This was linked to twice recently, once in a Rationality Quotes thread and once in the article about mindfulness meditation, and I thought it deserved its own article.
It’s a transcript of a talk by Persi Diaconis, called “The problem of thinking too much”. The general theme is more or less what you’d expect from the title: often our explicit models of things are wrong enough that trying to think them through rationally gives worse results than (e.g.) just guessing. There are some nice examples in it.
The Problem of Thinking Too Much [LINK]
This was linked to twice recently, once in a Rationality Quotes thread and once in the article about mindfulness meditation, and I thought it deserved its own article.
It’s a transcript of a talk by Persi Diaconis, called “The problem of thinking too much”. The general theme is more or less what you’d expect from the title: often our explicit models of things are wrong enough that trying to think them through rationally gives worse results than (e.g.) just guessing. There are some nice examples in it.