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lukeprog comments on Reply to Holden on The Singularity Institute - Less Wrong
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Why?
Direct quotes:
That is synonymous with success in Western society. His definition of superior general rationality or insight (read: instrumental and epistemic rationality) fits with my paraphrase of that direct quote.
You think his definition is wrong.
I.e., we shouldn't necessarily expect rational people to be successful. The only problem I see with my paraphrase is in explaining why some people aren't successful given that they're rational (per your definition), which is by having atypical goals. Well, that should make sense if they're instrumentally rational (of course, this discounts luck. but i don't think luck is an overriding factor on average, here.)
This isn't useful information unless you also link to the other tests and show why they're meaningful after training to do well on them. I would take it out of your argument, as is. (Also, it's a spider web of links -- which I've read before).
Your paraphrase of me was:
But I didn't think that what Holden got wrong was a confusion between one's own goals and "success in Western society" goals. Many of SI's own goals include "success in Western society" goals like lots of accumulated wealth and power. Instead, what I thought Holden got wrong was his estimate of the relation between rationality and success.
Re: the testing. LWers hadn't trained specifically for the battery of tests given them that day, but they outperformed every other group I know of who has taken those tests. I agree that these data aren't as useful as the data CFAR is collecting now about the impact of rationality training on measures of life success, but they are suggestive enough to support a weak, qualified claim like the one I made, that "it seems" like LWers are more rational than the general population.
It occurs to me that Holden's actual reasoning (never mind what he said) is perhaps not about rationality per se and instead may be along these lines: "Since SI staff haven't already accumulated wealth and power, they probably suffer from something like insufficient work ethic or high akrasia or not-having-inherited-billions, and thus will probably be ineffective at achieving the kind of extremely-ambitious goals they have set for themselves."
It may or may not be Holden's, but I think you've put your finger on my real reasons for not wanting to donate to SI. I'd be interested to hear any counterpoint.
Right, then I (correctly, I think) took your reasoning a step farther than you did. The SI's goals don't necessarily correspond with its members' goals. SIers may be there because they want to be around a lot of cool people, and may not have any particular desire for being successful (I suspect many of them do). But this discounts luck, like luck in being born conscientiousness -- the power to accomplish your goals. And like I said, poor luck like that is unconvincing when applied to a group of people.
When I say "it seems", being an unknown here, people will likely take me to be reporting an anecdote. When you, the executive director of SI and a researcher on this topic, says "it seems" I think people will take it as a weak impression of the available research. Scientists adept at communicating with journalists get around this by saying "I speculate" instead.