Viliam_Bur comments on Making Rationality General-Interest - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Swimmer963 24 July 2013 10:02PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 25 July 2013 08:44:46AM 1 point [-]

That does not include the "map corresponding to territory" idea, which is very important for us. Also, it has its now negative connotation. Like "rational" has Spock, "effective" has all kinds of effective villains. At least the Spock seems harmless.

Comment author: RobbBB 25 July 2013 09:02:44AM *  2 points [-]

I think having two different words for epistemic and instrumental rationality would be a feature, not a bug. There's already plenty of overlap between the two (knowing truths is useful, and can easily be subsumed in a discussion of instrumental rationality), but since they do come into conflict sometimes, it would be very valuable to have a concise way to specify which kind of rationality we're talking about. This would also make our replacing 'rationality' with some other term have a function beyond euphemism treadmilling, which makes it easier to justify to the anti-PR crowd.

But I agree "effective" kind of falls flat. Is there an adjective/noun set derivable from "wins" that doesn't make us sound like Charlie Sheen? (It can be a protologism.)

Comment author: nshepperd 29 July 2013 05:32:22AM 1 point [-]

Something derived from "success"? If you don't mind sounding like a self-help guru. "Achievement" if you don't mind sounding like a primary school teacher. "Optimisation" is pretty accurate but I guess only really works for AI programmers or mathematicians who already have a technical understanding of it.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 July 2013 06:51:27PM 1 point [-]

Also, it has its now negative connotation. Like "rational" has Spock, "effective" has all kinds of effective villains.

Huh. I don't get that connotation at all. OTOH, this is possibly due to me not being a native speaker or consuming unusually little mainstream mass media.