For me the obvious problem with “rationality is winning” as a soundbite is that the figure of the “winner” in our culture is defined in a frankly toxic way and using that word obfuscates the huge asymmetries at play. Terminal values are still a thing; rationality is about pursuing one’s own goals as best as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean winning. If you’re an oil CEO with the goal of making a buttload of money and screw everything else and I’m an environmentalist genuinely preoccupied with saving the Earth from climate change, even my most rational approach is climbing up a very steep hill while you can just fund some crank to spread comforting bad science, bribe a few politicians and call it a day.
Don’t mistake me, and think that I’m talking about the Hollywood Rationality stereotype that rationalists should be selfish or shortsighted. If your utility function has a term in it for others, then win their happiness. If your utility function has a term in it for a million years hence, then win the eon.
I’m not arguing that having altruistic goals isn’t rational though. I’m arguing that altruistic (and thus morally constrained) goals are harder to achieve and thus all else equal if it’s Selfish Rationalist vs Altruistic Rationalist of equal skill, the former actually wins more often than not.
I think the distinction here isn’t intrinsically about altruism, it’s about the complexity/difficulty of the thing you’re trying to achieve. I do think altruism tends to have more complexity baked into it than selfishness of a corresponding scale, but it depends on the particular altruism/selfishness. Helping one person do an object level thing for a day is easier than going to the moon, even if you’re doing the latter for selfish reasons.
Obviously, what I’m talking about applies to goals of comparable grandeur. Big civilizational aims. “I want to help the local poor by working in a soup kitchen” is obviously easier than “I want to annex Ukraine to my empire”, even though the former is altruistic and the latter just selfish and cruel aggrandizement.
Fine and well, but that’s got nothing to do with the definition of “winning” or “winner”, semantic concerns, etc. Some goals are harder to achieve than others, that’s all.
The point is that if you say “doing X is winning” then immediately people will drift to “whoever is winning is doing X”—which is a fallacy, but you only can see that if you notice all the asterisks that come with that first statement.
For me the obvious problem with “rationality is winning” as a soundbite is that the figure of the “winner” in our culture is defined in a frankly toxic way and using that word obfuscates the huge asymmetries at play. Terminal values are still a thing; rationality is about pursuing one’s own goals as best as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean winning. If you’re an oil CEO with the goal of making a buttload of money and screw everything else and I’m an environmentalist genuinely preoccupied with saving the Earth from climate change, even my most rational approach is climbing up a very steep hill while you can just fund some crank to spread comforting bad science, bribe a few politicians and call it a day.
—“Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality”
I’m not arguing that having altruistic goals isn’t rational though. I’m arguing that altruistic (and thus morally constrained) goals are harder to achieve and thus all else equal if it’s Selfish Rationalist vs Altruistic Rationalist of equal skill, the former actually wins more often than not.
I think the distinction here isn’t intrinsically about altruism, it’s about the complexity/difficulty of the thing you’re trying to achieve. I do think altruism tends to have more complexity baked into it than selfishness of a corresponding scale, but it depends on the particular altruism/selfishness. Helping one person do an object level thing for a day is easier than going to the moon, even if you’re doing the latter for selfish reasons.
Obviously, what I’m talking about applies to goals of comparable grandeur. Big civilizational aims. “I want to help the local poor by working in a soup kitchen” is obviously easier than “I want to annex Ukraine to my empire”, even though the former is altruistic and the latter just selfish and cruel aggrandizement.
Fine and well, but that’s got nothing to do with the definition of “winning” or “winner”, semantic concerns, etc. Some goals are harder to achieve than others, that’s all.
The point is that if you say “doing X is winning” then immediately people will drift to “whoever is winning is doing X”—which is a fallacy, but you only can see that if you notice all the asterisks that come with that first statement.