Great post. You’re on a roll, Eliezer.
Hal, I query how often the best decision-making process really is binary go/non-go. That humans often reduce a decision making instant to go/non-go “as an approximation to rationality it is of course a total kludge” seems plausible to me (to use Anders Sandburg’s words).
Eliezer, I doubt the justice system’s guilty/not guilty approach is grounded in rationality either. “If Justitia must consider any more complex issue, she should relinquish her scales or relinquish her sword” -and I think the underlying issues regarding “justice” are almost always more complex. But then again, I think the approach with justice should be economic, incentive-based, and empirically grounded, rather than punitive and grounded in social norms the way it is now (in the U.S.).
Anders, is there any research on the degree to which human predisposition to “treat discussion as a form of combat, an extension of war” reduced to 2 binary and oppositional players is grounded in a primate aesthetic. The parallel to primate researcher discussions of alpha and challenger males seems strong to me.
Great post. You’re on a roll, Eliezer. Hal, I query how often the best decision-making process really is binary go/non-go. That humans often reduce a decision making instant to go/non-go “as an approximation to rationality it is of course a total kludge” seems plausible to me (to use Anders Sandburg’s words).
Eliezer, I doubt the justice system’s guilty/not guilty approach is grounded in rationality either. “If Justitia must consider any more complex issue, she should relinquish her scales or relinquish her sword” -and I think the underlying issues regarding “justice” are almost always more complex. But then again, I think the approach with justice should be economic, incentive-based, and empirically grounded, rather than punitive and grounded in social norms the way it is now (in the U.S.).
Anders, is there any research on the degree to which human predisposition to “treat discussion as a form of combat, an extension of war” reduced to 2 binary and oppositional players is grounded in a primate aesthetic. The parallel to primate researcher discussions of alpha and challenger males seems strong to me.