There was a good discussion on LW about Arthur Chu’s performance on Jeopardy LINK—especially how he took advantage of regular patterns underlying question selection and “random” events to try and maximise his winnings.
The comment thread on that discussion also mentions other “rationalist” practices by other contestants.
Specifically, he hates the idea that “politics is the mindkiller”.
If I understand him correctly (which I probably don’t), I would say he believes he can rationally decide which side in a political conflict is “good” and which one is “evil”, and then the correct strategy is simply to attack the opponents with everything you have. The whole concept of corrupted hardware and ethical injuctions probably seems to him like a clever excuse for not doing the right thing.
If I tried to steelman (what I imagine to be) his position, I would say that today people overestimate their personal importance. Unlike in the ancient tribes, today the political battles have millions “fighting” against millions. Your own input is a very small fraction of the whole, and your probability of becoming a leader of the tribe is almost zero. Therefore your epistemic rationality is not really important in the large scale, but spreading memes that make people better or worse fighters can make a difference.
Something like “Your price for joining” taken to the extreme—your own sanity is the price, if you really care about an issue. If you care about your own rationality more than about the issue, that’s your choice, but it is not the one that maximizes human happiness.
There was a good discussion on LW about Arthur Chu’s performance on Jeopardy LINK—especially how he took advantage of regular patterns underlying question selection and “random” events to try and maximise his winnings.
The comment thread on that discussion also mentions other “rationalist” practices by other contestants.
Note that Arthur does not consider himself a rationalist, and hates LW.
Specifically, he hates the idea that “politics is the mindkiller”.
If I understand him correctly (which I probably don’t), I would say he believes he can rationally decide which side in a political conflict is “good” and which one is “evil”, and then the correct strategy is simply to attack the opponents with everything you have. The whole concept of corrupted hardware and ethical injuctions probably seems to him like a clever excuse for not doing the right thing.
If I tried to steelman (what I imagine to be) his position, I would say that today people overestimate their personal importance. Unlike in the ancient tribes, today the political battles have millions “fighting” against millions. Your own input is a very small fraction of the whole, and your probability of becoming a leader of the tribe is almost zero. Therefore your epistemic rationality is not really important in the large scale, but spreading memes that make people better or worse fighters can make a difference.
Something like “Your price for joining” taken to the extreme—your own sanity is the price, if you really care about an issue. If you care about your own rationality more than about the issue, that’s your choice, but it is not the one that maximizes human happiness.
So, he was playing almost like Watson?