AlexU comments on Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (269)
Yet many highly intelligent people with normal rationality have terrible fashion sense, particularly males, at least in my anecdotal experience. Ditto for social skills, dating skills, etc... (fashion is really a subset of social skills, combined with aesthetics). (a) Are these people not really rationalists, because they haven't figured out how to improve themselves in those areas, or (b) do ordinary rationalists have trouble figuring out that they would benefit from improvement in those areas, and how to do it? Or perhaps (c), they recognize the benefits of greater social abilities, but they do not believe that the effort is worth it?
In principle, normal intelligent rationalists could figure out how to improve their fashion skills and social skills deliberately and systematically. But if indeed so few people in that category do so, I would take it as evidence that a systematic approach to developing interpersonal skills and style actually requires a higher level of rationality that what normal rationalists possess (perhaps x-rationality, depending on what we mean by that).
I've talked before in this same vein about the limits of rationality. One can be a perfect rationalist and always know what to do in a given situation, yet still be unable to do it for whatever reason. This suggests that pretty strongly that good "rationalists" would be wise to invest their time into other areas as well, since rationalism alone won't turn you into the ubermensch. It won't make you healthy and fit, it won't enable you to talk to girls any better or make friends any easier. (And I object to any conception of "rationalism" so sweepingly broad that it manages to subsume every possible endeavor you'd set out on, e.g., the old "a good rationalist would realize the importance of these things and figure out meta-techniques for developing these skills.")