Discussion Don't Always Believe Your Experience

[Joop]

Hello, I'm making this thread because IN MY EXPERIENCE. Experience is a teacher that often fails to teach the right message. Experience can be very misleading, and is not always misleading but often times it is.

Don't get me wrong, your experience is DATA. And that data, is probably a fact. But often times we including the "Why's" with the "What's".

Let me give you an example. Data, fact: 99% of the people who died ate a cucumber.
Now that seems like an innocent piece of data. But one may think "So cucumber is mostly the cause for death!"
That, right there, is an answer to the question "Why?". Why do people die? Well I don't know but SOMEHOW 99% of the people who died ate a cucumber! Why not draw a connection between the two! So take your understanding of reality by experience with a grain of salt. You know what happened, not always knowing why it happened.

 

[Smart No More]

Correlation doesn't inherently equal cause, right?


Take everything on individual merit, don't be led by your insecurities or assumptions and always aim to find the truth rather than seeing what you either want to see or fear seeing. As is seemingly most people's first instinct.

 

[Joop]

Correlation doesn't inherently equal cause, right?


Take everything on individual merit, don't be led by your insecurities or assumptions and always aim to find the truth rather than seeing what you either want to see or fear seeing. As is seemingly most people's first instinct.

That's very correct. Also people jump to conclusions out of ignorance and what is most conventionally reasonable, what usually makes sense. Though in some subject sense works backwards, against the intuition...

 

[Nolan96]

Unfortunately it's necessary to always trust your own experience over the experts, who will be fired from their jobs if they give the wrong answer and who are soulless propaganda-pushers. But definitely take in as much data as you can, being mindful of the fact that a lot of what's available is just the cherrypicked leftovers after key things have been brushed under the rug.

 

[Smart No More]

So true.


It's really weird. We've come to a cross roads in our evolution I think. On one hand we have to make generalisation as hunter gatherers for the sake of survival. We couldn't question certain things because the consequences could be death so we had the make general correlations in order to suevive as long as possible. Now though, we live in a different type of civilisation where thinks are infinitely more complex as we step closet and closer to understanding the bigger/and smaller picture of our existence and the science behind it. Add to this the complexities of social dynamics and our ever evolving beliefs and its no longer okay to generalise or make certain assumptions.

I'm not sure how I feel about all of it but I'm all for looking at things objectively. That's probably the only thing I'm certain of and ultimately facts change over time ha. We only know what we know and much of it is wrong haha.

 

[Joop]

Unfortunately it's necessary to always trust your own experience over the experts, who will be fired from their jobs if they give the wrong answer and who are soulless propaganda-pushers. But definitely take in as much data as you can, being mindful of the fact that a lot of what's available is just the cherrypicked leftovers after key things have been brushed under the rug.

Your experience is data, but we trust our experience by inferring the "Why's", sometimes a little too quickly.

"Why did I fail the test? Must be that the teacher is stupid! The whole class failed!"

Your experience/data is that everyone failed. But is it because the teacher is extremely stupid? Maybe... Maybe not... The why's are not obvious...

 

[CTB Dream]

Yea vry vry this know, exp not rely no need, can sci analyz befr happen can see no need waste time put self ,that why have tech advance intrnt all help. Why take 10y try thing can see analyz study. This why human still no adv tell how even thing art draw music etc study can see different type no stay one type 10y say exp try say no type. Algo simul do any posbl no need put self take exp, can stay safe take useful info no waste age time

 

[Joop]

Yea vry vry this know, exp not rely no need, can sci analyz befr happen can see no need waste time put self ,that why have tech advance intrnt all help. Why take 10y try thing can see analyz study. This why human still no adv tell how even thing art draw music etc study can see different type no stay one type 10y say exp try say no type. Algo simul do any posbl no need put self take exp, can stay safe take useful info no waste age time

Honestly you really got me confused here... I suppose I understood the last sentence though, you try to take useful information for your purposes. Which I do too, sometimes though what is the most useful information is under question... Which makes us all confused as to how to solve our problems. Or perhaps that's just my experience :)

 

[Sakura94]

She's saying computer simulations do things far faster than a single human doing a single thing by trial and error over a decade. Humans are very limited by time and resource and also risk, sacrifice IE: someone attacking their experiment or personal status while they complete the task. And then taking information direct from that process. Hence success of AI in recent years. She's not wrong. Though we have 8 billion humans so we still have a lot of lived data.
Something I've also been thinking over too. Humans tend to worship suffering, sacrifice, it is important to them they suffer the process. Perhaps this is part of the evolutionary process too, just a thought.

 

[Joop]

She's saying simulations do things far faster than a single human doing a single thing by trial and error over a decade. Humans are very limited by time and resource and also risk, sacrifice IE: someone attacking their experiment or personal status while they complete the task. And then taking information direct from that process. Hence success of AI in recent years. She's not wrong. Though we have 8 billion humans so we still have a lot of lived data.
Something I've also been thinking over too. Humans tend to worship suffering, sacrifice, it is important to them they suffer the process. Perhaps this is part of the evolutionary process too, just a thought.

First of all, thanks for explaining!

Prediction with simulation is useful, though doesn't always explain why things happen the way they do.

Let's say we are not sure whether earth is round or flat (although right now we clearly know it's round). If we were to run a simulation that predicts what comes next in the horizon - the simulation may correctly predict we are repeating on the same patterns (since earth is round, we would just complete a full circle), but we may reach the conclusion that it's because earth is actually flat and infinite repeating pattern (which is obviously not the case).

So in short a simulation, even if useful, not always explains the situation...

Humans tend to worship suffering, sacrifice, it is important to them they suffer the process. Perhaps this is part of the evolutionary process too, just a thought.

One more thing about this, people don't worship suffering only. They worship the opposite as well. For example they worship the ability to do something without breaking a sweat :)
Suffering is just one more thing we appreciate, and I believe evolution is a way to explain it (aka, if evolution is true - it could explain it)

Not saying you said we only appreciate suffering, just saying that in case someone would interpret or think in this way.

 

[Cathy Ames]

So take your understanding of reality by experience with a grain of salt. You know what happened, not always knowing why it happened.

Another good thing to keep in mind is that you really only know about your own experience. You don't actually know what other people are experiencing. For example, people who have recovered from depression are only experts on the topic of their own depression, not other people's depression.

 

[Joop]

Another good thing to keep in mind is that you really only know about your own experience. You don't actually know what other people are experiencing. For example, people who have recovered from depression are only experts on the topic of their own depression, not other people's depression.

That's just absolutely true and one of the things I was thinking when writing this topic.

People often times talk above another person because of experience, as if that makes them absolutely true.

But! Not only experience is a confusing teacher, but also is limited to the person experiencing.

 

[Cathy Ames]

That's just absolutely true and one of the things I was thinking when writing this topic.

People often times talk above another person because of experience, as if that makes them absolutely true.

But! Not only experience is a confusing teacher, but also is limited to the person experiencing.

Too many people are blind to the fact that another person can be having a completely different experience to them.

 

[Joop]

Too many people are blind to the fact that another person can be having a completely different experience to them.

Indeed. I was facing that very problem with music. Another person said to me "Eh, I used to be like you and now I've grown out of it."
But the truth is they never were like me, because their melodies suck! Also known in public as "Suck ass".
And of course - that person was just reluctant to accept the fact their experience doesn't give them power over me.