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The argument is fundamentally and fatally flawed by a lack of understanding of how the "mind" works. The basic flaw in the argument is that there is only one "

The argument is fundamentally and fatally flawed by a lack of understanding of how the "mind" works. The basic flaw in the argument is that there is only one "mind" and that all its workings are available to us. But as much recent research shows, especially that of Tversky and Kahneman, we have at least two "minds", the so-called "fast" and "slow" systems, and the "fast" system is not directly accessible to "us" - and "us", what we recognize as "us", is the working of "slow", the deliberate, conscious, effortful problem solver, often called upon to cook up a "good enough story" to explain an exception "fast" couldn't make sense of. "Fast" might be terrifically good at probability, with some survival heuristics favouring particular conclusions - better to always conclude that those weird pattens in the bush are a tiger than to be wrong once. Since "fast" is not really accessible to "slow", it matters not how good "fast" is at probability - and "fast" could be 100% probabilistic AI and we'd never know it... ...not without detailed neurophychological study, at least. It certainly wouldn't "just be evident".

middayc 13y ago
My argument doesn't assume that we don't have unconscious processes. Maybe I didn't express well what I think. I do think we have multiple "minds" (I even wrote a blogpost on this subject on another blog once). Maybe my "then people would be naturally great at probability" came out as if we would then consciously know about probability, know the formulas etc without the need to learn about them. No. I tried to say that if so then results of our "fast" mind would be very well attuned to probabilistic study of the problem. For example, you wouldn't become scared when boarding a plane. I will try to write another blogpost being more precise. Not that it's worth anything, more for myself. I won't post it here, not because of opposing comments, but because many think this is not a HN material and I don't want to spam. Not that it matters, obviously. But I don't think there is no probability processing anywhere in the system (we do conscious probability if not else). My thoughts were that it can't be the main or important driver behind it all. I think the memory itself (storage and "soft" retrieval of information .. my theory on models that we make) plays much more important role in our function than any special or complex algorithm. Again, not that it matters what I think.

middayc 13y ago

My argument doesn't assume that we don't have unconscious processes. Maybe I didn't express well what I think. I do think we have multiple "minds" (I even wrote a blogpost on this subject on another blog once). Maybe my "then people would be naturally great at probability" came out as if we would then consciously know about probability, know the formulas etc without the need to learn about them. No. I tried to say that if so then results of our "fast" mind would be very well attuned to probabilistic study of the problem. For example, you wouldn't become scared when boarding a plane. I will try to write another blogpost being more precise. Not that it's worth anything, more for myself. I won't post it here, not because of opposing comments, but because many think this is not a HN material and I don't want to spam. Not that it matters, obviously. But I don't think there is no probability processing anywhere in the system (we do conscious probability if not else). My thoughts were that it can't be the main or important driver behind it all. I think the memory itself (storage and "soft" retrieval of information .. my theory on models that we make) plays much more important role in our function than any special or complex algorithm. Again, not that it matters what I think.