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RobinHanson comments on Test Your Rationality - Less Wrong
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Surely we want to distinguish "rational" from "winner." Are winners on average more rational than others? This is not clear to me.
I predict that winners are on average less rational than rationalists. Risk level has an optimal point determined by expected payoff. But the maximal payoff keeps increasing as you increase risk. The winners we see are selected for high payoff. Thus they're likely to be people who took more risks than were rational. We just don't see all the losers who made the same decisions as the winners.
If we can't demand perfect metrics then surely we should at least demand metrics that aren't easily gamed. If people with the quality named "rationality" don't on average win more often on life-problems like those named, what quality do they even have, and why is it worthwhile?
Suppose we did the experiments and found other policies more winning than rationality. Would you adopt the most winning policy?
If not, then admit that you value rationality, and stop demanding that it win.
I do have components of my utility function for certain rituals of cognition (as described in the segment on Fun Theory) but net wins beyond that point would compel me.
That would be a rational thing to do!
I understand "rational" people "win" at the goal of believing the truth, but that goal may be in conflict with more familiar "success" goals. So the people around us we see as succeeding may not have paid the costs required to believe the truth.