Johnicholas comments on Epistemic Viciousness - Less Wrong

55 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 March 2009 11:33PM

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Comment author: Johnicholas 14 March 2009 03:59:37AM 6 points [-]

"The way I test the rationality of the people around me is by lying to them, generally about irrelevant things, and seeing if they can unravel the lies."

Unless you are carefully documenting your procedures (which I doubt), this is exactly the kind of informal "testing" that gets superstitious or mystically inclined individuals into epistemic hot water. Playing pranks on your friends is one thing, striving for increased human rationality something else.