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Affective Death Spirals — LessWrong

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Many, many, many are the flaws in human reasoning which lead us to overestimate how well our beloved theory explains the facts. The phlogiston theory of chemistry could explain just about anything, so long as it didn’t have to predict it in advance. And the more phenomena you use your favored theory to explain, the truer your favored theory seems—has it not been confirmed by these many observations? As the theory seems truer, you will be more likely to question evidence that conflicts with it. As the favored theory seems more general, you will seek to use it in more explanations. If you know anyone who believes that Belgium secretly controls the US banking system, or that they can use an invisible blue spirit force to detect available parking spaces, that’s probably how they got started. (Just keep an eye out, and you’ll observe much that seems to confirm this theory . . .) This positive feedback cycle of credulity and confirmation is indeed fearsome, and responsible for much error, bo

x Affective Death Spirals — LessWrong Death Spirals Affect Heuristic Affective Death Spiral Emotions Rationality Frontpage 124 Affective Death Spirals by Eliezer Yudkowsky 2nd Dec 2007 2 min read 46 124 Many, many, many are the flaws in human reasoning which lead us to overestimate how well our beloved theory explains the facts. The phlogiston theory of chemistry could explain just about anything, so long as it didn’t have to predict it in advance. And the more phenomena you use your favored theory to explain, the truer your favored theory seems—has it not been confirmed by these many observat

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