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Learned Blankness — LessWrong

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One day, the dishwasher broke. I asked Steve Rayhawk to look at it because he’s “good with mechanical things”. “The drain is clogged,” he said. “How do you know?” I asked. He pointed at a pool of backed up water. “Because the water is backed up.” We cleared the clog and the dishwasher started working. I felt silly, because I, too, could have reasoned that out. The water wasn’t draining -- therefore, perhaps the drain was clogged. Basic rationality in action.[1] But before giving it even ten seconds’ thought, I’d classified the problem as a “mechanical thing”. And I’d remembered I “didn’t know how mechanical things worked” (a cached thought). And then -- prompted by my cached belief that there was a magical “way mechanical things work” that some knew and I didn’t -- I stopped trying to think at all. “Mechanical things” was for me a mental stopsign -- a blank domain that stayed blank, because I never asked the obvious next questions (questions like “does the dishwasher look unusual i

x Learned Blankness — LessWrong Motivations Cached Thoughts Identity Rationality Frontpage 271 Learned Blankness by AnnaSalamon 18th Apr 2011 6 min read 188 271 Related to: Semantic stopsigns , Truly part of you . One day, the dishwasher broke. I asked Steve Rayhawk to look at it because he’s “good with mechanical things”. “The drain is clogged,” he said. “How do you know?” I asked. He pointed at a pool of backed up water. “Because the water is backed up.” We cleared the clog and the dishwasher started working. I felt silly, because I, too, could have reasoned that out. The water wasn’t draini

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