Prankster comments on What is the difference between rationality and intelligence? - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Wei_Dai 13 August 2014 11:19AM

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Comment author: Prankster 13 August 2014 03:08:08PM 0 points [-]

It seems to me that, as you point out yourself, the concepts mean different things depending on whether you apply them to humans.

Abstract intelligence and abstract rationality are pretty much the same thing as far as I understand. The first is "ability to efficiently achieve goals in a wide range of domains", and the second one is a combination of instrumental rationality and epistemic rationality, which amounts to basically "solving problems given your information" and "acquiring information". When put together, the two types of rationality amount to "gather information about domains and achieve your goals within them", or phrased in another way "ability to efficiently achieve goals in a wide range of domains".

When applied to humans these words mean slightly different things and I think the analogies presented by the other commenters are accurate.