From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Jul 28 2002 - 10:11:27 MDT
Another factor is the ability to detect patterns. A stupid person is
less able to detect subtle patterns and correlations than an intelligent
one. However, most patterns are spurious and not worth dwelling on, so
we learn to ignore them efficiently. But paranoia seems to be an
inability to ignore unlikely but important patterns - the probability
of the pattern is extremely low, but if it is true it would be so
important that it has to be further examined. This model would suggest
that intelligent people are more likely to end up in conspiracy theory
since they see more complex patterns to worry about; if they have a
slight predisposition to not being able to let go of patterns that might
be important they can turn into obsessives.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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