loqi comments on The Brooklyn Society For Ethical Culture - Less Wrong
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Comments (26)
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. But if rationalism doesn't at least offer something comparable to other options, many people won't even try.
Robin's argument in that link seems to be that taking pleasure in disagreement with average beliefs is, all else equal, a bad thing; it's certainly not an argument in favor of updating toward average beliefs. Aumann agreement only strictly applies to ideal rationalists with shared assumptions, but as a rule of thumb one should update toward other agents' beliefs based on the demonstrated rationality of their belief-forming process.
True. I think the goal here is a bit more complex than "maximize number of self-proclaimed rationalists", though.
I was presenting it as an argument favoring updates toward average beliefs over doing so for in-group beliefs, but you're still right that it's really making an unrelated point.
I find such demonstrations quite difficult to identify. Doing so requires both confidence in the correctness of their conclusion and, to a lesser extent, confidence that the beliefs you observe aren't being selected for by other rationalists.