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BillyOblivion comments on Rationality Quotes: March 2011 - Less Wrong
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This is an old saying, which I learnt from the 1994 movie Forrest Gump (not otherwise a bastion of rationalism).
While we may judge people as irrational ("stupid") based on what they know (epistemic rationality, roughly), it's instrumental rationality that matters in the end.
Or alternatively, there's something intelligent that works much better.
While there are predictable (and accurate) objections to this quote as such, at heart it's good sense. On the one hand, it can mean the same thing as "the rational thing is the thing that wins", and on the other it can mean something like "if you predict that it has a low probability of working, but it works, then that is evidence that should raise your estimate of its likelihood of working," both of which are, I'd imagine, lesswrong-approved sentiments.
Do we have a source for that? (It's all over the Internet, with varied phrasing.)
I looked and couldn't find a definitive source, and really only posted it as sort of a neuron-jerk response.
I first heard it from some old Cajun sounding general talking about something to do with (IIRC) the Katrina response.
No, that was a different stupidity quote. "Don't get stuck on stupid".
Who are you quoting?
I seem to recall having read/heard this before.
Mind you, it depends on the reliability of it working. If something has a (real) 90% chance of making the problem twice as bad, but just happens to fix it, then it's still stupid.