= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Teal_Thanatos comments on Rationality Quotes July 2011 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (145)
I am sure that this quote indicates that categorizing options too far is detrimental. The Sequence on Reductionism's summary states 'complicated things are made of simpler things' but categorizing all the simple things together despite their belonging to separate complicated things should indicate a fallacy. It also indicates that the entirety of the options available are not considered properly if they're grouped too much.
You can go too far with that though. Separating categories is only useful insofar as we care about the differences between them. If you don't want to get shot and don't care why you're being shot, then there's not much sense in separating options that lead directly to that outcome.
Obviously there are a lot more than 149 options. You could stick the barrel into your mouth, for instance, using either your left or right hand. But if you start counting this way it's obvious that these options are useless and a waste of brain space. A good decisionmaker needs not only to be aware of the options available to them, but to be able to dismiss the bad options with a minimum of wasted thought.
I agree with going too far, this quote seems to me to be reflecting extremities and mid-ranges categorization. Yes, there's a lot more than 149 options, but there's many which are functionally the same, and categorizing it all under two options 'Get Shot' & 'Do what they say' doesn't take into consideration 'Do what they say, then get shot to hide witnesses' or any other option, it parses all options into mutually exclusive categories when in reality, they're not mutually exclusive.
By enforcing the two phase blanketing mentality, there's no consideration of changing of situation or any other variables. (Such as, 'wait to attention elsewhere, escape.'). A good decision maker does need to be able to dismiss bad options with minimal thought, but dismissing good(Less Wrong!) options with the bad is detrimental as well. What I'm taking from the quote is not that I must consider every option (The first speaker does not, he/she merely considers three and states the existence of others.) but that I must be cognizant of the fact that there are other options available and not categorize them in such a way that they are unavailable to my self.
As I'm new to Rationality, this may be a little convoluted, if you could explain any holes in what I am trying to explain I will be grateful.