“Systematized winning” shouldn’t be about both equally, in an “A, and also B” sort of sense. It should be about a particular relationship between process and outcome: about using thinking techniques that help one win, whatever those turn out to be. “Rationality is using whatever thinking techniques actually help you build useful world-models”, or some pithier re-wording.
Then, when you combine that aim with the empirical claim that in fact to attain unusual success in a domain it helps to follow particular processes (e.g., to accept that the domain works the way it works; to gather evidence as to what practices are actually most likely to help you succeed rather than defending your first hypothesis against all objections; etc.), you end up with “systematized winning” having some implications about process. But it’d be nice if the slogan captured that the processes “rationality” might advocate are a means to the end of accurate beliefs and/or winning (and that the specific notion of how “rational people” think should be changed, if it turns out that our processes don’t help with accurate beliefs and/or winning), and that process goals have zero rationality-goodness in themselves, apart from their consequences.
It should be about using thinking techniques that help one win, whatever those turn out to be.
Absolutely. And rationality is the means by which we evaluate, implement, and update those techniques. The “means by which” in the previous sentence is what rationality is.
But the process stuff is here a means to an end (to be changed, if it turns out that our processes don’t help), rather than a reified end in itself.
You’re talking here about specific processes for achieving specific wins. I’m saying that rationality integrally involves the higher-level general processes by which we determine which techniques (low-level processes) to use, how to evaluate the results of using them, how to modify them based on experience, etc.
“Systematized winning” shouldn’t be about both equally, in an “A, and also B” sort of sense. It should be about a particular relationship between process and outcome: about using thinking techniques that help one win, whatever those turn out to be. “Rationality is using whatever thinking techniques actually help you build useful world-models”, or some pithier re-wording.
Then, when you combine that aim with the empirical claim that in fact to attain unusual success in a domain it helps to follow particular processes (e.g., to accept that the domain works the way it works; to gather evidence as to what practices are actually most likely to help you succeed rather than defending your first hypothesis against all objections; etc.), you end up with “systematized winning” having some implications about process. But it’d be nice if the slogan captured that the processes “rationality” might advocate are a means to the end of accurate beliefs and/or winning (and that the specific notion of how “rational people” think should be changed, if it turns out that our processes don’t help with accurate beliefs and/or winning), and that process goals have zero rationality-goodness in themselves, apart from their consequences.
It should be about using thinking techniques that help one win, whatever those turn out to be.
Absolutely. And rationality is the means by which we evaluate, implement, and update those techniques. The “means by which” in the previous sentence is what rationality is.
But the process stuff is here a means to an end (to be changed, if it turns out that our processes don’t help), rather than a reified end in itself.
You’re talking here about specific processes for achieving specific wins. I’m saying that rationality integrally involves the higher-level general processes by which we determine which techniques (low-level processes) to use, how to evaluate the results of using them, how to modify them based on experience, etc.