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Armok_GoB comments on Three ways CFAR has changed my view of rationality - Less Wrong
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Instrumental and epistemic rationality were always kind of handwavey, IMO. For example, if you want to achieve your goals, it often helps to have money. So if I deposit $10,000 in your bank account, does that make you more instrumentally rational?
You could define instrumental rationality as "mental skills that help people better achieve their goals". Then I could argue that learning graphic design makes you more instrumentally rational, because it's a mental skill and if you learn it, you'll be able to make money from anywhere using your computer, which is often useful for achieving your goals.
You could define epistemic rationality as "mental skills that help you know what's true". Then I could argue that learning about chess makes you more epistemically rational, because you can better know the truth of statements about who's going to win chess games that are in progress.
I like the idea of thinking of rationality in terms of mental skills that are very general in the sense that they can be used by many different people in many different situations, kind of like how Paul Graham defines "philosophy". "Mental skills that are useful to many people in many situations" seems like it should have received more study as a topic by now... I guess maybe people have developed memetic antibodies towards anything that sounds too good to be true in that way? (In this case, the relevant antibodies would have been developed thanks to the self-help industry?)
I thought the difference what what set of beliefs the method was attracted to: For epistemic, it's whatever is "really true" with no if or but, for instrumental, it's whatever in actuality leads to the best outcome. Things where it differs include believing the right thing for the wrong reasons/being overconfident in something true, in game theoretical situations like blackmail and signaling, or in situations where mental states are leaky like the placebo effect or expectation-controlled dementors.
Given this interpretation, I decided on the policy of a mixed strategy where most people are mainly instrumentally rational, some are pure epistemic, and the former obey the later unquestioningly in crisis situations.
That last paragraph is really interesting. I don't know your reasoning behind it, but I'd perhaps suggest that this correlation may be a result of instrumentally rational people working mostly on cached conclusions from society, which were developed somewhat behind the curtains by trial and error and memes being passed around etc., whereas epistemically rational people are able to adapt more quickly, because they can think right away, rather than allow the memetic environment to catch up, which simply won't happen in crisis situations (the cached-conclusions system for memetic environments doesn't work that fast).
Maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about though. I can't tell whether this could bridge inferential distance. Either way though, what's your reasoning behind that statement? What does it mean that most people are working mostly in instrumental, whereas some are pure epistemic, and why do the former obey the latter in crisis situations?
I assumed that was obvious or I'd have elaborated. Basically, of the situations in which they differ, they do so by the epistemic making a better decision, but the instrumental having some other benefit. Decisions can be delegated, including the decisions of many to just a few, so you can have only a few people need to take the instrumental hit of strict epistemic conduct, while still having everyone get most of the benefits of decisions based in good epistemic rationality. In return for their sacrifice, the epistemics get status.
This is not a "how things are" or "how everyone should do" thing, just one strategy a coordinated group of rationalists could use.