roystgnr comments on Rationality quotes January 2012 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Thomas 01 January 2012 10:28AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 02 January 2012 01:59:13PM 11 points [-]

The truth is common property. You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true.

It would seem that if no other humans are behaving rationality and your group is behaving rationally then even Sesame St could tell you which of these things is not the same.

Comment author: roystgnr 05 January 2012 08:19:01PM 3 points [-]

If no other groups of humans are behaving as rationally as yours is, then it's likely no other humans are capable of easily identifying that your group is the one with the high level of uniquely rational behavior. To the extent that other groups can identify rational behaviors of yours, they will have already adopted them and will not consider you unique for having adopted them too.

You can signal the uniqueness your group by believing and doing things that are both rational and unpopular, but to most outsiders this only signals uniqueness, not rationality, because the reason such things are unpopular is because most people don't find them to be obviously rational. And the outsiders are usually right: even though they're wrong in your particular actually-is-rational case, that's outnumbered by the other cases which, from the outside, all appear to be similar arational group-identifying behaviors and rationalizations thereof. E.g. at first glance there's not a huge difference between "I'm going to get frozen after I die", "I don't eat pork", "I avoid caffeine and hot drinks", etc.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 06 January 2012 06:26:56AM 2 points [-]

Depends on how immediate and/or dramatic the benefits of the rational behavior are.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 January 2012 08:32:05PM 2 points [-]

To the extent that other groups can identify rational behaviors of yours, they will have already adopted them and will not consider you unique for having adopted them too.

Not actually true. I'd like it to be!

Comment author: TheOtherDave 05 January 2012 09:04:03PM 0 points [-]

Damn skippy.

I'd even settle for the above being true of my group with respect to other groups.