Sam_B comments on Lawrence Watt-Evans's Fiction - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 July 2008 03:00AM

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Comment author: Sam_B 16 July 2008 11:38:58PM 2 points [-]

Why do you think these characters are trying to be "rationalists", even a misguided idea of "rationalists"? I don't watch Star Trek, but as far as I know Mr Spock never describes himself as a rationalist. He may use words like 'logical' and 'probability', but - unless there's something I don't know, which is very possible - he does not come out and say 'I am a rationalist', or claim to adhere to any of the principles that make up rationality. I'm similarly unaware of any character that explicitly sets out to be a rationalist, and repeatedly fails.

As far as I can tell, Mr Spock and his character type aren't portrayed wrongly as rationalist, they're portrayed correctly as introverted, stubbornly skeptic and/or overestimating their own intellect. Nothing more. When Spock says "Captain, we have a 94.92% chance of dying" when the chance of dying is 10%, I don't believe the scriptwriter's message is "probability is a crap science", I believe it's "Spock's understanding of probability is crap, and he vastly overestimates it".