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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Self-skepticism: the first principle of rationality - Less Wrong
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I did once suggest a similar heuristic; but I feel the need to point out that there are many people in this world with track records of achievement, including, like, Mitt Romney or something, and that the heuristic is supposed to be, "Pay attention to rationalists with track records outside rationality", e.g. Dawkins and Feynman.
I fail to see how finding more already-rationalists with a track record would benefit LW specifically*, unless those individuals are public figures of some renown that can attract public attention to LW and related organisations or can directly contribute content, insight and training methods. Perhaps I'm just missing some evidence here, but my priors place the usefulness of already-rationalists within the same error margin as non-rationalists who are public figures that would bother to read / post on LW.
Paying attention to (rationalists with track records outside rationality)** seems like it would be mostly useful for demonstrating to aware but uninterested/unconvinced people that training rationality and "raising the sanity waterline" are effective strategies that do have real-world usefulness outside "philosophical"*** word problems.
* Any more than, say, anyone else or people with any visible track record who are also public figures.
** Perhaps someone could coin a term for this? It seems like a personspace subgroup relevant enough to have a less annoying label. Perhaps something playing on Beisutsukai or a variation of the Masked Hero imagery?
*** Used here in the layman's definition of "philosophical": airy, cloud-head, idealist, based on pretty assumptions and "clean" models where everything just works the way it's "supposed to" rather than how-things-are-in-real-life. AKA the "Philosophy is a stupid waste of time" view.
I think the idea here is to find people who have found the types of rationality that lead to actual life success - found a replicable method for succeeding at things. Such an individual is expected to be a rationalist and to have a track record of achievement.
Mitt Romney strikes me as a fairly poor example, since from my knowledge of his pre-political life, he seems like a strong rationalist. He looks much better on the instrumental rationality side than the epistemic rationality side, but I think I would rather hang out with Mormon management consultants than atheist waiters. (At least, I think I have more to learn from the former than the latter.)
If: 1) being more rational makes you more moral
2) he's saying things during this campaign he doesn't really believe
3) dishonesty, especially dishonesty in the context of a political campaign, is immoral
Then: c) His recent behavior is evidence against his rationality, in the same sense his pre-political success is evidence for it.
1 seems true only in the sense that, in general, immorality is more attractive to bad decision-makers than to good decision-makers, but I would be reluctant to extend beyond that.
This is probably not something we should argue about here, but I think the whole project of rationality stands or falls on the truth of premise 1.
Why?
What if it had no effect on morality, but just made people more effective? As long as the sign bit on people's actions is already usually positive, rationality would still be a good idea.
Well, if you don't mind me answering a question with a questions, more effective at what? If it just makes you more effective at getting what you want, whether or not what you want is the right thing to want, then it's only helpful to the extent that you want the right things, and harmful to the extent that you want the wrong things. That's nothing very great, and certainly nothing to spend a lot of time improving.
But if rationality can make you want, and make you more effective at getting, good things only, then it's an inestimable treasure, and worth a lifetime's pursuit. The 'morally good' seems to me the right word for what is in every possible case good, and never bad.
He could expect to do enough good as president to outweigh that.
I doubt it, though.
See, even as no fan of his whatsoever, I suspect Mitt Romney is a very smart fellow I would be foolish to pay no heed to in the general case, and who probably has a fair bit of tried and tested knowledge he's gained in the pursuit of thinking about thinking. Even given qualms I have about the quality of some things he's been quoted as saying of late, but then presidential campaigns select for bullshit.
There are too many accomplished people in the world contradicting each other to not filter it somehow.
My filtering criteria (maybe flawed) is "people whose biographies are still read after a few decades". This way "non-rationalist" like Churchill gets read; looking for "rationalists" will end up selecting people too similar to you yourself to learn interesting things.