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lessdazed comments on [Infographic] A reminder as to how far the rationality waterline can climb (at least, for the US). - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (47)
I don't think that's quite a terminal value.
Regardless, modern science aims to minimize false positives. Strong ability in that is hard to compare to weaker abilities to adeptly manage the ratio of false positive to false negative errors, calculating expected value of information, account for cognitive biases, etc.
Two people, each having one of the ability sets I described above, would perform differently in different scenarios, with variables being environment and values. It may be possible to objectively compute values for each describable skill set. Assuming one can and there are hard limits, as no person will approach either hard limit, and even if they could approach one hard limit the best thing to do would probably be to reach a Pareto optimum far from the limit it could nearly reach, I say this is vague and sounds true but not important.
(I have that as somewhat of a terminal value, as far as I can tell.)
Then you and I do not share terminal values. I value being "right" because it is "right". I disvalue being "wrong" because it is wrong. These are practically tautological. :)
Well... there is significance in judging the ability of an arbitrary individual from a given culture to achieve excellence in either quality by examining the availability of the other, especially when attempting to compare the 'greatness' of their achievements. But that has less to do with the hardness of the limits and more to do with the strength of correlation. (With the caveat that the correlations are only statistical; individuals can and do violate those correlations quite frequently -- a testament to how skilled human beings are at being inherently contradictory.)
The body of knowledge that today comprises cognitive science and behavioral economics is something our predecessors of a century ago did not have. I should expect, as a result of this -- should the information be widely disseminated (with fidelity) over time, to see something equivalent to the Flynn Effect in terms of what Eliezer calls the "sanity waterline". (With people like Cialdini and Ariely newly entering into the arena of the 'grand marketplace of ideas', we might see a superior result to that goal than the folks at Snopes have achieved with their individual/piecemeal approach.)
Correspondence of beliefs to reality being desirable is no closer to being a tautology than financial institutes being on the side of rivers, undercover spies digging tunnels in the ground, or spectacles being drinking vessels.
If I had said something that meant something loosely correlated to this, your point would be valid. Instead, what I said was: "I value being right because it is right; I disvalue being wrong because it is wrong."