Morendil comments on Rationality Quotes November 2009 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 November 2009 11:36PM

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Comment author: Morendil 30 November 2009 08:03:11AM 5 points [-]

Our actions generally satisfy us: we recognize that they are in the main coherent, and that they make appropriate, well-timed contributions to our projects as we understand them. So we safely assume them to be the product of processes that are reliably sensitive to ends and means. That is, they are rational, in one sense of that word. But that does not mean they are rational in a narrower sense: the product of serial reasoning.

-- Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained

Comment author: DanArmak 30 November 2009 05:26:59PM 0 points [-]

Our actions generally satisfy us

Incidentally, it seems to me that this invokes the anthropic principle. To wit, if our actions generally seemed irrational and unsatisfactory to ourselves, we would probably go insane.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 November 2009 05:52:22PM 0 points [-]

That seems to stretch the anthropic principle rather further than I would be included to do.