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bentarm comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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In this case, isn't it equally true that no wind is unfavourable?
"The Way is easy for those who have no utility function." -- Marcello Herreshoff
Not sure, this came up in a few previous conversations. If an agent is almost certain that it's completely indifferent to everything, the most important thing it could do is to pursue the possibility that it's not indifferent to something, that is to work primarily on figuring out its preference on the off chance that its current estimate might turn out to be wrong. So it still takes over the universe and builds complicated machines (assuming it has enough heuristics to carry out this line of reasoning).
Say, "Maybe 1957 is prime after all, and hardware used previously to conclude that it's not was corrupted," which is followed by a sequence of experiments that test the properties of preceding experiments in more and more detail, and then those experiments are investigated in turn, and so on and so forth, to the end of time.
If someone didn't value any world-states more than any others, I'm not sure that a Way would actually exist for them, as they could do nothing to increase the expected utility of future world-states. Thus, it doesn't seem to really make sense to speak of such a Way being easy or hard for them.
Am I missing something?
I think you're over analyzing here, the quote is meant to be absurd.
Whaaa?
Someone explain please. It didn't seem absurd when I read it.
If you don't want anything, it's very easy to get what you want.
However, everyone reading this post is a human, and therefore is almost certain to want many things: to breath, to eat, to sleep in a comfortable place, to have companionship, the list goes on.
I interpreted it similarly to part of this article:
Since you said the quote itself was absurd I thought you were saying the post was an internally flawed strawman meant for the purpose of satire, but you meant something else by that word.
I'm the one who said that. Just to make it clear, I do agree with your first comment: taken literally, the quote doesn't make sense. Do you get it better if I say: "It is easy to achieve your goals if you have no goals"? I concede absurd was possibly a bit too strong here.
Okay, that makes more sense, yeah I see what you mean and agree.
That depends on whether your goal is to travel or to arrive.
I am reminded of an exchange between Alice and the Cheshire cat
–Lewis Carrol
Of course, this requires that the Cat either is being difficult, or doesn't understand the word "much".
Which applies to the first quote too: if your destination is not limited to a single possible port, but it is limited to something narrower than "anywhere at all", then bad winds can in fact exist. (Applying this insight to the metaphorical content of that statement is an exercise for the reader.)
I don't see how this criticism applies to the original quote.
(And yes, the Cheshire Cat's entire schtick is being difficult.)
It is possible that you don't know which port you're sailing to because you have ruled out some possible destinations, but there is still more than one possible destination remaining. If so, it's certainly possible that a wind could push you away from all the good destinations and towards the bad destinations. (It is also possible that a wind could push you towards one of the destinations on the fringe, which pushes you farther from your destination based on a weighted average of distances to the possible destinations, even though it is possible that the wind is helping you.)
(Consider how the metaphor works with sailing=search for truth, port=ultimate truth, and bad wind=irrationality. It becomes a way to justify irrationality.)
The difference between "no knowledge about your destination whatsoever" and "not knowing your destination" is the difference between "I don't care where I'm going" and "I don't much care where I'm going" in the Cheshire Cat's version.
Even if you don't know which port you're going to, a wind that blows you to some port is more favorable than a wind that blows you out towards the middle of the ocean.
That's only true if you prefer ports reached sooner or ports on this side of the ocean.