I think that misunderstandings can occur when one person presents an idea which possesses some features which resemble features of another idea that a listener has already considered. If the resemblance is somewhat superficial, especially if the superficial resemblances lie *at a shallow underlying level, *a person who is listening to the idea may feel certain that he was totally familiar with the idea even though he might not really get what the speaker was saying. The listener may casually miscategorize the presented idea by thinking that it was the same as the similar idea he had already considered. Good ideas are often unoriginal or unsurprising and this vague familiarity can strangely have a non-intuitive effect to further a misunderstanding. The reason that this can occur is that ideas sometimes need to be emphasized or 'formalized' in some way in order for them to be fully appreciated.
I for one would like to be able to understand why people who should be interested in something I have said aren't. The answer to this question has always been somewhat elusive. A primary characteristic that can produce this kind of misunderstanding is superficiality in the listener. (Of course the new idea may be poorly presented and we all make a variety of mistakes, but I am often confronted with the experience where I have repeatedly presented a commonsense idea and I can't find anyone who acts like they understand what I am talking about). But is there anyway you can verify (at least for yourself) that someone who should be reacting intelligently to what you are saying is actually reacting at a too-superficial level? I have found that there is a way in this group because we are constantly talking about artificial means of creating "personality" traits. If someone repeatedly emphasizes superficiality of association as a presumption for the basis of intelligence then there is a chance that he might unitentionally be describing a method that commonly underlies his own thought processes. For example, I have described a process of synthesis where a new idea is formed from the association of two pre-existing ideas based on a reason. The reasons can be superficial, like a superficial co-occurrence (of time or position) or a superficial similarity, but then I also emphasized that ideas may be related by complimentary conceptual roles. Furthermore, I have emphasized the importance of conceptual structure which is a term I use to stress that there may be a greater complexity to putting ideas together than just relying on one superficial feature. So now, if after expressing this and pointing out that the purpose of combining ideas is to create some semantic or operational structure, I see someone restating the insight that co-occurrence and similarity are the basis of correlation and association I will have some substantial evidence that my ideas were not appreciated by that person because he tends to be over reliant on superficial methods of thought. Co-occurrence, similarity, simple association and analogy are all examples of relations between ideas that are typically shallow. The superficiality may not be at the surface level, but it is usually not going to be that deep. The declaration of these relations are all ok but I feel that if the presenter is going to explain how intelligence works then he needs to take it to a deeper level. Of course, misunderstanding can also occur when a phrase is taken to refer to a superficial aspect of thought even though the speaker intended it to refer to deeper relations as well. But I think the declaration that the basis of correlation is co occurrence, similarity and associativity has just been too over-used to still be considered sufficient as a presentation of the basis of thinking. Thinking gets a little deeper than that. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
