The charitable interpretation of Eliezer’s position here is that he doesn’t want to tie the word ‘rational’ to any particular methodology. He wants to tie it to “winning”. So that, if someone comes up with a better decision theory (for example), he wants to evaluate the ‘rationality’ of that theory by the criterion of whether it wins, rather than by the criterion of whether it matches the orthodox methodology.
Personally, I think he is pissing into the wind in this attempt to hijack the meaning of a word. People in economics and related fields tend to take ‘rational’ as a term that can be freely equated to their own preferred methodology, and they use various hyphenated rationalities when they need to compare methodologies.
The charitable interpretation of Eliezer’s position here is that he doesn’t want to tie the word ‘rational’ to any particular methodology. He wants to tie it to “winning”. So that, if someone comes up with a better decision theory (for example), he wants to evaluate the ‘rationality’ of that theory by the criterion of whether it wins, rather than by the criterion of whether it matches the orthodox methodology.
I don’t have a problem with that definition. It seems the most useful one. It is just that being maximally rational doesn’t make you win all the time. It maximizes winning. Or expected winning. Something like that. It doesn’t make you guess lotto numbers perfectly or generally act like you’re save scumming the universe.
Short answer: No.
See, in particular: Probability is Subjectively Objective.
This is related to a mistake that crops up when people say “Rationalists Should Win” and mean it literally. (So I try to avoid the phrase myself.)
Agree that that has similar problems.
I had forgotten the extent to which Eliezer stuck to his guns in backing that claim. Ick.
The charitable interpretation of Eliezer’s position here is that he doesn’t want to tie the word ‘rational’ to any particular methodology. He wants to tie it to “winning”. So that, if someone comes up with a better decision theory (for example), he wants to evaluate the ‘rationality’ of that theory by the criterion of whether it wins, rather than by the criterion of whether it matches the orthodox methodology.
Personally, I think he is pissing into the wind in this attempt to hijack the meaning of a word. People in economics and related fields tend to take ‘rational’ as a term that can be freely equated to their own preferred methodology, and they use various hyphenated rationalities when they need to compare methodologies.
I don’t have a problem with that definition. It seems the most useful one. It is just that being maximally rational doesn’t make you win all the time. It maximizes winning. Or expected winning. Something like that. It doesn’t make you guess lotto numbers perfectly or generally act like you’re save scumming the universe.