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Johnicholas comments on Taboo "rationality," please. - Less Wrong
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Nick Bostrom's introduction to the Doomsday Argument is an example of smart, cautious discussion of anthropic reasoning.
You should take the fact that the best argument that you can find for the proposition: "Rationality is optimal now, but it wasn't in 1950." is appealing to the Doomsday Argument, as evidence that your brain is in rationalization mode.
To falsify the conjunction "Rationality is optimal now" and "Rationality was not optimal previously", you only need to falsify one of the conjuncts. For example, "Rationality is not optimal now" or "Rationality was optimal previously".
EDIT: I said that awkwardly. To change your mind regarding "Rationality is optimal now and rationality was not optimal previously", you would have to change your mind regarding one of the conjuncts. For example, you could accept the statement "Rationality is not optimal now."
Robin Hanson has posted on the costs of rationality.
Yeah, you're basically making the doomsday argument. Note that you could use the same reasoning about any question that you expect to come up from time to time, for instance "do I like cheese?"
Are you asking an explanation for why anthropic reasoning is bunk?