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DanielLC comments on Rationality and Winning - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (83)
The definitions I've seen on here are (paraphrased):
Epistemic Rationality: Ability to find truth in a wide variety of environments
Instrumental Rationality: Ability to alter reality to fit your desires in a wide variety of environments
Work ethic and akrasia are part of epistemic rationality, in that they affect your ability to find the truth, but once you figure out what you need to do, any akrasia in actually doing it is strictly instrumental.
I may be misreading this, but it seems to me that you inverted the meaning of akrasia.
After careful reading, my understanding is that DanielLC is saying:
"Akrasia generally harms your instrumental rationality only. Except that you need some basic knowledge to bootstrap your epistemic rationality -- and if akrasia prevents you from ever learning this, then it has directly harmed your epistemic rationality, too."
as a reply to JGWeissman saying:
"If you know akrasia harms you significantly, and you don't make solving this problem your high priority, you are not even epistemically rational!"
Which, by the way, made me realize that I really am not epistemically rational enough. :(
More like, "If you know akrasia harms you significantly, and you don't make solving this problem your high priority, then it doesn't matter if you are epistemically rational because it's not helping you be (instrumentally) rational."
"Rationality" by itself should refer to instrumental rationality. Epistemic rationality is tool of instrumental rationality. Despite these concepts being described as different adjectives modifying the same noun, it is suboptimal to think of them as different aspects of the same category. Epistemic rationality belongs in a category with other tools of rationality, such as actually choosing what you know you should choose.
Fixed.
I know what it means; I just wrote the sentence wrong.
Whoops. Fixed.
I know what it means, I just typed it wrong.
Whoops. Fixed.
I know what it means, I just typed it wrong.