You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

shminux comments on People who "don't rationalize"? [Help Rationality Group figure it out] - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: Mercurial 02 March 2012 11:38PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (85)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 March 2012 12:25:22AM *  7 points [-]

I don't think I rationalize to any significant extent. Even the examples I came up with for Anna's thread concern inefficient allocation of attention and using zero-information arguments, not something specifically directed to defense of a position. I admit being wrong or confused on simple things, sometimes incorrectly (so that I have to go back to embrace a momentarily-rejected position). It's possible I'm completely incapable of noticing rationalization and would need a new basic skill to fix that, but doesn't seem very likely.

(Alternatively, perhaps "rationalization" needs to be unpacked a bit, so that problems like those in the examples I referred to above can find a place in that notion. As it is, they seem more like flaws in understanding unbiased with respect to a favored conclusion, unless that conclusion is to be selected in the hindsight.)

Comment author: shminux 03 March 2012 04:36:48AM 19 points [-]

Anyone volunteers to go through Vladimir_Nesov's comments on LW and point out his rationalizations to him?

Comment author: Mercurial 03 March 2012 06:59:30AM 10 points [-]

That could actually be quite helpful. No offense to Vladimir; we're just sincerely curious about this phenomenon, and if he's really a case of someone who doesn't relate to Tarski or rationalization, then it'd be helpful to have good evidence one way or the other about whether he rationalizes.