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steven0461 comments on People who "don't rationalize"? [Help Rationality Group figure it out] - Less Wrong
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I wouldn't necessarily expect there to be a super-strong connection between not rationalizing and being a "high-level rationalist". There are other ways to go systematically wrong than through goal-directed rationalization. As a possibly overlapping point, your concept of "high-level rationalist" probably sneaks in things like intelligence and knowledge that aren't strictly rationality.
Eliezer's "formidability" seems even worse, with its implications of high status.
Good points.
I'm not trying to sneak in connotations, by the way. We're just talking about the fact that these people seem to be quite good at things like goal-factoring, VOI calculations, etc.
I didn't mean to say the sneaking was intentional. VOI calculations seem like they would correlate more with intelligence than rationality as such. I can't find any reference to goal-factoring; what do you mean by that?
I know this is much later, but for future readers I thought I'd chime in that goal-factoring is a process of breaking your goals down into subgoals and so on. At each level, you ask yourself "what am I trying to achieve with this?" and then ask yourself if there might be a better/cheaper/more efficient way to do so.
This is very closely related to the idea of purchasing goods separately.
[I attended January 2013 CFAR workshop and volunteered at the March one.]