Actually I’m not sure. Anyway, anecdotally, I got into a disagreement with somebody yesterday over what a rational agent would do to find out what somebody had for breakfast. I said that in most cases they would just ask, but the person with whom I was speaking said that they would cut the person open to see what they ate. When I said that this would lead to the agent getting arrested, the person fell back on the idea that when asked the rational agent would give no answer about what the person had for breakfast, since the didn’t look inside and see. I rejected this because that would make me, as someone who would just ask, better at updating towards the truth (of what the people had for breakfast) than the rational agent.
This rambling summary of our disagreement could have been avoided if I had just been using the word “optimal” or some other term.
P.S. I think many of the points about the word “optimal” being sub-optimal are good ones, but I think it might be worth looking for a better term than “rational”. On the other hand, while “optimal” may not be the optimal word to choose, it could still be the rational one.
Perhaps the optimal way to find out is cutting them open, too. At least if you optimise for certainty of the answer and ignore the side-effects as arrests, ethics and disgust. People can have silly preconceptions of rationality, people can have silly preconceptions of optimality as well (or perhaps propensity to argue about silly things in general).
I granted him that it might make sense it the world somehow depended on it of it there were other crazy circumstances, but he was arguing that a more-rational-me would cut the person open, and I was saying that a more-rational-me would probably just ask.
Did he give any explanation why such a silly thing would be rational? Does he exhibit similar weird interpretations of “rationality” or other words on other occasions, or was his insistence only a result of his inability to change mind, even if it means insisting on clearly unreasonable random guesses?
His definition of rational was something like “getting to the truth with highest possible accuracy” but may have even been “getting to the truth 100% of the time”.
I will start using “Optimal”.
Actually I’m not sure. Anyway, anecdotally, I got into a disagreement with somebody yesterday over what a rational agent would do to find out what somebody had for breakfast. I said that in most cases they would just ask, but the person with whom I was speaking said that they would cut the person open to see what they ate. When I said that this would lead to the agent getting arrested, the person fell back on the idea that when asked the rational agent would give no answer about what the person had for breakfast, since the didn’t look inside and see. I rejected this because that would make me, as someone who would just ask, better at updating towards the truth (of what the people had for breakfast) than the rational agent.
This rambling summary of our disagreement could have been avoided if I had just been using the word “optimal” or some other term.
P.S. I think many of the points about the word “optimal” being sub-optimal are good ones, but I think it might be worth looking for a better term than “rational”. On the other hand, while “optimal” may not be the optimal word to choose, it could still be the rational one.
Perhaps the optimal way to find out is cutting them open, too. At least if you optimise for certainty of the answer and ignore the side-effects as arrests, ethics and disgust. People can have silly preconceptions of rationality, people can have silly preconceptions of optimality as well (or perhaps propensity to argue about silly things in general).
It might be the best way to find out the answer, but would you really argue that it would be a rational or optimal decision in real life?
I wouldn’t, of course.
I granted him that it might make sense it the world somehow depended on it of it there were other crazy circumstances, but he was arguing that a more-rational-me would cut the person open, and I was saying that a more-rational-me would probably just ask.
Did he give any explanation why such a silly thing would be rational? Does he exhibit similar weird interpretations of “rationality” or other words on other occasions, or was his insistence only a result of his inability to change mind, even if it means insisting on clearly unreasonable random guesses?
His definition of rational was something like “getting to the truth with highest possible accuracy” but may have even been “getting to the truth 100% of the time”.