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abigailgem comments on Epistemic Viciousness - Less Wrong
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What can be done about it? We can fight.
The Master can argue for Creationism, and try to defeat the pupil's refutation of it. We can argue for or against One-boxing on Newcomb's problem. Or pretend to be the AI arguing that the Gatekeeper should free it. The Master is only Master for as long as s/he is undefeated.
This equates rationality with victory in argument on an arbitrary side of an issue regardless of the truth; which is not at all the skill we want to inculcate.
Maybe instead of a fight, form it as a riddle:
The master gives an argument for creationism. The "homework" is for the student to understand why this argument is invalid.
Every now and then, just to mix things up, the master would give an argument for a statement which actually turns out to be true, to make sure that the student is actually searching for truth, and not just arbitrary counter-arguments to whatever it is the master said.
It depends upon an empirical question - do more rational arguments win? I think most of the folks around here assume they don't. But if they do, then it sounds like a good enough test.
This is the skill of Debating, which is highly respected and taught the world over. Because it wins at politics (convinces the other chimps) even if it loses at matching the territory. It's damned useful, but it's a bit Dark Arts prone. (That's not a reason to avoid it, but one to take care.)
Yes. The winner of rationality-contest can not be decided by subjective judges. Instead, the winner must be confirmed by reality. This, of course, limits the amount of possible questions, because at some point, real data ist needed.
Contestants could be asked to judge if a precition for the future will happen or not.
Example: stock market rises from 2015 to 2017. The current president gets reelected.
They discuss, choose a position, the event happens or does not happen, and THEN the winner is decided.
Or they might come from research papers, which the contestants do not know. In that case the contestants would be presented an experiment and can test their rationality by predicting the outcome. Which is read after everyone has made a prediction.
Of couse, different from a debate, all contestens may provide the same answer.