undermind comments on Power and difficulty - LessWrong

21 Post author: undermind 22 October 2014 05:22AM

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Comment author: JoachimSchipper 27 October 2014 05:55:41AM *  1 point [-]

This is not nice - could you try to find a more pleasant way to say this?

Also, LW does do epistemic rationality - but it's easier to say something useful and new about practical matters, so there are more posts of that kind.

Comment author: undermind 30 October 2014 05:25:05AM *  2 points [-]

Sure, it was snarky, but I thought it was funny.

It's a decent criticism of a decent chunk of LW, such that I don't have a great response to it. Check your accuracy at a meta-level to determine when to lie to yourself? That seems to be how this technique is used, but it feels like an unsatisfactory response.

Comment author: JoachimSchipper 30 October 2014 06:27:05AM 2 points [-]

I didn't exactly disagree with the content, right?

Part of the problem is just that writing something good about epistemic rationality is really hard, even if you stick to the 101 level - and, well, I don't really care about 101 anymore. But I have plenty of sympathy for those writing more practical posts.

Comment author: undermind 30 October 2014 06:35:54AM 1 point [-]

No, you didn't.

And kudos (in the form of an upvote) to you for suggesting something to improve the niceness of rationalists -- as has been pointed out many times, that's something we should work on.

Yeah, instrumental rationality is (epistemically) easier -- on the writer as well as on the reader. Epistemic rationality requires rigor, which usually implies a lot of math. Instrumental rationality can be pretty successful with a few examples and a moderately useful analogy.