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shminux comments on Rationality Quotes August 2013 - Less Wrong
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Comments (733)
If you define best as easiest.
I see it as more of a "rather than sorting projects by revenue, make sure to sort them by profit," combined with "in cases where revenue is concave and cost linear, which happen frequently, the lowest cost project is probably going to be the highest profit."
That plus "beware inflated revenue estimates, especially for have-it-all type plans". Cost estimates are often much more accurate.
If best is defined as easiest, then the "usually" within the quote is entirely superfluous. "If" statements are logically exception-less, and the Law of Conserved Conversation (That i've just made up) means that "usually" implies exceptions. Otherwise it would be excluded from the quote. So I say, pedantically, "duh. but you're missing the point a bit, aren't you mate?"
I like to think of the principle as a kind of Occam's for action. Don't take elaborate actions to produce some solution that is otherwise trivially easy to produce.
You may want to read something about pragmatics, starting with e.g. the section on conversational implicatures in Chapter 1 of CGEL.
(Your made-up law sounds related to these.)
Huh. The Maxim of Relation does sound very much like what I was trying to go for.
Alternatively, if you define solution such that any two given solutions are equally acceptable with respect to the original problem.