[SEQ RERUN] Just Lose Hope Already

Tyrrell_McAllister

Today's post, Just Lose Hope Already, was originally published on 25 February 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Casey Serin owes banks 2.2 million dollars after lying on mortgage applications in order to simultaneously buy 8 different houses in different states. The sad part is that he hasn't given up - hasn't declared bankruptcy, and just attempted to purchase another house. While this behavior seems merely stupid, it recalls Merton and Scholes of Long-Term Capital Management who made 40% profits for three years and then lost it all when they overleveraged. Each profession has rules on how to be successful which makes rationality seem unlikely to help greatly in life. Yet it seems that one of the greater skills is not being stupid, which rationality does help with.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Politics is the Mind-Killer, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, Just Lose Hope Already, was originally published on 25 February 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Casey Serin owes banks 2.2 million dollars after lying on mortgage applications in order to simultaneously buy 8 different houses in different states. The sad part is that he hasn't given up - hasn't declared bankruptcy, and just attempted to purchase another house. While this behavior seems merely stupid, it recalls Merton and Scholes of Long-Term Capital Management who made 40% profits for three years and then lost it all when they overleveraged. Each profession has rules on how to be successful which makes rationality seem unlikely to help greatly in life. Yet it seems that one of the greater skills is not being stupid, which rationality does help with.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

Is this ("It has a small probability of success, but we should pursue it, because the probability if we don't try is zero") not a standard pro-cryonics argument? Given a sufficiently large expected payoff, it seems perfectly valid ...

Cryonics should just work if everything we currently already believe about the brain is true and there are no surprises. It is not a small probability. It is the default mainline probability.

2endoself15y

No. In cryonics we do an explicit cost-benefit calculation in order to see whether we value it enough to spend money that could be used elsewhere. Eliezer is referring to the specific case where something is found to be far less likely than cryonics (which isn't that improbable) but is pursued anyways because the alternative has exactly zero benefit. Such situations almost always ignore some cost or benefit in order to rationalize a choice despite ~0 probability.

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[SEQ RERUN] Just Lose Hope Already

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[SEQ RERUN] Just Lose Hope Already

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