include things like deciding whether to regard Knox and Sollecito as “innocent” or “guilty”, and how strong a level of rhetoric to permit oneself in expressing one’s conclusion).
I think it is clear that this post is not about how to distinguish between the kind of extremely small differences in confidence levels that would be entailed by correctly factoring that intuition into one’s calculation. Remember that the entire context here is a catastrophic failure of epistemic rationality—with horrible consequences—that resulted from people paying too much attention to these types of intuitions. They would have done much better to literally ignore it entirely. (If it actually raises the probability of guilt from 0.001 to 0.002, it would have been better for the police or jurors to have ignored it entirely and estimated 0.001 than to have taken it into account and estimated 0.99, as they effectively did, or 0.5+, as many others have done.)
Well, would you agree that the phrase “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” could plausibly be interpreted as meaning “ignore that intuition entirely”? That was how I first interpreted it. Perhaps your post should be rephrased, so it’s more clear that “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” actually means “recognize that that intuition is contradicted and outweighed by the other evidence”.
If that is what you meant, then I agree with this part of your assessment.
Well, I do believe that we should not advise people to ignore their intuitions outright, unless we have a very strong argument for doing so. Naturally, this is irrelevant if you are not advising people to ignore their intuitions outright.
Part of it appears to be Komponisto’s style: the post is peppered with things like “completely”, “utterly” “nothing”, “ruthlessly”, “gigantic”.
However, I think “shut that voice out, ruthlessly” may be pretty good advice at least at some point in the thinking/decision process. Because even after you’ve taken everything (including that voice) into account, and concluded that the true answer is different than it “feels”, and the intuition you feel is the result of an identified bias, your right answer might still “feel” wrong. The bias will keep injecting doubt, and it takes effort to shake it off. It’s hard to get a heuristic to admit it when it’s leading you astray. ;)
Tabooing “ignore”, I do not think “that intuition constitutes literally zero Bayesian evidence of guilt” is a reasonable interpretation of my phrase. “Your analysis of this case should be for all practical purposes the same as it would be if you didn’t have that intuition” is more accurate (where “practical purposes” include things like deciding whether to regard Knox and Sollecito as “innocent” or “guilty”, and how strong a level of rhetoric to permit oneself in expressing one’s conclusion).
I think it is clear that this post is not about how to distinguish between the kind of extremely small differences in confidence levels that would be entailed by correctly factoring that intuition into one’s calculation. Remember that the entire context here is a catastrophic failure of epistemic rationality—with horrible consequences—that resulted from people paying too much attention to these types of intuitions. They would have done much better to literally ignore it entirely. (If it actually raises the probability of guilt from 0.001 to 0.002, it would have been better for the police or jurors to have ignored it entirely and estimated 0.001 than to have taken it into account and estimated 0.99, as they effectively did, or 0.5+, as many others have done.)