3 ms·

> “Our ignorance is invisible to us” Just like those tricky drawings, that even after they tell you that both lines are the same length, your mind keep saying

> “Our ignorance is invisible to us” Just like those tricky drawings, that even after they tell you that both lines are the same length, your mind keep saying “nope that one is longer”. Something very similar happens when we try see our ignorance. It takes a lot of effort, especially when no one have ever bothered to teach us.

ACow_Adonis 8y ago
But if you ARE taught it, suddenly it becomes possible. If you are brought up in a philosophical tradition which essentially says: "Knowledge is forming a theory, and then trying to disprove it", then suddenly ignorance becomes visible. In the two line example: sure, you mind tells you they're different, but if you're taught that knowledge is about trying to falsify your own opinion, you think about how it might be disproved. You go grab a ruler, bring it back to measure the two lines, and hot damn! Growing up, I had a very similar moment trying to understand the Monty Hall problem. I was SO frustrated when my intuition said that I was right, I actually grabbed my father (sorry dad) and made him sit down with me while we physically ran through a hundred or so actual physical simulations and recorded the results to see whether practice would match up against theory or my intuition. It matched up with theory. I learnt a very valuable lesson about intuition and probability. Of course you're absolutely right however, almost no education system is actually set up to teach or grade using that style...and most kudos is given in academia for making positive claims rather than setting up realistic hypothesese and then working to actively disprove your own or other people's theories.
- sitkack 8y ago
  Getting a handle on the unknown is what makes new knowledge come into focus. By definition, they are working at the boundary. This is why we have formalisms that ensure we aren't fooling ourselves. The struggle is constant, that is why we need to blindly follow those formalisms. That step of running the simulation was crucial in not cementing gut feelings over proof. Not many people make that leap to running a simulation, even though causality and our ability to imagine a far future is a prime human skill.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

ACow_Adonis 8y ago

But if you ARE taught it, suddenly it becomes possible. If you are brought up in a philosophical tradition which essentially says: "Knowledge is forming a theory, and then trying to disprove it", then suddenly ignorance becomes visible. In the two line example: sure, you mind tells you they're different, but if you're taught that knowledge is about trying to falsify your own opinion, you think about how it might be disproved. You go grab a ruler, bring it back to measure the two lines, and hot damn! Growing up, I had a very similar moment trying to understand the Monty Hall problem. I was SO frustrated when my intuition said that I was right, I actually grabbed my father (sorry dad) and made him sit down with me while we physically ran through a hundred or so actual physical simulations and recorded the results to see whether practice would match up against theory or my intuition. It matched up with theory. I learnt a very valuable lesson about intuition and probability. Of course you're absolutely right however, almost no education system is actually set up to teach or grade using that style...and most kudos is given in academia for making positive claims rather than setting up realistic hypothesese and then working to actively disprove your own or other people's theories.

sitkack 8y ago
Getting a handle on the unknown is what makes new knowledge come into focus. By definition, they are working at the boundary. This is why we have formalisms that ensure we aren't fooling ourselves. The struggle is constant, that is why we need to blindly follow those formalisms. That step of running the simulation was crucial in not cementing gut feelings over proof. Not many people make that leap to running a simulation, even though causality and our ability to imagine a far future is a prime human skill.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]