Vladimir_M comments on Rational Regions? - Less Wrong

1 Post author: katydee 19 October 2010 08:22AM

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

Comments (20)

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

Comment author: Vladimir_M 21 October 2010 08:05:10AM *  2 points [-]

To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people. I don't find the choice of this measure at all obvious, or even that it can be meaningfully defined.

Comment author: komponisto 21 October 2010 08:28:04PM 2 points [-]

To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people.

Not necessarily; there just has to be an ordering. Clearly people's rationality can be compared, as extreme cases illustrate: Eliezer Yudkowsky is more rational than Kent Hovind, for example.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 21 October 2010 09:43:05PM 1 point [-]

Sure, but very extreme examples aren't interesting. The real question is how many pairs of individuals (or groups) can be covered by that partial ordering. Not very many, I'd say, unless your definition introduces some criteria for which there is ultimately no rational justification, in any meaningful sense of that word.