TheAncientGeek comments on Self-Congratulatory Rationalism - Less Wrong

51 Post author: ChrisHallquist 01 March 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: TheAncientGeek 24 August 2015 09:34:12PM *  0 points [-]

A realistic one.

But not one that tells you unambiguously what to do, ie not a usable guideline at all.

There's a lot of complaint about this heuristic along the lines that it doesn't guarantee perfect results...ie, its a heuristic

And now there is the complaint that its not realistic, it doesn't reflect reality.

Ideal rationalists can stop reading now.

Everybody else: you're biased. Specifically, overconfident,. Overconfidence makes people overestimate their ability to understand what people are saying, and underestimate the rationality of others. The PoC is a heuristic which corrects those. As a heuristic, an approximate method, it i is based on the principle that overshooting the amount of sense people are making is better than undershooting. Overshooting would be a problem, if there were some goldilocks alternative, some way of getting things exactly right. There isn't. The voice in your head that tells you you are doing just fine its the voice of your bias.

Comment author: satt 27 August 2015 01:22:50AM *  0 points [-]

But not one that tells you unambiguously what to do, ie not a usable guideline at all.

I don't see how this applies any more to the "may .or may have been having an off day"" version than it does to your original. They're about as vague as each other.

Overconfidence makes people overestimate their ability to understand what people are saying, and underestimate the rationality of others. The PoC is a heuristic which corrects those. As a heuristic, an approximate method, it i is based on the principle that overshooting the amount of sense people are making is better than undershooting.

Understood. But it's not obvious to me that "the principle" is correct, nor is it obvious that a sufficiently strong POC is better than my more usual approach of expressing disagreement and/or asking sceptical questions (if I care enough to respond in the first place).

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 27 August 2015 03:16:50PM 0 points [-]

But not one that tells you unambiguously what to do, ie not a usable guideline at all.

I don't see how this applies any more to the "may .or may have been having an off day"" version than it does to your original. They're about as vague as each other.

Mine implies a heuristic of "make repeated attempts at re-intepreting the comment using different background assumptions". What does yours imply?

Understood. But it's not obvious to me that "the principle" is correct,

As I have explained, it provides its own evidence.

nor is it obvious that a sufficiently strong POC is better than my more usual approach of expressing disagreement and/or asking sceptical questions (if I care enough to respond in the first place).

Neither of those is much good if interpreting someone who died 100 years ago.

Comment author: satt 27 August 2015 11:18:11PM 0 points [-]

Mine implies a heuristic of "make repeated attempts at re-intepreting the comment using different background assumptions".

I don't see how "treat everyone's comments as though they were made by a sane , intelligent, person" entails that without extra background assumptions. And I expect that once those extra assumptions are spelled out, the "may .or may have been having an off day" version will imply the same action(s) as your original version.

As I have explained, it provides its own evidence.

Well, when I've disagreed with people in discussions, my own experience has been that behaving according to my baseline impression of how much sense they're making gets me closer to understanding than consciously inflating my impression of how much sense they're making.

Neither of those is much good if interpreting someone who died 100 years ago.

A fair point, but one of minimal practical import. Almost all of the disagreements which confront me in my life are disagreements with live people.

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