dlthomas comments on Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great - Less Wrong

140 Post author: Yvain 09 April 2009 02:44AM

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

Comments (269)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: dlthomas 18 January 2012 10:07:15PM 2 points [-]

[W]e should generally expect more people to claim benefits than to actually experience them.

I don't think this claim is supported. There are reasons (some presented) why we should expect this. There are also reasons (a few listed below) why we should expect the opposite. I don't see at all why we should expect either set to dominate.

Reasons I might not post a benefit I've accrued:

1) I'm too busy out enjoying my improved life. 2) The self-congratulatory thread smells too much of an affective death spiral. 3) I am unsure how much of the benefit was actually from x-rationality and how much was from other sources. 3.1) 3, plus overcompensation for cognitive dissonance and similar biases. 4) It feels like bragging - and in fact, it seems to sometimes be interpreted this way; look at some of the reaction Luke has got for some of his posts. 5) I'm busy focusing on improving further; posting a comment listing benefits I've derived so far might not be an effective means to this goal.