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

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

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 10 April 2009 05:05:45PM 10 points [-]

Michael Vassar:

nerds, scientists, skeptics and the like who like to describe their membership in terms of rationality are [not] noticibly better than average at behavioral rationality, as opposed to epistemic rationality where they are obviously better than average but still just hideously bad.

Simply applying "ordinary rationality" to behavior is extreme. People don't use reason to decide if fashion is important, they just copy. Eliezer's Secret Identities post seems to make a very similar point, which seemed to largely match this post. One point was to get rationality advice from people who actually found it useful, rather than ordinary nerds who fetishize it.