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Desrtopa comments on Rationality Quotes February 2014 - Less Wrong
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I disagree. Many people, in my experience, seem to think that everyone ought to have an opinion on every subject presented them, as if developing reasonable opinions were something that did not take significant amounts of information or effort.
I am happy to acknowledge that there is no end to the subjects that I have no right to an opinion on, because I haven't put in the time or effort to justify holding forth any position whatsoever.
Such people typically do not require an opinion to be reasonable :-D
In my government class in high school, we had to do an exercise that involved saying which side we were on for several standard political issues.
I remember thinking: "Fuck, I don't have an opinion on gun control!" But there was no scale 1-5 strongly agree to strongly disagree. It was just, "which side are you on?" I even complained to the teacher and she said "Just pick one. You have to have some opinion." Then we had to argue for our positions with the other students at our table.
Basically, "come up with an opinion. Any opinion is fine, just make sure it suits your personality. Then act like you believe it strongly enough to argue for it. Huzzah commitment bias. Make it part of your identity by comparing yourself to your neighbors. No time/internet access will be given during this assignment to do any research."
I ended up arguing for gun control, my (explicit) reasoning internally was "this is the liberal position. When I think about liberals, I think of my parents who are relatively reasonable, when I think of conservatives I think of [the conservatives my parents point out and make fun of] who are crazy. So more likely, the liberals are right."
This is like an exercise in anti-rationality, but I bet most people would think it is a good thing.
Politics appears to be all about choosing a fixed position and coming up with whatever aguments may support them, which is the exact inverse of what rational debate should be.
I would be even less charitable. Politics is mainly about memorizing arguments for your position someone else came up with, presenting them well, and making them sound like responses to your opponents' memorized arguments, and strategically emphasizing the more moderate aspects of your position (if not plainly lying about the less moderate aspects) to appeal to the median voter.
When I studied business management, I always felt revulsion toward my marketing courses. Now my cousin has just finished a post-graduate degree in "political marketing," which drives my revulsion to critical mass.
I agree, but the first VNM axiom doesn't: totality of the preference ordering. Neither does Eliezer.
VNM agents are still allowed to be indifferent.
I like Robin Hanson's post about this. Or there's this quote in from Russell and Norvig:
The quote actually was about betting. From Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, by Russell & Norvig, on Dutch books:
Thanks for the correction!
EDIT: My copy has "One can no more refuse to bet than one can refuse to allow time to pass." Different editions, I guess.
They still have to know they're indifferent.
Why isn't saying "I don't know" a reasonable approach to the issue when ones knowledge is vague enough to be useless for knowledge (and can only be made useful if the case was a bizarre thought experiment), Just because one couldtheoretically bet on something doesn't mean one is in a position to bet. (For example to say that I don't know how to cure a disease so I will go to the doctor, or I don't know what that person's name is (even though I know it isn't "Xpchtl Vaaaaaarax") so I should ask someone, Or I don't know how life began. Or I don't know how many apples are on the tree outside (even though I know it isn't 100 million))
The kind of people Desrtopa is talking about wouldn't be contented with answers such as “10 to 1000”.