Konkvistador comments on Rationality Quotes October 2011 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: MinibearRex 03 October 2011 06:41AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (532)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 October 2011 05:25:07PM *  4 points [-]

Seems a good take. Up voted!

Thinking long and hard about this formulation, I think it is equivalent to a great extent to my own approach on the rules, which I constructed mostly in status language. I should admonish myself for laziness, because that key part can be talked about in the abstract (I think) and I should have taken the time to write down a post on what could be talked about.

There will not necessarily be unique solutions to these rules, for example, evidence that men and women think differently in important ways can either be dismissed entirely or have its interpretation arranged so that the tasks women are better at are more important

But some solutions will be more popular than others. And choosing a very unpopular solution may get you into as much trouble as not following the core rule set at all. Analysis of why some gain greater popularity in various circles is where I think the meat lies.To give an example, rule 2 is often applied to rationalize adaptive behaviour (that often dosen't even arise from the human minds ability to deceive itself for gain, but from mere selection effects and memetic evolution), so that one can continue to espouse principles and opinions that signal good things about you because of the handicap principle. So tagging on what basically amounts to a simple model of moral fashion improves predictive power noticeably and I am sure you and others can think of other such useful additions to the black box replacement of contemporary Western ideological thought as well.