Compartmentalization

Compartmentalization, or division of types of activity on separate magisteria is a tendency to restrict application of a generally-applicable skill, such as scientific method, only to select few contexts. More generally, the concept refers to not following a piece of knowledge to its logical conclusion, or not taking it seriously.

A common phenomenon in humans is excellent epistemological performance in one domain - and terrible performance in others. This phenomenon undermines 'appeals to authority' but also shows that someone holding an obviously false belief can still be worth learning from.

Blog posts

• Outside the Laboratory
• Reason as memetic immune disorder by Phil Goetz
• That Magical Click
• The Mystery of the Haunted Rationalist by Yvain
• Simultaneously Right and Wrong by Yvain
• Compartmentalization in epistemic and instrumental rationality by Anna Salamon
• Compartmentalization as a Passive Phenomenon by Kaj Sotala
• Consistently Inconsistent by Kaj Sotala

See also

• Semantic stopsign, Anti-epistemology
• Cached thought
• Shut up and multiply, Bite the bullet, Absurdity heuristic
• Dangerous knowledge
• General knowledge, Understanding
• Alief
• Ugh field