scav comments on 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

78 Post author: Yvain 22 November 2013 09:26AM

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Comment author: Ander 25 November 2013 10:56:37PM 18 points [-]

Took the survey, and finally registered after lurking for 6 months.

I liked the defect/cooperate question. I defected because it was the rational way to try to 'win' the contest. However, if one had a different goal such as "make Less Wrong look cooperative" rather than "win this contest", then cooperating would be the rational choice. I suppose that if I win, I'll use the money to make my first donation to CFAR and/or MIRI.

Now that I have finished it, I wish I had taken more time on a couple of the questions. I answered the Newcomb's Box problem the opposite of my intent, because I mixed up what 2-box and 1-box mean in the problem (been years since I thought about that problem). I would 1-box, but I answered 2-box in the survey because I misremembered how the problem worked.

Comment author: scav 26 November 2013 02:52:26PM 2 points [-]

Heh. I also didn't care about the $60, and realised that taking the time to work out an optimal strategy would cost more of my time than the expected value of doing so.

So I fell back on a character-ethics heuristic and cooperated. Bounded rationality at work. Whoever wins can thank me later for my sloth.

Comment author: RussellThor 01 December 2013 08:34:39AM 1 point [-]

Same thats pretty much why I choose cooperate.