This is a cogent and insightful piece, thanks for writing it. You mention two kinds of people. Person 1 understands a complex idea but cannot articulate it without resorting to a simple copy. Person 2 does not understand the complex idea but since they gain sufficient utility from the simple copy they believe the idea is true. There may be no way of telling these two kinds of people apart just by talking to them. Outside their own minds they will appear to be in the same category.
This is extremely true in my experience. I'd say people are much more able to talk intelligently about subjects they DON'T have dumb availability heuristic ready-made examples of than those they do. I imagine some book club comprised of randomly selected urban college graduates discussing a book about the Renaissance in July, then a book about Barack Obama in August. The July discussion would be of incomparably higher quality than the discussion in August.
Great analysis! In retrospect, I can say I've found your theory to be true every time I do a deep dive into any topic. When I recently began to read some theology, I thought I knew the basics of Christian theology, but I actually just knew the stupid cousin of actual theology, the dumbed down simple memes that had spread to me by osmosis.
To complete the circle we now need a dumbed down version of your idea for easy dissemination. "Every theory gets stupider over time"?
A commenter elsewhere pointed out that this pattern holds even for wrong theories. So it would be only appropriate for this one to get spread around and misinterpreted.
> The end result here is that you may be inoculated against many valid, helpful, accurate ideas, because you’ve been exposed to their stupid cousins first.
And yet to purposefully leave yourself unprotected by memetic inoculation in order to 'consider all things', you tend to make yourself vulnerable to the most complex and detailed explanations in defiance of Occam. This is why Lizzo is a sex symbol. But yes I agree very strongly with the premise. Just alerting you to the thorns & cliffs on the other side of the mountain.
This is a cogent and insightful piece, thanks for writing it. You mention two kinds of people. Person 1 understands a complex idea but cannot articulate it without resorting to a simple copy. Person 2 does not understand the complex idea but since they gain sufficient utility from the simple copy they believe the idea is true. There may be no way of telling these two kinds of people apart just by talking to them. Outside their own minds they will appear to be in the same category.
Nice work, dude!
"you just don’t see to get it, do you?" should read "seem", not "see". Good read!
This is extremely true in my experience. I'd say people are much more able to talk intelligently about subjects they DON'T have dumb availability heuristic ready-made examples of than those they do. I imagine some book club comprised of randomly selected urban college graduates discussing a book about the Renaissance in July, then a book about Barack Obama in August. The July discussion would be of incomparably higher quality than the discussion in August.
Great analysis! In retrospect, I can say I've found your theory to be true every time I do a deep dive into any topic. When I recently began to read some theology, I thought I knew the basics of Christian theology, but I actually just knew the stupid cousin of actual theology, the dumbed down simple memes that had spread to me by osmosis.
To complete the circle we now need a dumbed down version of your idea for easy dissemination. "Every theory gets stupider over time"?
I dig it.
A commenter elsewhere pointed out that this pattern holds even for wrong theories. So it would be only appropriate for this one to get spread around and misinterpreted.
"Every theory gets stupider over time"
Memetic entropy?
Great post!
> The end result here is that you may be inoculated against many valid, helpful, accurate ideas, because you’ve been exposed to their stupid cousins first.
This reminded me of Scott's old post https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/
Oh, no, I'm absolutely doing it out of hate now.
I wasn't.
Now I am.
Good work.
And yet to purposefully leave yourself unprotected by memetic inoculation in order to 'consider all things', you tend to make yourself vulnerable to the most complex and detailed explanations in defiance of Occam. This is why Lizzo is a sex symbol. But yes I agree very strongly with the premise. Just alerting you to the thorns & cliffs on the other side of the mountain.
"Looks pretty stupid, right?
Now, how would you feel if you had a number of encounters with people who would talk about how majestic horses were.
You’d think these people were idiots, right?"
Back in reality, though, McLuhan wrote that Africans understood cartoons quite well and cut scenes in film very poorly.