I suspect you need to travel some (most?) of the inferential distance to becoming a rationalist (one way or another) before you can start clicking on ideas and concepts you’re hearing for the first time.
Maybe you could devise a click-test and give it to different groups to see what kinds of people click more often?
I suspect you need to travel some (most?) of the inferential distance to becoming a rationalist (one way or another) before you can start clicking on ideas and concepts you’re hearing for the first time.
Depending on whether my “clicks” and EY’s “clicks” are the same, this isn’t true. My studies in Math and Computer Science were full of clicks and the people around me would click at different points in the more complicated Math classes. Some of these people were certainly not rationalist. They were very smart, but certainly not rationalist.
I’m not sure what you mean by “clicks” in Math classes. It looks like you’re using “click” for “understand” or “gain insight”? Whether and when you click in complicated Math classes depends on how you manage to grasp math concepts and follow and connect them logically (or something of this sort). Whereas EY defines “click” as a “a very short chain of reasoning”, which in the minds of most people gets derailed. What I’m suggesting is that it gets derailed by other preconceptions that interfere with the short reasoning chain.
It looks like you’re using “click” for “understand” or “gain insight”?
Sort of, but on a whole different scale than I use for the words “understand” or “gain insight.” So much so that I would never switch one word out for the other.
For me, “click” is to “understand” as “fly” is to “jump.” You could say that flight is a form of jumping, but all the details are different and they have drastically different results.
Whereas EY defines “click” as a “a very short chain of reasoning”, which in the minds of most people gets derailed.
I wonder if we should just use the word Bayesian and drop “Rationalist”. It has an entrenched meaning opposite to empiricist. We can also use words like Skeptic, Scientists, Popperian, and the like in their traditional meanings.
I wonder if we should just use the word Bayesian and drop “Rationalist”. It has an entrenched meaning opposite to empiricist.
I think the traditional “rationalist/empiricist” dichotomy is most likely a confusion. I don’t mind at all if we end up helping to displace this terminology by spreading our sense of “rationalist”.
What I had in mind is that people will click more often if they’ve gone through some of the inferential distance already and are in a mindset in which, when they first encounter cryonics/AI/whatever, it appears obviously/intuitively possible. Which is why you have 25% computer industry people and 25% scientists (i.e. it’s obviously not a random sample of people). Scientists are more likely than most people to be atheists, believe in the possibility of AI, etc, and also more likely to click when they first hear about cryonics on the radio.
As you’ve said, the chain of reasoning followed by a click is very short. But it’s only short for those people that don’t have other (longer) chains of reasoning and beliefs that seem to contradict the original statement. And in order to connect the short chain, you have to dissolve the long one first. It seems to me that people need to have already accepted to a certain extent the naturalistic/scientific worldview in order to click immediately on cryonics.
Now, I’m not sure how much of this applies to children, but I don’t see why kids can’t have a similar (albeit based on simpler reasoning chains) mindset, i.e. they already accept most of the prerequisites for cryonics.
Hmm. Things like that I remember, at least in the sense that I have flashes of memory of reading a few books, or discussing a film with somebody, or some things I liked to draw. (Writing never quite attracted me, but I doodled all the time.)
However, I have almost no memory of my mental state. All my memories are almost like flashes of third-person-view scenes of my life; which tempts me to believe they’re “re-constructed views” rather than memories, otherwise I’d expect them to be first-person.
(Also, the flashes of memories are not associated with moments. I might reconstruct when a memory was about by deducing from what I see in the flashes with things I can track down the age of, but otherwise I don’t have a mental “when” something happened. All this of course applies only memories older than a few years.)
I suspect you need to travel some (most?) of the inferential distance to becoming a rationalist (one way or another) before you can start clicking on ideas and concepts you’re hearing for the first time.
I suspect you need to travel some (most?) of the inferential distance to becoming a rationalist (one way or another) before you can start clicking on ideas and concepts you’re hearing for the first time.
Maybe you could devise a click-test and give it to different groups to see what kinds of people click more often?
Depending on whether my “clicks” and EY’s “clicks” are the same, this isn’t true. My studies in Math and Computer Science were full of clicks and the people around me would click at different points in the more complicated Math classes. Some of these people were certainly not rationalist. They were very smart, but certainly not rationalist.
I’m not sure what you mean by “clicks” in Math classes. It looks like you’re using “click” for “understand” or “gain insight”? Whether and when you click in complicated Math classes depends on how you manage to grasp math concepts and follow and connect them logically (or something of this sort). Whereas EY defines “click” as a “a very short chain of reasoning”, which in the minds of most people gets derailed. What I’m suggesting is that it gets derailed by other preconceptions that interfere with the short reasoning chain.
Sort of, but on a whole different scale than I use for the words “understand” or “gain insight.” So much so that I would never switch one word out for the other.
For me, “click” is to “understand” as “fly” is to “jump.” You could say that flight is a form of jumping, but all the details are different and they have drastically different results.
Yeah, that isn’t how I am using click at all.
At age eight? Even I wasn’t much of a rationalist until nine or so.
I wonder if we should just use the word Bayesian and drop “Rationalist”. It has an entrenched meaning opposite to empiricist. We can also use words like Skeptic, Scientists, Popperian, and the like in their traditional meanings.
But no one can be a Bayesian except in the statistical-method-advocacy sense of the term.
I think the traditional “rationalist/empiricist” dichotomy is most likely a confusion. I don’t mind at all if we end up helping to displace this terminology by spreading our sense of “rationalist”.
What I had in mind is that people will click more often if they’ve gone through some of the inferential distance already and are in a mindset in which, when they first encounter cryonics/AI/whatever, it appears obviously/intuitively possible. Which is why you have 25% computer industry people and 25% scientists (i.e. it’s obviously not a random sample of people). Scientists are more likely than most people to be atheists, believe in the possibility of AI, etc, and also more likely to click when they first hear about cryonics on the radio.
As you’ve said, the chain of reasoning followed by a click is very short. But it’s only short for those people that don’t have other (longer) chains of reasoning and beliefs that seem to contradict the original statement. And in order to connect the short chain, you have to dissolve the long one first. It seems to me that people need to have already accepted to a certain extent the naturalistic/scientific worldview in order to click immediately on cryonics.
Now, I’m not sure how much of this applies to children, but I don’t see why kids can’t have a similar (albeit based on simpler reasoning chains) mindset, i.e. they already accept most of the prerequisites for cryonics.
That’s weird. Do you actually remember your thoughts from that age?
I remember writing absolutely unthinkably awful science fiction, and reading Jerry Pournelle’s A Step Farther Out.
Hmm. Things like that I remember, at least in the sense that I have flashes of memory of reading a few books, or discussing a film with somebody, or some things I liked to draw. (Writing never quite attracted me, but I doodled all the time.)
However, I have almost no memory of my mental state. All my memories are almost like flashes of third-person-view scenes of my life; which tempts me to believe they’re “re-constructed views” rather than memories, otherwise I’d expect them to be first-person.
(Also, the flashes of memories are not associated with moments. I might reconstruct when a memory was about by deducing from what I see in the flashes with things I can track down the age of, but otherwise I don’t have a mental “when” something happened. All this of course applies only memories older than a few years.)
Or perhaps not travel far enough away.