Nice article Kaj—this is a phenomena I’ve come up against myself several times, so it’s really nice to see a carefully worked analysis of this situation. In a probabilistic sense, perhaps intuitive differences are priors that arise from evidence that a person no longer recalls directly, so although the the person may have rationally based their belief on evidence, they are unable to convince another person since they do not have the original evidence at hand. I’m particularly thinking of cases where “evidence” comprises many small experiences over a prolonged period, making it particularly difficult to replay to another person. A carpenter’s intuition about the strength of a piece arises from their experiences working with wood, but no single piece of evidence could be easily recalled to transfer that intuition to someone else.
intuitive differences are priors that arise from evidence that a person no longer recalls directly
Incidentally this is how people get embedded in theism. In my own case I was presented with some “proofs” of religion when I was 14; they weren’t terrible actually but in retrospect had logical holes. But once they get embedded in your mind, they are very hard to get out. You have to pull yourself out by your own hair, so to say. Or have an emotionally significant event of large magnitude happen to you.
That doesn’t mean one or both conclusions aren’t wrong. If someone has experiences that are not representative of problems in general, they’ll have flawed intuitions.
Also the problem at hand may simply be atypical, so someone with well-rounded experiences will be wrong.
Nice article Kaj—this is a phenomena I’ve come up against myself several times, so it’s really nice to see a carefully worked analysis of this situation. In a probabilistic sense, perhaps intuitive differences are priors that arise from evidence that a person no longer recalls directly, so although the the person may have rationally based their belief on evidence, they are unable to convince another person since they do not have the original evidence at hand. I’m particularly thinking of cases where “evidence” comprises many small experiences over a prolonged period, making it particularly difficult to replay to another person. A carpenter’s intuition about the strength of a piece arises from their experiences working with wood, but no single piece of evidence could be easily recalled to transfer that intuition to someone else.
Incidentally this is how people get embedded in theism. In my own case I was presented with some “proofs” of religion when I was 14; they weren’t terrible actually but in retrospect had logical holes. But once they get embedded in your mind, they are very hard to get out. You have to pull yourself out by your own hair, so to say. Or have an emotionally significant event of large magnitude happen to you.
Interesting! I wonder whether there is already a name for this bias. Does it fall under the “cached thought” unbrella perhaps?
It’s like cached thoughts, but deeper, since you end up building up on the original though and it becomes a whole web of interconnected beliefs.
That doesn’t mean one or both conclusions aren’t wrong. If someone has experiences that are not representative of problems in general, they’ll have flawed intuitions.
Also the problem at hand may simply be atypical, so someone with well-rounded experiences will be wrong.
Yes, exactly.
I liked the article, and there is little more I can add that is not a paraphrase of Alex.