RobinHanson

Eliezer Yudkowsky write a post on Facebook on on Oct 17, where I replied at the time. Yesterday he reposted that here (link), minus my responses. So I’ve composed the following response to put here: I have agreed that an AI-based economy could grow faster than does our economy today....

I've been trying for a while to make sense of the various alternate decision theories discussed here at LW, and have kept quiet until I thought I understood something well enough to make a clear contribution. Here goes. You simply cannot reason about what to do by referring to what...

I take it as obvious that signaling is an important function in many human behaviors. That is, the details of many of our behaviors make sense as a package designed to persuade others to think well of us. While we may not be conscious of this design, it seems important...

(Epistemic) rationality has two major components: * Smarts: An ability to, by attending, infer truth from info under ideal circumstances. * Toughness: An ability to limit performance degradation as circumstances worsen. Attending takes time, energy, quiet, etc. Circumstances where human rationality degrades include when: * We expect the truth to...

Most healthy intellectual blogs/forums participate in conversations among larger communities of blogs and forums. Rather than just "preaching to a choir" of readers, such blogs often quote and respond to posts on other blogs. Such responses sometimes support, and sometimes criticize, but either way can contribute to a healthy conversation....

Martial arts can be a good training to ensure your personal security, if you assume the worst about your tools and environment. If you expect to find yourself unarmed in a dark alley, or fighting hand to hand in a war, it makes sense. But most people do a lot...

The word "rational" is overloaded with associations, so let me be clear: to me [here], more "rational" means better believing what is true, given one's limited info and analysis resources. Rationality certainly can have instrumental advantages. There are plenty of situations where being more rational helps one achieve a wide...