Yvain comments on Individual Rationality Is a Matter of Life and Death - Less Wrong

24 Post author: patrissimo 21 March 2009 07:22PM

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Comment author: Yvain 21 March 2009 08:59:48PM *  8 points [-]

Robin's post seemed to be about the marginal value of rationality. Being completely irrational is a one way ticket to death or ruin, I agree. But there are fewer ways to die by refusing to go from ordinary high-IQ university-educated person to person who has read and applied the Overcoming Bias techniques. They're still there, but they're not quite as obvious. Most of the ones I can think of involve medicine, and Robin probably disagrees and doesn't think those matter so much.

Comment author: patrissimo 21 March 2009 09:49:54PM 7 points [-]

Good point about the marginal value of rationality. But my experience with myself and with almost all of the smart graduate-degree holding people I know, is that there is significant irrationality left, and significant gains to be had from self-improvement. You may believe differently.