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lessdazed comments on Rationality Quotes October 2011 - Less Wrong
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Okay. That makes sense.
Contradicting false statements, even irrelevant ones, is a strong impulse in our culture (by which I mean LW culture and the broader subcultures from which it draws many of its readers). But it doesn't yet look to me like we overemphasize this.
Your recent correction of lukeprog on his use of the phrase "Aumann agreement" seemed to me to be an example of this "correcting impulse". I think it was good for you to make the correction. I would have pointed out the erroneous usage if someone had not already done so. But the incorrectness of the phrase was irrelevant to the point of his post.
Or are you using "relevance" in a sense in which lukeprog's use of the phrase "Aumann agreement" was relevant?
In my opinion, overused magic words deserve correction.
See the zeroth virtue.
I'm not sure that I'm getting your point. The theme of your links is that the word "rational" is overused around here. Is it your point that "Aumann agreement" is also overused?
Are you referring to the virtue that Eliezer calls "the void"? I'm not seeing the relevance.
Not really, that was poor word choice on my part. Only literally is it overused, in that one excessive use constitutes overuse.
It's that such words have a warm feel to them, so they are used even when the anticipation controlling/more literal/more technical meaning is not intended. The overuse causes confusion by muddying the meaning, and increases the risk that I will name the way to understand the world and achieving my goals instead of actually understanding the world and achieving my goals.
This type of thing is common because one such overuse is common, "rational". The specific overuse of "Aumann's agreement theorem", the same type of thing, is not common.
I have several times seen it described as a rule that rationalists update towards each other's estimates, which is distressing. Clearly, they may share evidence and conclude something is more or less likely than either originally thought. A way to make sure one is learning and updating is to avoid using words for ideal methods, lest they cause one to think one is using them when one isn't.
Yes. It's only belatedly and reluctantly named there so it can be an example of its own point, to explain relationships among concepts rather than try and explain by using labels for rationality.
Agreement is an indicator subject to Goodhart's law.
(You've lost the "magic".)
I cast magic song!