This suggestion is certainly an interesting one—that clicks happen in places where pre-existing ideas are weak, and “clicky” people have fewer strongly-entrenched concepts.
I think the explanation goes somewhat beyond this however, based on a personal observation that “clicks” seem to preferentially arise for ideas which are, to the best of our understanding, “right”. I know people with very low thresholds of belief, and clicky people, and it seems to me that the correlation between the two is negative if it exists. Credulous people can’t click onto an idea because it doesn’t seem more right to them than any other—every point is neutral, so new ideas are simply accepted.
Clicky people, by contrast, can click in the positive or negative. Just as intelligence explosion can make “intrinsic” sense to someone, counterarguments to it are likely to throw a mental flag even before they find a clear source for the objection. The click seems to go beyond acceptance to rapid understanding and evaluation.
This suggestion is certainly an interesting one—that clicks happen in places where pre-existing ideas are weak, and “clicky” people have fewer strongly-entrenched concepts.
I think the explanation goes somewhat beyond this however, based on a personal observation that “clicks” seem to preferentially arise for ideas which are, to the best of our understanding, “right”. I know people with very low thresholds of belief, and clicky people, and it seems to me that the correlation between the two is negative if it exists. Credulous people can’t click onto an idea because it doesn’t seem more right to them than any other—every point is neutral, so new ideas are simply accepted.
Clicky people, by contrast, can click in the positive or negative. Just as intelligence explosion can make “intrinsic” sense to someone, counterarguments to it are likely to throw a mental flag even before they find a clear source for the objection. The click seems to go beyond acceptance to rapid understanding and evaluation.