Ignore the entire machinery of rationality. Treat all human interaction as nothing more than social grooming or status games in a tribe of apes.
Is there actually anything else to human interaction?
It makes no sense to expect people to engage the machinery of rationality when they don’t believe it’ll further their goals. Even if they benefit from being privately rational, it’s not necessarily in their interest to share their rationality with you. Hence, if you haven’t earned their respect, they’ll conceal their wisdom from you, like the Spartans.
In fact, pretty much everything in Eliezer’s post seems to apply only to the rare situation of two or more people who respect each other enough to actually feel a need to appear logically consistent and make their lies plausible. Usually at least one of the people is in no real need to convince the other of anything (i.e., they have higher status), so they won’t waste any time or energy trying to. Therefore, their statements serve other purposes; mainly, to display their high status and to warn the underling when they’re getting too close to a line they won’t let them cross unpunished. Conspicuously wasting the interlocutor’s time with nonsense serves this purpose very well.
Status, status, status. It gets (some of) us every time. There seems to be very little to life but status to a normal person.
Is there actually anything else to human interaction?
It makes no sense to expect people to engage the machinery of rationality when they don’t believe it’ll further their goals. Even if they benefit from being privately rational, it’s not necessarily in their interest to share their rationality with you. Hence, if you haven’t earned their respect, they’ll conceal their wisdom from you, like the Spartans.
In fact, pretty much everything in Eliezer’s post seems to apply only to the rare situation of two or more people who respect each other enough to actually feel a need to appear logically consistent and make their lies plausible. Usually at least one of the people is in no real need to convince the other of anything (i.e., they have higher status), so they won’t waste any time or energy trying to. Therefore, their statements serve other purposes; mainly, to display their high status and to warn the underling when they’re getting too close to a line they won’t let them cross unpunished. Conspicuously wasting the interlocutor’s time with nonsense serves this purpose very well.
Status, status, status. It gets (some of) us every time. There seems to be very little to life but status to a normal person.