9 ms·

The author seems to attack logical and rational thinking a lot, however, their argument is not convincing. "But I think Impostor Syndrome is valuable. The peop

by tensor 12y ago

The author seems to attack logical and rational thinking a lot, however, their argument is not convincing. "But I think Impostor Syndrome is valuable. The people with Impostor Syndrome are the people who aren't sure that a logical proof of their smartness is sufficient. They're looking around them and finding something wrong, an intuitive sense that around here, logic does not always agree with reality, and the obviously right solution does not lead to obviously happy customers, and it's unsettling because maybe smartness isn't enough, and maybe if we don't feel like we know what we're doing, it's because we don't." Most importantly, consider the quote "logic does not always agree with reality". Logic neither agrees nor disagrees with reality. Logic itself is flawless, but the assumptions you put into it can be wrong. The problem is not with thinking logically, thinking logically is good. Rather, it's an issue with holding incorrect assumptions. Leaving aside the problem of defining smart, the claim, then, is that the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold. That's quite a bold claim. It needs a lot more evidence than personal anecdote for me to accept.

shenberg 12y ago
Logic is very much flawed in the sense that you can't necessarily model reality using logic, and good paradoxes point out examples (for example look at the torturous "solutions" to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox ).
lhnz 12y ago
There is no quote that "the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you have". I can't even find the words false or assumption in the article. You are strawmanning or reading incorrectly. This is what he says: > Here's the problem. Logic is a pretty powerful > tool, but it only works if you give it good input. > As the famous computer science maxim says, > "garbage in, garbage out." If you know all the > constraints and weights - with perfect precision > - then you can use logic to find the perfect > answer. But when you don't, which is always, > there's a pretty good chance your logic will lead > you very, very far astray. My personal experience in life has been that this is the case. No matter how much I have studied, it's not possible to logic your way out of insufficient or misperceived data which in most domains other than programming is the rule. I've also experienced the same over-confidence of logical thinkers kept in bubbles - they adjust to the quantity and correctness of data they have in one part of their life and then use logic and cognitive biases to rationalise the outcomes they have in life.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > My personal experience in life has been that this is the case. No matter how much I have studied, it's not possible to logic your way out of insufficient or misperceived data which in most domains other than programming is the rule. > I've also experienced the same over-confidence of logical thinkers kept in bubbles - they adjust to the quantity and correctness of data they have in one part of their life and then use logic and cognitive biases to rationalise the outcomes they have in life. Well if they use logic then they are dumb, not smart. Centuries ago we've invented better tools called statistics and probability theory that are designed to deal with uncertain and incorrect data, and do this job optimally, as opposed to human intuition and cognitive shortcuts humans normally do.
MRSallee 12y ago
> ... the claim, then, is that the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold ... I disagree, the claim wasn't that smart people are wrong more often. But that smart people, even when they are wrong, are too good at rationalizing their wrongness to ever realize they were wrong in the first place.
- thret 12y ago
  Unskilled people fall into the same trap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- kamaal 12y ago
  At times this can send you down the wrong road while you are convinced you are correct. You will go too far to realize this, and generally you can't undo a lot of things later.
- eikenberry 12y ago
  Not recognizing you are wrong and heading down the wrong path is a sign of a lack of experience. Experience is what teaches you how to recognize 'wrongness' whether the reason for not recognizing it is rationalization or obtuseness doesn't matter. And a smart person would learn the lessons of this faster and thus suffer from it less in the long run.
zera11 12y ago
This article states that there are more than just one form of logic: http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/logic-of-buddhist-philosophy/ http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/logic-of-buddhist-philos...
- javert 12y ago
  And that is a blatant lie. By a famous philosophy professor, no less, which just means it a worse lie. All statements are true, false, arbitrary, or nonsensical. Contrary to Priest, a statement can't be true and false. (It can be neither true nor false, by virtue of being arbitrary or nonsensical.) A self-referential sentence, like "This sentence is false," is simply nonsensical. Famous philosophers have written whole books on the premise that this is an important problem, but it isn't. Graham Priest would probably gesticulate that I just don't "get it," but no, I do get it. I've read the article, and it's bullshit.
  - pron 12y ago
    You can define any consistent logic system you want. It would help if you think of "T" and "F" merely as two symbols rather than having semantics that seem familiar to you in the real world. But once you assign the meanings "true" and "false" to those symbols, you venture beyond mathematics into the realm of philosophy (in particular, epistemology). The problem is that while you can define "true" and "false" in a common logic system, taking the same definitions into the real world isn't so smooth. The main problem is that in the real world you don't have axioms -- you have assumptions which might be "true" or "false" (whatever that means once we go beyond our measurement range). This alone pretty much precludes almost everything in the real world from being "true" in the mathematical sense. These assumptions are so pervasive that even the most basic quality, or concept, underlying all of science -- namely, causality -- is a mere assumption. Therefore, your statement "All statements are true, false, arbitrary, or nonsensical" can only be defined to hold in a system of logic, but doesn't necessarily translate into the real world. Mathematically speaking, nothing we know of the physical universe is known to be either true or false. In fact, you can't even conclusively (again, in the mathematical sense) say that two statements about the physical universe contradict, because we don't "know" anything about the physical universe in the same sense as we know something in a mathematical logic system. In short, your opinion is neither true about mathematics (where you can define any system you want) nor about the physical universe, where you can't directly apply any mathematical logic system, and in particular the one you think is "the one true logic".
javert 12y ago
It also repeates the cliche that emotions are opposed to reason. That's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy for most people, but it just doesn't have to be that way. All you have to do is stop repressing your emotions but also stop appeasing them, two opposite sides of the same mistake. Rather you listen to them and treat them as an input and an output just like all other data (except they are special in being both input and output). (In a nutshell---in practice there is a lot more to it.)
- amirmc 12y ago
  In fact, you can't make well-reasoned choices without the emotional-processing regions of your brain being intact and healthy.
WalterBright 12y ago
Mr. Spock was always illogically neglecting the reality of emotional behavior in humans. I always thought Spock was the most illogical person on the Enterprise.
- zequel 12y ago
  But look at what they did on ST:Next Generation! They went the other way and replaced him with a psychologist who would proffer such advice as "The Klingons are firing at us, I sense anger."
jorleif 12y ago
As the author was speaking of his experience as a founder, I read his "logic does not always agree with reality" to mean that in an environment of sufficient uncertainty logic is not that useful, because you can think logically as much as you want, but you still cannot predict your environment. No thinking-based solution, be it logic or something else can work if you cannot predict your environment. It does not matter if logic is flawless or not. It is misleading to think about it as putting in the wrong assumptions, rather it is that in an unpredictable environment you cannot know what the right assumptions are.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > No thinking-based solution, be it logic or something else can work if you cannot predict your environment. It does not matter if logic is flawless or not. It is misleading to think about it as putting in the wrong assumptions, rather it is that in an unpredictable environment you cannot know what the right assumptions are. Of course there is a solution that can do this, it's called probability theory and it was invented exactly for this - for dealing with uncertainty and unpredictability. Moreover, I don't know where this meme that IT people/geeks/smart people use "logic" came from, it's nonsense and it must die now. Reality runs on probability theory, not by high-school logic. Also I think that those smart people are getting things right, the "curse" seems to me to be partly jealousy of the less smart (so they "those smarter guys are actually dumb" to boost their self-esteem [0]) and partly the fact that many things in this world are actually pointless nonsense that the society cultivates because, well, not everyone is smart. Many people get labeled "geeks" or "introverts" because they couldn't possibly care less about the soap operas average person play out in their lives. [0] - I've seen this behavior countless of times when objectively better schools, universities, courses, or even TED gets called "elitistic" and thus becomes bad/stupid in the eyes of those who're outside of the "elite" group.
  - jorleif 12y ago
    Probability theory is great, but there are still environments that are unpredictable enough that experimentation is the only alternative. Think of science, for example; If probability theory combined with past experience was enough, there would be no point in doing experiments. Probability theory can only give you the best estimate from the past. If the future is in any way different from the past, for instance because the past gives insufficient information about the process in question, the prediction will still often be wrong, and you are back to experimentation rather than thinking.
zhte415 12y ago
QED?
sergiosgc 12y ago
> the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold. I read a bit past what the author wrote. I think he observed that smart people in that context externalize blame. This is extremely natural, and something only seasoned individuals learn to avoid. Thinking that a project fails purely for external reasons prevents correction of personal actions on future events. As such, it is better to err on the side of blaming oneself than to err towards blaming the environment. II personally believe this behavior is pervasive across the entire intelligence spectrum. Personal accountability is something that is socially learned.
- zxcdw 12y ago
  > Personal accountability is something that is socially learned. But the problem arises, when you then need to take things into account which you simply can't anticipate. Consider this (overly simplified) exampe: I have to choose one out of A, B and C. I know that A is ruled out because of this and this. So I only have B and C as realistic options. I choose C, as it is furthest away from A and I could use this as an reasoning for it to be the safest bet. So, C it is. But then it just happens that for whatever reason C is ruled out too for whatever reason. Thus, by choosing C out of the three, I make no mistake. I had solid reasoning, for all I knew C should have been the safest bet. The fault is not mine, the fault is external. How can someone ever just suck it up, when they follow a precise, definite and convincing procedure to come to a situation in which external influence just makes it all fail for them? How could there be any personal accountability in an example described above? There is none, the reasons for failure are absolutely out of my control. I can not be held personally accountable (in a philosophical sense, world out there doesn't give a fuck) for things I have had absolutely no way to anticipate. How could you just go all "Oh well, you should have picked B instead, because had you done so, your choice wouldn't have failed!". Yeah, that's true, but there's nothing to learn about personal accountability there.
  - zaphar 12y ago
    Personal Accountability is about more than just admitting you were wrong. Sometimes it's about admitting that you didn't have enough information to make a definite choice. In you hypothetical situation while you didn't do anything wrong you still had something to learn. If you don't look back and see what information would have allowed you to pick B and instead go oh well, there was nothing I could have done differently. Guess it was just inevitable. You will miss an opportunity to learn and possibly do better next time. That missed opportunity is an example of arrogance in action.
mreiland 12y ago
still, logic is simply a system of thought, it's philosophy, nothing more (which is why Mathematics is considered a branch of philosophy). So the idea that logic isn't reality is a completely valid idea both because logic is simply a system of thought, and because logic cannot reasonably take into account perspective. you can reason about perspective, but reasoning by itself is not enough for logic, logic dicatates that you reason in a specific manner, and sometimes it's better to reason in other manners.

by tensor 12y ago

shenberg 12y ago

Logic is very much flawed in the sense that you can't necessarily model reality using logic, and good paradoxes point out examples (for example look at the torturous "solutions" to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox ).

lhnz 12y ago

There is no quote that "the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you have". I can't even find the words false or assumption in the article. You are strawmanning or reading incorrectly. This is what he says: > Here's the problem. Logic is a pretty powerful > tool, but it only works if you give it good input. > As the famous computer science maxim says, > "garbage in, garbage out." If you know all the > constraints and weights - with perfect precision > - then you can use logic to find the perfect > answer. But when you don't, which is always, > there's a pretty good chance your logic will lead > you very, very far astray. My personal experience in life has been that this is the case. No matter how much I have studied, it's not possible to logic your way out of insufficient or misperceived data which in most domains other than programming is the rule. I've also experienced the same over-confidence of logical thinkers kept in bubbles - they adjust to the quantity and correctness of data they have in one part of their life and then use logic and cognitive biases to rationalise the outcomes they have in life.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> My personal experience in life has been that this is the case. No matter how much I have studied, it's not possible to logic your way out of insufficient or misperceived data which in most domains other than programming is the rule. > I've also experienced the same over-confidence of logical thinkers kept in bubbles - they adjust to the quantity and correctness of data they have in one part of their life and then use logic and cognitive biases to rationalise the outcomes they have in life. Well if they use logic then they are dumb, not smart. Centuries ago we've invented better tools called statistics and probability theory that are designed to deal with uncertain and incorrect data, and do this job optimally, as opposed to human intuition and cognitive shortcuts humans normally do.

MRSallee 12y ago

> ... the claim, then, is that the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold ... I disagree, the claim wasn't that smart people are wrong more often. But that smart people, even when they are wrong, are too good at rationalizing their wrongness to ever realize they were wrong in the first place.

thret 12y ago
Unskilled people fall into the same trap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
kamaal 12y ago
At times this can send you down the wrong road while you are convinced you are correct. You will go too far to realize this, and generally you can't undo a lot of things later.
eikenberry 12y ago
Not recognizing you are wrong and heading down the wrong path is a sign of a lack of experience. Experience is what teaches you how to recognize 'wrongness' whether the reason for not recognizing it is rationalization or obtuseness doesn't matter. And a smart person would learn the lessons of this faster and thus suffer from it less in the long run.

zera11 12y ago

This article states that there are more than just one form of logic: http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/logic-of-buddhist-philosophy/ http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/logic-of-buddhist-philos...

javert 12y ago
And that is a blatant lie. By a famous philosophy professor, no less, which just means it a worse lie. All statements are true, false, arbitrary, or nonsensical. Contrary to Priest, a statement can't be true and false. (It can be neither true nor false, by virtue of being arbitrary or nonsensical.) A self-referential sentence, like "This sentence is false," is simply nonsensical. Famous philosophers have written whole books on the premise that this is an important problem, but it isn't. Graham Priest would probably gesticulate that I just don't "get it," but no, I do get it. I've read the article, and it's bullshit.
- pron 12y ago
  You can define any consistent logic system you want. It would help if you think of "T" and "F" merely as two symbols rather than having semantics that seem familiar to you in the real world. But once you assign the meanings "true" and "false" to those symbols, you venture beyond mathematics into the realm of philosophy (in particular, epistemology). The problem is that while you can define "true" and "false" in a common logic system, taking the same definitions into the real world isn't so smooth. The main problem is that in the real world you don't have axioms -- you have assumptions which might be "true" or "false" (whatever that means once we go beyond our measurement range). This alone pretty much precludes almost everything in the real world from being "true" in the mathematical sense. These assumptions are so pervasive that even the most basic quality, or concept, underlying all of science -- namely, causality -- is a mere assumption. Therefore, your statement "All statements are true, false, arbitrary, or nonsensical" can only be defined to hold in a system of logic, but doesn't necessarily translate into the real world. Mathematically speaking, nothing we know of the physical universe is known to be either true or false. In fact, you can't even conclusively (again, in the mathematical sense) say that two statements about the physical universe contradict, because we don't "know" anything about the physical universe in the same sense as we know something in a mathematical logic system. In short, your opinion is neither true about mathematics (where you can define any system you want) nor about the physical universe, where you can't directly apply any mathematical logic system, and in particular the one you think is "the one true logic".

javert 12y ago

It also repeates the cliche that emotions are opposed to reason. That's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy for most people, but it just doesn't have to be that way. All you have to do is stop repressing your emotions but also stop appeasing them, two opposite sides of the same mistake. Rather you listen to them and treat them as an input and an output just like all other data (except they are special in being both input and output). (In a nutshell---in practice there is a lot more to it.)

amirmc 12y ago
In fact, you can't make well-reasoned choices without the emotional-processing regions of your brain being intact and healthy.

WalterBright 12y ago

Mr. Spock was always illogically neglecting the reality of emotional behavior in humans. I always thought Spock was the most illogical person on the Enterprise.

zequel 12y ago
But look at what they did on ST:Next Generation! They went the other way and replaced him with a psychologist who would proffer such advice as "The Klingons are firing at us, I sense anger."

jorleif 12y ago

As the author was speaking of his experience as a founder, I read his "logic does not always agree with reality" to mean that in an environment of sufficient uncertainty logic is not that useful, because you can think logically as much as you want, but you still cannot predict your environment. No thinking-based solution, be it logic or something else can work if you cannot predict your environment. It does not matter if logic is flawless or not. It is misleading to think about it as putting in the wrong assumptions, rather it is that in an unpredictable environment you cannot know what the right assumptions are.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> No thinking-based solution, be it logic or something else can work if you cannot predict your environment. It does not matter if logic is flawless or not. It is misleading to think about it as putting in the wrong assumptions, rather it is that in an unpredictable environment you cannot know what the right assumptions are. Of course there is a solution that can do this, it's called probability theory and it was invented exactly for this - for dealing with uncertainty and unpredictability. Moreover, I don't know where this meme that IT people/geeks/smart people use "logic" came from, it's nonsense and it must die now. Reality runs on probability theory, not by high-school logic. Also I think that those smart people are getting things right, the "curse" seems to me to be partly jealousy of the less smart (so they "those smarter guys are actually dumb" to boost their self-esteem [0]) and partly the fact that many things in this world are actually pointless nonsense that the society cultivates because, well, not everyone is smart. Many people get labeled "geeks" or "introverts" because they couldn't possibly care less about the soap operas average person play out in their lives. [0] - I've seen this behavior countless of times when objectively better schools, universities, courses, or even TED gets called "elitistic" and thus becomes bad/stupid in the eyes of those who're outside of the "elite" group.
- jorleif 12y ago
  Probability theory is great, but there are still environments that are unpredictable enough that experimentation is the only alternative. Think of science, for example; If probability theory combined with past experience was enough, there would be no point in doing experiments. Probability theory can only give you the best estimate from the past. If the future is in any way different from the past, for instance because the past gives insufficient information about the process in question, the prediction will still often be wrong, and you are back to experimentation rather than thinking.

zhte415 12y ago

QED?

sergiosgc 12y ago

> the smarter you are, the more false assumptions you hold. I read a bit past what the author wrote. I think he observed that smart people in that context externalize blame. This is extremely natural, and something only seasoned individuals learn to avoid. Thinking that a project fails purely for external reasons prevents correction of personal actions on future events. As such, it is better to err on the side of blaming oneself than to err towards blaming the environment. II personally believe this behavior is pervasive across the entire intelligence spectrum. Personal accountability is something that is socially learned.

zxcdw 12y ago
> Personal accountability is something that is socially learned. But the problem arises, when you then need to take things into account which you simply can't anticipate. Consider this (overly simplified) exampe: I have to choose one out of A, B and C. I know that A is ruled out because of this and this. So I only have B and C as realistic options. I choose C, as it is furthest away from A and I could use this as an reasoning for it to be the safest bet. So, C it is. But then it just happens that for whatever reason C is ruled out too for whatever reason. Thus, by choosing C out of the three, I make no mistake. I had solid reasoning, for all I knew C should have been the safest bet. The fault is not mine, the fault is external. How can someone ever just suck it up, when they follow a precise, definite and convincing procedure to come to a situation in which external influence just makes it all fail for them? How could there be any personal accountability in an example described above? There is none, the reasons for failure are absolutely out of my control. I can not be held personally accountable (in a philosophical sense, world out there doesn't give a fuck) for things I have had absolutely no way to anticipate. How could you just go all "Oh well, you should have picked B instead, because had you done so, your choice wouldn't have failed!". Yeah, that's true, but there's nothing to learn about personal accountability there.
- zaphar 12y ago
  Personal Accountability is about more than just admitting you were wrong. Sometimes it's about admitting that you didn't have enough information to make a definite choice. In you hypothetical situation while you didn't do anything wrong you still had something to learn. If you don't look back and see what information would have allowed you to pick B and instead go oh well, there was nothing I could have done differently. Guess it was just inevitable. You will miss an opportunity to learn and possibly do better next time. That missed opportunity is an example of arrogance in action.

mreiland 12y ago

still, logic is simply a system of thought, it's philosophy, nothing more (which is why Mathematics is considered a branch of philosophy). So the idea that logic isn't reality is a completely valid idea both because logic is simply a system of thought, and because logic cannot reasonably take into account perspective. you can reason about perspective, but reasoning by itself is not enough for logic, logic dicatates that you reason in a specific manner, and sometimes it's better to reason in other manners.