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RobbBB 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?)
In my other message I said wealth doesn't automatically make you more rational, because rationality is "systematic and agent-internal". I don't want to dismiss the problem you raised, though, because it gets us into deep waters pretty fast. So here's a different response.
If I reliably use my money in a way that helps me achieve my ends, regardless of how much money I have, then giving me more money can make me more instrumentally rational, in the sense that I consistently win more often. Certainly it's beyond dispute that being in such a situation has instrumental value, bracketing 'rationality'. The reason we don't normally think of this as an increase in instrumental rationality is that when we're evaluating your likelihood of winning, the contributing factors we call 'instrumental rationality' are the set of win-relevant cognitive algorithms. Having money isn't a cognitive algorithm, so it doesn't qualify.
Why isn't having money a cognitive algorithm? 'Because it's not in your skull' isn't a very satisfying answer. It's not necessary: A species that exchanges wealth by exchanging memorized passcodes might make no use of objects outside of vocal utterances and memes. And it's probably not sufficient: If I start making better economic decisions by relying more heavily on a calculator, it's plausible that part of my increased instrumental rationality is distributed outside my skull, since part of it depends on the proper functioning of the calculator. Future inventions may do a lot more to blur the lines between cognitive enhancements inside and outside my brain.
So the more relevant point may be that receiving a payment is an isolated event, not a repeatable process. If you found a way to receive a steady paycheck, and reliably used that paycheck to get what you wanted more often, then I'd have a much harder time saying that you (= the you-money system) haven't improved the instrumental rationality of your cognitive algorithms. It would be like trying to argue that your gene-activated biochemistry is agent-internal, but the aspects of your biochemistry that depend on your daily nootropic cocktail are agent-external. I despair of drawing clear lines on the issue.
Because it isn't an algorithm -- a step-by-step procedure for calculations. (Source: Wikipedia.)
Money isn't a cognitive algorithm because it doesn't actually help you decide what to do. You don't generally use your money to make decisions. Having more money does put you in a better position where the available options are more favourable, but that's not really the same thing.
Of course, if you spend that money on nootropics (or a calculator, I suppose), you might be said to have used money to improve your instrumental rationality!