[SEQ RERUN] Bayesians vs. Barbarians

MinibearRex

Today's post, Bayesians vs. Barbarians was originally published on 14 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Suppose that a country of rationalists is attacked by a country of Evil Barbarians who know nothing of probability theory or decision theory. There's a certain concept of "rationality" which says that the rationalists inevitably lose, because the Barbarians believe in a heavenly afterlife if they die in battle, while the rationalists would all individually prefer to stay out of harm's way. So the rationalist civilization is doomed; it is too elegant and civilized to fight the savage Barbarians... And then there's the idea that rationalists should be able to (a) solve group coordination problems, (b) care a lot about other people and (c) win...

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Today's post, Bayesians vs. Barbarians was originally published on 14 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Suppose that a country of rationalists is attacked by a country of Evil Barbarians who know nothing of probability theory or decision theory. There's a certain concept of "rationality" which says that the rationalists inevitably lose, because the Barbarians believe in a heavenly afterlife if they die in battle, while the rationalists would all individually prefer to stay out of harm's way. So the rationalist civilization is doomed; it is too elegant and civilized to fight the savage Barbarians... And then there's the idea that rationalists should be able to (a) solve group coordination problems, (b) care a lot about other people and (c) win...

Taboo "altruism" and "egoism". Those words in their original meaning are merely strawmen. Everyone cares about other people (except for psychopaths, but psychopaths are also bad at optimizing for their own long-term utility). Everyone cares about their own utility (even Mother Theresa was happy to get a lot of prestige for herself, and to promote her favorite religion). In real life, speaking about altruists and egoists is probably just speaking about signalling... who spends a lot of time announcing that they care about other people (regardless of what they really do for them), and who neglects this part of signalling (regardless of what they really do). Or sometimes it is merely about whom we like and whom we don't.

I had no intention of implying extreme altruism or egoism. I should be clear that by altruism I mean the case in which an agent believes that the values of of some other entity or group have a smaller discount rate than those of the agent itself, while egoism is the opposite scenario. I describe myself as an egoist, but this does not mean that I am completely indifferent to others. In the real world, one would not describe a person who engages in altruist signalling as an altruist, but rather that person would choose the label of altruist as a form of sign... (read more)

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