MichaelVassar comments on Rationalist Fiction - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 March 2009 08:22AM

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Comment author: Nominull 19 March 2009 03:14:06PM 12 points [-]

Encyclopedia Brown is an especially bad example. Most of the mysteries he solves, he solves by knowing some piece of minor trivia which contradicts some off-hand statement of the criminal. This promotes "rationality" as "knowing a lot of facts", which is absolutely not what we're trying to promote here, and provides the wrong model of problem solving. Encyclopedia Brown is based on formal logic, not Bayesian probability.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 19 March 2009 03:28:55PM 9 points [-]

But just "intelligence is useful" takes people farther than many intelligent people get. Seriously.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 March 2009 07:08:28PM 3 points [-]

Empirical data point: Read the Encyclopedia Brown books and liked them, was probably influenced to some degree or other.