I have not spent much time on this site, so I may have an incorrect understanding of rationality. However, I see rationality more as a vehicle for pursuing and understanding truth. The first argument is to convince people to value truth, and then the next step would be to present rationality as a different method of thinking which would be better able to pursue truth. Convincing someone to value truth is its own battle, especially to folks who have the postmodern belief that their own perception is valuable simply because they perceive it. Simply, if someone does value truth, introducing rationality should follow easily. If someone does not value truth, then they will not accept rationality.
I’m confused by your response. You’ve used a lot of pronouns, so in this context, I’m interpreting your sentence as rationality being a means to the end of truth. However, because of the pronouns, your sentence brings to mind the question: Can rationality be used as a means to ANY end?
If a person values personal happiness, can a rationalist present rationality as a way to be happy? If a person values a successful, blissful marriage, can a rationalist present rationality as a means to love your wife? And (just for the sake of testing the extremes) can rationality be a means to knowing God more deeply?
I mean that to care about truth you have to have something to protect. You have to care about what’s true because you desperately want to actually achieve a goal, rather than fitting in with the people who talk about achieving the goal.
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own? To me, it seems not.
I think my wording of the second sentence you quoted actually sabotaged the question I was really asking. Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own?
It logically can exist as a motivation of its own, but a great many think that they have such motivation, far more than actually do. Even if one feels that one seeks truth for its own sake, it’s probably not true.
I think I remember that Nietzsche did not believe it was possible.
Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
Rationality gives people different things depending on the person and their environment. The best way to predict what would happen in a hypothetical scenario is to be rational. Being able to predict things accurately probably causes more happiness than it prevents, for most. This is a mild side effect of rationality, things designed around happiness would have more of a chance of being good at affecting that (I suspect most basically fail and there are a few gems there).
My view that others, such as Eliezer, do not share is that rationality is much more related to losing than to winning. Rationality prevents people from making mistakes, this is only equivalent to winning and positively creating success if one goes on a significant not-losing streak.
So I’d say that if you are happy naturally, and unhappy when bad things happen to you, it will probably help a lot. If you are naturally unhappy, and need good things to happen to be happy, it won’t make you happy at all, it will only lessen the frequency and severity of failures and problems. It helps one’s net happiness but doesn’t make one happy.
If I’m understanding empiricism correctly, rationalists value truth because it allows them to properly function in their world. I’m confused. Is a rationalist’s success more important than the truth which gives them success?
Rifle scopes do not help help snipers shoot guns. They help snipers know where to aim to hit a target. If the military cut all funding for scopes, it’s still physically possible to perform all the actions that would have been chosen had they had the equipment. It’s even physically possible to shoot more accurately by firing unaimed shots than by firing aimed shots.
However, that would be a stupid idea. It’s stupid because the odds are not better for a random shot than for an aimed shot.
Likewise, rationalists want to win, to hit the target. Sometimes we reason that for an individual shot, it feels like we would do better by not aiming. We check our reasoning over and over, but the output is “It is slightly better to not aim than aim here, this is an exception to the usual rule.” In such cases, we aimanyway.
One problem with trying to believe false things is that those things can corrupt other beliefs and areas of study where we need truth and can’t afford to be wrong. We can do better by relentlessly seeking truth, even when it seems like it would somewhat be better not to know.
Opinions may differ for cases where it seems extremely important to avoid the truth.
In short, we seek truth not for its own sake, but to win, and still seek it when it seems falsehood would probably better help us win, because that seeming is unreliable and usually wrong.
Likewise for killing people to accomplish a goal, they are analogous.
I have not spent much time on this site, so I may have an incorrect understanding of rationality. However, I see rationality more as a vehicle for pursuing and understanding truth. The first argument is to convince people to value truth, and then the next step would be to present rationality as a different method of thinking which would be better able to pursue truth. Convincing someone to value truth is its own battle, especially to folks who have the postmodern belief that their own perception is valuable simply because they perceive it. Simply, if someone does value truth, introducing rationality should follow easily. If someone does not value truth, then they will not accept rationality.
One can value it as a means or an end.
I’m confused by your response. You’ve used a lot of pronouns, so in this context, I’m interpreting your sentence as rationality being a means to the end of truth. However, because of the pronouns, your sentence brings to mind the question: Can rationality be used as a means to ANY end?
If a person values personal happiness, can a rationalist present rationality as a way to be happy? If a person values a successful, blissful marriage, can a rationalist present rationality as a means to love your wife? And (just for the sake of testing the extremes) can rationality be a means to knowing God more deeply?
I failed to communicate, sorry, I will try again:
One can value rationality/(systematically believing true things and trying to shed false beliefs) as a means or an end.
Not exactly
I mean that to care about truth you have to have something to protect. You have to care about what’s true because you desperately want to actually achieve a goal, rather than fitting in with the people who talk about achieving the goal.
If rationality requires truth, and truth requires a motivation, can rationality exist as a motivation on its own? To me, it seems not.
I think my wording of the second sentence you quoted actually sabotaged the question I was really asking. Can rationality give a person happiness given that’s their goal?
It logically can exist as a motivation of its own, but a great many think that they have such motivation, far more than actually do. Even if one feels that one seeks truth for its own sake, it’s probably not true.
I think I remember that Nietzsche did not believe it was possible.
Rationality gives people different things depending on the person and their environment. The best way to predict what would happen in a hypothetical scenario is to be rational. Being able to predict things accurately probably causes more happiness than it prevents, for most. This is a mild side effect of rationality, things designed around happiness would have more of a chance of being good at affecting that (I suspect most basically fail and there are a few gems there).
My view that others, such as Eliezer, do not share is that rationality is much more related to losing than to winning. Rationality prevents people from making mistakes, this is only equivalent to winning and positively creating success if one goes on a significant not-losing streak.
So I’d say that if you are happy naturally, and unhappy when bad things happen to you, it will probably help a lot. If you are naturally unhappy, and need good things to happen to be happy, it won’t make you happy at all, it will only lessen the frequency and severity of failures and problems. It helps one’s net happiness but doesn’t make one happy.
You may want to read http://lesswrong.com/lw/go/why_truth_and/ for an understanding of what this site thinks about that.
If I’m understanding empiricism correctly, rationalists value truth because it allows them to properly function in their world. I’m confused. Is a rationalist’s success more important than the truth which gives them success?
Rifle scopes do not help help snipers shoot guns. They help snipers know where to aim to hit a target. If the military cut all funding for scopes, it’s still physically possible to perform all the actions that would have been chosen had they had the equipment. It’s even physically possible to shoot more accurately by firing unaimed shots than by firing aimed shots.
However, that would be a stupid idea. It’s stupid because the odds are not better for a random shot than for an aimed shot.
Likewise, rationalists want to win, to hit the target. Sometimes we reason that for an individual shot, it feels like we would do better by not aiming. We check our reasoning over and over, but the output is “It is slightly better to not aim than aim here, this is an exception to the usual rule.” In such cases, we aim anyway.
One problem with trying to believe false things is that those things can corrupt other beliefs and areas of study where we need truth and can’t afford to be wrong. We can do better by relentlessly seeking truth, even when it seems like it would somewhat be better not to know.
Opinions may differ for cases where it seems extremely important to avoid the truth.
In short, we seek truth not for its own sake, but to win, and still seek it when it seems falsehood would probably better help us win, because that seeming is unreliable and usually wrong.
Likewise for killing people to accomplish a goal, they are analogous.
I say “we” but in truth only speak for myself.
Thank you! I think I have a better understanding of rationality now.