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Since we are explaining ourselves, the best confabulation is all we can strive to achieve.


Exactly, memories aren't immutable, and every visit are bound to have a side effect.


When a problem is new and fresh for each participant, pairing can be a great tool to connect with both the problem and each other's innate skillset, IMO.


Why do you think thinking fast is more important than thinking slowly?


It makes life easier. E.G.

- Someone is explaining a concept.

- We get it in a few seconds, can come up connections, next steps, implications, etc.

- Other people need to have it explained longer, or miss the main point, or don't see how it connects to other pertinent things.

You can see how that would make life easier, and make you more effective at a variety of real time tasks.


Yup, but this always made school so fucking boring for me. Get it the 5 first minutes the teacher explains, spend 55 other minutes wandering in your mind about other stuff while the teacher proceeds to drill it into your peers memory repeating it ad-nauseaum until they sing it like fucking gospel.

That's the education I experienced at least, maybe someone else had better luck, but once you've to slowdown to the slowest of 30, and you're the fastest, things get pretty slow.


This messed me up so bad when I finally hit material I needed to work at even a little. Years and years and years of getting things instantly, with no effort whatsoever. Lecturing about the same thing again for the fifth day in a row, but I had it the first day? Cool, I'll draw cartoons and still answer any questions you ask me. Hand me a test? No problem. A-grade work in 5 minutes, read my book for the remainder of the hour. My stupid kid brain (this was... age 13 or so? Maybe 14?) was sure something horrible had happened to me over the Summer and I was now an idiot, when that stopped being how things worked. I wouldn't be surprised if I could have been diagnosed with actual depression, from then through my early 20s, mostly due to that and the follow-on effects.

I've since learned this is a super-common experience for gifted kids and one of the things really good gifted programs focus early on mitigating. I gather kids smarter than I was may still experience something similar, but not until they burn out hard and very suddenly, around Sophomore or Junior year of a challenging degree program.


If you had the choice understand the concept 10 times slower but in the end would come up with twice the amount of connections, would you consider it as something valuable?

Yes I see how it would make life easier, but is that really a meaningful goal?

And how do we know that the reasons behind that it makes life easier isn't just a bias society has towards its own traits? - E.g life is easier for right handed people aswell.


> If you had the choice understand the concept 10 times slower but in the end would come up with twice the amount of connections, would you consider it as something valuable?

But then they aren't just thinking slower, they are doing more processing. It isn't just "slow vs fast', it is "more processing vs less processing". Similarly if two people eat hamburgers as fast, but one of them eat twice as many hamburgers and therefore takes twice the time, it doesn't make him a "slow eater" it just means he eats a lot per meal.


Absolutely.

Then the question becomes: when is something fully processed - and to which degree is a person inclined to explore the depths of a concept?

What is the limit that decides when depth is no longer valuable?


But that is a different question.


We agree in part, I don't think its morally better to think faster. Just that it makes life easier/makes it easier to achieve life outcomes you want.


I think the extent to which this actually occurs is overstated in discussions of intelligence because it makes people feel better, but maybe I'm just an asshole.


> Why do you think thinking fast is more important than thinking slowly?

I would say _that_ should be the definition of intelligence (as in, how 'smart' one is). If it takes someone a day to understand something, and it takes someone else 5 minutes to do the same, it's not just a matter of time spent. It completely shapes _how_ one thinks and how deep you can go in any given subject. There's only so much brainpower we can expend before getting tired and 'restarting' tasks is not easy.

Let's say if you are listening to a discussion with a topic you aren't very familiar with, but your peers are extremely familiar with. You'll see that the way the conversation flows is very different. They will rapid fire, exchange incomplete sentences (because the other person has inferred the rest) and overall have a much more rich and complex conversation. You'll be thinking about the next chess move, they will be thinking 10 steps ahead.

Then you'll say: "that's a bad example, this is about knowledge, not intelligence, they are doing it faster because they know more about the subject". Yes. I'll argue that a meaningful 'intelligence' delta doesn't really exist among healthy humans. It's all about how many patterns you have been exposed to. When we try to measure intelligence, we end up measuring knowledge, every single time.

Take the Mensa tests. Someone who went to good schools and did mentally challenging things will have most likely encountered similar questions before. Not exactly the same questions, but adapting something you have seen before to a new situation is much easier than doing this for the first time.


why is the mensa test timed?


Good question, maybe because time is tangible and measurable? I don't know


No, it's abstractions of animal instincts, and that difference is huge.


I don't think so. A lot of those instincts, such as killing, are pretty strongly proscribed.


"How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain" by Lisa Feldman Barrett should be considered for this list.


The very first review I see at Amazon (Kimberly) is saying "Book's main premise is an erratic, non-peer reviewed assertion". The said review is detailed and has cited multiple references. I don't know what to conclude. Advice would help.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret/dp/15098...


You should not let one review stop you from reading Barrett's book. The subject is highly fascinating and important since much of our lives are ruled by emotions and feelings. I note that the review is from one "emotion researcher" who might be focusing on finer nuances which might not be relevant for a initial broad understanding of the topic for a general audience. Also the reviewer quotes Paul Ekman (i got introduced to this subject through his book Emotions Revealed) who has had his own research questioned - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman#Criticisms. Nothing is set in stone here; marrying Social Psychology to concrete Neuroscience is a very difficult endeavour so an exposure to all viewpoints should be sought out.


Thanks for a detailed response. I'll add the book to my reading list.


Thanks for sharing. Never heard of this book. I will check it out.


I second the recommendation. I thought it was great.


Holy shit the bias just reeks out of this paper.


Dude you have no information, I can't sincerely understand how you think you can have such detailed understanding of the situation.


Why would I need more information?

A guy was putting his hand on his co-workers' knees! Often enough that people scurried from him! It's clear the implication is made that this is just a "Hindu" thing.

That's wrong. It's not a Hindu thing. It's offensive to say it is. And the idea that my comments saying so are being flagged is also offensive.

Comments like Eh... Can't we just bomb them as usual? ;-) are the ones that violate HN guidelines and should be flagged.


Imagine the horror of seeing two men walking holding hands because they are just friends. Many cultures have it where adult male friends hold hands and it just means that.


You're setting up a straw man. In this situation no one is talking about two close friends walking holding hands.

We are talking about a man inappropriately touching his coworkers. Not coworkers who also happen to be good friends. Coworkers who are actively avoiding him because of it.

The LIE being told, and being upheld by you, is that this is part of "Hindu" culture. Anyone saying that is extremely ignorant about India.


I am also really surprised that you are being downvoted for this. This is not a cultural thing at all and assuming it away is terrible.


It is very much a cultural thing. What makes you think that it isn't?

In some cultures, men (non-romantically) holding hands is perfectly normal. In some cultures, a woman and a man shaking hands would be scandalous. In some cultures, touching somebody else's head would be considered extremely rude. The rules as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, what constitutes sexual behaviour, etc. are clearly different in different cultures.

"Touch has a high degree of cultural relativity. Thus, the meaning of touch can only be understood in its cultural context (Guindon et al., 2017; Halbrook & Duplechin, 1994; Phelan, 2009)."

"Sexualization Of Touch: Americans, in general, have difficulty conceptualizing physical contact as nothing more than emotional nurturance and tend to avoid touch for fear of being misunderstood (Hunter & Struve, 1998; Zur, 2007a, 2007b)."

https://www.zurinstitute.com/touch-in-therapy/


You are talking about things you know nothing about. How familiar are you with various Indian cultures? This thing about putting his hand on coworker's knees, to the point that they avoid him, is very much not a part of Indian culture.

Yes, men holding hands is commonly seen.... when those men are close friends. There would be no people trying to avoid each other.


I am not talking about Indian culture at all, and don’t know whether this specific encounter in this specific environment by this specific person was sexual or appropriate or whatever. I am specifically objecting to "This is not a cultural thing at all" by the GP.


So.... by your definition literally everything is a cultural thing? If you aren't talking about this specific situation, wtf are you talking about?


> A guy was putting his hand on his co-workers' knees!

Oh my god!


I perceive "hand on knees" gesture either as an intimate sensual caress, or unwanted groping and borderline sexual harassment.

Is "hand on knee" just a friendly way to position yourself when talking to someone in some cultures (so I know what to expect)?


It is not incorrect. In fact, your arguments aren't even mutually exclusive, depending on the context.

One is not an individual or a group inherently, it is solely based on the concepts you are using to create the context.


There was a cultural agreement to not use those weapons. Back then the community had to create rules for the game.


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