Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/Criticisms of LessWrong/reply (25)

I tried to write this, but crashed (again). When you look at what Cached thought are, in the guy's descriptions, it's quite different from priming, unless you bend over really far with your definitions.

What I talk about in the essay I've lost (2ce) is that the statistical side of our brains, or the sense of "what that is likely to mean" or priming is a way the mind tosses out ideas. Cached thoughts, at least in the LW essay is an idea that there is one path which is associated linearly with one choice and one solution. Look at the example - remove bricks first, and the chimney falls. No one does that. No one thinks like that. No one ever hears one path and says like an automaton, "i shall inact X, cause it's what I was told to do". Brains simply don't function that way. We may be far more likely to do a particular path, especially when fed by our brains connections it's formed after living for as long as anyone's lived.

Priming is similar to the example I use often about pyramids. when you hear a word in isolation, you will respond with the most likely image that word relates to, along with flashes of other possibilities. But that's not a cashed thought - especially when you think of caching the way this guy does, as a computer person. "I have a prior copy that I will use to fill in the blank", not "I have some ideas, a host of possibilities, and a shit load of experiences that I will bring to the table when thinking about anything". Making connections "If you say pyramid, I also think of deserts, of the bible, of the sphinx, of heiroglyphs, etc. But those thoughts do not also prevent me from thinking about Woo, or South America, or failed math classes.  That's to me, the central difference.

Again, maybe it's more about how he's writing, but I find his entire premise to be pushing to a solution that isn't set up by the argument. I know, quite talking about what I'm writing, and just fucking write it. ;-)