Vladimir_Nesov comments on The Costs of Rationality - Less Wrong

32 Post author: RobinHanson 03 March 2009 06:13PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 March 2009 08:23:13PM *  6 points [-]

Learning many true facts that are not Fun and are morally irrelevant (e.g. learning as many digits of pi as you can by spending your whole life on the activity), because this way you can avoid thinking about facts that are much less certain, shouldn't be considered rational. Rationality intrinsically needs to serve a purpose, the necessity for this is implicit even in apparently goal-neutral definitions like the one Robin gave in the post.

Another problem, of course, is that you don't know the cost of irrationality if you are irrational.

Comment author: timtyler 03 March 2009 11:21:27PM 1 point [-]

I don't see how "seeking truth" is "goal-neutral". It is a goal much like any other.

The main thing I feel the urge to say about "seeking truth" is that it usually isn't nature's goal. Nature normally cares about other things a lot more than the truth.

Comment author: Kenny 07 March 2009 11:54:16PM 0 points [-]

If nature can be said to have goals, it has "seeking truth" in so far that any thing, including ourselves, does.

Comment author: timtyler 26 March 2009 09:51:24PM 2 points [-]

Perhaps I was too brief. Organisms are goal oriented - or at least they look as though they are. Teleonomy, rather than teleology, technicallly, of course.

Organisms act as though their primary goal is to have grandchildren. Seeking the truth is a proximate goal - and not an especially high-priority one.

Prioritising seeking the truth more highly than having babies would be a bizarre and unnatural thing for any living organism to do. I have no idea why anyone would advocate it - except, perhaps as part of some truth-worshiping religion.