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DanielLC comments on Rationality Quotes March 2014 - Less Wrong
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We aren't trying to promote the idea that rationality is true. We are trying to promote that it is useful.
More accurately, we have defined "rational" to mean "useful", and when we argue that something is rational, we are arguing that it's useful.
If you are, you are being irresponsible because you are not checking what people are going to do with this useful thing.
I can't know for sure that it won't come back to bite me, but I suspect helping people generally tends to be helpful. There are things that are easier to use to cause harm than to help, like nuclear weaponry, but in general helpful things seem to have improved humanity's standard of living, and made them care more about morality.
I don't actually think that teaching rationality is dangerous. I think that LW expects it to have an edifying effect, to change values for the better. So it is the claim of purely instrumental rationality that is the problem.
We are trying to promote the idea that it is useful because it is true.
The only senses in which you wouldn't say it's true are those in which that would be a type error.