The post is about a tradeoff between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality: you shouldn’t invest too much effort in precise knowledge, and in some circumstances, humans may find themselves at a disadvantage because of knowing more. The same clash appears in the metaphor where you trade the achievement of goals (not wanting to eat kittens) for precision of knowledge (gaining IQ points).
Ah… I think I see now. The comment assumed that one would not want to eat kittens, and that IQ is equivalent or isomorphic to epistemic rationality, and then mapped that to giving up instrumental rationality in favor of epistemic rationality. Definitely could’ve used some explanation.
Has this comment really gone entirely without explanation and still been upvoted multiple times? How is this remotely relevant to the post?
The post is about a tradeoff between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality: you shouldn’t invest too much effort in precise knowledge, and in some circumstances, humans may find themselves at a disadvantage because of knowing more. The same clash appears in the metaphor where you trade the achievement of goals (not wanting to eat kittens) for precision of knowledge (gaining IQ points).
Ah… I think I see now. The comment assumed that one would not want to eat kittens, and that IQ is equivalent or isomorphic to epistemic rationality, and then mapped that to giving up instrumental rationality in favor of epistemic rationality. Definitely could’ve used some explanation.