Manfred comments on Do biases matter? - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: Student_UK 20 February 2011 01:10AM

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

Comments (15)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Manfred 20 February 2011 11:13:14PM 0 points [-]

The former president of South Africa denied that HIV caused AIDS. Biases matter.

Comment author: Student_UK 21 February 2011 12:52:20AM 1 point [-]

Ok. Clearly you only read the title, and not my actual post. I didn't say no biases matter, just that they might not always be a bad thing.

Comment author: Manfred 21 February 2011 04:08:25AM *  0 points [-]

Ah, sorry, I'd assumed that, though you talked about other things in your post, you still wanted attempted answers to the question in the title.

EDIT: also note that this provides a nice test of the value of heuristics with biases. If everyone on earth had them instead of didn't, would it be more valuable than a few million Africans?

Comment author: Desrtopa 21 February 2011 01:46:52AM *  0 points [-]

Biases may not always be a bad thing, but you can't tell whether they're good in any specific case without comparing them objectively to an unbiased position. You can't skip straight to second order rationality without employing first order rationality first. If biases are bad on average, then as a rule you're generally better off assuming that it's better not to preserve your bias.