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I think something that goes hand in hand with being a naive realist is believing in the accuracy of our own memory and in our conscious control of our own actio

I think something that goes hand in hand with being a naive realist is believing in the accuracy of our own memory and in our conscious control of our own actions. Most people believe their memory to be an accurate account of their experiences and also believe that they choose how they act and behave. Any serious introspection, however, quickly shows how foolish those two beliefs are.

googlryas 4y ago
How should I go about disproving to myself that my memory is accurate and I am in conscious control of my actions? I hear it said, but every time I call upon my memory of something long ago that is externally verifiable, I am pretty much always accurate (either I get it right, or realize I don't know).
- Jensson 4y ago
  These psychological results are only true for average people, note how in every experiment there are always many people who does the rationally correct thing to do. So there is no reason to believe based on those studies that people who have much higher levels of rationality doesn't exist. Its just, many will believe they are rational when they aren't, since their lack of rationality makes them unable to see all the ways they are irrational. But people who notice their own irrationality can just stop doing those things and change their views and therefore becomes much more rational than average. So we have several layers, we have those who don't see their own irrationality and call themselves rational, we have those who see their own irrationality and call themselves irrational since they are, and then we have the ones who see their own irrationality and takes measures to fix it and therefore call themselves rational. The last group would be the most rational ones, but is still often mistaken for the first group.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Pick a room of your home growing up. Draw a picture of it, as best you can, from memory. Go ask your siblings or parents if you're right. Memory is a fluid thing.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    You assume the person has a clear picture of their childhood home. At least for me I only have very fuzzy mental pictures of my childhood homes, I'd have to try to piece them together to draw anything so I know I'd get many tings wrong. I don't think that everyone adds a lot of fake information to their memory unconsciously, I know some does based on those studies but no study found that everyone did that. Instead I do know that my memory is very rarely wrong, when I answer test questions and I remember something from long ago I am almost always correct when answering for example so I got good grades without studying much at all.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? Could you have a mistaken belief about your memory and it's veracity?
      - Jensson 4y ago
        I barely studied for tests and still remembered the questions, the grades I got from them are still there. It is very hard to fake that sort of thing for yourself, everyone knows roughly how well their memory serves them during tests in school. If you had to study a lot then you know your memory is shit, so rationally you shouldn't believe anything you recall. Edit: > Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? I remember the sources of my beliefs. Sometimes I have mistaken beliefs since the sources were wrong or fuzzy, like my parents told me something that I then believed, but then I learned that my parents were wrong. This makes it very easy to correct mistaken beliefs, since you just go back to the sources and verify and re evaluate the information against the new disagreeing information. Remembering the sources of what you know isn't that much extra information, so it isn't particularly hard to do, but it helps a lot keeping yourself more rational.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Unfortunately I built a memory palace out of my childhood home, so that is an area I'm very confident in (and yes, I've double checked my palace with pictures and it all lines up).
- feanaro 4y ago
  You can prove the limitations of your memory quite easily to yourself -- but don't cheat! Find a so-called DRM word list (acronym originating from the researchers' names Deese, Roediger and McDermott) and have someone test you: They present you with the word list for a predetermined amount of time during which you attempt to memorize it. Then they ask you to recall which words were present. Along with recalling (some of the) actual words, you are in addition likely to recall a so-called critical word which was not actually present in the list. A collection of such word lists can be found at https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf
  - Jensson 4y ago
    I've done that test in a real study, I scored perfectly. As long as you have reasonable understanding of the limitations of your own memory then you wont over or under estimate the accuracy of it, this isn't particularly hard to do for some people. Just because many people makes that mistake doesn't mean that such mistakes are common in everyone.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - feanaro 4y ago
      See my [other response](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649). The claim is certainly you cannot get a DRM-style test "right". Just because someone somewhere gets it right, that doesn't mean you can rely on your memory to be infallible.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    I actually did one of these in college (like 20 years ago), and got it perfect. Not sure if it was a DRM word list specifically, since it was just a psych major room mate testing me, but it seemed very similar. But even if I didn't, that's not really the kind of thing I would ever call upon my memory for. Usually it is something like (real, recent examples from my life): "Who said what, when, how, and to whom", "who was here and who left first", "did this scene happen before or after this other scene in the movie", "who threw the first punch", etc.
nawgz 4y ago
I find the idea that we don’t choose how we act and behave to be strange. I’m with you that memories are inaccurate but the latter point just reads like you fully deny free will and there is not even conscious level filtering or decisions made prior to action. Can you expand on what you mean?
- feanaro 4y ago
  The conscious filtering and the actions are an illusion. They certainly happen on some level, since humans are clearly adaptable and reactive systems, but they are not likely to be conscious as we conceive of them. We usually feel like there is a person inside that has control and almost extra-physical ability to override, but surely this must be result of physical inputs and processes? In a weird twist, meditation is one thing that makes this subjectively apparent. There have also been some (contentious) scientific experiments pointing towards this.
  - NateEag 4y ago
    > We usually feel like there is a person inside that has control and almost extra-physical ability to override, but surely this must be result of physical inputs and processes? I know of no rigorous evidence against the idea that we're purely matter and physics, nor do I know of any rigorous evidence showing that's all there is to humans (or living beings generally). It's arguably a "mysticism of the gaps", but the "hard problem" form of consciousness still seems like a pretty weird outcome of evolution to me if that is in fact what it is, and not something that's adequately explained by, say, the anthropic principle. I realize opinions will vary, and I'm okay with that - this one happens to be mine at the moment. It seems to me to require a decent amount of faith in the idea that only matter exists to conclude that consciousness and free will must be illusory. It's certainly a defensible, reasonable stance, but I don't think it's the only plausible one. > There have also been some (contentious) scientific experiments pointing towards this. If you're referring to Libet's analysis of the Bereitschaftspotential experiments, there has been some acceptance in the past few years that this paper shows he misinterpreted the data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 Popular summary of the debate in The Atlantic: https://archive.ph/SHH0p https://archive.ph/SHH0p

googlryas 4y ago

How should I go about disproving to myself that my memory is accurate and I am in conscious control of my actions? I hear it said, but every time I call upon my memory of something long ago that is externally verifiable, I am pretty much always accurate (either I get it right, or realize I don't know).

Jensson 4y ago
These psychological results are only true for average people, note how in every experiment there are always many people who does the rationally correct thing to do. So there is no reason to believe based on those studies that people who have much higher levels of rationality doesn't exist. Its just, many will believe they are rational when they aren't, since their lack of rationality makes them unable to see all the ways they are irrational. But people who notice their own irrationality can just stop doing those things and change their views and therefore becomes much more rational than average. So we have several layers, we have those who don't see their own irrationality and call themselves rational, we have those who see their own irrationality and call themselves irrational since they are, and then we have the ones who see their own irrationality and takes measures to fix it and therefore call themselves rational. The last group would be the most rational ones, but is still often mistaken for the first group.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Pick a room of your home growing up. Draw a picture of it, as best you can, from memory. Go ask your siblings or parents if you're right. Memory is a fluid thing.
- Jensson 4y ago
  You assume the person has a clear picture of their childhood home. At least for me I only have very fuzzy mental pictures of my childhood homes, I'd have to try to piece them together to draw anything so I know I'd get many tings wrong. I don't think that everyone adds a lot of fake information to their memory unconsciously, I know some does based on those studies but no study found that everyone did that. Instead I do know that my memory is very rarely wrong, when I answer test questions and I remember something from long ago I am almost always correct when answering for example so I got good grades without studying much at all.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? Could you have a mistaken belief about your memory and it's veracity?
    - Jensson 4y ago
      I barely studied for tests and still remembered the questions, the grades I got from them are still there. It is very hard to fake that sort of thing for yourself, everyone knows roughly how well their memory serves them during tests in school. If you had to study a lot then you know your memory is shit, so rationally you shouldn't believe anything you recall. Edit: > Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? I remember the sources of my beliefs. Sometimes I have mistaken beliefs since the sources were wrong or fuzzy, like my parents told me something that I then believed, but then I learned that my parents were wrong. This makes it very easy to correct mistaken beliefs, since you just go back to the sources and verify and re evaluate the information against the new disagreeing information. Remembering the sources of what you know isn't that much extra information, so it isn't particularly hard to do, but it helps a lot keeping yourself more rational.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Unfortunately I built a memory palace out of my childhood home, so that is an area I'm very confident in (and yes, I've double checked my palace with pictures and it all lines up).
feanaro 4y ago
You can prove the limitations of your memory quite easily to yourself -- but don't cheat! Find a so-called DRM word list (acronym originating from the researchers' names Deese, Roediger and McDermott) and have someone test you: They present you with the word list for a predetermined amount of time during which you attempt to memorize it. Then they ask you to recall which words were present. Along with recalling (some of the) actual words, you are in addition likely to recall a so-called critical word which was not actually present in the list. A collection of such word lists can be found at https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf
- Jensson 4y ago
  I've done that test in a real study, I scored perfectly. As long as you have reasonable understanding of the limitations of your own memory then you wont over or under estimate the accuracy of it, this isn't particularly hard to do for some people. Just because many people makes that mistake doesn't mean that such mistakes are common in everyone.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - feanaro 4y ago
    See my [other response](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649). The claim is certainly you cannot get a DRM-style test "right". Just because someone somewhere gets it right, that doesn't mean you can rely on your memory to be infallible.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I actually did one of these in college (like 20 years ago), and got it perfect. Not sure if it was a DRM word list specifically, since it was just a psych major room mate testing me, but it seemed very similar. But even if I didn't, that's not really the kind of thing I would ever call upon my memory for. Usually it is something like (real, recent examples from my life): "Who said what, when, how, and to whom", "who was here and who left first", "did this scene happen before or after this other scene in the movie", "who threw the first punch", etc.

nawgz 4y ago

I find the idea that we don’t choose how we act and behave to be strange. I’m with you that memories are inaccurate but the latter point just reads like you fully deny free will and there is not even conscious level filtering or decisions made prior to action. Can you expand on what you mean?

feanaro 4y ago
The conscious filtering and the actions are an illusion. They certainly happen on some level, since humans are clearly adaptable and reactive systems, but they are not likely to be conscious as we conceive of them. We usually feel like there is a person inside that has control and almost extra-physical ability to override, but surely this must be result of physical inputs and processes? In a weird twist, meditation is one thing that makes this subjectively apparent. There have also been some (contentious) scientific experiments pointing towards this.
- NateEag 4y ago
  > We usually feel like there is a person inside that has control and almost extra-physical ability to override, but surely this must be result of physical inputs and processes? I know of no rigorous evidence against the idea that we're purely matter and physics, nor do I know of any rigorous evidence showing that's all there is to humans (or living beings generally). It's arguably a "mysticism of the gaps", but the "hard problem" form of consciousness still seems like a pretty weird outcome of evolution to me if that is in fact what it is, and not something that's adequately explained by, say, the anthropic principle. I realize opinions will vary, and I'm okay with that - this one happens to be mine at the moment. It seems to me to require a decent amount of faith in the idea that only matter exists to conclude that consciousness and free will must be illusory. It's certainly a defensible, reasonable stance, but I don't think it's the only plausible one. > There have also been some (contentious) scientific experiments pointing towards this. If you're referring to Libet's analysis of the Bereitschaftspotential experiments, there has been some acceptance in the past few years that this paper shows he misinterpreted the data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 Popular summary of the debate in The Atlantic: https://archive.ph/SHH0p https://archive.ph/SHH0p