Here’s a silly comic about rationality.
I rather wish it was called “Irrationally Undervalues Rapid Decisions Man”. Or do I?
Nick_Novitski
Karma: 48
This is why neophilia isn’t always selected for.
For starters, the Council of Nicea would flounder helplessly as every sect with access to a printing press floods the market with their particular version of christianity.
Undetectability is hard (impossible?) to establish outside of thought experiments. Real examples are limited to undetected and apparently-unlikely-to-be-detected phenomenon.
But if I took your question charitably, I would personally say absolutely yes.
I’ve always been fond of stealing Maxwell’s example: if there was a system of ropes hanging from a belfry, which was itself impossible to peer inside, but which produced some measurable relation between the position and tension between all the ropes, then what can be said to “exist” in that belfry is nothing more or less than that relationship, in whatever expression you choose (including mechanically, with imaginary gears or flywheels or fluids or whatever). And if later we can suddenly open it up and find that there were some components that had no effect on the bell pull system (for example, a trilobite fossil with a footprint on it), then I would have no personal issue with saying that those components did not exist back “when it was impossible to open the belfry.”
But I hold this out of convenience, not rigor.
First: Haha, voted up for humor.
But if I can be dour for a moment: presume we live in a universe where it’s not self-explanatory. What is the cautionary tale we can extract from this? That time spent thinking about optimizing happiness isn’t time spent experiencing it?
The return of the dojo metaphor! And here I thought we had seen the back of it.
Personally, I would go a step further and say that debating popular ideas which are unworthy of debate might be a good way to train bright un-titled college students.
My grandmother, being time-rich and lacking for good conversation, never failed to invite door-to-door prosyletizers into her house, then spend hours telling them how ridiculous their beliefs were. Soon after this behavior became known, one told her he had been placed in charge of training new young missionaries, and asked if she would mind if he brought them around and seeing how they did against her. She didn’t, so he did, and continued to until her health took its final turn for the worse.
Unfortunately, the anecdote ends there, so I don’t know what the results of the experiment were, or if they are an actual argument for this trial by verbal fire. But I’m sympathetic to the guess that the practice would inculcate surety in those students who didn’t give up mid-way: they would have the answers to the common lies “beaten” into them.
What makes the intelligence cycle zero-sum? What devalues the 10 MIPs advance? After all, the goal is not to earn a living with the prize money brought in by an Incredible Digital Turk, but to design superior probability-space searching programming algorithms, using chess as a particular challenge, then to use that to solve other problems which are not moving targets, like machine vision or materials analysis or...alright, I admit to ignorance here. I just suspect that not all goals for intelligence involve competing with/modeling other growing intelligences.
Technological advances (which seem similar enough to “increases in the ability to achieve goals in the world” to be worthy of a tentative analogy) may help some (the 20 MIPs crowd) disproportionately, but don’t they frequently still help everyone who implements them? If people in Africa get cellphones, but people in Europe get supercomputers, all people are still getting an economic advantage relative to their previous selves; they can use resources better than they could previously.
Also, if point 3″ is phrased equally as vaguely as 3′ (perhaps: “Wealthy people are able to do things to increase the values in 2″.”), then it seems much more reasonable. Wealth can be used to obtain information and contacts that giver greater relative wealth-growing advantage, such as “Don’t just put it all in the bank,” or “My cousin’s company is about to announce higher-than-expected earnings,” or even “Global hyperinflation is coming, transfer assets to precious metals.” Conversely (I think), if point 3′ had a formulation sufficiently specific to be similarly limited (“Computers can keep having more RAM installed and thus will have more intelligence over time.”), I don’t see how that would be an indictment of the general case. What am I missing?
A ranking preference is expressed as a vote. An explanation is expressed as a reply. In the system as it stands, these are two very discrete actions. How often and in what circumstances do people use them in combination? What would be the effects of explicitly linking them?
So the solution is either to change the system’s design, or change the user’s behavior? The latter seems unlikely, so what would a system designed to utilize soft voting look like?
Please say more on which interpretations are nonsense, and why. As someone who wants to protect myself from being taken in by complex falsehoods apparently worthy of respect, I greatly value your better knowledge of them.
One view doesn’t need to “beat out” the other; for each societal state, there’s a corresponding equilibrium between individualistic- and group-think (or rather, group-think for varying sizes of groups) as each person weigh the costs and benefits of adherence for them. In a world of individuals, an organized and specialized group of any size “= more power.” Witness sedentary farmers displacing hunter-gatherers. On the other hand, in a world of groups, a rogue individualistic prisoner’s-dilemma-defector is king. Witness sociopaths in corporate structures, or the plots of far too many Star Trek episodes.
The balance of power can shift as Individualism becomes a better choice, due to its risks lessening and rewards increasing, whether due to culture, technology, or extensive debates on websites.
I agree, but that one kind is able to determine an optimal response in any universe, except one where no observable event can ever be reliably statistically linked to any other, which seems like it could be a small subset, and not one we’re likely to encounter except
Certainly, there are any number of world-states or day-to-day situations where a full rigorous/sceptical/rational and therefore lengthy investigation would be a sub-optimal response. Instinct works quickly, and if it works well enough, then it’s the best response. But obviously, instinct cannot self-analyze and determine whether and in what cases it works “well enough,” and therefore what factors contribute to it so working, etc. etc.
Passing the problem of a gun jamming the Rationality-Function might return the response, “If the gun doesn’t fire, 90% of the time, pulling the lever action will solve the problem. The other 10% of the time, the gun will blow up in your hand, leading to death. However, determining to reasonable certainty which type of problem you’re experiencing, in the middle of a firefight, will lead to death 90% of the time. Therefore, train your Instinct-Function to pull the lever action 100% of the time, and rely on it rather than me when seconds count.”
Does this sound like what you mean by a “beneficial irrationality”?
Also: I propose that what seems truly beneficial, seems both true and beneficial, and what seems beneficial to the highest degree, seems right. To me, these assertions appear uncontroversial, but you seem to disagree. What about them bothers you, and when will we get to see your article?
What makes a position well-chosen or more likely to assit in reaching actual conclusions?
I think that my bias towards our being related to monkeys is due to the meanings I invest in “monkey” and “human” as not being greatly dissimilar.
On the other hand, if I had already accepted the existence and human-exclusiveness of a soul, and/or a supernatural account of the world’s origin that afforded special primacy to humans as distinct from animals, then clearly I would think relations that crossed these distinct boundaries of type were too absurd to consider.
Also, another limitation on the heuristic might be, as you suggest, weighing the value of the time that it would take to investigate the proposition being examined; I’m more likely to pause and engage in a discussion of my beliefs when I’m relaxing in my leather armchair with a snifter of brandy than while I’m changing trains on the way to work.
“The God Belief”? Is that a freudian slip?
Not everyone tries to be rational. Some people despise rationality because of the same stink you attribute to it, or because of others. To them it might connote atheism, or linking themselves to low-status entities like “the man” or “the sheeple.”
A rational person is someone who applies rationality. A rationalist is someone who advocates the application of rationality, just as a racist is someone who argues the fundamental importance of racial status and history, or a “homosexualist” is someone who (purportedly) wants to make homosexuality part of all our lives.
There’s a dangerous potential to be confused between (for example) “objectivity” (the belief you mention) and “objectivism” (membership in the low-status group you mention).
Could we argue that forced “combat” with the opposite gender is good training for negotiating cooperation with hostiles towards futures higher in our preference ranking?
Err, and that such training is valuable.
I hear appeals to my politeness.
That is, because many people debate in order to show their skill at debating, or because they want to dominate the other person by making them submit to their position, some folks will mistake you for one of those people (assuming, of course, that you aren’t), and they’ll be upset by a debate continuing on for too long.
A rarer and sillier objection: the argument to coolness. “Why are you getting so upset about this? It’s not like it, or anything else, matters that much.”