How exactly does knowingly being irrational actually help you to build a space shuttle?
If being rational requires behaviors and choices incompatible with constructing the space shuttle, irrationality is the only way to reach the goal of building it.
You can see this all the time in politics. If logical arguments help support the goals that people are trying to forward, they'll use them. If logic works against them, they will ignore it - and try their hardest to distract everyone else from it.
Tell us: what was the rational purpose of the space shuttle in the first place?
"Truth" and "rationality" only work as top-level goals
Bottom-level. The bottom goal is the support for everything else. You can take off the top without disturbing anything beneath it, but changing anything lower-down affects everything above it.
'Rationality' isn't a fundamental goal. It's a means toward an end. The end, the only one that actually matters. Moving up through the goaltree, rationality only then becomes the goal we strive for.
In most cases, people only want as little truth as is necessary to accomplish their goals. Their actual goals, not what they claim to want or even what they think they want.
Eliezer will probably just pretend that all of those things [cryo etc.] are justified without ever suggesting that it could even be otherwise. Alternate strategies involve claiming that anyone who doesn't accept that believing those things is justified is irrational, putting forward logically invalid arguments that 'prove' belief in those things is justified, and trying to claim their validity as axiomatic.
[EY: I've compacted five Caledonian comments into one comment. See OB policy on commenting frequency. I'm letting C get away with his sixth comment below, but if he keeps it up I'll start deleting outright. If you want to post more, C, then wait.]
Ah, I see posts are now being edited without being marked to show that they have changed. Splendid!
Followup to: Lonely Dissent
True story: In July, I attended a certain Silicon Valley event. I was not an organizer, or a speaker, or in any other wise involved on an official level; just an attendee. It was an evening event, and after the main presentations were done, much of the audience hung around talking... and talking... and talking... Finally the event organizer began dimming the lights and turning them back up again. And the crowd still stayed; no one left. So the organizer dimmed the lights and turned them up some more. And lo, the people continued talking.
I walked over to the event organizer, standing by the light switches, and said, "Are you hinting for people to leave?" And he said, "Yes. In fact [the host company] says we've got to get out of here now - the building needs to close down."
I nodded.
I walked over to the exit.
I shouted, "LISTEN UP, EVERYONE! WE'VE GOT TO GO! OUR TIME HERE HAS PASSED! YOU CAN TALK OUTSIDE IF YOU LIKE! NOW FOLLOW ME... TO FREEDOM!"
I turned.
I marched out the door.
And everyone followed.
I expect there were at least two or three CEOs in that Silicon Valley crowd. It didn't lack for potential leaders. Why was it left to me to lead the CEOs to freedom?
Well, what was in it for them to perform that service to the group? It wasn't their problem. I'm in the habit of doing work I see being left undone; but this doesn't appear to be a common habit.
So why didn't some aspiring would-be future-CEO take the opportunity to distinguish themselves by acting the part of the leader? I bet at least five people in that Silicon Valley crowd had recently read a business book on leadership...
But it's terribly embarrassing to stand up in front of a crowd. What if the crowd hadn't followed me? What if I'd turned and marched out the door, and been left looking like a complete fool? Oh nos! Oh horrors!
While I have sometimes pretended to wisdom, I have never pretended to solemnity. I wasn't worried about looking silly, because heck, I am silly. It runs in the Yudkowsky family. There is a difference between being serious and being solemn.
As for daring to stand out in the crowd, to have everyone staring at me - that was a feature of grade school. The first time I gave a presentation - the first time I ever climbed onto a stage in front of a couple of hundred people to talk about the Singularity - I briefly thought to myself: "I bet most people would be experiencing 'stage fright' about now. But that wouldn't be helpful, so I'm not going to go there."
I expect that a majority of my readers like to think of themselves as having strong leadership qualities. Well, maybe you do, and maybe you don't. But you'll never get a chance to express those leadership qualities if you're too embarrassed to call attention to yourself, to stand up in front of the crowd and have all eyes turn to you. To lead the pack, you must be willing to leave the pack.