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Larks comments on Rationality Quotes October 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 October 2014 11:02PM

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Comment author: Larks 04 October 2014 02:31:08AM 2 points [-]

How is this a rationality quote? I can see people thinking this is a good argument, especially if you politically agreed with the author, but it doesn't seem to be about rationality, or demonstrating an unusually great deal of rationality

Comment author: sketerpot 04 October 2014 02:48:19AM 8 points [-]

It would definitely be a rationality quote if it went on to quote the part where Eric Flint decided to test his hypothesis by putting some of his books online, for free, and watching his sales numbers.

Comment author: DanielLC 04 October 2014 05:20:11PM 2 points [-]

Does he say what the results were anywhere?

Comment author: dspeyer 06 October 2014 09:08:59PM 7 points [-]

Huge success. Sales jumped up in ways that are hard to explain as anything other than the free library's effect.

Comment author: dspeyer 06 October 2014 09:14:17PM 3 points [-]

It expresses two ideas:

  • Reduction to incentives is such a useful hammer that it's tempting to think of the world as homo economus nails. Like all simplified models, that can be useful, but it can also be dangerously wrong.
  • It isn't very much information to say that people have a price. The real information lies in what that price is. It may be true to say "people are dishonest", but if you want to win, you need to specify which people and how dishonest.
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