wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes February 2014 - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 02 February 2014 01:35PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (482)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 02 February 2014 08:58:34PM 6 points [-]

"Without suffering" seems like a really high bar. Additionally, do we really want a system that can, presumably, put an utter genius with leet rationality skillz in the top position, and not gain from it? If the correlation between doing well and having a smart leader is literally zero, that's what you get.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 February 2014 03:58:34PM 3 points [-]

Additionally, do we really want a system that can, presumably, put an utter genius with leet rationality skillz in the top position, and not gain from it?

This response seems to rely on wilfully misunderstanding of the grandparent.

Preventing damage from an imbecile does not require or imply inability to benefit from a genius. The difference in outcome between having an average leader and an imbecile must be minimal. The difference between an average leader and a genius can be arbitrarily large. It would be uncharitable (as well as just plain wrong) to assume that Taleb is claiming that the correlation between leader intelligence and performance is zero.

(Whether such a system is remotely possible is a whole other issue.)