rwallace comments on Desirable Dispositions and Rational Actions - Less Wrong

13 Post author: RichardChappell 17 August 2010 03:20AM

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Comment author: ata 17 August 2010 04:24:21AM *  5 points [-]

There are a few essential questions here:

  1. Does a reasonable model of reality actually cause us to anticipate any scenarios where it is beneficial to have an irrational disposition?
  2. Are these common enough that choosing to surrender one's rational disposition would have an overall positive expected utility?
  3. If you've gotten far enough to be able to wield rationality skillfully enough to correctly determine the answers to those questions, is it really possible to force yourself to forget how to be that rational, if you decide it would be instrumentally beneficial to do so?

I'm not convinced that the answer to any of these is "yes", and I don't think you've really argued for them. This post would be stronger and more interesting if you attempted to make the point that agents with irrational dispositions do tend to be rewarded, and tend to be rewarded enough that being irrational is worth it.

(As for #3, I think there was an Eliezer post on that or a related issue, not sure what it was called...)

Edit: I think I was thinking of Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased).

Comment author: rwallace 17 August 2010 01:41:28PM 0 points [-]

By "irrational", do you mean in the sense of "would pay the $100 as Parfit's Hitchhiker"? If so, then the answer to all three questions is yes: there are lots of scenarios in real life where we are called upon to pay debts both positive and negative (repay favors, retaliate against aggression) and we think the benefit to be gained from doing so will be less than the cost. There are enough such scenarios that a disposition to pay debts without stopping to do utility calculations usually pays off handsomely over a lifetime.

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