Robin_Hanson2 comments on Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 September 2007 08:05PM

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Comment author: Robin_Hanson2 15 September 2007 02:18:50AM 5 points [-]

Surely, true wisdom would be second-order rationality, choosing when to be rational. ... You can't know the consequences of being biased, until you have already debiased yourself. And then it is too late for self-deception. The other alternative is to choose blindly to remain biased, without any clear idea of the consequences. This is ... willful stupidity.

This isn't quite fair. While it is true that you couldn't know the detailed consequences of being biased, you could make a rational judgment under uncertainty, given what you do know. And it should be possible to for your best judgment in this situation to be that you are better off biased. Of course this mere possibility does not mean that you are in fact better of being biased.