I have found it useful and interesting to build a habit of noticing an intuition and then thinking of arguments for why that intuition is worth listening to. It has caused me to find some pretty interesting dynamics that it seems like naive consequentialists/utilitarians aren’t aware of.
One concern about this is that you might be able to find arguments for any conclusion that you seek out arguments for; the counter to this is that your intuition doesn’t give random answers, and is actually fairly reliably correct, hence explicit arguments that explain your intuition are some amount more likely than random to correspond reality, making these arguments useful to discover.
This definitely goes better if you are aware of the systematic errors your intuition can make (i.e. cognitive biases).
Concept-shaped holes are such a useful concept; from what I can tell, it seems like a huge amount of miscommunication happens because people have somewhat different understandings of the same word.
I think I interpret people’s advice and opinions pretty differently now that I’m aware of concept-shaped holes.
Yes. This is why language is so difficult. Then there’s the added layer of propoganda. It can make two people who “speak the same language” be completely unable to understand each other.
I have found it useful and interesting to build a habit of noticing an intuition and then thinking of arguments for why that intuition is worth listening to. It has caused me to find some pretty interesting dynamics that it seems like naive consequentialists/utilitarians aren’t aware of.
One concern about this is that you might be able to find arguments for any conclusion that you seek out arguments for; the counter to this is that your intuition doesn’t give random answers, and is actually fairly reliably correct, hence explicit arguments that explain your intuition are some amount more likely than random to correspond reality, making these arguments useful to discover.
This definitely goes better if you are aware of the systematic errors your intuition can make (i.e. cognitive biases).
Is there a context for the type of things you are using your intuition for?
Concept-shaped holes are such a useful concept; from what I can tell, it seems like a huge amount of miscommunication happens because people have somewhat different understandings of the same word.
I think I interpret people’s advice and opinions pretty differently now that I’m aware of concept-shaped holes.
Yes. This is why language is so difficult. Then there’s the added layer of propoganda. It can make two people who “speak the same language” be completely unable to understand each other.