drethelin comments on Why Don't Rationalists Win? - Less Wrong

6 Post author: adamzerner 05 September 2015 12:57AM

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Comment author: drethelin 12 September 2015 08:26:12PM 2 points [-]

I have the opposite experience! Most people at LW meetups I've been to have tended to be succesful programmers or people with or working on stuff like math phds. Generally more socially awkward but that's not a great proxy for "competence" in this kind of crowd.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 September 2015 02:08:14AM *  1 point [-]

Do you think this was caused by their rationality? It seems more likely to me that these people are drawn to rationality because it validates how they already think.

Comment author: lahwran 15 September 2015 10:02:05PM *  0 points [-]

What you just said doesn't make sense. "Rationality", as formally defined by this community, refers to "doing well" (which I contest, but whatever); Therefore, the question is not "was it caused by their rationality", but "was it caused by a lack of rationality", or perhaps "Was their lack of rationality caused by using LW techniques?".

Comment author: [deleted] 16 September 2015 08:06:24PM 1 point [-]

Defining rationality as winning is useless in most discussions. Obviously what I was referring to is rationality as defined by the community, EG "extreme epistemic rationality".

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 16 September 2015 08:47:59PM 1 point [-]

The community defines rationality as epistemic rationality AND as winning, and not noticing the difference between the two leeds to the idea that rationalists ought to win at everything...that the winningness of instrumental rationality. and the universality of ER can be combined.