trapped priors: Nonlinear Function
Created: March 12, 2021
Modified: March 12, 2021

trapped priors

This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.
  • SSC link:
  • How general is this phenomenon?
    • You have a belief
    • Your belief colors your perception of something that doesn't inherently reinforce the belief
    • You conclude that your perception is reinforcing your belief
    • The belief grows even stronger
  • You could see this as fundamentally about rounding. You don't have the capacity to see that the prior + perception is slightly less in favor of your belief than the prior alone.
  • More specifically, maybe it's about the need to view things in discrete categories, which might somehow be a fundamental part of generalization?
  • But it's not always a numeric phenomenon. It can also be about the structure of your conceptual scaffolding.