EchoingHorror comments on Compartmentalization in epistemic and instrumental rationality - Less Wrong

77 Post author: AnnaSalamon 17 September 2010 07:02AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (121)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: EchoingHorror 20 September 2010 03:29:31AM 1 point [-]

I think that, very basically, when it comes to ideas rationalists explicitly don't have anything to protect. Ideas are to be judged by their merits without interference. This has to include the Something to Protect that brought about rationality in the first place, because to the degree that thing isn't rational there is a contradiction in using rationality to protect irrationality, the defensive attitude and bias you mentioned.

Can "definite major purpose" avoid that problem (beyond sounding unlike what is meant)? I'd shorten it to "major purpose" or make it "prime directive" or "main quest" just to avoid anything definite. It should be subject to change with new information or better thinking while the rational methods used to achieve it stay the same.