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LawrenceC comments on Rationality Compendium: Principle 1 - A rational agent, given its capabilities and the situation it is in, is one that thinks and acts optimally - Less Wrong
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Comments (28)
There are a couple of problems here. First is the usual thing forgotten on LW -- costs. "More information" is worthwhile iff its benefits outweigh the costs of acquiring it. Second, your argument implies that, say, attempting to read the entire Wikipedia (or Encyclopedia Britannica if you are worried about stability) from start to finish would be a rational thing to do. Would it?
No, it isn't. Being curious is a good heuristic for most people, because most people are in the region where information gathering is cheaper than the expected value of gathering information. I don't think we disagree on anything concrete: I don't claim that it's rational in itself a priori but is a fairly good heuristic.