http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2009/05/10/rational-incoherence/ Good Analysis, Bad Grammar Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:11:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2009/05/10/rational-incoherence/comment-page-1/#comment-14931 Anika Eckhart Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:49:26 +0000 http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/?p=533#comment-14931 <p>Thanks for posting this great information :)</p> Thanks for posting this great information :)

]]> http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2009/05/10/rational-incoherence/comment-page-1/#comment-9080 Eliezer Yudkowsky Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:32:24 +0000 http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/?p=533#comment-9080 <p>When Less Wrong <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality" rel="nofollow">says "rationality"</a>, we mean epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality: obtaining a certain sort of correspondence between a map and the territory ("truth"), and choosing so as to steer the future toward regions we value highly ("winning"). To formalize the former we have probability theory, for the latter decision theory. Of course there are many sorts of human behavior that aren't easily described in these terms. But why does that say that we can't have a coherent discussion about truth-finding or winning strategies? People who mouth certain words because they're socially expected to do so may not be coherently analyzable as having beliefs, but that's because they're not looking for truth. They could be called irrational or arational, but not rational.</p> When Less Wrong says “rationality”, we mean epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality: obtaining a certain sort of correspondence between a map and the territory (“truth”), and choosing so as to steer the future toward regions we value highly (“winning”). To formalize the former we have probability theory, for the latter decision theory. Of course there are many sorts of human behavior that aren’t easily described in these terms. But why does that say that we can’t have a coherent discussion about truth-finding or winning strategies? People who mouth certain words because they’re socially expected to do so may not be coherently analyzable as having beliefs, but that’s because they’re not looking for truth. They could be called irrational or arational, but not rational.

]]> http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2009/05/10/rational-incoherence/comment-page-1/#comment-5456 Robin Hanson Mon, 11 May 2009 11:00:40 +0000 http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/?p=533#comment-5456 <p>Can't we sensibly aspire to the goal of moving our beliefs closer to the truth, and to better distinguishing which of our apparent beliefs are actually epistemic-type beliefs?</p> Can’t we sensibly aspire to the goal of moving our beliefs closer to the truth, and to better distinguishing which of our apparent beliefs are actually epistemic-type beliefs?

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