| Yoav Ravid | v1.20.0Jan 3rd 2021 | (-201) Removed blog posts section (they were all already tagged) | ||
| Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) | v1.19.0Oct 3rd 2020 | (+201) tagged posts | ||
| habryka | v1.18.0Sep 13th 2020 | (+54/-201) | ||
| baaaaaal | v1.17.0Jul 6th 2016 | (+11/-7) grammar fix: singular "there is" to plural "there are" preceeding "a number of" | ||
| [anonymous] | v1.16.0Jul 31st 2014 | (+7) added an "a" and a "the" | ||
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| Grognor | v1.14.0Mar 10th 2012 | (+10/-20) | ||
| Vladimir_Nesov | v1.13.0Jan 21st 2010 | (+164/-134) moved "see also" to the end, added a link to status quo bias/reversal test | ||
| Vladimir_Nesov | v1.12.0Jan 7th 2010 | (+24) /* See also */ | ||
| Vladimir_Nesov | v1.11.0Dec 21st 2009 | (+30) /* Other posts */ |
There isare a number of situations wherein which the absurdity heuristic is wrong. A deep theory has to override the intuitive expectation. Where you don't expect intuition to construct an adequate model of reality, classifying an idea as impossible may be overconfident. The future is usually "absurd", although sometimes it's possible to rigorously infer low bounds on capabilities of the future, proving possible what is intuitively absurd.
The absurdity heuristic classifies highly untypical situations as "absurd", or impossible. While normally very useful as a form of epistemic hygiene, allowing us to detect nonsense, it suffers from the same problems as the representativeness heuristic.
There is a number of situations where the absurdity heuristic is wrong. A deep theory has to override the intuitive expectation. Where you don't expect intuition to construct an adequate model of reality, classifying an idea as impossible may be overconfident. The future is usually "absurd", although sometimes it's possible to rigorously infer low bounds on capabilities of the future, proving possible what is intuitively absurd.
Blog postsAbsurdity Heuristic, Absurdity BiasStranger Than HistoryWhy is the Future So Absurd?Arbitrary SillinessbyRobin HansonTalking Snakes: A Cautionary TalebyYvainThe Correct Contrarian Cluster