PhilGoetz comments on Bayesians vs. Barbarians - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 April 2009 11:45PM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 16 April 2009 03:24:10AM 0 points [-]

But reversed stupidity is not intelligence. And reversed evil is not intelligence either. It remains true that real wars cannot be won by refined politeness. If "rationalists" can't prepare themselves for that mental shock, the Barbarians really will win; and the "rationalists"... I don't want to say, "deserve to lose". But they will have failed that test of their society's existence.

Are you assuming that niceness (not torturing people, not killing civilians) is correlated with rationality?

Comment author: Larks 04 August 2009 12:35:53PM 1 point [-]

To the extent that we all have common values, rationality should correlate to achieving those values: so if niceness is a general value, a rationalist community should be nice (or gain enough of another value to make up for the loss).

If niceness is not a reasonably-universal value, empirically our understanding of niceness seems to correlate with rationality.

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