Luke_A_Somers comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 15 March 2012 04:19:50PM 2 points [-]

Agreed, except the treatment of WMI does not seem the least bit crazy to me. But what do I know - I'm a crazy physicist.

Comment author: roystgnr 15 March 2012 05:24:57PM 5 points [-]

The conclusions don't seem crazy (well, they seem "crazy-but-probably-correct", just like even the non-controversial parts of quantum mechanics), but IIRC the occasional emphasis on "We Have The One Correct Answer And You All Are Wrong" rang some warning bells.

On the other hand: Rationality is only useful to the extent that it reaches conclusions that differ from e.g. the "just believe what everyone else does" heuristic. Yet when any other heuristic comes up with new conclusions that are easily verified, or even new conclusions which sound plausible and aren't disproveable, "just believe what everyone else does" quickly catches up. So if you want a touchstone for rationality in an individual, you need to find a question for which rational analysis leads to an unverifiable, implausible sounding answer. Such a question makes a great test, but not such a great advertisement...

Comment author: Dmytry 12 April 2012 05:02:09AM 0 points [-]

Choosing between mathematically equivalent interpretations adds 1 bit of complexity that doesn't need to be added. Now, if EY had derived the Born probabilities from first principles, that'd be quite interesting.