My point is that the prior under which you interpret the text is shaped by the expectations about the source of the text. If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence over the knowledge of what a given piece of text could mean if taken out of context. Certainly, you can’t read minds without data, but the data is about minds, and that’s a significant factor in its interpretation.
If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence
This is why people often can’t follow simple instructions for mental techniques—they do whatever they already believe is the right thing to do, not what the instructions actually say.
My point is that the prior under which you interpret the text is shaped by the expectations about the source of the text. If the text, taken alone, is seen as likely meaning something that you didn’t expect to be said, then the knowledge about what you expect to be said takes precedence over the knowledge of what a given piece of text could mean if taken out of context. Certainly, you can’t read minds without data, but the data is about minds, and that’s a significant factor in its interpretation.
This is why people often can’t follow simple instructions for mental techniques—they do whatever they already believe is the right thing to do, not what the instructions actually say.
That’s overconfidence, a bias, but so is underconfidence.