Cached thought
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A cached thought is an answer that was arrived at by recalling a previously-computed conclusion, rather than performing the reasoning from scratch. Cached thoughts can be useful in saving computational resources at the cost of some memory load, and also at the risk of maintaining a belief long past the point when evidence should force an update. In particular, cached thoughts can result in a lack of creative approaches to problem-solving, as cached solutions may interfere with the formation of novel ones. What is generally called common sense is more or less a collection of cached thoughts.
See also
- Groupthink, Information cascade
- Status quo bias
- Semantic stopsign, Separate magisteria
- Rationalist taboo
Main post
Other posts
- How to Seem (and Be) Deep — Just find ways of violating cached expectations.
- The Virtue of Narrowness and Original Seeing — One way to fight cached patterns of thought is to focus on precise concepts.
- Cached Procrastination by jimrandomh
- Cached Selves by Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk