LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Don’t Trust Your Brain” by silentbob


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…if it's anything like mine[1]. If it isn't, then maybe treat this as an opportunity to fight the typical mind fallacy by getting a glimpse at what's going on in other minds.

I've made many predictions and have gone through a lot of calibration training over the years, and have generally become pretty well calibrated in several domains. Yet I noticed that in some areas, I seem surprisingly immune to calibration. Where my brain just doesn't want to learn that it's systematically and repeatedly wrong about something. This post is about the three four such areas.

(1) Future Ability to Remember Things

Sometimes, I feel incredibly confident that some piece of information will be easy for me to recall in the future, even when this is entirely false. Some examples:

  • When I meet a new person, and they mention their name, then while hearing it, I typically feel like "yeah, easy, it's trivial for me to repeat that name in my head so I will remember it forever, no problem", and then 5 seconds later it's gone
  • When I open some food/drink product and then put it into the fridge, I usually take a note on the product [...]

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Outline:

(00:43) (1) Future Ability to Remember Things

(02:32) (2) Local Optima of Comfort

(04:13) (3) Interpersonal Conflict

(05:26) (4) Bonus: Recognizing Im in a Dream

(06:19) Takeaway

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:

December 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uCXuqNcTPxxCJxnae/don-t-trust-your-brain

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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