Nevertheless, the use of this currently tenuous scientific theory to found our entire understanding of intuition would seem a little bit premature, especially if the theory contradicts what other influential and valued institutions have had to say about intuition (for instance, philosophy).
We should found our understanding of intuition (or anything else) on the best information we currently have. Whether something’s likely to be overthrown in the next 50 years is obviously related to how much we should trust it now for any given purpose, but not all that tightly. (For instance: we know that current theories of fundamental physics are wrong because we have no theory that encompasses both GR and QFT; but I for one am extremely comfortable assuming these theories are right for all “everyday” purposes—both because it seems fairly certain that whatever new discoveries we make will have little impact on predictions governing “everyday” events, and because at present we have no good rival theories that make different predictions and seem at all likely to be correct.
The use of the “system 1 / system 2” dichotomy here on LW doesn’t appear to me to depend much on subtle details of what’s going on. It looks to me—though I am not an expert and will willingly be corrected by those who are—as if we have quite robust evidence that some human cognitive processes are slow, under conscious control, and about as accurate as we choose to take the trouble to make them, while others are fast, not under conscious control, highly inaccurate in some identifiable circumstances, and hard to make much more accurate. And it doesn’t look to me as if anything on LW requires much more than that. (Maybe some of CFAR’s training makes stronger assumptions; I don’t know.)
what other influential and valued institutions have had to say about intuition (for instance, philosophy)
What matters is not how influential and valued those institutions are, but what reason we have to think they’re right in what they say about intuition. “Philosophy” is of course a tremendously broad thing, covering thousands of years of human endeavour. What (say) Plato thought about intuition may be very interesting—he was very clever, and his opinions were influential—but human knowledge has moved on a lot since his day, and in so far as we want our ideas about intuition to be correct we should give rather little weight to agreeing with Plato.
Would you like to be more specific about how our opinions about intuition should differ from those currently popular on LW, as a result of taking into account what influential and valued institutions like philosophy have said about it?
Nevertheless, the use of this currently tenuous scientific theory to found our entire understanding of intuition would seem a little bit premature, especially if the theory contradicts what other influential and valued institutions have had to say about intuition (for instance, philosophy).
We should found our understanding of intuition (or anything else) on the best information we currently have. Whether something’s likely to be overthrown in the next 50 years is obviously related to how much we should trust it now for any given purpose, but not all that tightly. (For instance: we know that current theories of fundamental physics are wrong because we have no theory that encompasses both GR and QFT; but I for one am extremely comfortable assuming these theories are right for all “everyday” purposes—both because it seems fairly certain that whatever new discoveries we make will have little impact on predictions governing “everyday” events, and because at present we have no good rival theories that make different predictions and seem at all likely to be correct.
The use of the “system 1 / system 2” dichotomy here on LW doesn’t appear to me to depend much on subtle details of what’s going on. It looks to me—though I am not an expert and will willingly be corrected by those who are—as if we have quite robust evidence that some human cognitive processes are slow, under conscious control, and about as accurate as we choose to take the trouble to make them, while others are fast, not under conscious control, highly inaccurate in some identifiable circumstances, and hard to make much more accurate. And it doesn’t look to me as if anything on LW requires much more than that. (Maybe some of CFAR’s training makes stronger assumptions; I don’t know.)
What matters is not how influential and valued those institutions are, but what reason we have to think they’re right in what they say about intuition. “Philosophy” is of course a tremendously broad thing, covering thousands of years of human endeavour. What (say) Plato thought about intuition may be very interesting—he was very clever, and his opinions were influential—but human knowledge has moved on a lot since his day, and in so far as we want our ideas about intuition to be correct we should give rather little weight to agreeing with Plato.
Would you like to be more specific about how our opinions about intuition should differ from those currently popular on LW, as a result of taking into account what influential and valued institutions like philosophy have said about it?