Good question. So I don’t believe this very strongly at all, but it’s the hypothesis that affords more to do compared to the selection hypothesis so it’s more worth testing. One thing I could learn from running experiments like this repeatedly is that even doing quite a good job teaching math to most people won’t cause them to acquire the inside view skill, which would be an important negative result.
It feels to me like the actual math I know is an important component of my inside view skill. More complicated gears models do in fact have components that resemble components of models in math, physics, etc. and it’s in fact useful to know what kinds of components are out there. Also I think learning math in a particular way was very useful for training the skill in a particular way. But I would not be surprised if it turns out that the skill starts with a nucleus that was determined by some mostly hereditary personality trait that gets nurtured or not depending on exposure to things like math.
Good question. So I don’t believe this very strongly at all, but it’s the hypothesis that affords more to do compared to the selection hypothesis so it’s more worth testing. One thing I could learn from running experiments like this repeatedly is that even doing quite a good job teaching math to most people won’t cause them to acquire the inside view skill, which would be an important negative result.
It feels to me like the actual math I know is an important component of my inside view skill. More complicated gears models do in fact have components that resemble components of models in math, physics, etc. and it’s in fact useful to know what kinds of components are out there. Also I think learning math in a particular way was very useful for training the skill in a particular way. But I would not be surprised if it turns out that the skill starts with a nucleus that was determined by some mostly hereditary personality trait that gets nurtured or not depending on exposure to things like math.