Constant2 comments on The Evolutionary-Cognitive Boundary - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 February 2009 04:44PM

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Comment author: Constant2 12 February 2009 05:57:14PM 2 points [-]

I'm getting two things out of this.

1) Evolutionary cynicism produces different predictions from cognitive cynicism, e.g. because the current environment is not the ancestral environment.

2) Cognitive cynicism glooms up Eliezer's day but evolutionary cynicism does not.

(1) is worth keeping in mind. I'm not sure what significance (2) has.

However, we may want to develop a cynical account of a certain behavior while suspending judgment about whether the behavior was learned or evolved. Call such cynicism "agnostic cynicism", maybe. So we have three types of cynicism: evolutionary cynicism, cognitive cynicism, and agnostic cynicism.

A careful thinker will want to avoid jumping to conclusions, and because of this, he may lean toward agnostic cynicism.