[SEQ RERUN] No One Can Exempt You From Rationality’s Laws
Today’s post, No One Can Exempt You From Rationality’s Laws was originally published on 07 October 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Traditional Rationality is phrased in terms of social rules, with violations interpretable as cheating—as defections from cooperative norms. But viewing rationality as a social obligation gives rise to some strange ideas. The laws of rationality are mathematics, and no social manoeuvring can exempt you.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Singlethink, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
It took me two or three re-reads to fully understand the point of this post, but the resulting click was as loud as a metal pipe being hit by a hammer. This is a really, really important concept, and I wish I had a better way of explaining it to people—I generally have to fumble for words when doing so.