we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational..
I am not sure that we do? I think we are not immune to the typical mind fallacy. But there is plenty of talk around these parts about optimal strategies when confronted with irrational opponents—the correct decision is not always throwing away your own rationality. Communicating with emotional people with the languages they can resonate with seems like a fine practice of rationality.
Now, that is strawmanning a little bit. Perhaps this is talking about a maximum exploitative strategy against irrational/imperfect agents?
Does this some right to you as a toy model?: You are a chess grandmaster. One day, you are challenged by a youth of hubris—the youth is clearly going to benefit from been taking down a peg or two for his development.
If you play as if you are facing a near-peer opponent, you will likely win but that is not optimizing enough for humiliation (and you knew humiliation is good for his devlopment). Been the chess grandmaster you are and the fact that you had been a callous youth in your haydays, you know you can easily model your opponent’s next moves; they will likely make more inaccuracies than you and you are loathed to not take advantage of the situation. So you do, and you make somewhat inaccurate moves in anticipation of them playing badly and thus, maximizing the humiliation potential.
Woud the chess example be a case where a rational agent is rationally expecting the opponents to be irrational?
When I said “we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational”, I was thinking of, for example, our fundraising situation.
In the post regarding fundraising (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5n2ZQcbc7r4R8mvqc), habryka seems to feel frustrated that Moskovitz is cutting off funds despite habryka’s extremely rational explanations to Moskovitz and related organizations.
Yet the emotions (evolutionary fight, flee, freeze responses) of Moskovitz et al overwhelm their rationality, so it doesn’t matter how rational habryka attempts to be with them.
For ideal fundraising success, we might want to keep the limits of rationality in mind.
The very best rationalists and people with the most goodwill for humanity might sometimes overestimate the rest of humanity. That’s because they have so much goodwill for humanity. It’s not “a bad thing” at all. It’s just something we all (myself very much included) need to be aware of in ourselves.
(I’ll paste this in my above post as a clearly-marked edit, in case any of the replies ever get deleted.)
Good point! Moskovitz is probably acting with a mix of rationality and self-protection emotions. After addressing the emotions, maybe we can appeal to his rationality in explaining how we intend to shield the reputational costs (a second nonprofit org that’s independent, but very charitable to LW, or something along those lines).
(Again, I’ll paste this in the above post, clearly marked in the edit section.)
I am not sure that we do? I think we are not immune to the typical mind fallacy. But there is plenty of talk around these parts about optimal strategies when confronted with irrational opponents—the correct decision is not always throwing away your own rationality. Communicating with emotional people with the languages they can resonate with seems like a fine practice of rationality.
Now, that is strawmanning a little bit. Perhaps this is talking about a maximum exploitative strategy against irrational/imperfect agents?
Does this some right to you as a toy model?:
You are a chess grandmaster. One day, you are challenged by a youth of hubris—the youth is clearly going to benefit from been taking down a peg or two for his development.
If you play as if you are facing a near-peer opponent, you will likely win but that is not optimizing enough for humiliation (and you knew humiliation is good for his devlopment). Been the chess grandmaster you are and the fact that you had been a callous youth in your haydays, you know you can easily model your opponent’s next moves; they will likely make more inaccuracies than you and you are loathed to not take advantage of the situation. So you do, and you make somewhat inaccurate moves in anticipation of them playing badly and thus, maximizing the humiliation potential.
Woud the chess example be a case where a rational agent is rationally expecting the opponents to be irrational?
When I said “we irrationally expect everyone else to be rational”, I was thinking of, for example, our fundraising situation.
In the post regarding fundraising (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5n2ZQcbc7r4R8mvqc), habryka seems to feel frustrated that Moskovitz is cutting off funds despite habryka’s extremely rational explanations to Moskovitz and related organizations.
Yet the emotions (evolutionary fight, flee, freeze responses) of Moskovitz et al overwhelm their rationality, so it doesn’t matter how rational habryka attempts to be with them.
For ideal fundraising success, we might want to keep the limits of rationality in mind.
The very best rationalists and people with the most goodwill for humanity might sometimes overestimate the rest of humanity. That’s because they have so much goodwill for humanity. It’s not “a bad thing” at all. It’s just something we all (myself very much included) need to be aware of in ourselves.
(I’ll paste this in my above post as a clearly-marked edit, in case any of the replies ever get deleted.)
fwiw I think this is missing the point about what Habryka is frustrated about.
Is it Moskovitz’s “irrational” responses that got him or a set of rather legible needs like “avoiding funding anything that might have unacceptable reputational costs for Dustin Moskovitz”?
Good point! Moskovitz is probably acting with a mix of rationality and self-protection emotions. After addressing the emotions, maybe we can appeal to his rationality in explaining how we intend to shield the reputational costs (a second nonprofit org that’s independent, but very charitable to LW, or something along those lines).
(Again, I’ll paste this in the above post, clearly marked in the edit section.)