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righteousreason comments on Rationality Boot Camp - Less Wrong
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You said "the kind of rationality that one uses internally and entirely on your own." I'm asking what this is for. What goals do you have in mind for such a kind of rationality? Do you not have any goals for it?
If you are solving an equation, debugging a software system, designing an algorithm, or any number of other cognitive tasks, understanding the methods of rationality involved in interacting with other people will be of no use to you (unless it just happens to be that some of the material applies across the domains). These are things that have to be done in and of yourself.
If you solve the equation, but don't get your results published in a top paper, do you win?
If you debug the software, but sell it for half it's worth, do you win?
If you fail to get the recognition for your work and your boss takes all the credit, do you win?
Humans are social animals, we live in a social society. In almost any task, you accomplish more, acquire more rewards, are better set up for the next task with a series of interpersonal skills. Life is not discrete little pieces. Most people (maybe even everyone) who considers applying to this program are much better at seeing the true state of a program than seeing the true state of a party, much better at manipulating the program than the party, and due to law of the instrument see one set of skills as more valuable than the other. In reality both are needed.
"Walking on the moon is power! Being a great wizard is power! There are kinds of power that don't require me to spend the rest of my life pandering to morons!"
That makes sense, yes. It still strikes me as a bit of an artificial compartmentalisation. As cousin_it has just noted, the world is frequently not so obliging. Being good at a technical task is nice, but not caring to be good at its complementary tasks which involve humans is a good way to lose.