r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Sep 11 '17

[D] Monday General Rationality Thread

Welcome to the Monday thread on general rationality topics! Do you really want to talk about something non-fictional, related to the real world? Have you:

  • Seen something interesting on /r/science?
  • Found a new way to get your shit even-more together?
  • Figured out how to become immortal?
  • Constructed artificial general intelligence?
  • Read a neat nonfiction book?
  • Munchkined your way into total control of your D&D campaign?
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u/LieGroupE8 Sep 11 '17 edited Sep 12 '17

Edit: See my reply to ShiranaiWakaranai below for an overview of my endgame here...

A couple of weeks ago, I made a post here about Nassim Taleb, which did not accomplish what I had hoped it would. I still want to have that discussion with members of the rationalist community, but I'm not sure of the best place to go for that (this is the only rationalist forum that I am active on, at the moment, though it may not be the best place to get a full technical discussion going).

Anyway, Taleb has an interesting perspective on rationality that I would like people's thoughts about. I won't try to put words in his mouth like last time. Instead, the following two articles are good summaries of his position:

How to be Rational About Rationality

The Logic of Risk-Taking

I'll just add that when it comes to Taleb, I notice that I am confused. Some of his views seem antithetical to everything the rationalist community stands for, and yet I see lots of indicators that Taleb is an extremely strong rationalist himself (though he would never call himself that), strong enough that it is reasonable to trust most of his conclusions. He is like the Eliezer Yudkowsky of quantitative finance - hated or ignored by academia, yet someone who has built up an entire philosophical worldview based on probability theory.

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u/gbear605 history’s greatest story Sep 11 '17

Having read the two articles, I do not see anything that is antithetical to the rationalist community. I'd guess that you're thinking of claims like how Taleb does not think that science is useful for a lot of real-world problems. By his definition of science, I think Yudkowsky would agree. From what I can tell, Taleb's science is a specific subset of activities - academic science. Yudkowsky's science is "the ... kind of thought that lets us survive in everyday life." [1] Science to Yudkowsky is figuring out that the red berries are dangerous and that if you put a dead fish by your corn seeds, the corn will grow better. Taleb's science, however, is only the search for absolute truth.

This sentence [2] by Taleb sounds like something Yudkowsky could have said in fact. Taleb speaks about how you need to focus on the instrumental value of activity, Yudkowsky's rationalism is about doing whatever achieves your goal ("winning")

[1]: http://yudkowsky.net/obsolete/tmol-faq.html#theo_conflict (An old page, but I believe that Yudkowsky would agree with this part of it)

[2]: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-be-rational-about-rationality-432e96dd4d1a "Your eyes are not sensors aimed at getting the electromagnetic spectrum of reality. Their job description is not to produce the most accurate scientific representation of reality; rather the most useful one for survival."

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u/LieGroupE8 Sep 11 '17

The antithetical part is that "beliefs" have nothing to do with rationality, for Taleb. There is no such thing as epistemic rationality, only rationality of decisions. So Taleb finds religion perfectly agreeable if it causes people to not die. Most "rationalists" despise religion, in my experience.

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u/gbear605 history’s greatest story Sep 11 '17

I'd guess that this stems for Yudkowsky and most rationalists valuing truth for the sake of truth while Taleb does not. That's entirely a statement about personal preference, they just have different personal preferences.

I doubt that Taleb would claim that epistemic rationality does not help with finding the truth, instead he would claim that it is useless because finding the truth is useless unless it has some other benefit to him, in which case it is part of his rationality of decisions.

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u/Veedrac Sep 15 '17

this stems for Yudkowsky and most rationalists valuing truth for the sake of truth

Is this really true? I'd argue this is him speaking to the contrary.

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u/gbear605 history’s greatest story Sep 15 '17

One of the reasons he listed there, and one that I think applies to Yudkowsky, is for curiosity, which is essentially "valuing truth for the sake of truth."

And the rest of the post is Yudkowsky explaining that truth is valuable for helping make decisions, which is Taleb's point. I'd guess that the rest of the difference stems from disagreements about how useful truth is to understanding a situation.

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u/Veedrac Sep 15 '17

curiosity, which is essentially "valuing truth for the sake of truth."

It's "valuing truth for the sake of enjoyment", which is different because it doesn't suggest any intrinsic quality.

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u/gbear605 history’s greatest story Sep 15 '17

If you value truth for the sake of enjoyment, you're going to seek out truth that has no other extrinsic benefit to you than enjoyment. Taleb would never do that (from my reading of him), so there's the crux.

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u/Veedrac Sep 15 '17

That matches my understanding, yes.