You explain how you learned skills of instrumental rationality from debating, but in doing so, you also learned reliable answers to questions of fact about the universe: how to win debates. When I’m learning electrostatics I learn that charges come with different polarities. If I later learn about gravity, and that gravitationally everything attracts, this doesn’t make the electrostatics wrong! Similarly your debating skills were not wrong, just not the same skills you needed for writing research papers.
Regarding Kelly 2003, I’d argue that learning movie spoilers is only desirable, by definition, if it contributes to one’s goals. If it is not desriable, then I contend that it isn’t rational, in any way.
Regarding Bostrom 2011, you say he demonstrates that, “a more accurate model of the world can be hazardous to various instrumental objectives.” I absolutely agree. But if we have reliable reasons to expect that some knowledge would be dangerous, then it is not rational to seek this knowledge.
Thus, I’m inclined to reject your conclusion that epistemic and instrumental rationality can come into conflict, and to reject the proposition that they are different.
(I note that whoever wrote the wiki entry on rationality was quite careful, writing
Epistemic rationality is that part of rationality which involves achieving accurate beliefs about the world.
The use of “involves” instead of e.g. “consists entirely of” is crucial, as the latter would not normally describe a part of rationality.)
When I’m learning electrostatics I learn that charges come with different polarities. If I later learn about gravity, and that gravitationally everything attracts, this doesn’t make the electrostatics wrong! Similarly your debating skills were not wrong, just not the same skills you needed for writing research papers.
In a vacuum, this is certainly true and in fact I agree with all of your points. But I believe that human cognitive biases make this sort of compartmentalization between mental skillsets more difficult than one might otherwise expect. As the old saying goes, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
It would be fair to say that I believe tradeoffs between epistemic and instrumental rationality exist only thanks to quirks in human reasoning—however, I also believe that we need to take those quirks into account.
Thanks for bringing that article to my attention.
You explain how you learned skills of instrumental rationality from debating, but in doing so, you also learned reliable answers to questions of fact about the universe: how to win debates. When I’m learning electrostatics I learn that charges come with different polarities. If I later learn about gravity, and that gravitationally everything attracts, this doesn’t make the electrostatics wrong! Similarly your debating skills were not wrong, just not the same skills you needed for writing research papers.
Regarding Kelly 2003, I’d argue that learning movie spoilers is only desirable, by definition, if it contributes to one’s goals. If it is not desriable, then I contend that it isn’t rational, in any way.
Regarding Bostrom 2011, you say he demonstrates that, “a more accurate model of the world can be hazardous to various instrumental objectives.” I absolutely agree. But if we have reliable reasons to expect that some knowledge would be dangerous, then it is not rational to seek this knowledge.
Thus, I’m inclined to reject your conclusion that epistemic and instrumental rationality can come into conflict, and to reject the proposition that they are different.
(I note that whoever wrote the wiki entry on rationality was quite careful, writing
The use of “involves” instead of e.g. “consists entirely of” is crucial, as the latter would not normally describe a part of rationality.)
In a vacuum, this is certainly true and in fact I agree with all of your points. But I believe that human cognitive biases make this sort of compartmentalization between mental skillsets more difficult than one might otherwise expect. As the old saying goes, “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
It would be fair to say that I believe tradeoffs between epistemic and instrumental rationality exist only thanks to quirks in human reasoning—however, I also believe that we need to take those quirks into account.