[my intuition is] taking into account at most two out of the whole space of considerations
Well, there’s a difference between:
sorting: prioritizing two out of a larger number of considerations.
filtering: only considering two out of a larger number of considerations.
Humans use cognitive aids (visuals, charts, summaries, recordings) to help them with stuff like:
memory: of lists/hierarchies
calculations: of numbers
representations: of data or information
That kind of information feeds into filtering and sorting processes and can alter their results.
Otherwise, beliefs filter and priorities sort.
Cognitive aids boost your decision-making but only because otherwise we’d rely on:
faulty memory
incorrect or absent calculations
inadequate representations
The bottom line on explicit reasoning is that, even when done correctly, it can suffer from missing premises. Whatever the reason that the premises are missing, the conclusions are altered no matter what information would be helpful input to the conclusion. Cognitive aids and a knowledgebase can help with that problem.
I believe that in most circumstances internal feelings should have a general correspondence to the information we receive about the state of the world and oneself in it, but we are cognitively flexible and have fallible defaults.
What you see, hear, or feel internally might reinforce a single conclusion or conflict with it or conflict with each other (for example, when what you tell yourself to do is not what you feel like doing and you don’t know what to conclude).
Marketers use mental associations and different sensory representations to convey or prioritize conflicting information. They take advantage of our fallible defaults.
You have probably noticed that in pharma drug commercials:
verbal information: a narrator (usually with cheery or flat intonation) comfortably rattles off how some lousy drug could kill you or make a limb fall off in between a discussion of the drug benefits and a suggestion to ask your doctor about it
visual information: the visuals show you a person suffering some ailment but then getting the drug and suddenly their life changing to one involving slow-motion smiling, socializing, dating, or walking their dog or playing with their grandkids
You don’t see any visuals of a person dying from using the drug or losing a limb from it. Supplying that would lead your feelings away from the commercial’s goals.
You know how choice of sensory system changes your perception of the information.
Most people claim that commercials don’t work on them. But they do.
You can be betrayed by (among other things):
gut instincts
mental associations
distracted attention
fallible default cognitive processing
Obviously, just trusting your gut might not always be the best thing, but sometimes doing so does just what you think, it provides information that is not already available in your explicit reasoning.
I favor use of cognitive aids to compensate for memory, calculation, or representation problems, but they don’t always help with internal conflicts or motivated reasoning[1]. An assistant can help lead you through a thought process that, when you are faced with fatigue, becomes too difficult to do alone. That last idea is a gem, actually, but people don’t do it much.
Well, there’s a difference between:
sorting: prioritizing two out of a larger number of considerations.
filtering: only considering two out of a larger number of considerations.
Humans use cognitive aids (visuals, charts, summaries, recordings) to help them with stuff like:
memory: of lists/hierarchies
calculations: of numbers
representations: of data or information
That kind of information feeds into filtering and sorting processes and can alter their results.
Otherwise, beliefs filter and priorities sort.
Cognitive aids boost your decision-making but only because otherwise we’d rely on:
faulty memory
incorrect or absent calculations
inadequate representations
The bottom line on explicit reasoning is that, even when done correctly, it can suffer from missing premises. Whatever the reason that the premises are missing, the conclusions are altered no matter what information would be helpful input to the conclusion. Cognitive aids and a knowledgebase can help with that problem.
I believe that in most circumstances internal feelings should have a general correspondence to the information we receive about the state of the world and oneself in it, but we are cognitively flexible and have fallible defaults.
What you see, hear, or feel internally might reinforce a single conclusion or conflict with it or conflict with each other (for example, when what you tell yourself to do is not what you feel like doing and you don’t know what to conclude).
Marketers use mental associations and different sensory representations to convey or prioritize conflicting information. They take advantage of our fallible defaults.
You have probably noticed that in pharma drug commercials:
verbal information: a narrator (usually with cheery or flat intonation) comfortably rattles off how some lousy drug could kill you or make a limb fall off in between a discussion of the drug benefits and a suggestion to ask your doctor about it
visual information: the visuals show you a person suffering some ailment but then getting the drug and suddenly their life changing to one involving slow-motion smiling, socializing, dating, or walking their dog or playing with their grandkids
You don’t see any visuals of a person dying from using the drug or losing a limb from it. Supplying that would lead your feelings away from the commercial’s goals.
You know how choice of sensory system changes your perception of the information.
Most people claim that commercials don’t work on them. But they do.
You can be betrayed by (among other things):
mental associations
distracted attention
fallible default cognitive processing
Obviously, just trusting your gut might not always be the best thing, but sometimes doing so does just what you think, it provides information that is not already available in your explicit reasoning.
I favor use of cognitive aids to compensate for memory, calculation, or representation problems, but they don’t always help with internal conflicts or motivated reasoning[1]. An assistant can help lead you through a thought process that, when you are faced with fatigue, becomes too difficult to do alone. That last idea is a gem, actually, but people don’t do it much.
I like Julia Galef’s work in that area, an entire book devoted to the problem of motivated reasoning shows a good awareness of a major problem.